Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality

compiled by his daughter Zeena and Nikolas Schreck - February 2, 1998

Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997), along with Charles Manson, Timothy
Leary, and other messianic pop gurus, was a notorious figure of the
1960s' subculture of social experiment. As the flamboyant High Priest
of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible, he served
as an ideal bogeyman for the sensation-seeking American media of that
tumultuous period.

His curious celebrity was based largely on a self-created legend. This
carefully-orchestrated legend may, in the final analysis, be LaVey's
most enduring legacy. LaVey disseminated his legend through interviews
with journalists, personal discussion with his disciples, and two
LaVey-approved [auto]biographies (apparently ghostwritten by LaVey
himself). The first of these, 1974's The Devil's Avenger (credited to
LaVey associate Burton Wolfe), embellished on the fabrications Wolfe
had already sketched in his introduction to the Satanic Bible. The
second, 1990's Secret Life of a Satanist (credited to Blanche Barton,
LaVey's live-in secretary and mother of his son), contradicted many of
LaVey's own claims in the earlier volume, while putting forth new
legends for public consumption. As social historians and scholars of
occult movements begin to study LaVey's life and times in an objective
historical context, a wealth of information concerning the man beneath
the Devil horns has come to light. This brief checklist is a concise
guide to separating the deliberate prevarications from the human, all-
too-human facts. For brevity's sake, only the most well-known aspects
of the legend will be clarified here.

LEGEND: Claimed that "Anton Szandor LaVey" was his genuine birth name.

REALITY: Born "Howard Stanton Levey".

SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois. Confirmed
by relatives.

LEGEND: Claimed his parents were Joseph and Augusta LaVey.

REALITY: Parents were Michael and Gertrude Levey.

SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois. Confirmed
by ASL's daughter Zeena and daughter Karla according to her entry on
ASL's death certificate.

LEGEND: Claimed he was introduced to the Dark Side by his
Transylvanian Gypsy grandmother, who regaled him as a child with
supernatural folklore and tales of vampires and werewolves.

REALITY: ASL's grandmother was not Transylvanian nor of Gypsy stock.
She was a Ukrainian named Cecile Luba Primokov-Coulton ("Coulton" was
Anglicized from "Koltonoff"). Despite his frequent claims, ASL had no
Gypsy ancestry.

SOURCES: Relatives, including ASL's parents.

LEGEND: In 1945 the 15-year-old ASL was brought to the ruins of
postwar Germany by his uncle, a U.S. Coast Guard officer. There the
teenaged ASL was shown top-secret films inspired by Satanic cult
lodges and their rituals. ASL claimed that the "German" rituals in his
1972 book The Satanic Rituals were actual transcripts of the filmed
rituals he saw as a youth.

REALITY: Young Howard spent the entirety of 1945 in suburban northern
California, and never visited Germany at any time in his life. The
uncle who he claimed brought him to Germany was incarcerated at
McNeill Island Penitentiary for involvement with Al Capone-related
criminal activity during 1945, and was never in the armed forces.
Allied martial law forbade U.S. citizens from visiting postwar
Germany. The "German" rituals in the Satanic Rituals are written in
extremely poor, Anglicized German. They are clearly uncredited
adaptations of the short story The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap
Long and H.G. Wells' famous novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.

SOURCES: ASL relatives, former wife Diane LaVey, The Hounds of
Tindalos, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Satanic Rituals, Church of
Satan member Rosalind Herkommer (who translated ASL's rituals into
German).

LEGEND: The 15-year-old ASL played second oboe with the San Francisco
Ballet Orchestra, making him the youngest musician ever to play with
that prestigious institution.

REALITY: There was no "San Francisco Ballet Orchestra" in 1945. The
San Francisco Ballet was accompanied by a local orchestra, whose
records show that none of its three oboists was named "Levey" or
"LaVey".

SOURCES: San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, San
Francisco, California.

LEGEND: In 1947 ASL ran away from home and joined the Clyde Beatty
Circus. The Circus employed the 17-year-old as a lion tamer. He then
replaced the Circus calliope player, accompanying such famous Beatty
acts as the Concellos, Harold Alanza, and the Cristianis.

REALITY: The voluminous Beatty archives show no record of a "Levey" or
"LaVey" as lion tamer or musician. The Concellos, Alanza, and
Cristianis were never Beatty performers; they worked exclusively for
the Ringling Brothers Circus.

SOURCES: Beatty 1947 Route Books, Circus World Museum, Baraboo,
Wisconsin (Wright, "SD", page 67); ASL relatives.

LEGEND: In 1948 the 18-year-old ASL was engaged to play organ at the
Mayan burlesque theater in Los Angeles. There he met a young stripper
named Marilyn Monroe, with whom he had a passionate love affair in the
period before her rise to film stardom. According to ASL, Monroe had
resorted to stripping to pay her rent. As proof of his relationship
with Monroe, ASL later showed visitors a copy of Monroe's famous nude
calendar inscribed "Dear Tony, How many times have you seen this!
Love, Marilyn".

REALITY: ASL never knew Monroe. Monroe intimate Robert Slatzer and
Harry Lipton, Monroe's agent in 1948, have exposed and discredited
this tale. Lipton paid Monroe's expenses, including her rent. Paul
Valentine, director of the Mayan Theater, has stated that the Mayan
was never a burlesque theater, and that neither Monroe nor ASL ever
worked for the Mayan in any capacity. Diane LaVey, ASL's former wife,
has admitted that she forged the "Monroe" inscription on the calendar.
ASL's former publicist Edward Webber claims ASL admitted he never knew
Monroe.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Paul Valentine (Wright, "SD", page #68), Harry
Lipton (Aquino-Lipton conversation 12/1/82), Robert Slatzer (letter to
Aquino 11/27/82), Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91).

LEGEND: ASL was exposed to the savagery of human nature during his
stint as a San Francisco Police photographer in the early 1950s.

REALITY: San Francisco Police Department past employment records
include no "Howard Levey" nor "Anton LaVey". Frank Moser, who was a
SFPD photographer in the early 1950s, said that ASL never worked for
the Department.

SOURCES: SFPD records, Frank Moser (Wright, "SD", page 68).

LEGEND: ASL studied criminology at San Francisco City College during
the Korean War.

REALITY: SFCC has no record of ASL's enrollment at any time.

SOURCES: SFCC records (Wright, "SD", page 68).

LEGEND: ASL purchased the house at 6114 California Street (which would
later become the headquarters of the Church of Satan - the infamous
"Black House") because he discovered on first inspection that it was
the former brothel of Barbary Coast madam Mammy Pleasant. The house
was honeycombed with trapdoors and secret passageways, built by
Pleasant to elude police raids.

REALITY: 6114 was ASL's parents' home. It was never a brothel, nor did
Mammy Pleasant ever live or work there. ASL's parents first allowed
ASL and his first wife Carole to live in the house, then transferred
ownership of it to ASL and his second wife Diane in 1971. Such secret
passages and hidden rooms that exist were constructed by ASL.

SOURCES: Relatives, San Francisco property records (Michael & Gertrude
Levey, Joint Tenancy Grant Deed, July 9, 1971).

LEGEND: In the 1950s ASL traveled to Nice, France, where he recorded
an album of organ music under the pseudonym of "Georges Montalba".

REALITY: ASL's first and only trip to France was in the mid-1970s,
when his Dutch disciple Maarten Lamers, Amsterdam sex club owner,
financed his voyage. The "ASL=Montalba" story appeared in 1989, when a
gullible Church of Satan member found a Montalba album and suggested
that it was similar to ASL's own music. ASL, never pleased by
competition, responded with the preposterous "pseudonym" claim - which
is still ardently supported by his posthumous followers.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL was the official city organist for San Francisco until
1966, playing for gala events such as government banquets and
political meetings.

REALITY: San Francisco has never had an "official city organist".
According to ASL's first wife Carole, his only income of $29.91/week
was generated by his regular engagement at the "Lost Weekend"
nightclub, where he was the house Wurlitzer organist.

SOURCE: Julie Burford, Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, California
(Wright, "SD", page 68). Carole LaVey's divorce proceeding records
(Wright, "SD", page 68).

LEGEND: On the night of April 30, 1966 (the German Satanic festival of
Walpurgisnacht), ASL in a "blinding flash" declared himself the High
Priest of Satan, proclaimed that the Age of Satan had begun, and
founded the Church of Satan as a religious institution.

REALITY: In 1966 ASL supplemented his income by presenting weekend
lectures on exotic and occult topics, and by conducting "Witches'
Workshops". He charged $2 a head, filling his living room with the
curious and establishing a local reputation as an eccentric.
Professional publicist Edward Webber suggested to ASL that he "would
never make any money by lecturing on Friday nights for donations ...
it would be better to form some sort of church and get a charter from
the State of California ... I told Anton at the time that the press
was going to flip out over all this and that we would get a lot of
notoriety". In the summer of 1966, long after the fictional founding-
date invented later, a newspaper article about ASL's lectures
offhandedly referred to him as "priest of the Devil's church". This
mixture of Webber's idea and the newspaper's characterization resulted
in the creation of the Church of Satan as a business and publicity
vehicle. Jack Webb, a San Francisco Police investigator who knew ASL
from the "Lost Weekend" nightclub, also suggested that he should form
a church of some kind to exploit his recondite knowledge.

SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91), Jack Webb, Diane
LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL's trademark shaved head was the result of a ceremonial
head-shaving on April 30, 1966, to formalize his role as High Priest
of Satan. This ritual was performed in the tradition of the Yezidi
devil worshipping tribes of Iraq, who were said to have carried out a
similar ceremony.

REALITY: ASL shaved his head in the summer of 1966 due to a light-
hearted dare from his wife. The "LaVey look" had nothing to do with
the Church of Satan founding nor any mystical meaning attached to it
later. Nor do Yezidi qawwals (religious teachers) shave their heads.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey; Ethel S. Drower, Peacock Angel, 1941; C.J.
Edmonds, A Pilgrimage to Lalish, Royal Asiatic Society, 1967.

LEGEND: In 1966 ASL personally designed the Baphomet emblem of the
Church of Satan. He owns the right to this design, claiming it cannot
be reproduced without obtaining licensing rights from the Church of
Satan.

REALITY: The Baphomet emblem used by the Church of Satan was neither
original to it nor created by ASL, hence cannot be trademarked. The
original Baphomet dates at least as far back as the medieval Knights
Templar. The artwork for the current emblem's goat/pentagram first
appears in a 1931 book by Oswald Wirth. The complete emblem with the
added circles and "LVYThN" Hebrew letters appears on the cover of a
book by Maurice Bessy two years before the creation of the Church of
Satan. Early photos of Church activities often show ASL or his
disciples using the Bessy book as a photo-prop because of its
prominent cover-Baphomet, and he included that book in his Compleat
Witch bibliography. The Baphomet, including this rendition of it, is
clearly in the public domain.

SOURCES: Oswald Wirth, La fran-maconnerie rendue intelligible a ces
adeptes - II, "Le compagnon", Paris: Derry-Livres, 1931, page #60;
Maurice Bessy, A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural,
London: Spring Books, 1964 [the original edition of this work -
Histoire en 1000 images de la magie - was published in 1961 by
Editions du Pont Royal]; Thomas H. Hilton, Sex and the Occult, Vol. I,
Los Angeles: Centurion Press, 1974;Church of Satan members, The Black
Flame (a 1980s Church of Satan magazine).

LEGEND: One of ASL's most widely-accepted falsehoods is his claim that
he served as technical advisor for the 1968 Roman Polanski film
Rosemary's Baby. ASL also claimed to have played the curiously
uncredited part of the Devil in that film.

REALITY: ASL had no involvement with Rosemary's Baby. Polanski's close
friend Gene Gutowski (original producer of the film) stated that there
was no technical advisor, nor did ASL ever even meet Polanski.
Producer William Castle, who details all aspects of the film's
production in his autobiography, never mentions ASL. He does describe
Polanski's diligence in basing the film exactly on the Ira Levin novel
from which it was adapted, eliminating any need for technical advice.
The father of the actress who played Mia Farrow's body-double in the
Devil scene recalled that a young, very slender professional dancer
played the part, dressed in a small rubber suit. In 1971 this suit was
acquired by Studio One Productions in Louisville, Kentucky, for use in
a low-budget horror film Asylum of Satan. Michael Aquino, technical
advisor for that film, examined the suit and concluded that the 200-
pound, 6-foot ASL could not possibly have worn it. [The suit was worn
by a girl in the Asylum film.] Not a single member of the cast or crew
of Rosemary's Baby has ever mentioned ASL's involvement. In 1968 a San
Francisco theater did ask ASL to make an appearance at the film's
local opening as a promotional event. This appears to have been ASL's
only connection with the film that engendered the 1960s' popular
interest in Satanism.

SOURCES: Gene Gutowski; William Castle, Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare
the Pants off America, New York: Pharos Books, 1992; Diane LaVey,
Michael A. Aquino (COS, page #17).

LEGEND: Jayne Mansfield, Hollywood sex symbol and actress, was a card-
carrying Satanist and had an affair with ASL.

REALITY: Publicity agent Tony Kent, an associate of Ed Webber,
arranged the meeting between Mansfield and ASL as a publicity stunt.
ASL was smitten with the actress. Mansfield, who made no secret of her
many affairs, denied knowing ASL intimately, and no associate of hers
has ever confirmed any supposed romance with ASL. In a 1967 interview
she said, "He had fallen in love with me and wanted to join my life
with his. It was a laugh." According to ASL's publicist Edward Webber,
Mansfield would ridicule her Satanic suitor by calling from her Los
Angeles home and seductively teasing him while her friends listened in
on the conversation. ASL's public claims that he had an affair with
Mansfield began only after Mansfield's death in an automobile
accident, which he also claimed was the result of a curse he had
placed on her lover Sam Brody.

SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino 6/2/91); interview with
Mansfield quoted in Jayne Mansfield by May Mann, Pocket Books, 1974.

LEGEND: ASL wrote the Satanic Bible, his principal work, to fulfill
his congregation's need for a scriptural guide.

REALITY: The Satanic Bible was conceived as a commercial vehicle by
paperback publisher Avon Books. Avon approached ASL for some kind of
Satanic work to cash in on the Satanism & witchcraft fad of the late
1960s. Pressed for material to meet Avon's deadline, ASL resorted to
plagiarism, assembling extracts from an obscure 1896 tract - Might is
Right by Ragnar Redbeard into a "Book of Satan" for the SB, and
claiming its authorship by himself. [Ironically these MiR passages are
the ones most frequently quoted by ASL disciples.] Another third of
the SB consists of John Dee's "Enochian Keys", taken directly but
again without attribution from Aleister Crowley's Equinox. The SB's
"Nine Satanic Statements", one of the Church of Satan's central
doctrines, is a paraphrase, again unacknowledged, of passages from Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The last words in the SB - "Yankee Rose" - have
been puzzled over for years by readers. "YR" is actually the name of
an old popular tune in ASL's nightclub repertoire.

SOURCES: ASL, The Satanic Bible; Ragnar Redbeard, Might is Right, Port
Townsend: Loompanics (reprint), 1896; Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Galt's
speech, ca. pages #936-993); "Yankee Rose" by Sidney Holden & Abe
Frankl (Irving Berlin Music, 1926).

LEGEND: ASL claimed that at the height of the Church of Satan's
popularity there were hundreds of thousands of formal members.

REALITY: Diane LaVey (who administered the Church as High Priestess
1966-1984), Michael A. Aquino (senior Magister of the Church and
Editor of its Cloven Hoof newsletter 1971-1975), and Zeena LaVey (High
Priestess of the Church 1985-1990) have all affirmed that the figures
claimed by ASL were grossly exaggerated. The membership of the Church
of Satan never exceeded 300 individuals, several of whom were
nonmember subscribers to the newsletter or ASL friends receiving
complimentary mailings.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Michael A. Aquino, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL claimed to be a multimillionaire, owning three homes in
northern California, a convent in Italy, a chateau in France, a fleet
of luxury automobiles, a 185-foot yacht, three salvage ships, and
other property.

REALITY: During Diane [LaVey] Hegarty's 1988-91 lawsuit against ASL,
and ASL's subsequent 1991 filing for bankruptcy, ASL stipulated under
oath that he owned nothing more than 50%% of the house his parents had
given jointly to him and Diane, along with the personal items he kept
therein. ASL's final years were subsidized by California state aid.
Assessors declared the house to be in such poor repair as to be nearly
worthless on the real estate market. Family members have attested to
the fact that by the mid-1970s the LaVeys lived in near-poverty,
frequently having to rely upon ASL's father's generosity. According to
other LaVey relatives, ASL continued to rely on handouts from friends
and relatives until the end of his life.

SOURCES: Hegarty v. LaVey (San Francisco Superior Court Case #891863),
Anton LaVey Bankruptcy, Chapter 7 (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern
California, Case #91-34251), Zeena LaVey, other relatives.

LEGEND: ASL was a close friend of Sammy Davis, Jr. and inducted him
into the Church of Satan.

REALITY: Sammy Davis, Jr. was invited to accept an honorary membership
in the Church of Satan by Michael Aquino. After Davis sent Aquino his
acceptance on March 17, 1973, he was presented with the honorary
membership on April 13, 1973 by Aquino and Karla LaVey alone. ASL did
not meet Davis until August 1973.

SOURCES: Davis letter to Aquino 3/17/73; Church of Satan Priesthood
Bulletin 4/30/73; Aquino, COS, Chapter 23; Sammy Davis, Hollywood in a
Suitcase (pre-publication text, printed in Daily News, New York,
9/11/80), Karla LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL presented himself as a loving family man.

REALITY: ASL violently beat his wife Diane throughout their marriage.
In 1984 a police report was made describing Diane being strangled into
unconsciousness by ASL, who was in such a murderous rage that his
daughter Karla had to pull him off Diane and drag her outside the
house to save her life. ASL routinely physically beat and abused those
of his female disciples with whom he had sex, forcing them into
prostitution as part of his "Satanic counseling" and collecting their
earnings. In 1986 ASL was a passive witness to the sexual molestation
of his own grandson by a longtime friend who was later convicted of
sex crimes with minors. In 1990 ASL informed a mentally-ill stalker of
his daughter Zeena of her whereabouts and the time & location of a
public appearance she was scheduled to make, deliberately endangering
her life.

SOURCES: San Francisco Police records of ASL attack on Diane LaVey,
Zeena LaVey, Diane LaVey, Stanton LaVey.

LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship with Togare, his
pet lion.

REALITY: While ASL was always careful to portray himself to the public
as an animal lover, in private he was cruel to and neglectful of his
pets. When he was given Togare as a cub in 1964, he was ill-equipped
to deal with such an exotic, wild animal despite his pretensions as a
circus lion-tamer. As Togare became larger and more unruly, ASL
frequently used an electric cattle prod to hurt and frighten him into
submission. Many animal-rights proponents, including Togare's final
owner Tippi Hedren, agree that it is detrimental to a wild animal's
development to be raised in a domestic environment. ASL was arrested
due to Togare's unruly behavior, and ASL was ordered to donate him to
the San Francisco Zoo. After complying, ASL made only two visits to
Togare. Due to the trauma of his early life, Togare needed special
care at the Zoo and at every animal-care facility in which he
subsequently lived.

SOURCES: Jack Castor (Lion Keeper, San Francisco Zoo), Diane LaVey,
Zeena LaVey, Tippi Hedren (The Cats of Shamballa, McGraw-Hill, 1985).

LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship with his other
pets.

REALITY: In the late 1960s ASL acquired a Doberman Pinscher (Loki) as
an accent to his "sinister" image. ASL never took the time to
housebreak or train Loki, and relegated him to the overgrown and
unkempt backyard of the house, regardless of weather. If Loki ever
tried to slip into the house for shelter, ASL routinely used Togare's
cattle-prod on him to terrify him back outside. In his old age Loki
developed such severe arthritis that he could not climb the stairs to
the back door to eat, and began wasting away from malnutrition. ASL
then gave him to one of his prostitute "students", who at least saw
that Loki had a warm, inside home until he died a few months later.
During her young childhood ASL's daughter Zeena once awoke late at
night to hear slamming sounds and the shrieking of her German Shepherd
puppy. Running downstairs, she saw ASL savagely beating the cowering,
cornered dog with a wooden plank. When Zeena begged ASL to stop and
asked him what the dog had done to deserve such treatment, ASL
screamed, "She won't listen to me! I'm going to force her to obey me!"
ASL continued beating the dog until her face was covered with her
blood, then dropped the plank and left the dog quivering in the
hallway, so injured and frightened that she wouldn't let even Zeena
come near her. This incident left the dog traumatized for a long time
afterwards.

SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.

LEGEND: On ASL's original death certificate the date of his demise was
recorded as October 31, 1997 (Halloween).

REALITY: An official investigation by the City of San Francisco
determined that ASL's actual date of death was October 29, 1997 and
that the "Halloween" date had been illegally written on the document.

SOURCES: Death Certificate #380278667, San Francisco Department of
Public Health; Dr. Giles Miller (attending physician at ASL's death),
Physician's Amendment to Death Certificate, 11/26/97.
____________________

RESEARCH REFERENCES: Wright, Lawrence, "Sympathy for the Devil",
Rolling Stone #612, September 5, 1991, Saints and Sinners. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Aquino, Michael A., The Church of Satan. San
Francisco: Temple of Set, 1983. We extend our thanks to ASL's
relatives and associates who contributed their memories.

Exorcism, Demonology, Psychic Investigations - http://www.garguillio.com/