Ozymandias and Harriet: Homunculi, Androids, and Owls

And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?  -- Arthur Frayn/Zardoz

Yahweh 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

          Genesis 2:7

"Adam" literally means "son of red earth."  A man made of clay.  God shaped him, blew into his nose, and then "poof!"  Ecce Homo!

According to some traditions, Lucifer refused to bow down before God's newest creation, and for his disobedience and his pride, he was cast out of Heaven.

Adam's first wife Lilith was also created from dust, and in some traditions fashioned from the same ball of clay as Adam.  She, like Lucifer, was quarrelsome, refused to obey Adam, and was thus expelled (or left of her own accord) from the Garden of Eden.  

Adam = Incel Prime? 

Lilith's origins are found in Sumerian mythology, where she is sometimes depicted as an evil spirit, or a witch, demon, and even -- perhaps -- as a goddess.  Lilith lore is rich and varied and we regret that going into her story more closely is not within the scope of this post.  

One day....

The Akkadian word lilu is related to the Hebrew word lilith in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird....In Hebrew-language texts, the term lilith or lilit (translated as "night creatures", "night monster", "night hag", or "screech owl") first occurs in a list of animals in Isaiah 34. (Wikipedia)

The Burney Relief (1800-1750 BCE)
By Gennadii Saus i Segura - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126738193

The Burney Relief may or may not be a representation of Lilith.  The identification of the figure as Lilith is based on the aforementioned descriptions of her in Isaiah, as well as translations of her name.  But, as we have seen, translations of her name vary from say, "night hag" to "screech owl."  Any identification of this relief as a depiction of Lilith is thus debatable, and current scholarly consensus is that she is not Lilith but Inanna/Ishtar.  Consider the following:  

The "screech owl" translation of the King James Version is, together with the "owl" (yanšup, probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the "great owl" (qippoz, properly a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words. (Wikipedia)

Basically, they didn't know the meaning of some Hebrew words, so they chose "owl."  The KJV version of 34:15 uses "great owl" but the word qippoz actually means snake.  Given the adventures in the Garden of Eden, it's more appropriate.  Many depictions of Lilith have her embracing a large serpent, as in Collier's famous eponymous painting from 1887.

Anton LaVey

How fitting that creating artificial life-forms was a latter-day obsession of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.   Lucifer refused to bow to God's creation, so why would Lucifer's priest not want to do the same and try to equal God?  

LaVey found creating artificial "companions" important enough to make it Point 4 in his Pentagonal Revisionism: A 5-Point Program, a manifesto which 

....reflects attitudes which allow others to decide whether they wish to align themselves with Satanism or not. Each is necessary for Satanic change to take place.

Here's how he introduces it. 

4. Development and production of artificial human companions

The forbidden industry. An economic “godsend” which will allow everyone “power” over someone else. Polite, sophisticated, technologically feasible slavery. And the most profitable industry since T.V. and the computer.

Link  (CoS)

The actual text is a kind of "how to" manual, with tips and suggestions, as well as criticism of sexual dolls.  I suppose at the time, the only game in town were those ridiculous inflatable dolls, suitable more for a prank than a shag.  I wonder how he'd feel about Real Dolls?  LaVey's text is about more than a simple sex toy, but clearly, when one thinks of creating an artificial companion subject to one's authority, the "incel inside" is bound to kick in among many a frustrated male.  

Personally, the more "life-like" those Real Dolls get, the creepier they become, a la the uncanny valley.  As my ex-wife once noted, sex with such a doll is akin to necrophilia, the ultimate domination over a female "partner." A powerless female form, reduced to an unmoving body. This company has existed now for years and put its first doll on the market in 1996.  They cost thousands of dollars. 27 fnord years and counting. 

Interesting quote from founder Matt McMullen in an interview with Haaretz: "Sex robots will be a great boon to society. There are millions of people out there who cannot establish good relationships."

LaVey doesn't deny the sexual component of creating "gynoids," but he still a seems more into the power relationship, and playing God....

The taboo against androids for companions has persisted largely due to the Frankensteinian or Pygmalionistic "imitation of God" trauma. 

**** 

In today's world the creation of replacement or supplementary human beings is the most Satanic activity possible. This is not meant as a replacement for the philosophy of Satanism as outlined in The Satanic Bible. It is a contemporary vehicle for it.

**** 

I have great respect for those who pioneer their own artificial human companions, crude as they might initially be. They will have come a small step closer to playing God and creating man or woman according to their desired image. With a creative outlet as cloaked in age-old taboo as this, innovation may now run rampant -- more so than any artform man has yet known.

The bizarre twilight world of the ventriloquist, the puppet-master and the dollmaker can perhaps be understood through other than the minds of psychologists. The acceptable schizoid element in all of us -- the one that selects our mates -- has a fresh, new, open portal to pass through. Through surrogates the race will survive.

 Eldon Tyrell

In Blade Runner, Eldon Tyrell, -- director of the company which creates the "replicants" (androids) which protagonist Detective Deckard is charged with "retiring" -- demonstrates the quality of his craft by showing Deckard an artificial owl.

In Blade Runner 2029, a comic book, Tyrell buries an owl on his family property and wonders if he can “beat death.” In a Blade Runner video game, Tyrell creates a pathogen, deadly to replicants, code named ”Night Owl” (recall those translations of Lilith).  In the Blade Runner 2019 comic, Tyrell has an owl he calls “Athena.”

Robert Mercer

Real-life billionaire and early AI researcher, Robert Mercer

....dubbed his house the Owl’s Nest. Owls seem to be something like a familiar for Mercer. He’s commissioned a succession of yachts, all called Sea Owl, the latest of which stretches to 203 feet.  At the Owl’s Nest, visitors pass through pillars crowned by a pair of owl statues, their wings outstretched as if taking flight.

         Bloomberg

Could Tyrell be inspired by Mercer, or is it simply a coincidence? As a symbol of wisdom, the owl is not exactly obscure.  

One shouldn't overstate Mercer's involvement in AI. It seems to be one of many computer-related projects with which he has been involved, and he seems to have been more interested in using computers to make himself rich rather than make artificial life.

This talk of billionaire power brokers and owls cannot but evoke the Bohemian Grove.  The Grove's symbolism is rife with owls, and a giant owl is the central figure in the opening ceremony (or ritual?) at their annual encampments.

Here are two articles on the [Bohemian] Grove 

• Owl of Wisdom: Illuminati, Bohemian Club, Schlaraffia, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
• Bohemian Grove: Moloch, Moles and Rituals 

We at LoS have ourselves already spilled a lot of virtual ink over owls and the Grove....

In a brief exchange of comments on one of his articles, researcher Terry Melanson writes: 

I find it weird that Masonry doesn’t really use the owl and never has. A missed opportunity, esoterically-wise. I like the work you do at Laws of Silence on all these subjects. Surprisingly I have friendly relations with Masons, mostly because I don’t try and bullshit or fabricate.

It’s also super interesting that Mercer is obsessed with owls and that conspiracists totally overlooked it. When [a friend] told me about Mercer and owls I immediately thought of this post I did many moons ago. There a cybernetic angle to it, which Mercer is all-too familiar with.

A Strange Metallic Plaque with Cybernetic Occult Symbolism 

This provenance of the plaque discussed below is unknown, but grok, if you will, the symbols Melanson describes:

There’s quite the variety of symbols, culled together in a single theme. Amidst circuitry and technical specs, the owl of wisdom is present; an all-seeing eye within a downward-pointing triangle; a neuron seemingly attached to a circuit; a pentagram in some sort of feedback loop; the Panta Rhei [“everything is in a state of flux”] of Heraclitus is mentioned, and so is cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener’s Gott & Golem, Inc. [God and Golem, Inc.: A comment on certain points where Cybernetics impinges on Religion].

The neuron attached to a circuit, and the evocation of the golem....hmm.  To what degree is this symbol-rife plaque a totem to the creation of either bio-mechanical interface, or artificial life?  A golem....

James Gordon Bennet

What is it with rich men and owls?  The Bohemian Grove, Robert Mercer...and then there's James Gordon Bennett.  Like Mercer, Bennett was really into owls.  He even planned for a mausoleum that would have risen to 465 feet tall, in the form of an enormous owl. 

Bennett seems to have harboured an enthusiasm for owls for much of his life, an obsession that only seems to have grown over time. He began keeping live owls in his offices, he wore owl-themed cufflinks and even painted owls on the prow of his beloved yacht, the Lysistrata. He insisted an owl was printed on the masthead of the New York Herald and his newspapers carried articles and editorials arguing for the protection of the birds. When in the 1890s the Herald moved from ‘Newspaper Row’ in Lower Manhattan to a site in Midtown (now known as Herald Square), Bennett asked his friend and drinking partner, Stanford White, to design the new headquarters. Bennett unsurprisingly stipulated that plenty of owls should adorn the edifice.  (Dave Castleton's blog)

That plaque Terry wrote about is something I’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s just a unique work of art?  But the cybernetic angle, hmmm....When I wrote about the Tyrell's replicants, I thought of Anton Lavey’s later obsession with androids. In his “Den of Iniquity” he created a life-sized scene using mannequins to represent human depravity.  He spoke of that as being the model; the real goal would be to have androids instead. Converting dead into living matter.  Like Frankenstein.  Playing God.

In the Shelley's novel, the creature Dr. Frankenstein creates is compared to Adam, and the creature compares himself to Lucifer:  "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel."   That is, he who refused to bow before Adam.  That fear of artificial life is a recurring theme which doesn't require deep elucidation. From Metropolis to Hal, to Skynet, we fear what we may yet create.

The epigraph of the 1818 edition reads:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?

I evoke Frankenstein, but isn't Pinocchio a similar idea; the puppet become living boy?  Or the Gingerbread Man?  I hadn't thought about the golem at first.  

A golem is a creature from Jewish folklore, created from clay, and brought to life by incantations and rituals.  The most famous legend is that of the Golem of Prague, made by 

the late 16th-century Rabbi Loew, who created a golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic  attacks and pogroms. (Wikipedia)

The golem -- named Josef -- actually had powers beyond human capabilities:  he could summon the dead and turn invisible.  Rabbi Loew usually "deactivated" Josef on Friday so as not to violate the Sabbath  One day, Loew forgot to shut Josef down, and then feared his creation would desecrate the Sabbath.  

Jesus caught flak for healing on the Sabbath.  He replied that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."  I.E. don't let someone die because healing on the Sabbath isn't allowed.  New Covenant stuff.  But to observant Jews, it's a big deal.  Rabbi Loew was pretty keyed up.  

Another variation has the golem falling in love, and the becoming violent upon being rejected.  Should have bought him a Real Doll.  In some accounts he went on a murderous rampage.  Hmm.  The golem may have been the world's first incel.  Obey, women, or be cast out.  Molded by Lilith myths?  In the end Rabbi Loew was able to immobilize the golem, whose body fell to pieces, pieces which were then locked away in the synagogue's attic, where they could be restored to life again....if needed....

Islam and Judaism are iconoclastic; drawing or sculpting human images is generally forbidden, as it is the province of God alone to create human likenesses.  Christianity has not been exempt from the impulse, and has experienced sporadic and often violent eruptions of iconoclastic fervor.  

Protestantism, while not entirely devoid of icons, is certainly far more sparing in the use of representations and imagery in churches than Catholicism.  Perhaps the iconoclastic impulse relates to the Great Chain of Being, which precludes the need for intermediaries in order to contact the angelic realms, intermediaries for whom images are created to honor them and facilitate their assistance.  Or perhaps it results from the same wariness about creating human images that makes tales of creating life so rife with negative consequences.

A few years ago on a family visit to the Cave of Niaux, the guide explained that in the cave paintings of this system, one finds bison, mammoth, antelopes, but never human images.  Why?  We have no answer.

Adam was initially created as a golem (גולם) when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless husk."  Like Adam, all golems are created from mud by those close to divinity, but no anthropogenic golem is fully human. Early on, the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak. (Wikipedia)

Tales of the golem date from the Middle Ages to the 19th century; some commentators have explicitly linked the theme of hubris found within Frankenstein to that of these tales.  

A golem-like Yiddish and Slavic folk tale about the "Clay Boy" is described as a mixture of elements of the golem and the Gingerbread Man, where a lonely couple makes a child out of clay, with disastrous or comical consequences.

In one common Russian version, an older couple, whose children have left home, make a boy out of clay and dry him by their hearth. The Clay Boy comes to life; at first, the couple is delighted and treats him like a real child, but the Clay Boy does not stop growing and eats all their food, then all their livestock, and then the Clay Boy eats his parents. The Clay Boy rampages through the village until he is smashed by a quick-thinking goat. (Wikipedia)

The creation of life from clay is something found throughout the world, as evidenced by this list.  If I had to start this post over, I'd start with this list.  As it is I started with what I know.  But from Europe to the Fertile Crescent, to Africa, Asia, North and South America, Polynesia....All of humanity yields legends about humanity being shaped from clay, mud, or soil.  Perhaps a way to comprehend how out life-giving sustenance grows from the land?

In the Clay Boy and many golem stories, as in Frankenstein, the artificial life form often turns on its creators.  Even a superficial review of cinema reveals the same fears about modern golems:  2001, Alien, Metropolis, Terminator, Big Bug, Star Tek: The Motion Picture, Ex Machina, Tron, The Matrix.... 

As The Gid says "There must be a bazillion movies films where AI takes over."  Indeed.

The Gid also mentions Chucky as a malevolent golem.  I'd agree; though not AI, the theme of an evil doll come to life must also feature in a bazillion, or at least a gazillion films.  I suppose many of these dolls are possessed, but in others, the doll has somehow been brought to life.  In fact, don't the geeks in Weird Science bring to life a Barbie doll that takes them on rollicking adventures beyond the comfort zone?  If I recall, this film uses the Hollywood Frankenstein "It's alive!" type animation scene; but does their creation qualify as a golem?

Is the Current Golem AI?

If the current golem is AI, the same fears of losing control of it abound as in traditional folklore, and they have abounded since its infancy, even before it was born.  One can say the original fear of AI per se is rooted in the fear of industrialization.  The French Saboteurs and English Luddites were worried about the loss of more than their jobs, but a way of life.  Chaplin's Modern Times satirizes the mechanization of daily life resulting from industrial capitalism, the Taylorism of everyday life.  Metropolis  goes so far as to put an anthropomorphic entity at the center of the dismal industrial web; isn't its Molech basically a robot AI?

In one of my favorite films, Clash of the Titans (1980) Zeus takes clay figures and breathes onto them and they begin to move. He isn't exactly bringing the figurines to life, but he is controlling the actions of the lives they depict.  Aren't these a bit then, like Adam?  What makes this film more relevant to this post is the automaton that serves as a guide for the hero, Perseus.  That automaton?  A golden owl!  Zeus commands Athena to send her owl Bubo, but instead she commands Hephaestus to make the automaton.

In a discussion about German clubs that may have had links to the Bohemian Grove, we had an opportunity to look at the Schlaraffia; their mascot is the eagle owl, aka Bubo bubo.  Astute readers will recall that Melanson's article (link above near the Melanson quote) on Bennett and owls also discusses...Schlaraffia.  And recall that owl Tyrell shows off?  It's an Eurasian eagle owl.

So, I found it appropriate to ask Chat GPT to write me something about this topic, so I gave it some parameters. I should definitely include its response:

Certainly, I will do my best to address the complex topics you've raised and tie them together into a cohesive post.

The creation of Adam and the golem have both been seen as stories of creation and the birth of intelligent life. In the biblical story of Adam, God creates the first man from the dust of the earth and breathes life into him. Similarly, the golem of Jewish folklore is a creature formed from mud or clay and brought to life through a ritual involving the Hebrew word for truth, "emet," written on its forehead. Both stories explore the idea of bringing life to inanimate matter and the potential consequences of doing so.

In the Blade Runner franchise, the character of Tyrell is a brilliant scientist who creates Replicants, artificial beings that are nearly indistinguishable from humans. Like the golem, the Replicants are created in the image of their human creators, and they possess a measure of intelligence and self-awareness that raises ethical questions about the nature of life and the value of non-human beings.

The connection to AI researcher Robert Mercer is less clear, but it's possible to draw some parallels between his work in artificial intelligence and the creation of the golem or the Replicants. Mercer is known for his work in natural language processing and machine learning, which involves teaching machines to understand and respond to human language. This could be seen as a kind of "creation" of intelligence, similar to the creation of the golem or the Replicants. 

The use of owl imagery in the [it means Blade Runner] franchise and Mercer's love of owls is an interesting connection. Owls are often associated with wisdom and knowledge, and they have been used as symbols of intelligence and insight in various cultures throughout history. In the AI [BR] franchise, the character of Eldon Tyrell has a pet owl that serves as a kind of mascot for his company, suggesting that he values knowledge and intelligence above all else. Mercer's love of owls may reflect a similar fascination with intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge.

The connection to James Gordon Bennett's love of owls is less clear, but it's worth noting that Bennett was a wealthy newspaper publisher who was known for his eccentric behavior. His love of owls may simply have been a personal quirk, rather than a symbol of any particular philosophical or ideological viewpoint.

The use of owl imagery in the Bohemian Club and Schlaraffia is also interesting, as both organizations are known for their secretive and exclusive membership. Owls are often associated with mystery and hidden knowledge, which may be why they are used as symbols by these organizations.

The use of puppets and artificial life in stories like Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man can also be seen as related to the themes of creation and artificial intelligence. In these stories, the characters are brought to life through magical means, but they struggle to navigate the complexities of the world and to understand their own identity. This could be seen as a metaphor for the challenges of creating artificial life and the ethical questions that arise from doing so.

In conclusion, the stories of Adam and the golem, as well as the Blade Runner franchise and the work of AI researcher Robert Mercer, all explore the themes of creation, intelligence, and the potential consequences of bringing inanimate matter to life. The use of owl imagery in these stories and organizations may reflect a fascination with knowledge and the pursuit of hidden truths. The use of puppets and artificial life in stories like Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man may also be seen as related to these themes, as they explore the challenges of creating intelligent life and the ethical questions that arise from doing so.

 And that's not a bad summation at all.

FIN

Post Scriptum

How odd that as I was summing all this up and addressing some issues raised by The Gid, he came across the following article:

Stanford researcher examines earliest concepts of artificial intelligence, robots in ancient myths

Epimetheus and the birth of Pandora, Athenian red-figure amphora C5th B.C., Ashmolean Museum

Classics scholar Adrien Mayor speaks of what are essentially robots that appear in literature as early as 700 BCE.  What is especially germane to this post is an early tale of Pandora, which bears a long citation:

The myth of Pandora, first described in Hesiod’s Theogony, is another example of a mythical artificial being, Mayor said. Although much later versions of the story portray Pandora as an innocent woman who unknowingly opened a box of evil, Mayor said Hesiod’s original described Pandora as an artificial, evil woman built by Hephaestus and sent to Earth on the orders of Zeus to punish humans for discovering fire. [Hints of Lilith, notes of Eve?]

Maybe this is a case of interpreting the past through the accumulated bias against artificial life, or perhaps this accumulated bias comes from ancient fears, perhaps the fears that led Magdalenian humans to refrain from depicting humans on their walls?  Note that Pandora is often said to have been created, like Lilith, from the earth.  She is also the first woman. What is different is that the chaos she unleashed was intentional....

It could be argued that Pandora was a kind of AI agent,” Mayor said. “Her only mission was to infiltrate the human world and release her jar of miseries."

She adds:

“Not one of those myths has a good ending once the artificial beings are sent to Earth,” Mayor said. “It’s almost as if the myths say that it’s great to have these artificial things up in heaven used by the gods. But once they interact with humans, we get chaos and destruction."

Runnin' with the Devil....

Shout at the Devil

This statue of Lee Roy Selmon sits in a small park near the expressway that bears his name.

Selmon wears the number 63, now retired, he wore when he was on the way to becoming a Tampa Bay Bucs and NFL legend (3 sixes?  As in 6-6-6?)  But over that he wears the casual business clothes that he wore on his way to becoming even more beloved in the Bay Area as an entrepreneur and a businessman, philanthropist, and USF athletic director.

I don't know much about Selmon, but he is said to have been an extremely "gentle" person, and many have argued that he was the best defensive end/tackle in NFL history.  He died after a massive stroke at the age of 56.

A few years back Tampa's USF (University of South Florida) decided to create a football program. I mean, damn, UF's Gators and FSU's Seminoles are football powerhouses, so why not try and create that magic in Tampa?  We have something in the water apparently.

I guess being known for football would be a better claim to fame for Tampa than its reputation for having a copious number of truly seedy dive bars and strip clubs!

I prefer to think it's the Death Metal, or even the Goth subculture.  Or even the Bro Bowl....

Lee Roy Selmon helped make the dream of being a college football town possible. USF's mascot:  the Bulls.  Hence the horns being flashed by Selmon.  Or is it "I love you" in sign language?

But dig it!  Selmon is using the side sinister, the left, as in the left-hand path.  Hail Satin!  Oh you devilishly smooth [black] fabric.  

I down another absinthe, light another taper, and sharpen my quill....Bauhaus plays in the background and the shadow of a spider wavers on the wall, the taper sputtering as a good, little flame gets going....

The Lee Roy Selmon Expressway used to be called the Crosstown Expressway.... Crosstown....Cross Town.  Tampa was a Cross Town, but that's gone now; the vanquished messiah replaced by a warrior of sport and business, realms of physical prowess and acquisition, material pursuits, victory.... 

Selmon's "devil horns" are a Satanic mudra blasting those values loud and proud.  

The word  "Tampa" is often said to be a Timucua word meaning "burning sticks."  This probable folk etymology is due to Tampa's once booming cigar industry.  Hav-A-Tampa was still a big brand of stogie when I was a lad, and are still sold today, though they should probably be called Hav-A-Ponce, cuz they're made in Puerto Rico....

It ain't burning sticks, but burning souls!  Hook-em horns!  And reel-em in, straight to Hades!  Mwah-ha-ha-haaa!  The elevator music on the neverending journey to Abaddon, recorded at Morristown.... located in, get this, the neighborhood of Sulphur Springs....

Obviously, I'm being facetious.  I just can't resist documenting any time I see a photo of someone flashing the "devil horns."  But this ain't no photo, it's a full-time, 8-foot sculpture of a Tampa legend.  I'm sure the ire of the fundamentalists can be found online easily enough.

The website of sculptor Joel Randall.

I really wish calling this post Necrocomiccon made sense. Punfortunately, it doesn't....

Song of my soul, my voice is 

dead,

Die thou, unsung, as tears 

unshed

Shall dry and die in

    Lost Carcosa.

 "The King in Yellow"

Like a lot of sullen, dorky kids, I first became interested in the occult in my early teens, and the subject interests me to this day....as a sullen, dorky adult.  I've bought a lot of books over the years, but three books I purchased at that heady time really stick out in my memory:  the first three "occult"-related books I bought.  

I might have already read Drawing Down the Moon (Margot Adler, RIP) when I bought these books - I'm not sure - but Adler's book was the first serious study of Wicca I'd read.  Even then I knew the wheat from the chaff.  It seems incredible to me now, but I found Adler's book in my high school library.  I may be wrong, but I'm not sure we'd see it in a public school these days.  Even then, anything vaguely "occult" was hard to find in school libraries, B. Dalton's, or Waldenbooks, the leading bookstores at the time.  This was, after all, the 1980s, and the US was experiencing a moral "Satanic" panic, hysteria that ruined hundreds of good peoples' lives.  QAnon is essentially the same phenomenon, but in this current iteration the "Satanists" have been identified as left-leaning politicians.  In the Middle Ages, it was "the Jooz...."

Let's make a blunt aside:  QAnon is Antisemitism in disguise.

Those early forays into the occult were not the most auspicious, but for me, they were very potent, even dangerous....

• The Magic Power of Witchcraft by Gavin and Yvonne Frost
• The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey
• Necronomicon (the so-called "Simon" version) by ?

I knew - even then - that the Necronomicon ("the" isn't in the title but Lovecraft uses it and it seems awkward without it) was a work of fiction, but I still felt there was something powerful in it; not in the rituals it contained, not in the incantations, but in the very book itself, the object; it was as if it - literally - radiated some kind of measurable power.  Almost like a homing beacon for otherworldly forces.  

Voodoo works because people believe it works.  Voodoo is a kind of gaslighting.  Tell a believer they've been cursed and they will freak out.  I believed some books radiated power, so they did.

40 years and 20+ addresses later, across 4 states and 2 continents, my original copies of The Satanic Bible and the Necronomicon are still with me.  I just recently moved and most of my books got put in boxes. 2 in particular did not.

The Necronomicon fascinates me because although it was an invention of Lovecraft - a fiction - many occultists insist it is based on something "real."  They maintain that although Lovecraft presented his accounts of the tome as fiction, he was speaking of literal eldritch forces and occult traditions.  For these people, the book is dangerous.  I never believed it could summon ancient entities, but I too, for a while, feared the book enough to resist actually opening it until some time after I'd purchased it.  But I was 12 or 13 years old and had a pretty active - and not always healthy - imagination.  From about 8 to 10 years old I couldn't sleep alone.  I'd awake during the night and lie there in a near panic until I got enough courage to run to my sister's room and sleep next to her.  I don't know why; but such was the mind of a kid who a few years later would treat the Necronomicon seriously:  An arguably neurotic child....not a "reasonable" adult....

The idea of the Necronomicon is so alluring that someone actually took the time to write it. This is the "Simon" Necronomicon that I purchased.  Simon is mentioned in the book's introduction as the person who re-discovered the manuscript.  Lovecraft himself claimed that he got the idea from Gothic stories, where "mouldering manuscripts" were often a trope, and he referred to the book throughout his oeuvre.  But the "Simon" version was originally published in 1978, long after Lovecraft's death in 1937.  

Like The Satanic Bible, my copy is an Avon paperback.  The covers are not dissimilar:  nothing except the title and a similar sigil, all white on black.  Necronomicon has a bit of ornamentation, but otherwise the books are both stark, and about the same dimensions all around.

When I first bought the book, I knew it was fiction, and at the time I was barely familiar with Lovecraft.  I mean, come on. The "Mad Arab"?  It was obvious the book was akin to The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, published at the height of Twin Peaks mania.  To expand the fictional universe....and make some coin.  Upon reflection, I find my reaction to the book puzzling;  I knew, or at least strongly suspected, it was fiction, yet on some level I was a bit "frightened" of it.  Maybe even then I was on some level aware of the precepts of chaos magic, that is to say that even fiction can be used effectively in ceremonial "magick."  Fiction or no, I knew it was powerful, because so many of the people I knew who were into the occult spoke of it in hushed tones and seemed to fear it.  It was catching.  It comes back to that comment about voodoo:  it works because people believe it works....

My great hope is that somebody some day will write and even stage The King in Yellow, the play mentioned in several stories of Robert W. Chalmers' eponymous collection.  It is an obvious thing to do: a malevolent play, a shocking diary, an accursed grimoire.  The fame of the stories in which they are found is such that readers are left wanting more, they want to actually read these disturbing things.  Some have suggested Lovecraft was inspired by Chalmers" fictitious play when he invented the Necronomicon, but apparently he did not encounter Chalmers' work until after he had already created his own....

Shadows here of Don Quixote and perhaps one of the inspirations for Foucault's Pendulum....

The Simon Necronomicon is a bit silly, really.  Lovecraft himself knew he could never write something as horrible as the book was said to be.  He knew hints and brief citations were much more effective.  And he was right.  The Simon Necronomicon is just too obviously fabricated to fill the reader with cosmic horror and dread - unless the reader is a 10-year-old neurotic who can't sleep alone....Guilty!  To recreate the power of the fictional book is impossible.  Chalmers wrote a few stanzas of The King in Yellow, but would never have been able to write an entire work with the effect of his fictional play.  The King in Yellow was said to have driven people mad.  It burned through Europe like an epidemic.  A diseased meme.  If he'd written it for real, one would read it, not go mad, and then poof!  The illusion - ruined.

H. P. Lovecraft, quoted by Peter H. Gilmore:

....one can never produce anything even a tenth as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about. If anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it.

The Simon Necronomicon is still in print and still sells a fairly decent amount of copies per year.  Most probably bought by newly-minted Lovecraftians.  A novelty for the collection.

Peter Gilmore, Magus of the Church of Satan, wrote an essay about the book which is worth reading.  The book has retained an air of mystery even in this era where almost all information can be accessed 24/7.  The book's true author isn't known for certain, although Gilmore sheds some light on that.

Gilmore also writes that the fact the book is a fiction doesn't make it useless as a magical tool:

Satanists understand that any prop that is sufficiently stimulating can be used in personal ritual, so if the materials contained in this book send the proper chill down your spine, then certainly avail yourself of them. As Magistra Nadramia has said: “Working with and expressing your emotions in the ritual chamber using this particular little black book is perfectly valid Satanic magic. A careful look at The Satanic Bible will tell you that Dr. LaVey encouraged the magician to use any and all elements of fiction, fact and fancy to create his Intellectual Decompression Chamber.

But, he adds:

Just don’t fool yourself outside the ritual chamber into the belief that you are using some authentic ancient tome handed down by Elder Gods to their human, or humanoid, servitors.

This reminds me of chaos magic and the tenet that "belief is a tool."  One can perform bibliomancy with a Bible or Donald Duck cartoons, and have equally valid results.  

Anyway, I stumbled across Gilmore's essay because I was interested in learning a bit more about Gilmore's biography.  I wasn't looking for Necronomicon information at all.  That said, I recently pulled out my copy to look through for the first time in over a decade, and it's sitting on the table next to my laptop.  So, when I clicked on Gilmore's essays and saw he'd written about it, my spider senses tingled.  

For some reason I wrote Nina Simone on a recent collage and then went to the metro after I'd finished collaging for the day; there I noticed a new poster about an upcoming concert in homage to....Nina Simone.  

When it rains it pours.

The coincidence of coming across an essay about a book I'd only just pulled off the bookshelf in over a decade made me think:

 "Drring-drring! Synchronicity calling. Write something."

And here it is. 

Europe Confronts Conspiracy Theory

On an EU website about Europe's COVID response, there are pages about Fighting Disinformation and Identifying Conspiracy Theories. These latter are not just about Covid, but conspiracy theories in general.

I think the latter page is especially useful and both pages should be incorporated into every high school student's curriculum.  Now that an unnamed orange muppet with tiny hands has announced he will run for POTUS in 2024, the page may become a lot more useful to help young people navigate the increasingly murky info-sphere.

I say that half-kiddingly.  I genuinely applaud the fact that the EU finds conspiracy theory a serious enough topic that it needs to be confronted head on.

After the Stateside events of January 6th, (there's that sandy-haired orange muppet again), more people are taking note.  Conspiracy theory has been leading to moral panic, and even violence, since the Romans accused Christians of: plotting to bring down the empire; cannibalism: conducting ritual orgies....probably even before.  

Once Christendom had in effect supplanted the Roman Empire as the warp and woof of Europe (the Romans were right!), the unfortunate target of the conspiracy-fueled mob has more often than not been the Jews. Which is something the EU page notes; conspiracy theory is often crypto-antisemitism.

The name of the players may change, but the elements of moral panic have remained the same since the Middle Ages: medieval blood-libel, the "Rosicrucian furore", the Illuminati, anti-Masonry, Satanic Ritual Abuse, QAnon.  

These elements include powerful, hidden elites; black magic and/or Satanism; trafficking children for ritual sex and murder; an international or even global reach....

QAnon is a political force the orange muppet openly toys with.  Whether he believes it or not is irrelevant.  Many of his supporters do, and it's one reason he wins their votes.  

Democracy can't function when lies and conspiratorial thinking dominate the agora.  Or as the WaPo has put it since the reign of the muppet:  "Democracy Dies in Darkness.". D-D-i-D, yo!

I recommend reading the EU's pages and the downloadable PDFs they make available.  We really may need them in the run-up to 2024.  And maybe even beyond.

I know that global elites working behind the scenes for their own benefit do exist.  By definition, two or more people working illegally for their own ends is a conspiracy.  I would say that in the spheres of business and politics "conspiracy" in it's widest sense is as much the rule as it is the exception.  I also know, thanks to Epstein, that billionaire sex-trafficking exists.  But it ain't Squid Game.

One could say, with or without irony, that the diffusion of outlandish conspiracy theories is itself a kind of disinformation campaign to make people so leery of anything hinting at conspiracy that they just roll their eyes at the very mention of illegal shenanigans in high places; so their crimes are hidden in plain sight. 

I got that reaction when I wrote a paper about the connection between Freemasonry and Scouting.  It sounds so loony that some people refused to read beyond the title for what is a rather sober and well-documented paper.

Anyway, this started out as a simple link to the EU site and as usual has morphed into another LoS prolixity.  And there isn't even a photo!

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I sorta kinda wrote about the Georgia Guidestones in 2010.

Old news now, but someone finally blew them up back in July. Locals seem kind of bummed: 

"My initial reaction was heartbreak and anger, frustration.  And I think that's consistent with the community's reaction."  Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves.

Lots of (if not most) articles about the Guidestones play up the anonymity of the person who originally funded the monument. Seems like a Rosicrucian group cuz the mysterious stranger who ordered them called himself RC Christian....subtle. 

The principles engraved upon it are also not inconsistent with Rosicrucian ideas.

The contact was not actually named RC Cola Christian, but Herbert Hinie Kersten, and was a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa.  Apparently a fan of David Duke and an outspoken racist who, in addition to financing mysterious monuments, sought to make a definitive scale to show how Whites are the superior race.

The Guidestones have a generally decent message.  Except the population control measures which evoke culling.  That Daisy David Duke support makes that one a bit more chilling.  

Common Sense Renewed, a book intended to explain the Guidestones, is said to describe a eugenics program to keep humanity going in the future.  So, wariness of the stones is not unwarranted.

Was Kersten representing a racist group, or was it a hobby horse of his alone?

Was he alone, or did he represent a group of "Perfectibilists," as the Illuminati called themselves.  A group of sages directing society behind the scenes:  Rosicrucians, Masons, Illuminists?  Secret Chiefs?  An underground stream?  Or a series of ponds?

So someone blowed 'em up.  And the remaining slabs were then demolished.  

Elberton should have kept them, and let the destruction serve as a monument to ignorance.  Fence them up at night to protect them.  Locals are worried about the lost tourist dollars.  Another reason to keep them.  Not just lucre, but as a "fuck you" to those who blew them up.  Leave what's remaining, and the rubble.  Erect a life-sized panel facsimile of the destroyed stone.  Despite some weird ideas and sketchy financing, it was an interesting monument.  At noon each day the sun used to shine through a hole onto that day's date.  It was a functioning solar calendar and clock.

Alas.  Turning destruction into history.  Too late to make lemonade from these lemons.

I've written a lot about the Temple de Sagesse Suprème, the so-called "Illuminati Pyramid" of Blagnac (a suburb of Toulouse).  They tagged and damaged that too.  Hard time to be an esoteric monument.

But we've written about the destruction of monuments before.  In the end, it's a testament to the power of public art as much as public ignorance....see The Politics of Removal for our take on it.

What is it with Georgia and cwazy cupcakes? Walker, Green, and Kandiss Taylor, who wrote:

“I am the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal,” Taylor wrote on social media app Telegram after releasing her video.

Taylor actually promised to blow them up.  Someone did it for her!  She denied involvement when the destruction occurred. 

BTW, here are the Guidestones' injunctions, originally engraved in 8 languages:  English, Spanish, Swahili, 

Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

Easy to see how this was seen as a kind of NWO blueprint, or some kind of Utopian scheme proposed by Rosicrucians.

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

• Unite humanity with a living new language.

• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.

• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

• Balance personal rights with social duties.

• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.

• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature.

Putin's Rasputin: Further Encounters with Fascism and the Occult

Hot on the heels of our posts about A) fascism and the occult and B) Putin as Czar, along comes a WaPo editorial discussing Russia's pretensions to an imperial lineage, the "3rd Rome" etc. and the right-wing occultist stoking those ideas.

Just as we wrote: ultra-nationalism, fascism and the occult.  Bloop!  Meep!  Tailor-made for my memespiracy....The far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia.  He may be full of pooh, but the pooh flows, and Poot listens, apparently.

We shouldn't over-emphasize the occult aspects of Hitler or Putin's ideology, but shouldn't ignore them, either.  The "why" is self-evident:  we need to understand Putin both in terms of rational realpolitik and, well, his nuttier concerns.

Putin's Rasputin's a dude named Dugin (say that 3x, fast), and "back in the day" he mixed with Satanists and punk-rockers before becoming a reactionary who embraced the Nazis to a certain degree.  He helped to found a Party called the National Bolshevik Party (aka the "Nazbols").  Their flag is a hammer and sickle, but the color scheme is pure Nazi.   The allusion is clear.

 

Glory be!  Mother Russia.  Strange how Dugin's time with occult circles and Satanists meshes so neatly with my last post about fascism, the occult, and Satanism.  Somehow, despite a call to the religious values of times past by these jackals, they are not only willing to countenance occultists among their ranks, but Satanists.  Strange bedfellows indeed!

Just by random chance I just won a French history magazine in a pub quiz and it's all about Russia, including the idea that Russia considers itself a "third Rome" after Byzantium.  This is not a new idea.  The Duke of Muscovy married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, and so the Russians adopted the double-headed eagle of the divided empire, their Cyrillic alphabet is based not on Latin but Greek letters, and they adopted Eastern Orthodoxy, not Roman Catholicism.  "Czar" means "Caesar," after all.  Moscow has long seen itself as the new center of the Roman Empire, the true inheritor of the Byzantines.

Dugin is a Russian Steve Bannon, a once-fringe thinker elevated to the center of power; someone scorned in the past but whose words now echo in Poot's speeches, and have a real effect.  This is not abstraction.  This is how mystical thinking ends up meaning 1000's of civilian casualties in an ill-conceived invasion to rebuild Novorossiya, the "New Russia."  The annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.  All of it explained by Putin using Dugin's language and mystical vision of a Russia reborn.

Occultists, fascists, Satanists.  And the enemies are, chiefly, the USA and Britain.  

Stay tuned.  Commies cum Nazi-loving, nationalist mystics.  It is worth studying Marinetti and D'Annunzio because the SAME THING IS HAPPENING TODAY (shouting).

Merde, Goddam, and fuck.  Here's a Nazi emblem turned "Soviet" and "Czarist".  It seems at once completely incoherent yet somehow, a "logical" conclusion of what has come before....

_

 Anton LaVey:  LEGEND and REALITY

compiled by Zeena and Nikolas Schreck February 2, 1998 © 1998 Wolfslair, Inc.

8033 Sunset Boulevard #1313 Los Angeles, CA 90046; U.S.A. 

Zeena Schreck (Official Website)

Nikolas Schreck (Official Website)

 

Note:  I mentioned in my last post (8-8-88: H8 is Gr8) that a lot of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey's official biography is "BS," so today I dug up this old list compiled by his daughter and her husband that compares the legend to the reality upon which I based that statement.  A lot of the falsehoods are easy to verify, and a lot of it is harmless self-mythologizing.  Some of it, like accusations of beating his wife and the animal cruelty, is a lot more disturbing.  Some of this "de-bunking" would be so easy to counter with evidence I can't see why Zeena would lie about it.  I can't verify a lot of it, but she does provide sources.  A dedicated biographer could easily separate the fact and the fiction, and as I've said, I for one would like to see a proper biography of the man, warts and all.

 

While one must bear in mind this compilation comes from an estranged daughter with a pitchfork to grind, one must also consider that if Zeena is lying it would be easy enough to disprove.  And one must ask, unless Zeena is insanely bitter, why would she malign her father so badly?  Clearly, this was a family with issues.  Believe or disbelieve what you want, but I found this to be illuminating, and I've linked to some things that either support Zeena's claims or shed light on what might for some people be rather obscure references.

 

As I've said, I've always had a soft spot for LaVey and can excuse his self-mythologizing; the CoS was, after all, his business, and as such required a larger-than-life figurehead to make it fun and intriguing.  I always saw LaVey as a carny of sorts, and he created a world for himself into which people are drawn to this day.  I was disheartened by a lot of this stuff and in the end, my image of the man became less rosy.  But like I said, decide for yourself....The CoS has written its own rebuttal, but as of today, their website seems to be down.  So when I said before the CoS seems to consist only of a website these days, even that doesn't seem to be the case....

 

Bold-face and italicized text are my own tweaks and insertions.  I also added the photos.  I have no affiliation with either Schreck.  I am neither pro- nor anti-Anton LaVey, either, just following up on an off-hand comment I'd made.  Getting back into the completist swing of things it would seem. In  many ways, I'm merely a compulsive "lister," or maker of lists....

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 [Wolfe did a second, longer introduction after a brief period when the intro was penned by Michael Aquino; current editions are introduced by Magus Peter H. Gilmore.  According to Wikipedia, The Satanic Bible has gone through 30 printings, has never been out of print, and had sold over a million copies worldwide.]  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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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. [Note:  Slatzer claimed to have been briefly married to Monroe and has himself been called a "liar and a fantasist."]  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). 

[Note:  LaVey was an accomplished organist.]
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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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).

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LEGEND: On the night of April 30, 1966 (the German Satanic [The night is associated with witches and pranks in Germany, but it is named after a Christian Saint and is celebrated as such in most of Europe] 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.

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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-worshiping [The Yezidi are a religious minority, monotheists persecuted by the Muslim majority, but in no sense "devil-worshipers"] 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 lighthearted 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.

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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 [More properly, the "Sigil of   Baphomet"] 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).

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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-unaccredited 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).

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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.

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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).

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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. 

[One day I'll do a post on Aquino:  Ph.D., Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army (PsyOps, Green Beret), Temple of Set founder, self-styled Scottish Baron.....interesting cat.  CoS-types despise Aquino, but his C.V. is impressive....]
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Shambala, McGraw-Hill, 1985).

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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.

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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.

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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.