Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 667: Anton LaVey Part II - Paint It Black

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

This week, the boys return to Anton LaVey as the former circus calliope player paints his house black and transforms himself into San Francisco’s spookiest local celebrity. With big cats, Black Masses, Baphomet, Jayne Mansfield, and a whole lot of carefully crafted mythmaking, LaVey builds the foundation for what would become his own uniquely American version of Satanism. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot task. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. All right, Marcus, you've brought a special instrument in that we have to exhibit for the audience. Yeah, this is my stylophone theremin. The antenna's a little wonky on it, so I'm just going to use the trigger on it. Just remember, before you listen to the sounds, these sounds are so powerful, so esoteric.

They, in fact, may drive you insane. So this is your warning. If you can't handle the theramen, you shut off the radio right now. I mean, they can't handle it because it seems weird. I like the pheromone because it's the only instrument you can play with your asshole. Won't you? Someone helped me with my pants. Oh, no. I am rolling out of blood pressure medication. Oh, what a horrible set of circumstances.

Where is my heroin? Where is my cake? Where is my career? You are not fit to smell my shit. I look at the pheromit as the reason, like, people don't use an orchestra to score a film. You don't need it. You don't need it at all. Don't need it, did.

Welcome to last podcast on the left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is... Marcus Parks badly playing the theremin. Here with me is Henry Zabrowski, the man who's just sitting there letting his tongue hang out of his mouth, like half his

brain isn't working. It isn't. It isn't. It's me. It's Henry Zabrowski. And I love the theramen because it sounds like a ghost having an orgasm. But also, Anton LeVe is the only unionized theremin player

that was ever in any of these, all of these musician unions, he was the only ever full-on union man, theraman playing. A true con man. Yeah. The theremin is one of the most difficult instruments to play in existence.

You should listen to... That was great what you used to do. No, no, no, because... Listen to real therapy. There's a real... Listen to Clara Rockmore. Listen to Clara Rockmore. It will blow your fucking mind

out of the back of your skull. And we have the man who's getting into therapy music over the next week. It's Ed Larson. Oh, how's everyone doing? You have a question. Is this 6666 or 6667? This is 667. 667.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But the thing. 6.7 is the thing. If this was episode 6.7, we would do this. But it's not episode 6.7. It's 6.67, which is a number most Sumers can't count to.

And also, we're not Catholic. We don't do six, seven. You see the Pope? Oh, I don't even. I'm just even, also, straight up, Pope is beginning the butlerian jihad. Huh. The dude, I don't know what that means.

Anti-Robit, like, a whole thing. It's written by, if you remember, he wrote this anti-AI thing, it started in Dune with the Catholics. We're not here to talk about Dune. Thank you, Marcus. This is Anton Laveh, part two. Yeah, one nerdy thing at a time.

Hey, I just want to make sure If you're listening to this, fucking is impossible. So when we last left Anton LeVay, the year was 1947. According to the tale LeVay spun for himself, he had become inspired after reading William

Gresham's classic carny novel Nightmare Alley, and instead of spending a life in the chains of the mundane world, LeVey had decided to bet everything on a life in the circus. Fuck yeah. Supposedly, Anton joined the Clyde Beatty Circus in the spring of 1947, where he was given the responsibility of feeding and watering the circus's big cats as a roustabout and so-called cage boy at the age of 17.

Roused about, by the way, is the dudes who set up and tear down the carnival at each town. Oh, okay. And, you know, if you don't water those big cats, they don't grow. I hate you, man. They just stay small cats. I know. He's so angry. It was angry you've been thinking about.

Well, LeVay claimed that the head of the circus personally taught him how to use the whip, the stick, the chair, and the revolver to get the big cats to perform. And before long, Anton said he was handling eight lions and four bingled tigers in a cage all at once, which is almost certainly a massive exaggeration to say the very least. But considering Anton LeVay's experience with big cats later on in his life, which will absolutely be discussed later, it seems like Antoni's. did at some point work with big cats enough to get a feel for how to train and control them. He was not a Count Dante, in other words. Anton claimed that in order to better work with the lions and tigers, he ate his food with them and mimicked their growling noises as they ate. Meow.

Hey, leave me alone. This is my soup. You're not supposed to be eating soup, tiger. Okay, this is my soup. Chicken noodle soup. I don't know how you got a taste for this. Leave me alone. Meow, shout out.

Meow. Meow. Hey, meow. Hey, listen. You got any bread to dip in this soup? Well, then I guess we're not at lunch together, are we? Said he even slept in their cages. Said he'd get clawed or knocked to the ground here and there.

But these incidents were chalked up as, quote, unintentional mishaps. For those of you that are following long and are also potential students of the esoteric, I would submit to you to go and read Michael Aquinos, two book long, personally published, his own version, biography of the Church of Satan, and the whole thing, because Michael Aquino more fucking homework Oh yeah buddy Because one book's the book

And the one The other second book Is the book to reference You gotta read When you're reading the first book Now it's important to remember Michael Aquino So many footnotes

That he had to do It's second volume Just to hold the footnot Oh just amendments It's fucking infuriated For those of you who don't know Michael Aquino Is the Eddie Munster looking man

That would eventually spin off From the Church of Satan He was Anton LeVais Right Hand Man As we'll get into more in the next episode But he wrote in the Church of Satan. He took everything that he could to essentially roast Anton LeVay from the inside out.

Because Michael Aquino, if you do read any of his stuff, he works for the government. He worked in the CIA. He did sciops. He's a very crazy-looking guy. But he's also a complete and utter dweeb. How does he even grow your eyebrows like that? Practice. He made his eyebrows at all thorn.

So Michael Aquino wrote all this book. and he heavily debunks all of Anton LeVay's claims in the book. Because he's so bitter because Anton LeVay is the Bugs Bunny to his Daffy Duck. And as he's going to write this whole book, he's all like, Anton LeVay, he lied about going to the circus. And he definitely didn't affect Miracle Monroe. And it's like, yeah, buddy. We know.

Anton LeVey even said it's a lie. Yeah. You constantly go and like, and there was just no possible way. He was at the circus. Because if you look at the rules of the circus performers, that happened at the time, you don't see Tony LeVey's name in there. Do you? I would like, you know.

And you're like, bro, you've lost the whole fucking point. Yeah. Well, one thing we do know. Good daffy duck. He really captured his essence. It is him. It's good. But one thing we do know that Anton LeVay did in the circus,

he did learn how to become a master of one of the most powerful and legendary of all organs, quite possibly the hottest pipes in all existence. Oh, shit. Crack organ Well, at the circus, Anton LeVay became a master of the instrument Most associated with the circus, the mighty calliope. Yeah. Now, calliopees, as Anton LeVay played them,

were steam-powered organs that used train whistles for their pipes, which made calliopees so painfully loud that even the smallest of calliopees could be heard from miles away. Even the smallest. You know, the elephants, love it. All the animals do, the horses, the lions, the tigers. They love being blasts in the face with loud noises in hot steed.

Here's an example of a calliopee from my favorite calliope album, Big Top Circus Calliopee played Out of Doors, Volume 1 by Paul Eakins. Doesn't that make you feel good? No, it does. It just sort of feels like the general noise in my head at all times. It kind of feels like me desperately trying to. to do my tax. Any moment of silence I have is just

when I hear music like this I forget that law exists. Yeah, I just want it swing in a ham. Get out of my way, kid! Get out of my way, kid! God, I love it so much. I love Calliopee music. I love that it's your first favorite, that's your favorite

Calliope album, because mine is getting gaped to Calliope by Gay Jenkins. Do you listen to that? Yeah, they turned the guy into a kaleiki. The kaleopi player for the circus that had taken in the young Anton LeVay, he was reportedly, I mean, they say he was an alcoholic. I think most Calliopee players are alcoholics. I think most circus people from this time period are alcoholics. Reportedly, this guy leaned on the keys more than he actually played them, which also sounds awful just to do...

In one version of the story, Leveille said that one day the Calliope player was simply too drunk to play and Anton stepped in. In another far more satanic version of the story, Anton claimed that he was so hell-bent on getting behind the Calliopee that he cursed the circuses alcoholic Calliope player who fell ill a few days later. And that's going to be a theme you'll see amongst Anton LeVay is him saying, yes, I cursed him. and everything fell apart. It's like, no, mostly it's just people who already had a lot of problems. Yeah. And then life just sort of took care of it for him.

So, Bay, it's going to happen to you. Like, it's because he'll look, like, I get it. Because, like, we all want this. Like, I do think that every time he talks like this, remember, he's serving a fantasy for you to fulfill. Everybody wants to hear that you can go, I curse you. And then you can just move on and do all this stuff.

He even knows, Anton Lavei himself knows, how detrimental curses are to your own personal health. So a lot of the times he talks about this, I always say there's always a tongue-in-cheek thing. Sure. There's always a little like, I curse you. He became a calliope player the same way I became a chef. He just show up to work and don't be the guy on heroin.

Yep. Welcome to America. You're hired. Well, Anton stepped in, played a rousing version of the William Tell Overshire, and the alcoholic player was put on permanent sabbatical. Anton LeVay was now a performer. So after he was elevated to the resident Calliopee player at the Clyde Bady Circus, he changed his name from Tony Levy to Anton Sandoor LeVey, after his great uncle. As a performer, he came to be known as the Great Zandor.

And this is a clip of him years later, playing a synthesizer mimicking a Calliope. Cool. This is me just trying to just... desperately put together the TV stand I'm like going through the forms this is me looking at IKEA forms and IKEA plans

Thunder blazes thunder blazes thunder blazes thunder I'm like fucking keys I'm actually starting to like him now yeah he's fun yeah he's really fun yeah that's part of his like big top medley it goes on for good four or five minutes oh I was hoping 40

He has a whole album I do have an Anton LeVey album which he plays the organ throughout It's a really fun album It's great It's part of the organ section In my record collection Which is ample

He loves organs Yeah, love them hot pipes Now Anton LeVay said That by playing live music He learned how to affect the moods Of not just the audience at the circus But also the moods of the big cats The Elephants and the human performers

It was said that LeVay had an unusual ability to add special life to the circus performers' acts with his own inimitable style of Calliope playing. But after traveling through much of the American West with the Clyde Beatty Circus, Anton settled down in Long Beach, California at the end of 1947 for a regular gig at the Pike Amusement Park. And through his Carney connections, he joined various traveling shows for small tours up and down the West Coast. During those days, LeVay met legendary. side show performers like the three-legged Francesco Lintini.

Francesco Lentini. Yeah. It's Francesco Lantini. And the two-faced Bill Dirk's. You know, I'm looking at it. It's for me. These guys are great.

I love Bill Dirk's. His little third leg just kind of comes out of his butt. A lot of that's really, I mean, when they say like three-legged performers, the posters that they painted were beautiful. I have a whole book of them. They're fucking great. All those old

side show posters that are just so massive, but they definitely do a lot of heavy lifting on the imagination. Usually when you walked into the tent, it really was just kind of like a weird third appendage. And usually, and that's the thing is that it was actually so disappointing that usually the sideshow performers would also have like a secondary act. So you would walk in. Yeah, you'd walk in and they wouldn't just be like, oh, you know, here's a couple of conjoined twins.

It'd always be like, oh, here's two conjoined twins who also know how to play the fiddle and sing. Yeah, of course, because that's a show. That's your show. Yeah, and like, we just watched The Elephant Man last night, and I cried watching it. God, I fucking love that movie. We just forgot that was the whole thing. The guy who ran into the story. Yes, yes.

And it's about him searching for pants. It's four and a half hours long. They go to Macy's, J.C. Penny's Burlington Coat Factory. But the elephant man, that was the whole thing, that he didn't have to because of just how. He was the only one that wasn't underwhelming. No. He was the closer. Yeah.

The elephant man was, yeah, good old Good old Joseph Merrick But Bill Dirk's I've never experienced the love Of a woman It's the sad It's the saddest death of all It really is

Yeah Do you know how the elephant man died? Yeah well I watched the Bradley Cooper Stage version that was fucking awful Yeah so he died by the Was that the reviews after the fact I was so close I literally went

At one point there And I'd like covered my mouth A live theater, no. No way they can see him. Well, Bill Dirk's, he actually just had a severe cleft palate that went all the way up to splitting his nose into. But to give the full two-faced illusion, he was known as the two-faced man. He would paint a third eye on his forehead to sell the act fully. That's fucking awesome.

It's like, I'm not enough. You know, I'm talking about lack of confidence. Yeah. It's like, I'm not ugly enough. Trust you, buddy. You're ugly. Yeah. LeVay got to know a particular kind of performer

calling himself the human ostrich. I love this act. The human ostrich had the ability to eat and regurgitate almost any object it will. Usually objects made of metal or glass because otherwise you're just watching a guy throw up. Although there were some regurgitators

who were massively popular and really talented. There was one guy who would swallow and eat like a bunch of fish and then he would regurgitate through a hoop into a fish bowl. That's awesome. Yeah. Again, that's a shop.

Yeah, fish died. Yeah, except for the fish. Yeah, fish don't count. A fish don't count. Well, human ostriches were so named because real ostriches ate rocks to help with digestion. And even besides that, I'm definitely going to see anyone who builds themselves as the human ostracist just to see what the fuck it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. Better be tall.

I mean, that's what they did with the elephant man. You just got to give him a fun name. Yeah, just pick an animal. Yeah. Especially if he kind of looks like it. That's awesome. Yeah. But out of all the sides.

acts that Anton LeVey got to know, he paid the most attention to the so-called Mitt camp at the carnival, where fortune tellers read palms. Like, give me a mitt. I'm going to read your fortune. That's why they were called the Mitt Camp. I actually saw this term in a recent carnival movie that I watched called She Freak. It's fucking amazing. It's like sort of a retelling of Todd Browning's freaks.

Really? They would say, dude, I got off of Vinegar Syndrome. It's fucking great. Yeah. I'll lend it to you. But alongside the Fortune Tellers were the mentalists. who cold-red, unsuspecting customers to see how much money they could bilk out of them. And this Anton LeVay said is where he truly watched and learned.

But Anton LeVay was also all about style, and he, like any cultural figure worth their snuff, went through many iterations before finally settling on the Mephistopheles core look that made him famous. In the circus, LeVay modeled himself after film noir gangsters, who wore wide-lapeled, big-shouldered suits, pocket squares, Panama hats, and of course, immaculately landscaped facial hair. This seems to be among the first instances of Anton LeVay truly leaning in to playing a sort of villain, or at least appearing to be a villain.

And this was certainly something that LeVay would later use while creating the Church of Satan. But besides helping him develop his villain persona, the circus also reinforced LeVay's attitude of hypocrisy concerning Christianity. He said that he would see men, lusting after women. at the carnival on Saturday nights as he played Calliope. But when Anton LeVay went in to play Oregon at the church services

at the tent revival the next morning, those same lusty men would be in the pews. Hypocrisy? And that is the key to what really the Church of Satan is all about. It's not really about it. We keep talking about it. It's really

an anti-hypocracy stance. It's about being true to yourself. It's like if you're going to go out Like, it's basically like, make a choice. Like, either you're going to go out and, you know, lust after women on Saturday night with Carvernavilles. That's totally cool. That's fine.

If you want to do, you know, church on Sunday and be a pious individual, that's totally fine too. But don't try to fucking do both. Well, he did both. Yeah, exactly. He's a hypocrite. But he also understood, like,

he was getting a paycheck. But he got a paycheck. He was a job. He also understood. Like, there is, I do think that this is the core to really try to understand of all of us, is that this is as deep as it really was supposed

to go for Anton LeVay. Like, this was the beginnings of a, the idea of we're setting ourselves free, we're trying to get out of all of this stuff, we're trying to because how many times have we seen the issue be, you're something that you're not? Yeah. And so you are showing up every day. Why is

it such a common thing now that we especially now that we're seeing that the guy that's anti, doing anti-trans laws is more likely than not using trans sex workers. It's like that's the thing now. Like it's it's like the way to be. So this is he kind of broadcast that early on. Very much so. Yeah. I mean it's and that it's also a Crowleyan idea. You know like Alistair Crowley would say the same thing. I can't remember the exact quote,

but it was something along the lines of like there's no more pain in the world caused than by those who are not true to themselves or who are not being their true selves. If you're going against what you're supposed to be, that's where you're only going to cause pain to yourself and to everybody around you, especially everybody around you. I legitimately think the world would be different. If a time traveler dress as an artist went back in time into Adolf Hitler's fucking class, went, took all his stupid ass paintings, put him in a gallery, and said, Adolf, these are amazing.

That is literally all he would needed, and we would not be here. We wouldn't be dealing with any of that. I think we'd be dealing with different things, but I always find it weird when people say, I'd go back in time to kill baby Hitler. You kill him as an art student. It's more fun. Oh, no. I'll tell you what, though.

Talk about finally... You'd be screaming and crying. Like, oh, no, no. This is really all about killing babies with impunity. That's really what it's about. Everybody who says that is just super curious about, like, wholesale just fucking murdering a baby.

And you can do it without feeling any form of guilt of its Hitler. Yeah. Yeah, we did have this conversation at home not too long ago, and we settled on teenage Hitler. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you kill him at 15. Yeah, oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You hear that, you fucking. evil 15-year-olds? Live from your grave. Now, Leveille claimed that after just a year behind the Calliope, he had earned a reputation as a flamboyant personality and a reliable musician with the men who own the burlesque theaters around the greater Los Angeles area. LeVay, at the age of 18, was hired to play a far less abrasive organ at the Mayan Burlesk theater, and it's here that Anton claimed to have his first brush with celebrities.

According to the almost certainly not true story, LeVay claims that one of the dancers at the Mayan was a pre-famed 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe. Nice. LeVay said that they had an intense love affair that only lasted a few weeks, but that they were very sexually compatible. The owner of the Mayan, however, maintained that Monroe never even performed there. But according to LeVay, when Marilyn Monroe orgasmed, she, quote, gnashed her teeth and farted. Well, he wished. He definitely wished because he does. We know he likes his peepee and he likes his farts.

And he loves his farts. But you know what I really do think that happened is... Sniff my sin for fog. Yes, you smell the sin. Smell the sin. Did they not know what creeps were back then? I think that, to be honest, no. I think that that's what he meant.

But you know what I do think is it because he's Anton LeVay? These stories are like, it's not true. But I bet you he had sex with really hot blonde chick that looked just like her. And I bet that when he had sex with her, he used that version of that to be the satanic ideal from then on out. So whatever it was,

whoever it was that he had sex with then, that was like this story, what it is about is the allegorical choosing of the satanic dual other nature. So what he did as a dark, weird, gross man, right? He idolizes the blonde bombshell as a way to get things out of it. life very easily.

So this is the first thing in his mind. It's like, that's kind of what it's about. Like, it's not about fucking Marilyn Monroe. It's about choosing the Maryland Monroe form. I get it. Now following his supposed... You fuckers. You fucking idiots.

Now following his supposed fling with Marilyn Monroe, LeVay claimed that he returned to San Francisco, where he expanded his professional pursuits to include photography. While still playing organ for local strip joints and private stagpast. parties, LeVay said that he also got a job taking pictures of women modeling clothes and underwear, even though the census lists his status in 1948 as unemployed. Let's just say a lot of guys who take pictures of women in their underwear are technically by the state unemployed.

Yeah, I'm sure you got cash into the table. But regardless of what the paperwork says, the draft was still in effect in 1948. So to avoid military service, LeVay enrolled at San Francisco City College as a criminology major. supposedly this led to LeVay getting a job as a crime scene photographer at the San Francisco Police Department. Now, the SFPD has no record of Anton LeVay working for them under any name, but LeVay maintained that his record must have been expunged. They were ashamed of having Anton LeVay on their ranks. But even so, LeVay said that his time photographing the grotesque blood-soaked bodies of car accident and murder victims led to another revelation.

In his words, Anton decided that, quotes, There's no god. There's nobody up there who, gives his shit, man is the only god. So man must be thought to answer to himself and other men for his actions. Forget about. I unfortunately agree with Anton LeVay. Unfortunately, I do have to agree with him.

It's the very bottom. So this is my belief. He looked at the works of Ouija while he was taking classes as in criminology. Weiji being the famous crime scene photographer from New York City. Fantastic. Now, I know there's a book out of all of his stuff that I have forgot to include. into what is the, one of the biggest inspirations for Anselaun LeVay in the Church of Satan. And it's a book by William Montgomery, the photographer, called The Command to Look.

He became obsessed with this book. It was a thing that William Montgomery, who took these pictures very similar to Diane Arbus, naked, a lot of naked ladies, but also like really intense effects, monsters, like very German expressionist and also grisly things. People would deform in these and old stuff. And he made them beautiful. And he wrote this whole aesthetics world of tips that he wrote in this book. And each one of them is Satanism to its core.

And so I think that the photography angle is partially his own obsession with William Montgomery. That then he fed these things to his own saying I did them. And said, but he's just studied them very thoroughly. Yeah. Because if you're building a myth, like Anton LeVay was building a myth, like first of all it's the mid-20th century ain't no internet

ain't no way to check nothing so if you tell a good enough story and Anton LeVay was smart enough to tell a good story where no one's going to question you people are going to pay far more attention to say someone who says I did this rather than

while I've studied the works of Willie Montgomery Yeah exactly the thing Nobody wants to hear that So when you say he studied the works of Ouija Ouija is a photographer Not like the Ouija board No no no

Weiji was the name of a crime scene photographer in New York City who it's he's possibly my favorite photographer ever like he would just the way that he would just show up to a crime scene and and photograph it in just the most beautiful honestly most beautiful way possible it's kind of insane beautiful and brutal he would show up to these he really was this like weird character and sometimes he'd like show up before the cop said oh it's one of those guys like LA confidential style yeah exactly yeah I'm pretty certain that that is kind of based on him oh he studied the works of Ouija, but he's such a nerd, he should have studied the works of Wedgie. I hate you, but he wasn't even interested.

He wasn't even actually interested in the material, Marcus. I know. He's set up. I think it's set up. I think it's interested, though. Like you explained it, it was interesting. I will say that. It was a bait, but it didn't, you know, it did work on me.

Now, in Anton LeVay's personal life, it's known that he married for the first time at the age of 21. But since it was 1951, nobody batted an eye when Anton married a nice 15-year-old middle-class girl named Carol Lansing. And after the two of them moved into an apartment near a San Francisco amusement park called Playland,

Carol gave birth to Anton's first child, Carla. But while Anton LeVe was starting a family, he was also actively seeking out other people who shared his point of view, although he was having a hard time finding his people. He drove to Berkeley, where he found Alistair Crowley's Order of

the lame-up. But after looking into Crowley's life and workings a little bit deeper, LeVay decided that Crowley was quote, druggy poser, whose greatest achievements were as a poet and a mountain climber. Forget about it. Fair enough, I suppose.

According to him, which makes all sense. By that point, if you could even see Crowley, with the very end of his life, he was such a heroin addict and such a gross-ass fucking guy, but to me, it also formulates the next levels of the church of Satan. Just being, there's Alistair Crowley, the man, the most evil

man to ever live. He walked the walk. He went through the fucking, he crossed the Rubicon. He met them. He met the fucking AWAS. He did all this shit. And I'll look at him. Yeah. And it's just like, look what he's fucking. He's basically just some schmuck that's dying a heroin abuse and all. And he's just this

garbage guy. So of course, like, you're like, it must be a lesson. Yeah. There's the Grand Majus. Yeah, and he's just some mumbly fuck who's looking for his next fix. Yep. Now, while the San Francisco Police Department has no record of Anton LeVay's employment, it was still the SFPD that seemingly introduced

Anton to the next phase of his increasingly spooky career. In 1953, Anton LeVe became one of the first Ghostbusters in America. Yeah, man. That's what shit, that's cool. If you don't think that's cool,

you're stupid. That's your plan. See, according to Anton LeVay, he was basically San Francisco's version of the X-Files. Anytime the SFPD got a so-called nut call, like a report of a ghost, a UFO, or a mysterious noise, the San Fran cops would toss the call to Anton LeVay.

And we know that this stuff happens because of when we covered the warrants. We know that cops do, they are people. They're like, all right, you can go look at this weird shit. Yeah. Anton would investigate by camping out in haunted locations in a sleeping bag with a camera loaded with infrared film to capture ghosts and to monitor fluctuations in the pitch and intensity of the hauntings. He used a theramine as a so-called intrusion detector.

And this hermitterman that I have here, this is a, it's a stylofoan therm, it's got an antenna. It's a little buggy, I'd say, but this is a little bit what it would sound like. It's just, thank you. Because you hear the ghost. Shut up. Shut the fuck up, Tony. Move the antenna to the right. We know you didn't go.

Go to the circus, Tony. Yes, I'm having trouble getting fucked. Now, what Anton discovered from his time as a ghost hunter was that people would insist on believing what they wanted to believe, regardless of evidence. Even when Anton would find a real cause for strange noises, like old pipes or a settling house, customers would insist on exorcisms to rid them of their supposed poltergeist.

Anton, of course, leaned in, devising charms and spells for his clients to complete the act. But in 1955, LeVay had enough of a reputation as a ghost hunter to quit his crime scene photographer gig. Instead of taking pictures of grisly deaths, LeVay now claimed that he could spend all his time, quote, exploring the black arts. Yeah.

But exploring the black arts don't pay the bills. No, it doesn't, dog. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. If this was a black arts podcast, we wouldn't be one. You know what I'm saying? You know, this had to be a bed of a true crime podcast Just to begin with, yeah.

So LeVay also joined the San Francisco Musicians Union in 1955 as an organist, which got him a gig playing the Warlitzer organ at a cocktail lounge, ominously called The Lost Weekend. Ooh, cool. That's a really good name for a cocktail. That's exactly where I want to be, dude. And I think it's, I mean, I know,

I found a picture of it from like 1979. So it survived. It was a very long-running, you know, San Francisco bar. It's such an interesting thing because he's a ghost hunter. who helps people, like, fix their pipe. So I feel like he's actually helping them fix their problem. Yes. But, like, he's fixing the pipe, and he's like, ah, ghost is gone.

Yeah. But, dude, but think about it. That's, like, the ultimate, like, thing, because you got something. You paid for it. He fixed the issue. You know what I mean? Everybody's happier. You still believe in ghosts.

He got money. Everybody's happy. Ghost plumbers. Yeah. That's how it started. That is literally how Ghostbusters. I believe it was called Ghost. Smashers.

Oh, yeah. Was the original name. Well, it all goes back to the magical principle of a, doesn't matter if it's real or not. The only thing that matters is if it works. Yep. The 195 was the year that Anton LeVay truly started developing his reputation as a local character in San Francisco.

In fact, it's my personal opinion. This is, and this is just me. I think that all Anton LeVe ever really wanted to be was a local character. I think he just wanted to be the weirdest guy in San Francisco. But the thing about being the weirdest guy in San Francisco is that it puts you in the running for being one of the weirdest guys in the world. So when Anton LeVay opened the door to local character status, the enterprise sort of ran away

with itself within about a decade. Well, I also think you and I kind of picked up on something that I've been thinking about more and more about Anton LeVay, that I do believe that he wanted to be in the movies. Yes, that is that, again, local character was the status he wanted. Being in the movies was the job he wanted. I think that what we'll see, every single thing kind of comes up against that, I think in the very, very end, he really just wanted to make art. I think he just wanted to make movies and TV.

Yeah. I think that's it. He just wanted to be in show business. Did he ever run with like Neil Cassidy or the dead or anything like that? No. Weirdos doing drugs in San Francisco. Oh, okay. Antony Day, the whole point of the Church of Satan was anti-hipy.

Well, he didn't run with Neil Cassidy, but he ran with people who ran with Neil Cassidy, which actually will get to one of those people here in a second who actually had sex with Neil Cassidy. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, but who didn't, but, you know. As far as how Anton became a local character, he did indeed have multiple big cats in his possession throughout the 1950s and 60s.

He must have had some experience. He had to have. Yeah, he started with a leopard named Zoltan. Smuggled through Burma and then Israel by an associate of Leve's, Zoltan the Lefford became like any other pet in the Levei household. Seemingly, Anton Levei did have enough experience with big cats to train and tame Zoltan the Leopard, because this big cat was safe enough to sometimes take naps with Anton's young daughter.

Now, in 1956, Anton's parents bought Anton and his growing family a two-story home at 5-1-14 California Street in San Francisco for the paltry sum of $9,500. Damn. Two-story townhouse in San Francisco, $9,500 in 1950s. That's not even rent for the fucking place now. God, no, it's not. No, it absolutely is not. But later, even though his parents bought it for him, Anton LeVay would lie and say that he had discovered that this house was not only a former bordello and speakeasy, but it also once been home to San Francisco's voodoo queen. According to LeVay, his house had at one point belonged to a woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant, who, according to the local press, had been responsible for the deaths of four people, including her longtime business partner, all in the pursuit of. of voodon. The rumor

was that a servant had seen pleasant pulling apart the bones in her partner's skull to pick out bits of his brain to use in voodoo rituals. In reality though, this was all just slander. Mary Ellen Pleasant was not only an essential link

in the Underground Railroad, but she was also one of America's first black millionaires. She was a brilliant businesswoman by all accounts, but Mary Ellen Pleasant didn't take no shit from nobody. Yeah. She was also naturally an abolitionist, and her dedication to the cause was so strong that when the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for insurrection in 1859, there was a note

from Pleasant detailing escape instructions in John Brown's pocket. But because the people of San Francisco simply couldn't handle that a black woman could be so successful in the mid-19th century, it was said, in the press, mind you, this is what the newspapers printed, that Mary Ellen Pleasant was only successful because she was. She used voodoo. That's the type of shit they've been doing for all of time, like starting with Cleopatra. Well, voodoo is famously bad for making money. It's like, it's really, honestly, for all of the magical purposes, it's not super good at it.

Now, Pleasant actually was a trained voodoo priestess. Oh, okay. She might have been highly trained in it. I mean, voodoo is a religion just like any other. Of course. And she, and the things about Mary Ellen Pleasant, she had been born into slavery. Her mother was Haitian. Her mother had taught her the voodoo practice.

But, you know, Mary Ellen Pleasant's story is fucking incredible. Yeah, it's amazing. That's a fucking amazing American story. That's a movie. Yeah, that's a movie. But when the press found out about her practice and tried exposing her, Pleasant doubled down and started carrying around a crystal ball as a prop. she therefore went down in San Francisco legend as the city's voodoo queen, the Marie LeVoe of the Bay Area. And Anton LeVay was trying to capitalize on that spooky reputation by saying that his new house had once been hers.

Yeah, it makes sense. Why not? Yeah. But it's not true. No, no, no, it's not. No, you know how it is. What are you going to do? But I also kind of always wondered how he retrofitted his house in the way that he did. Well, that's the thing is that while the house did not belong to Mariel Ellen Pleasant, it could have been a Bordello.

There was something going on in their rooms. Yeah, what's that? A lot of rooms. A lot of rooms, a lot of secret entrances. A lot of hidden passages and shit. Yeah, hidden passageways. Bedroom had multiple entrances. There were multiple secret entranceways that LeVay would later customize that ran throughout

the entire house. In other words, LeVay saw the possibilities here. So to further advance his local character status, he immediately, upon moving in, painted the house's exteriors black. Yeah, it was awesome. This, of course, would be the Church of Satan's infamous black house, where Anton would create the church and hold its first satanic black masses. And also, the windows were permanently boarded up and permanently painted over and shit. I'd call it the first satanic tourist attraction in history.

I would say so, yeah. It was a really tiny house smashed in between two giant houses, which is kind of funny, too, because then all the things grew around it. And it was just this little two-story, completely matte black house. And it's gone, though. Yeah, it's just an empty lot. Don't you paint your house black? Well, we actually have competition. Yeah.

We have a goth house also in the neighborhood. So we can't be chased in that dragon and also horrific for temperature. Yeah. It's horrific for the fucking L.A. heat. It's bad to do. Yeah. It fucking just drives bills up. Yeah, I got a Halloween house on my street.

Yeah. It's black with, you know, all the molding is painted orange. And, you know, it's also nice. You know what I found out because I did want to paint it black is that the problem is that you do have to, you have to repaint your house like every year. Really? Yeah. Oh. Yeah, it's really expensive.

Interesting. You figured black would be fine. No. Just cover it with shit. No, no, no. It's a real bad idea. It's bad. No.

Turn to maintain. Don't do it. I wish I could. I wish I could. Well, in the late 50s, the Black House served as a beacon for other people who were into a cult and paranormal subjects like Anton. And before long, LeVay had gathered enough of a crew to form a group called the Magic Circle. Of course, he couldn't find him anywhere else, so he made a way for them to come to him. Oh, yes.

Now the Magic Circle was basically a prototype for the Church of Satan, made up of a bunch of California weirdos who like to talk about magic with a K, the Magic Circle through parties at LeVay's Black House, where they would perform rituals, give lectures on occult topics, and generally socialize with other free thinkers. Amongst the early members of the Magic Circle was a magician and dentist named Cecil E. Nixon, D.D.S. Dr. Nixon. D.D.S. His main name, Cecil E. Nixon, D.D.S. His main name. hobby was the construction of automaton's, which in essence are somewhere between an animatronic and a robot, usually made of clockwork. Nixon's most famous automaton was ISIS. ISIS was a representation of an Egyptian woman who could supposedly play 3,000 songs on a zither that sat on its lap, using a complex system of gears, cams, sprockets, solenoids, and electromagnets. And the way it worked is that the guy would come out, he'd be like, let's get the system ready.

So he'd first show you all the gears. So you have this lady sitting on top of a box. He'd open up one door and you'd see all the gears underneath it. He opened another gore. He's like, this is also where all the gears are. And he opened another little door that had like buttons and little things on it. He's like, here's all the controlling mechanisms. Then he'd close it.

And he's like, all right, now I got to go get her prepped. And he'd turn a big crank. And then he's like, okay, now name a song. Yeah. Yeah. And there were actually little speakers on ISIS that you would like go down and, you would ask for the song that you wanted. That's awesome.

Yeah, well, not as impressive in reality as it sounds in theory. Shit. Just like the real Isis. Always. Every day, right? You're like, you guys are fucking, not as cool as I thought you'd be. Yeah, you're just the sequel to Al-Qaeda. It's always worse.

Too much G.I. Let's hear a demonstration of ISIS during a televised British magic show in 1989 after someone asked the automaton to play Home on the Range. No, you know it? It is. It really is, isn't it? It really is home on the road. It's really not. It's absolutely not in any way whatsoever, home on the range. That's more of a liar than Anton Mouvet. Well, those are guys who are two magicians.

He did it, he did it, he didn't. He promised it happened. How it operated. It happened right in Tronefest, we heard it. So for years, everybody said, right? But for years, there were so many people baffled by ISIS. Yeah. And they thought that it was magic.

And he said, like Nixon said, I had worked on this for 20 years in secret. it, and I'm continuing to work on it, and it's the mysterious mechanism. The owner of Harris Casino bought ISIS from Nixon and couldn't figure it out. He said he couldn't figure it out. Because it doesn't work. Well, how it works is that what happens is that there's a guy in it. Yeah. And then when you lower the crank, you show all the stuff, because that's like the front

of where the guy's sitting. And then when you lower, when you hit the crank, it lowers the inner working so the guy that's in the closed box can crawl into this thing. underneath Isis that has this little keyboard in which you try to play the zither by looking through this little slot with this keyboard. So that's why it sounds

like that. Because the guy can barely fucking see and he's trying to do it from the inside and this weird cockamamie like thing. Yeah, that's that shit that's still going on today. I went to the Magic Castle last night. Oh, cool. Oh, you went last night? I went last night. It just randomly was there. I'm thinking about the whole episode today. But, um...

What did you go with, what you go with? with your wife? No, you go with your wife. I named a wife. I named a wife. No, I went with Julie's friends. It was a good double-date thing. You went looking at a suit and everything. Yeah, I put a suit on. Yeah, yeah. Like a big monkey man.

And they got a piano. They didn't bring you back to the zoo or anything. It didn't ask you wear your shots. It's called Irma. You're right. And it's a piano that just plays. And what it is is like you talk to Irma. And Irma doesn't exist. It's an empty piano. But you speak at Irma.

You're like, Irma, please play. I ask for Autumn leaves. I was like, Irma, please play Autumn leaves. And then Irma goes, and then you tip Irma a dollar in her bird cage. And it's like, you know, there's just someone watching from another room. Sure.

You know, but it's very cool. It's my favorite part of the Magic Castle. Yeah. So if you ever go, you would love Irma. You spend the whole time in there. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would love the close magic.

All the close magic is my favorite things. But yeah, they definitely will touch her wife. Yeah. You really can't. They make their panties disappear. Yep. Yeah, they make their panties disappear. Well, Anton Mavay's Magic Circle.

also counted filmmaker and author Kenneth Enger as an early member. This marked the first of Lavey's two connections to the Manson family. One of Anger's films, Lucifer Rising, starred Manson family member Bobby Boussela, who was convicted in the murder of Gary Himman. That was the family's first victim. Kenneth Anger, to me, is also the exact reason why Anton LeVay was really interested more in getting into the movies. No, because Hollywood Babylon.

And how they, they're real. Which is also full of lies. It is. Their real love was the collection of those stories about Hollywood. That was their real time passing that they would do, just talking about all these old ideas of conspiracy theories, like old ideas of like C.C. C.C. B. DeMille, like, having, like, having, like, a girl mill

and, like, having all these things. Like, if you ever read Hollywood Babylon, it's so entertaining. And until they should have lived in L.A. He liked San Francisco. It was his hometown. San Francisco was still... cooler. It was back then it was especially. Yeah.

But, I mean, really, when these guys got together, like, they talked a lot more about, what was the name of the guy that, um, supposedly, you know, used the Coke bottle on the girl and almost got, you know, Chris Farley was supposed to play in a movie. Fatty Arbuckle. They talked far more about shit like Fatty Arbuckle and whether or not he actually did it than they did about Satan. Yeah. Like, that's the type of shit they talked about. But through Kenneth Anger, LeVe was introduced to the brilliant artist Marjor. Cameron, who was also Jack Parsons' widow. The Magic Circle also boasted aristocrats,

taxidermis, anthropologists, and gastroenterologists as members. In other words, LeVay was attracting intelligent, curious people into his orbit. LeVay was also exploring so-called demonic geometry at this time. So he designed an oddly shaped black and red medallion adorned with a batwing demon for the most devoted members of the Magic Circle to wear. These nerds then formed a subgroup called the Order of the Trapezoid. This was a group within the magic circle. And those members would eventually become the leaders in the Church of Satan. In fact, what this early group was doing with their rituals

really wasn't that much different from what the Church of Satan would eventually do. Their rituals helped with professional advances, unexpected rewards, money, sexual romantic satisfaction, or the elimination of their enemies. But differently, it was a bunch of nerds focusing their energies so they could get the things they wanted out of life, which is what magic is all about. Now, Order of the Trapezoid,

Natalie and I, I had made Order of the Trapezoid pendants for us to wear. In order of the trapezoid all comes from William Montgomery. The idea of what it's considered to be magical interest and the idea of a trapezoidal shape, which is what he uses. But again, it was just the drinking group. You know what I mean? The order of the trapezoid was just, he'd be like, okay, guys, leave.

We're having the order of the trapezoid. episode secret meeting now, and then they'd like, all right, now we can hang on. When you gave that to Natalie, was she like, could you get me something else? No. No. We're all with the women we're supposed to be with. Yay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's too late.

That's what she gets. Now, Anton LeVay's first marriage didn't last long. In 1959, when LeVe was 29 years old, he met a 17-year-old girl named Diane Hegarty, who was going by the name of Diane von Ju. Diane was working as an usher at a movie theater near a bar where Anton was playing the organ, and Anton apparently caught her eye.

Shortly after their affair began, LeVay divorced his wife for Diane. Although, interestingly, LeVay's daughter, Carla, stayed in the black house with her father rather than leave with her mother. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't that bad at the time. Yeah. It's probably all the trapped doors she couldn't find a way around.

I mean, that's what's fun to do. The Diane Higarty, would take LeVay's last name. And while the two would never marry, it is almost certain that the Church of Satan would have never gotten off the ground without Diane's input organization and ideas.

But just as important was the fact that Diane fully encouraged Anton LeVay to finally become Anton Zandor LeVay. Unless you believe fucking Michael Aquino. He's like, he talked to a... He had a publicist friend. Explain him on the way to do this church thing.

So they went to the state. They filled out all the paperwork because that's what they do. So it was not his idea at all. It was the other guy's idea. It's like you don't realize, you know, like if you were like a fat complaining loser, people are just going to like the other guy. This is the whole thing, man. Yeah, sure.

But guess what? Everybody liked him, bro. Yeah. Everybody liked Anton. No one liked you, Michael. No. They really didn't. You fucking, every time you talk, they probably went,

shut up, Michael. Shut the fuck up. I hope we never do it. episode on him. Oh, we will. Oh, no, he's coming up next episode. Yeah, he'll be a part of the next episode. A part of an episode. A part of an episode. He doesn't get his own episode. God, no. No, because this shit's too fucking boring. And I,

we are passed as a group. And you can be thanked. You thank us. Thank me. We're not going to talk about the magical workings. Okay? Because we know it bores people. Yeah. Because guess what I just tried to do. Read the Temple of Set book. And guess what it is? It's about all of his workings to form the Temple of Set.

And guess what it is? Boring is. Boring is. Fuck! If nothing's happened, his eyes are closed. Once Diane moved into the black house, it became, in the words of author Doug Brode in his book,

Born with the Tale, quote, a canvas on which LeVay could project his wicked, feverish art, creating a total environment out of his grisliest dreams. Cool.

Arthur and Diane painted their bedroom glossy red, while the kitchen and living room were just as black as the house's exterior. You'll look like this, Eddie, the exception in the kitchen

was a mural which featured a cartoon bat demon modeled after Shurnebog from the night on Bald Mountain segment in Fantasia. Hell yeah. Wow, yeah. And what I love is below Shurnebog, that's where he put all of his organs. I mean, organ in the kitchen is pretty great. Yeah, it's pretty

fucking cool. Man, I would love if someone played the organ for me while I cook. I know. I had that same thought. They then decorated the house with skulls, a full-size human skeleton probably obtained from someone at a San Francisco hospital, taxidermied animals, a coffin, a chair that LeVe claimed belonged to Rasputin, a coffee table made from a tombstone belonging to some guy named Lucas Machado, and of course, dozens of LeVay's own paintings.

I actually look, I couldn't really find LeVay's paintings. I couldn't either. It's insane. When you look, it's just, I mean, I guess it's just a Google thing, but yeah, Google is only gives you paintings of Anton LeVay. Oh, maybe he never did it and just lied about it. No, no, no, they were everywhere. In fact, actually, the...

They might just belong in his family. He just might not be in a whole in private hands. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I know he was good. The very first press that he got was for his paintings in, like, 1956. So they were apparently good. He was a good artist. Yeah.

So they got... It was a real skeleton? Yeah, they got a real skeleton. No one knows where they got it from, but they knew so many people, especially... Like, you know, they knew gastroenterologists. They knew dentists. They knew people in the medical world that probably could get them a human skeleton. It was a lot easier to get back then, too.

Far easier. Oh, yeah. I mean, just like, you know, speaking of Disney, the Pirates of the Caribbean used to be all skeletons. Yeah, real skeletons. That was when it was awesome. And then they switched it out when someone was like, this is disgusting. You're like, whatever, bro. I mean, it's not that hard.

I mean, I know there's a fucking antique store in Pasadena right now that's selling a skeleton for like $2,000. I mean, I know it's expensive. but it's not hard to get. I want my skeleton to end up in a classroom somewhere just so like some kid would steal my arm one. Oh, he had me, so I look what I've got old Eddie's pinky. Well, LeVey also installed a trick bookcase

that connected their purple-painted sitting room with their bedroom, a replica of King Tut's sarcophagus in the living room that also led to their bedroom and a trapdoor in a fake fireplace that led to the basement. That must have been so much fun to use. Was it a slide? I know, I hope so.

I mean, just a big net. It was probably a net at the end. Well, basically, I mean, he turned his house into a carnival. It was a spook house. The whole thing is the carnival spook house. Because in my view, just about everything, it just keeps coming back to the carnival. For another example, when Diane and Anton had their daughter, they named her after a character from the carny novel, Nightmare Alley. This child, perhaps one of the most infamous children in a cult history, was Xen.

But her part in the story will come later. Now, by 1960, after LeVay and Diane turned the Black House into a fun house for the occult, Anton began formalizing the magical lectures he'd been giving casually at Magic Circle gatherings. He held these formal lectures every Friday night at midnight in his red-walled living room. Eventually, LeVay opened these lectures to the public, charging $2.50 per person. These Friday night occult lectures came to be known as the first black masses, which were intended to be an inversion of the Catholic Mass.

Instead of speaking on biblical subjects, LeVeigh would give lectures on vampirism, lichanthropy, sideshow freaks, torture methods, sex theories, recipes for efferadigiacs, gland transplants on monkeys or goat. God, cool. Zombies, haunted houses, ESP, homunculi. Basically, it's what people like us have been doing with podcasts for the last 15 years, but in lecture form. Yeah, and he did it in a cool-ass house with a guy dressed up as the devil and all hanging

out. It's awesome. Yeah. Did he do, was he like playing the organ and stuff while he did it too? I mean, sometimes he'd play the organ. Yeah, but yeah, but mostly, yeah, they were just these like formalized lectures like, hey, I just, I studied vampires all week. Here's what I learned about vampires. Man, I bet that was fun as hell. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For 250? Like, that's a great Friday night. But taking it far beyond talk, Anton also held activities at these black masses, like the time one of the members of the Magic Circle allegedly obtained an actual human. leg from a physician. The supposed leg was cooked in fruit juice, grenadine, and triple sec, and served with fried bananas, yams, tonka bean wine, and caterpillars. And after a lecture on cannibalism was given, it was said that while some in the magic circle were squeamish about eating caterpillar, they had no problem feasting on human flesh. But if we're being

realistic here, it was probably just pork. It was pork. Because in the end, we all know that he doesn't believe in human sacrifice. That whole thing, it's just like a funny thing to do. And it's But it wasn't sacrificed. No. No. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was, I think they said it was like it had been amputated or something bullshit. Something like that.

It's not real. It's not real. Yeah. Although it could be. I'd like to think that it could be. Well, to me, the idea of, like, the idea that, because I held a cannibal dinner. Mm-hmm. And there's something about that where it's way, it's more fun to just be like, we're cannibals.

Like, then you don't have to worry about it. It's just fun if it looks like people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You shouldn't. You shouldn't eat people. It's just because it can lead to brain problems. You can get a prion disease. Yeah. That's the main issue. Same thing with don't eat dolphin either. Yeah.

A lot of too much mercury. That's right. That's the main issue. Now, once Anton LeVe started opening his home to the public, he also completely transformed his look in 1966. Looking to copy the style of medieval executioners, carnival strong men, and black magicians like Alistair Crowley, Anton LeVe shaved his head, donned a cloak, and shaped his goate into an aggressive point. Now, LeVay claimed that he did this to make. mimic the Faustian depiction of

Mephistopheles, who's usually seen as the devil's liaison or the devil's agent. Or cat. Yeah. Yeah. But it has been noted that Anton LeVay may have taken inspiration from a far less

highfalutin source. Instead of Faust, it speculated that Anton LeVay took his look from Don Rickles. Yes, he did. Of course, he did, that fucking hockey puck. Yeah, well, you want to look good. Now you're going to look like, man.

I'm Polish. That's what my father used to do every time he saw Don Rickles. Just about a month before Anton LeVay debuted his new look in 1966, Don Rickles had appeared as a supernatural villain in an episode of a now-forgotten espionage Western TV show called The Wild Wild Wild West, which I watched a little bit of it. It kind of seems like a cross between Mission Impossible and Gunsmoke. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.

Whoa, he's so far. funny looking in this. Yeah. Oh my God, Eddie. I've never seen him with a mustache. Wow, I've never seen him looking like that.

That's hilarious. Well, Rickles, in a rare dramatic turn, he played it totally straight, plays a sinister black magician named Asmodius who uses occult imagery, rituals, and black magic to frighten and manipulate the townsfolk in a typical

19th century Western settlement. In his episode, awesomely titled, The Night of the Druid's blood, Rickle's character even burns someone alive in a seemingly supernatural fashion. But ultimately, the deaths are exposed as simple murder using smoke and mirrors, much like a very dark episode of Scooby-Doo. Wow!

That's very cool. I can't wait to watch this. Yeah. But in the end, it cannot be denied that while the character design of Asmodius definitely took from depictions of Faust Mephistopheles, the style of Don Rickles in this role broadcast just a month before Anton LeVay unveiled his own look is incredibly similar to LeVay's bald-headed, pointed goatee style.

He also looks like what? Like there's also that famous guy was Ming the Mercilus was like a thing. Yeah, Ming the merciless from a Flash Gordon. Yeah. Man, you know that pissed rickles off. Like the first person that looked like him was like a Satanist.

Oh, he probably had no fucking idea. Wait, believe a guy? You believe in Satan? That's better? Yeah. Ever heard about this? Anyway. Anyway. Live from North Lane.

While Anton LeVay was certainly getting attention for all this occult imagery, he was also gaining local notoriety in San Francisco in the mid-1960s as the big cat guy. This kind of tells you, look, what San Francisco was about in the 60s. God, it's just so much fun. Yeah. See, in 1964, his leopard Zoltan, I mean, cat's a cat. No matter if it's big or something. small. Cats sometimes run out of the house when you open the door. Of course they do.

This time, Zoltan ran out of the house, got hit by a car. It's a fucking leopard. It's different than a cat. You know what I mean? It's definitely way different than a cat. No, a cat's a cat. You leave the door open, cat's going to get out. A leopard's 150 pounds. It's pretty big. I can only imagine also the person who hit

the guy. To walk, a living look! I'd be so scared. What kind of dog is that? Well, Zoltan was killed and buried in Anton's backyard. LeVe and his family were devastated. by Zoltan's death. So in November of 1964, a member of the

Magic Circle bought a baby Nubian lion for Anton Lefei. Yeah, she did such a good job with the first one. At least it killed itself. Come on. We've all, you know, gotten a pet after one pet died. Yeah, of course.

To be honest, I recommend it. Yeah. But now when they're leopards. Yeah, yeah, I don't think you have to worry about being, like, sad. Like, I think you should, as soon as your pet dies, get a new pet.

That's my view. Oh, yeah, you got to. I've placed a new pet. Always done. I have multiple pets, and I'm ready for them to die. Yours are staggered out. Yes. In generational, you get to really play with that.

That's awesome. Great roster. Yeah, we do the same thing at our house. It's always going to be two dogs, one young, one a little bit old, but you stagger them, so that way you're never without a dog. That's the idea. Because they're going to die. Every time.

But, you know, you never know which one's going to go. Tutsi was supposed to, like, make it okay for me to deal with Rambo dying, but then he died, and she's still around a year. later. She ain't going nowhere. No, she did that fight. She did it because she's an evil woman just like your fucking mother. Yep, it makes sense.

When Anton got a new big cat, he got a lion, and he named it Togar, after the stage name of an Austrian lion tamer. Now again, Anton LeVey must have had experience with big cats, because as opposed to Count Dante, who couldn't stop his lion from

attacking his students, LeVey was able to take Togar to his daughter's kindergarten class for show and tell. I mean, like, it's got to be something. I mean, this lark was actually reported in the San Francisco Chronicles. That absolutely happened. But it was still a kitten at that point, right? At that point, yeah, yeah.

But even so, you remember, like, Count Dante, his people would say, like, every time we tried to feed the cat, you had to hold down all four of its paws because it would scratch the shit out of you. Anton LeVay knew what he was doing. Yeah, Anton LeVay is better than Count Dante. Yes. On this one thing. Yeah, because Count Dante is a pale imitation of Anton LeVay. And seemingly, Anton LeVay, parlié parlié. this lion coverage into getting a part-time job writing a column for the Chronicle himself,

in which he cemented his reputation as one of San Francisco's weirdest characters. While the column was mostly about his time as a paranormal investigator, it was also where LeVe made his first claims about being a lion trainer, a carnival organist, a police photographer, and an accordion teacher. So that's where he set the lore. Yeah, and this legend was set. This was two years before he started the Church of Satan. It's easier to lie back then.

It really is. And honestly, you say that, but it's easy to lie now. You just got to keep doing it. That's the key, Eddie. Never give in, ever. Dig in, never change. Alex Jones fucking sold his family down the river when he broke character. I can't matter.

He broke character. That was his biggest problem. Now, Togar the Lion was, after all, still a lion. While Togar was well-behaved enough, where Anton could walk it through his local supermarket, just to get a reaction from the public, the lion did once almost kill the grandson of the 21st President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur.

Not Chester A. Arthur. Yeah, I'm sorry. You share a birthday. I've attached to him. Wow. Well, it's Chester A. Arthur's grandson. I still love him. Yeah, Arthur A. Arthur. Well, President Arthur's grandson

was also Chester A. Arthur. But he called himself Gavin to set himself apart. Called himself Gavin Arthur. Great. Gavin Arthur was yet another fascinating figure in Anton LeVay's orbit. By the mid-60s, Arthur had established himself as both an astrologer and a sexologist. God. Thank Albert Kinsey, but if he was obsessed with horoscopes.

It's a perfect time to be a sexologist. It really is. And slash fucking astrologer. Yeah, and you know who was like super into Gavin Arthur's sexologist stuff? Alan Watts. Alan Watts loved it. He would write all, like, and he knew Alan Watts. He was like Gavin Arthur was in that scene with Alan Watts and all those guys.

Well, and you know, Gavin Arthur would call himself the pre-Hippy hippie. He was active in the early gay rights movement as a bisexual. He was friends with and had sex with various writers amongst the beat generation. That's where Neil Cassidy came in. Wow. Yeah, it came in, came on, came out, whatever. Suck it as fucking jack. And he was also an early leader in San Francisco's hate Ashbury scene before the whole thing fell apart.

That's what he means when you, says he's the pre-hippy hippie. He was there in the beginning when they were like, okay, there's something going on here. Something's changing. You know, perspective is changing. And then, of course, the hippie movement just did what it did. Yeah.

But he was the guy, he was one of the guys at the very beginning. That's very cool. And those were the guys the Anton LeVay hung out with. And when Gavin Arthur dined with Anton LeVay, he found himself suddenly trapped under 250 pounds of lion, as Togar ripped Arthur's suit to shreds in the middle of dinner. He smelled the president on him. Yeah, got to get to Chester.

But ever the wag, Gavin later quipped to The Chronicle. This is what I get for not hiring a lion's center. You just seem, but I guess it is a bit of a snagel post line. Oh, yeah. This is what I get for not hiring a lion's sitter. Oh, new pseudelaw. Oh, wacked stage right even. Sometime in 1966,

Anton LeVay decided that his profile was not quite high enough. After shaving his head and putting on a cape and devil horns, LeVay officiated a wedding as a high priest of Satan, complete with a naked woman on the altar. The ceremony was, of course, both public and covered by the press. But after the ceremony, LeVay started gaining national attention as both a big cat guy and as a Satan. But his neighbors, instead of going after the Satanus angle, they started getting very vocal about Togar.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There's a lion attacking the neighborhood. We'll deal with the Satan stuff later. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of an esoteric issue that we're kind of all sort of trying to sort out. But there's a lion on the street. Yeah.

There's a lion in that house over there. It really does show you everything about San Francisco. There's this great news footage, this archive footage of people interviewing, like, neighbors and they're like, I don't care about the Satanism stuff, who really cares? But this lion keeps startling my husband when he roars it to a year. Yeah, it's so loud. It's so loud. It's so loud. The walls are so thin.

Eventually, though, Togar got to be too much to handle because it's always a bad idea to have a lion as a pet. Diane Higarty tried brushing Tabasco sauce on the furniture because Togar kept chewing everything to pieces. And Togar was known to go into rampage. within the house that would cost thousands of dollars to repair. Got to get a scratch and post. It really does. Yeah, or scratching a cross. Yeah, that would be so much fun.

You get upside down cross and scratch it's fucking awesome. I should have worked for Anton. Well, I don't have been great. Now, LeVay had tried and failed to sell Togar to a circus for $5,000. You should have tried for four. Yeah. Yeah. But after Togar clawed and burst a water pipe one day,

flooded the basement of the Black House, LeVay said, fuck it, and got on the phone to the San Francisco Zoo that very day to donate the beast. LeVay, however, wasn't happy about the circumstances that led to him losing Togar. He said he cursed his neighbors for complaining. I curse you. And many of them thereafter moved away, died, or disappeared. I think that mostly that was just what happened with San Francisco. They're also just, they were all the people that were complaining were old, and that's what old people do.

I got to do. Also, he got rid of the lion because it destroyed his house. Yeah. It was difficult to do, and expensive to keep, and it was a feeling it was coming out. He had a lot of feelings he didn't know how to deal with him.

Yeah, and he also, for some reason, decided to curse the director of the San Francisco Zoo, who was seemingly doing a henton a favor. Yeah, dude, honestly, he's ready to fucking help, bro. Well, LeVe claimed that he put all of his frustrations into a crystal baboon figure in a ritual chamber belonging to a friend. And while we could find no articles whatsoever

about this supposed incident, because you'd think the paper would have covered this, yeah. LeVay said that shortly after he made all these curses on the baboon figure, the director of the San Francisco Zoo was killed by apes. Well, I just did the whole thing on the San Francisco Zoo, and that was definitely not in their list of incidents. Yeah, I don't think he was killed by apes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, if anything, he would have been killed by Tatiana, who wasn't born yet. Exactly, yes. Togar, meanwhile, was renamed Neal. Neal? We're calling a fucking lion, Neil? That's a terrible name for a lion. It's a lion!

Yeah. And in 1972, he was. sold to a film director named Noel Marshall, who kept Togar in his home in Sherman Oates, here in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Oh, yeah, it's like I pretty certain I know the house. Yeah, they kept a ton of animals there because Marshall had a thing for lions as well. And in 1981, he directed the notoriously disastrous lion movie Roar. Oh, that's fucking Melanie Griffith's dad.

Yep, we're going to get into that right now because the production of this movie, weirdly has an occult angle that has nothing to do with Anton LeVay because coincidence is something that follows Anton LeVay everywhere. It's just the truth. Yeah. And Togar, by the way,

was one of the stars of Roar. Now, this Lion movie described as both the most dangerous movie ever made and the most expensive home movie ever made, it is fucking insane. It stars Tippy Hendren from the Birds who was married to Marshall,

their daughter, Melanie Griffith. She's the co-star and Jan DeBant, who directed Twister and Speed was the cinematographer on this movie. Whoa!

It took five years to complete this film because the big cats like Togar were less than cooperative and as a result, over 70 casting crew members were injured

by big cats in both small and nearly fatal incidents during filming. Yeah. A lion cutly named Cherry's she bit

Tipy Hendren's head hard enough to scrape her skull. Melanie Griffith almost lost an eye to another lion. She had to get cosmetic surgery. I mean, the rumor is, I don't know how true it is, but like that she was almost scalped and like her fucking top of her head was flopping up and down. Well, actually,

that's what happened to Jan DeBont. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you Jan DeBond? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's what happened to Jan DeBond. He wasn't even a fucking actor. He was the cinematographer. He was fully scalped by the same lion that almost ate Tippy Hendren. He had to get two. They said it took 200 20 stitches to put his scout back on.

Also, I gotta say, Roar is unwatchable. He's a bad film. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The director himself almost lost an arm after a lion bit his hand. That was just one of 11 serious injuries sustained by Noel Marshall, including gangrene and blood poisoning

from all the bites. All this shit took years for him to recover from. Togar was actually one of the lead lions in the movie, but his previous good behavior was forgotten. He bit the assistant director in the throat and jaw before trying to chew off the AD's ears. And this is after the AD accidentally queued and attack.

Because that's what would happen. They could just, you could make one movement, hand movement, hand movement, lion goes. Because they refuse to pay all the animals sag, you know, rates. That's the problem. You're like, you want me to get the union representative in here? And then they fucking just attacked them. That's how it always is.

Believe me, I work with Jeffrey Tambour. I know what goes on. And this is just a small, small sampling of all the shit that went down during the production of Roar. And the amount of sheer mayhem around this movie has caused people to call it a cursed production. But it said that Roar's curse is merely an extension of another movie curse. Marshall had funded Roar with the money that he had made as a producer for The Exorcist.

Oh, hell yeah. And it was rumored that Roar was plagued by the same satanic curse that made The Exorcist so difficult to film, which I'm sure was all very amusing to Anton the Vey. I mean, it's just because William Freakins kind of an asshole. Yeah, he's an asshole and he refrigerated the set and all that shit. And then, I mean, Roar was not cursed. It was filled with lions and tigers.

Literally bloodthirsty predators. The Exorcist just had a very perfectionist director that made things hard on the cast. Yeah, and there was elephants too. Like an elephant almost killed someone during the filming of Roar. Hell yeah. Yeah. Get at him.

Makes me think of Katie Perry. Why? Roar. Oh, yeah. And you just think of her just fucking just floating through space naked. Mm-hmm. I don't know why that's my default. Yeah, well.

Just her spinning through space, frozen and naked. Hell yeah. Dead? No. If she's frozen and naked in space, she's going to be dead. I guess so. Chili. All right, chili.

I don't really think about it that way, but. Partly, the church. Church of Satan's great success was very much a case of right place, right time. While San Francisco was already well established as a counterculture hotspot by 1966, LeVay was also writing a wave of uncertainty sweeping America when it came to the role that religion was supposed to play in the modern world. An April 8th of that year, Time magazine published a now infamous cover story with the headline asking, Is God Dead? Yep.

If you got to ask, he is. Yeah, man, exactly. I guess he hasn't shown up in a long time. Well, the whole point of the article was basically, you know, we used religion for so many years to explain the things about the natural world that we didn't understand. But now that we're in this era of modern science and we understand so many more things than we once did, what role does God play?

Do we need God anymore? And therefore, is God dead? No. Just asking the question naturally caused a lot of outrage. in the Christian establishment and also amongst Christians worldwide. But Anton LeVay was paying attention to not only the content of the article, but also the reaction. He immediately saw how publicly questioning the Christian God could translate into a lot of attention and a lot of publicity if you did it in the right way. So taking inspiration from such occult institutions as the

Hellfire Club and Alistair Crowley's Abbey of Philema and then sprinkling a lot of carnival atmosphere over the whole thing, Anton LeVay announced the founding of the Church of Satan on Volpurgis-Knox, 1960 years ago, this month. And it is incredible that all these sixes

show up in the same month that we did episode 666. And Walpard's Knocked is your birthday. Yep. No, it's kind of a whole thing. It's really strange. I'll always kind of think about the fact that all of that material was handed to me

as I then also was cast on a show in which I played a devil. and then I dealt with all that. We like, it's just, it's very funny how it all shakes out. I also think that Anton LeVe was inspired by Scientology in terms of the money. Yeah, well, in understanding

that you can do that. You can just set up a actual religion. I'm really excited next episode to talk about Sammy Davis Jr., poor devil, and your pretty face is going to hell and how they all come together. I just love Sammy Davis Jr. and fucking the whole thing. Yeah, cat, yeah, see.

Hell Satan, yeah, baby. He's amazing. 666 always was a big day for me too because that was the day I moved to New York City to become a comedian. That's amazing. And you know, my very first apartment in New York City, the address was 666 St. Nicholas Avenue. St. Nicholas is another word for Santa, and Santa is an anagram for Satan. That's awesome. Yeah, dude.

Fuck, yes. He fucking made us, man. I feel his power in my fucking veins. I will fucking, fucking, I'm going to kill God. I'm going to fucking kill God. I do it last week. We'll fucking kill God. LeVay declared 1966 to be

Ano Satanus, year one of the satanic calendar. But considering the year and the city in which it was founded, the Church of Satan was not the party you'd assume it to be. The church actually forbade the use of drugs and hallucinogens because they, quote, impeded the effective control

over one surroundings. Alcohol was allowed, but only in moderation. And it was often served at Church of Satan parties as a concoction called goblin juice, and it was usually served from a toilet. So he kind of gave you, like, there was a hint of like, you know, don't get too drunk. Yeah, you might want, yeah, which is, he's, but he was always about that. He was always like that.

He was, he was not a teetotler, but he was close to it. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Catholics are giving wine to children. Yeah, and then all the kids get fucking chlamydia from sharing the goblet with everybody. Yeah, yeah, and herpes. Yeah. Now, after the Church of Satan opened its doors, they began attracting misfits of every type, from the mentally ill with delusions of grandeur to curious knowledge seekers who felt like the hippie counterculture was lacking a distinct edge.

LeVay, in fact, hated hippies. He called them the final de-evolution of man. Whatever, bro. No, he was, well, because I actually fully believe. He saw them as lazy. They're lazy. They're just doing drugs. And they're not doing anything.

Fuck, yeah. Well, the one thing that he did. His real point was, you know what he was really against was the idea of, at the time, the idea of free love. That is what he was specifically against. Yeah, he liked to pay for it. Yes. He liked to be being, a poo-poop. But no, his thing was, I don't think you deserve to be loves just for existing.

The free love movement was all about how everyone should be loved no matter what they do. And you create an absolution type environment for anybody that, that wants to come and kind of try to forgive themselves first, and then you guys can all be, like his idea that we all should be loved no matter what. Anton LeVay is trying to say, earn my love. Yeah.

And I will say that I believe I could be wrong, because I don't know much about Anton LeVay, the hippie movement was invaded by bikers and criminals, and I don't think this one was. Well, the hippie movement failed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They all became fucking bankers and shit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, they failed completely. Well, and it's also the, just the simple fact that free love doesn't work. No, it's actually caused quite a bit of rape. Yes, it did.

Yeah, it caused a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of problems. And that's the thing that Anton LeVay did understand people at the very least. He did understand people and he did realize that, you know, people do need, we need rules. We do need some, we need at least a personal code that we need to live by. But he also understood that having a deity as the arbiter of those rules didn't work. It's like if you're only not committing crimes and doing horrible things because you're afraid that God will punish you for it, then you're a real piece of shit. Like you need every man and woman needs to do things because it's the right thing to do. For society.

Yeah, for society. Yeah. And I think the only hippie band that could use the Calliopee was blood, sweat, and tears. I mean, they would really be able to back that up because they could. got the sound. Yeah. But it's hard. It's very loud instrument.

It's hard to do. It's like, loud, man. Whether the people coming to the church of Satan were mentally unbalanced or merely weird, many of them that were attracted to the church of Satan, they wanted to use ritual magic to gain successes that they felt they were rightfully owed, but had been denied for one reason or another. In one example of a revenge ritual, the congregates would arrive to a satanic black mass dressed as the person they hated and wanted to curse.

They would then spend the evening acting and talking like their nemesis. Then, at the end of the night, the congregates would symbolically kill their nemesis through the casting of spells. Henry, for example, if he were to do this, would show up, act and talk like Eddie Redmayne on night. Oh, I'm a lady. Oh, I'm just a lady. Oh, don't worry about me. Lady best act in the whole world.

So skinny and wonderful. No, yeah, but I do think that magically this kind of makes sense. But, you know, what's funny is that practically, I think you'd be surprised what you learn walking around in the shoes of the person you hate all night. Like, I actually bet you end up getting a form of empathy from doing it. And that's kind of what he was even saying. Like, even just the curse part of it. It's not even that.

It's more like you need to accept it yourself. Like, you need to figure out how to get over other people's thoughts of you. Hey, man. I'm going to hate Jimmy John. matter how many sandwiches I eat. Well, he's a piece of shit. Yeah, and this is, it's incredibly nerdy shit, but the

idea was that the participant would gain new confidence from the magical act, and they would return to the world with the poise needed to obtain success in the realms of money, love, or vengeance, depending on their wish. Now, one of the things that's often left out of the history of the Church of Satan

is that it was co-founded and built from the ground up by LeVe's partner, Diane Hagarger. Diane took care of the administrative duties at the church, including collecting the $25 membership fees and producing and distributing all the merch. As we all know, merch is key to being sticky, and Diane made sure that LeVe's books, records, plaques, medallions, and membership cards, everyone loves a lanyard. Everybody likes a lanyard. She made sure that all of that shit made it out to the growing number of Satanists around the country. And so, with Diane's help, Anton LeVay became the first person to found an organization,

that was dedicated to Satan and the delights of the flesh. Basically, Satanism is a sort of, it's kind of a mix of like, Einran-style selfishness and hedonism, but with a caveat that nothing you do should ever hurt anyone else, children especially. The child caveat was added early on, because it seems like LeVay predicted the satanic panic of the 80s in which Satanists would be accused of molesting and or murdering children en masse

without a single shred of evidence. Wow, it's interesting that a man who married, a child wanted to protect them so much. Who was back in the 1950s? They weren't children yet. Well, you just made them kids now. See, I do think the most important thing the Church of Satan enters,

which is the thing that I think why it's worth anything, is all of the layers of consent. In Satanism, there are many, many layers of consent. It is all about you choosing. The idea that what Christianity proposes

is a boilerplate view of reality. They think that like when you're Christian, that you're just like it, it's a Christian world and there's nothing you can do about it and you're walking around with these rules created by an arbitrarily by an unknowing, unfeeling deity far above you that you now are supposed to walk around like a fucking puppet. This thing's supposed to be like, no, you choose. Yeah.

Yeah. Also, it seems like the church of Satan is better to women. Far better than... Well, he stole everything from women that ever... Every idea he had was stolen from women. He loved women truly, and I do completely understand it. Anton LeVay worship women, and he definitely plagiarized most of his best ideas from women. Yeah.

That is true. Yep. All right, take it back. Yeah. He's great. No, he loves what he trusted women. Women were an extremely important part of the Church of Satan. He actually viewed women as morally superior to men.

Yeah. And as far as like consent goes, the stuff the Church of Satan, was doing like they were talking about ideas of consent in the late 60s that really only became a part of like the culture at like just i would say american culture at large in 2020 maybe 2015 you know like like those those ideas of consent yeah they were around for a long time it's just that they were buried in the church of satan yeah because the hippie movement was a whole misogynistic thing that we didn't really understand that was game towards being like oh no man we all ball each other man it's like sometimes

A lot of dangerous people hid inside of the hippie movement. A lot of them, many dangerous people. I'm a hippie sympathizer, and I know that's true. Charles Manson, number one. Yeah. Now, one of the things that made the Church of Satan so successful, both in gaining supporters and in attracting enemies, was its effectively spooky imagery, much of which is styled around the sigil of the goat-headed occult figure, Baphomet.

That's why, if you can get a chance, get the out-of-print book the command to look. It is all this. This is everything. It's the heart of it. I had no idea. I'm a fucking student of Satanism, and I had no idea until I just got this book. Hell yeah. Well, the sigil of the Church of Satan was an inverted pentagram containing a goat's head

surrounded by five stylized Hebrew letters that spelled out the words, Leviathan, one of the crown princes of hell. Leviathan. It's one of the crown princes of hell. It's no big deal. But that goat was based on Baphimat. Now, Baphimat was the right figure for Anton LeVay to choose here, and not just because Baphomet is the coolest-looking and most

a most recognizable figure in all of occultum. To jog your memory, Baphimet is the hermaphroditic goat-headed figure with gigantic horns and wings, sitting cross-legged with one hand pointed up and the other hand pointed down. It certainly appears demonic, but it was in no way meant to be a representation of Satan.

Every single time, I'm going to let you know this. This is one of my fucking biggest pet peeves. If I see Baphimet being used as a representative of Satan in a movie, I shut it off. It shows that everything else is wrong. You've just completely fucked it all up. As soon as you're saying that Baphomet's like the devil

and it's supposed to be scary, the pendergrams are scary, it's like, oh, you're a moron. I remember in Boka we had the Christmas tree and then like everyone was like, well, if you're going to have a Christmas tree, you've got to have a menorah. And then like the Satanus in Baca got a, they applied and got a Baphmet sculpture in the middle of the same place.

That's fun as out. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I love thatfmet statues around. Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah, actually, I have a Baphomet statue in my home. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that my brother-in-law got me for Christmas. It was great.

It was really trying to see you. It was very sweet. Well, the word Baphomet actually first appears during the Crusades in 1307 as a sort of weapon to be used by the French crown against the warriors of the Crusades, the Knights Templar. See, the King of France felt that the Templars were becoming too powerful. So he declared that the Templars were worshipping an idolatrous bearded figure, called Baphimat, and he had many of the Templars arrested and tortured based on this accusation. And you remember the reason why they did that, too, is because they were running protection for all the treasures coming back from the Crusades, and eventually they said, what if we just keep

the treasures? Yeah. And then they just said, then they made him Satanus. It's about money. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not even Satanous. I mean, it's weird. It's, in reality, Bathamette was a corruption of the medieval European word for Muhammad,

who, of course, was worshipped by the other side in the crusade. Interesting. That medieval European word was Mahomet, which became Baphomet. Yeah, it's basically saying that they were worshippers of Muhammad, but they kind of created a new sort of person. An extra evil Muhammad. Yeah, an extra evil Muhammad that only the Knights Templar worshipped. But it was all based on basically Islamophobia. Baphimat came back in the 19th century when it was said that he became the subject of worship of another secret society.

The Freemasons. Fricicultist, Alifus Levi, took this rumor and ran with it. He gave Baphimitt light. He designed the Baphimit we all know today for his 1854 book, The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic. Looking for a figure that would represent a balancing of opposing forces, Levi reimagined Baphimette as a hermaphroditic winged figure with the head and feet of a goat. He then adorned his illustration with esoteric symbols galore, and in doing so, created one of the most metal images in history. But as far as how Baphmet came to represent Satan, Levi's illustration was simplified and used for the devil card

in the popular Riderweight tarot deck in 1909. And that, of course, sealed Baphmet's association with the Christian devil. This imagery was picked up by Alistair Crowley and eventually Anton LeVay, who both understood how powerful of an image Baphmet was. LeVay also understood how valuable his image of Baphmet. was. And in 1981, his depiction of the occult figure became a registered trademark of the Church of Satan. Excellent. See, this is the thing. It's not evil. Like, Baphimat is the reason why it works so well for esoteric symbolism is because when you look at it, you're like, oh my God, this evil

god, this evil horn thing. But it's exactly what you said. It's technically just a symbol of the balance of the flows of male and feminine, dark and light, all of these things. It's about balance. It's not an evil figure at all. It just looks evil, which works great for people. And also the devil card, it's not about something bad happening to you. It's about you getting several temptations and thinking

about and possibly changing what you're doing. It's about opening up your mind to other possibilities. Sounds like it's a similar image as Justice. Certain. And justice doesn't even have her tits out. And she should. She should. If she wanted us to pay attention

a little bit. Why are there no nipples on justice. I mean, they're there. There's no tits on justice. There can be. There sometimes is. She should flop them out. Sometimes they are flopped out. I remember in high school, there was

somebody who got real upset about an exposed nipple on a justice statue. It's just unbelievable. Like, you're going to jerk off to marble? I guess if you can, good on you. You know, I need more than that. Suck your machines, candles,

alcohol. How is your suction machine? Is it clean yet? It's honestly been struggling. really been struggling. I think it's going through depression. It's clogged. Yeah, you should change out the vacuum tubes. Oh, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah.

I got it all webbed up. Now, upon its founding, the Church of Satan almost immediately began attracting celebrities. But the first real celebrity to darken the door of the Church of Satan's black house was sex symbol and all-around groovy chick,

Jane Mansfield. Fucking love Jane Mansfield. As a busty blonde, who was far smarter than she appeared, Jane Mansfield was supposed to be 20th Century Fox's answer to Marilyn Monroe. But after the blonde bombshell trope fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mansfield started taking risks. She became the first American actress to perform a nude scene in a starring role, which naturally came with a lot of judgment and

tut-tuts from the general public. This wasn't at all out of character for Jane Mansfield, because she'd already appeared in Playboy spreads throughout the 1950s. So she was sort of about like, what the fuck who cares? Yeah, yeah, I already did this thing. Yeah, but according to some theories, Mansfield was looking for something to put her back into the spotlight in the mid-1960s. And after being judged harshly for her sexuality, here was Anton LeVay, who had founded a church, no less, saying that it was all right for you to be yourself. Mansfield, therefore, visited the Church of Satan when she was in San Francisco for a film festival in 1966. While Mansfield maintained that she remained Catholic, she thought that Anton LeVay was a judge.

genius, or at the very least, a very interesting person. So she participated in a few rituals as a curiosity. Jane Mansfield was also highly intelligent in just as self-aware as Anton LeVay, so the two of them formed a sort of symbiotic friendship.

Mansfield made the Church of Satan sexy, while Anton LeVay made Mansfield a little dangerous and a little hip. And man, Michael Aquino, such a jealous little fucking bitch. That's my whole take on a too because he's like,

James Mansfield, she had maybe a sort of passing fancy of Anton, but it was certainly Anton's drive. There was no way of Jane Mansfield ever be into Anton on its own. And it's like, whole thing being like, you just, you fucking unfuckable nerd. It was definitely, I do believe it was a two-way street.

No chicks were in a keynote. Not a single one. Look at his eyebrows. He was like, yeah, sometimes I want to fuck the bad boy, dude. Sorry. Mansfield's a good get, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, interestingly, while Jane Mansfield's life,

it was certainly rocky before she even met Anton LeVay. It truly began falling apart in the most tragic ways after their friendship began. See, this is when Anton still had Togar the Lion, and Mansfield's young son, Zoltan, who just coincidentally had the same name as LeVay's leopard, he became enamored with the lion. Uh-oh.

So when Mansfield took Zoltan to an animal park called Jungleland USA, Zoltan got too close to a wild lion because the kid thought that the big cat wanted to play. The lion attacked, bit Zoltan hard enough to fracture the child's skull and then bit him again and ruptured a spleen. What the fuck! Zoltan survived, but just barely. What happened next, though, is shrouded in mystery, multiple versions of the same story, and a lot of legend. That event, of course, is the grisly and gruesome death of Jane Mansfield in 1967. And this is just a year after she met Anton LeVay. In one version of the story, the whole tragedy began when LeVay gave a tour of the Black

House to Mansfield and her boyfriend, Sam Brody, who is also her divorce lawyer. LeVay. He is one of those. He really worked it out. LeVay warned both of them as they were walking through the house. Don't touch anything, but particularly, stay away from the candles shaped like skulls. But Brody wandered off and lit a skull candle anyway

while LeVay was presenting Mansfield with an official Baphomet pendant. Look what I did, honey. I directly divide the magus's orders. Isn't this a wonderful evening? You still go through that divorce, right? Yeah, yeah, just want to make sure. Now, when LeVay saw that the candle have been lit, he told Jane Mansfield that the skull candles were only used for

curses. And since there was no magical direction when Sam Brody lit the candle, LeVay had no idea what was going to happen to the two of them now that Brody had lit one. In another account, far more dramatic, upon seeing the lit candle, LeVay got agitated and shouted,

You will both be killed in a tragic car accident within a year. And what happens, it will be very something. And what happens, I'll be very something. Like, oh, boom! Ah! Boom!

Whoa! Ding, dang, boom. Whoa. Ah, ah. Crashing kind of thing. I love people who can exploit a good old tragedy. Of course. Well, he was before the tragedy.

He just set it up. Yeah, he's not even done yet. In yet another account, LeVeis said that Mansfield had asked him to put a curse on her ex-husband, Mickey Hargatee, so she could get full custody of her children. This, however, is a lie because Mansfield had already been granted full custody of before she even met LeVay. LeVay also claimed that he in Mansfield had a sexual relationship, that Jane was madly in love with him

and would call several times a day to ask him to cast spells that would help her career. During one phone call, LeVay said Jane's boyfriend grabbed the phone and told him to cease all communication. Stop talking to Jane. So, LeVay cursed Brody, declaring that he would be dead within one year. I curse you.

As it went, Brody was dead within a year. but so was Jane Mansfield. On June 29, 1967, Jane, her boyfriend, Brody, her driver, and three of her kids were driving to New Orleans when their Buick slammed into a truck. The top of their car was sheared off killing Jane and the two men instantly.

She was not decapitated as the legend goes, but her skull was crushed. As far as the kids in the car went, they all survived, including Jane Mansfield's daughter. That daughter was Mariska Hargate, who you probably know best as Detective Olivia Benson from Law & Order SVU. No nonsense, ladies. She's super tall. She's beautiful. James Mansfield should have been shorter.

She would have lived. You're right. It's her fault. You're right, Eddie. Fuck her, man. Fuck her huge breasts. No. No, never.

No, she's one of my favorite graves at Hollywood Forever. Oh, it is. She's got a really great stone. It does. All of her dogs are with her too, right? Mm-hmm. Well, according to legend. I'm a beautiful, beautiful woman.

Yeah. God damn. But when Jane Mansfield was killed... God. We could talk all day about the attractiveness of Jane Mansfield. Oh, yes. But when Jane Mansfield was killed, Anton LeVade tried including himself in the story,

although I do not think it came off anywhere near as cool as LeVay thought it would. He claimed that one day in 1967, he made a fatal mistake while making a fatal mistake while making a Church of Satan scrapbook. No, I lost my movie. I knew I should have hired a historian. Well, cutting out an article on Marilyn Monroe, LeVay said his scissors slipped,

and he accidentally cut a photo of Jane Mansfield across the neck. This put an accidental curse on Mansfield. And LeVe's scrapbook story, which he told over and over and over again, that did a lot of the heavy. lifting and contributing to the still persisting rumor that Mansfield was decapitated during the car crash

that killed her. I thought she was until this moment. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm kind of sad that she wasn't. Actually, it's all Anton LeVay. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Hey, you know, it's a great story. Don't get me wrong. Head was crushed. Unrecognizable. But it popped off. And again, that's a little bit of a

that's a little X factor than Anton LeVay kind of adds it, we miss. We miss around here. But Jane Mansfield was not the only celebrity to become interested in the Church of Satan, nor was the Church of Satan free from other infamous figures. Join us next week as we cover Anton's

involvement with Susan Atkins of the Manson family, his fight with Temple of Set founder and satanic panic figure Michael Aquino and the fascinating story of how Mr. Show Business himself, Sammy Davis Jr., became heavily involved with Anton

LeVay's Church of Satan, reportedly until the day he died. Oh yeah, man. Cool. Sammy Davis Jr. loved Satan. Mr. Bo Jangles, man. I love it, man. Sammy is cool as hell.

He really is. I actually plan on telling his full story because for me, Sammy Davis Jr. as a Satanist always sounded like a joke, but in looking into it, it was absolutely real. And of course, then there's the question.

It's Sammy Davis Jr. How does one of the rat pack become a Satanist? It makes total perfect sense. It literally all makes sense. I just watched an amazing documentary in Sammy Davis Jr. And it makes total sense because he really was like he was more Jewish than any other Jewish guy around him. Like literally, they all went to him.

Like that he became so Jewish that like Billy Crystal said he treated him like his own personal rabbi. That anytime he had problems with, he would like call Sammy Davis Jr. up and he would go on about the Torah. And then he taught himself Hebrew. He was primed for Satanism in a way. He was primed for Satanism in a way. He was a seeker. because his evolution went

Scientology, Judaism, Satanism. That's awesome. It's really interesting. We'll get there and also next week we'll talk about how

I can already hear you fucking which is the use, I'll use the slur that Anton LeVay used for all of you. Occult knicks. I've heard about, I know that you occultics

are already kind of upset about the fact that I'm talking and shit about Michael Aquino because we do know he's technically a good guy, which is hilarious.

Like he's technically a good man. he's a way better guy than Anton LeVay. He just happens to be way worse at everything else. He's just super annoying. He's really, he's very annoying. But the people love his fucking ass.

That's why no one trust the Democrats. We're so annoying. That's broke. Look at his ass. Don't fucking put we in there. Look at his Eddie Monster fucking ass. Yeah, he's ugly. I ain't no fucking Democrat.

I also want to say, I do nothing. You don't even know. I'm a libertarian. The true way of the future. Oh, and also I want to say, R.A.P. to schooners in Lubbock. My long-time bar. Oh, really? Yeah, the old fucking, you know, muck and grime that was schooners.

After 30 years, it's finally closing down. Oh. So I got to say, RIP to schooners, all you folk out there in Lubbock that are still going. Go have one on me. Go have a schooner, a bud light, and a fucking marlboro red, and relive my college days. Don't make me thirsty for it, man. Don't make me thirsty for it around. So go to Patreon. com slash podcast and left to listen to our show ad-free. You also can see last stream on the left live,

our streaming show on YouTube, every Tuesday at 5 p.m. PST. Go check it out. Go also look at all of our social media and LP on the left, blah, blah, blah. But please see us live. Last podcast on the left.com. See us live.

We are lots of different places. June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the GLC Live at 20 Monroe. July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Canes Ballroom, and July 18th, Oklahoma City, Tower Theater. Those are the last three J.K. Ultra shows, but don't worry, we will be announcing some more down the pipe.

Interesting. We cannot wait. So go check out. Also check out HGX2. It is kicking season two on LPN TV. And the brighter side's got new shit going on. The finals are coming, dude. It's coming, it's coming in some place underneath.

It's got new material coming out. They'll be on Romantasy. Go check that show. shit out on our YouTube page. Hell yeah, and I'm hitting the road myself. I got a lot of shows coming up. Go and see that on edytunes.com. I'm coming to all kinds of cities, including

San Francisco. So it's going to so fun. Great. Well, hell sweet, sweet, and hail Satan. And it's good to say it when it's proper. Yeah. Full-throated. Hail Satan. Sure. Palgin. Yeah, and on these like 666-66-7 episodes, I would like to hail the wonderful Rob Oki. For all the work you do on that show,

buddy. Rob, Rob. Rob. Yeah, Rob works his ass off. Thank you, Rob. Can some woman buy him? Can some woman come and buy my Rob, please? He's for sale.

I'll sell you to him.