RedHanded - Episode 205 - Anton LaVey & The Church of Satan

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Anton LaVey, founder and head priest of the Church of Satan, led a controversial life; he was linked to the deaths of a famous Hollywood starlet and a Kennedy brother. Join Hannah and Suruthi for a deep dive into America's satanic panic, the origins of Satanism and how it has evolved over the decades. They explore LaVey's early life, from burlesque organ player, to occultist, to becoming considered by some to be "the most evil man in the world". Sources: redhandedpodcast.com  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to the award-winning podcast, Red Hand. Yes. Oh my God, yes. We are now officially an award-winning podcast. Thank you to no one else in the entire world except every single person who is listening.

Thank you so much. We did it together as a team effort and it was such sweet revenge. Beautiful. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. A dish best served with thousands and thousands of votes. Yes. I'm going to see if I can do some digging to find out just how many votes we got. I bet they won't tell us because they still don't like us, even though we've snatched this award from their cold, dead hands.

Thank you so much. It means the world. And you probably will never know how much it means to us. So just take my word for it. It means a lot. So with that, I have wanted to do this episode for a very long time. As you know, I love an ideology. We've sort of touched on this topic.

You've already said it. Why am I jumping around it? We've touched on Satanism a lot, a lot of times, but we haven't ever really got it specifically right, as the Satanists in our Facebook group have told us many times. So hopefully this will be a bit of a redemption. It's so interesting. So here we are, Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan. Let's get going. I'm so excited. This is going to be

hopefully all correct. Definitely very exciting and interesting. I can't wait. Strap in. Strap in, get your horns up, hail Satan. We've all heard of it and we are all totally wrong, I'm afraid. Most Satanism is nothing to do with an actual physical Satan. Or at least, that's what the Satanic Temple's party line is. Satanic Temple and the Church of Satan are different. I do know that before you all jump all over my dick. Just like there are denominations of Christianity, there are different sects within Satanism that hold different beliefs.

Some atheistic, like the Church of Satan, and some theistic, although those ones are a little bit trickier to find and tend to be a little bit more eugenic-y. I was really not expecting the, like, neo-Nazi Satanist contingent to come out of the woodwork, but they exist. They exist. It's like you said, with any kind of ideology or religion

or anything, there's always going to be offshoots. What is that thing on the internet that all conversations end up with everybody talking about Hitler? It's kind of like the same thing with Satanism. Absolutely. They are offshoots. They're not anything necessarily to do with each other. They will just always exist. Those far-right neo-Nazis, they love a bit of that kind of... Like Hitler was big into the occult and all that yeah the nazis did love the old the old occultism i've learned a lot about occultism we've always stayed away from alistair crowley because there isn't really a story like there's

no like arc it's just like he did a load of weird shit and wrote loads of poems about gonorrhea and lots of fisting yeah because you, he bought that house up in Scotland that that Led Zeppelin guy built. It's been taken down. Oh, really? Yeah, so it's got no roof. I think they're, like, renovating it. But, like, there's a website of it,

and I don't know if it's National Trust or English Heritage or whatever, but some sort of similar conservation situation. It's like, please stop ghost hunting here. Don't come unless you are escorted. You can't just show up here. Whatever. English Heritage. Don't we unless you are escorted. You can't just show up here. Whatever. English heritage. Don't we pay taxes?

Wasn't that what I was yelling about when we went to the Peak District and there were no fucking signs anywhere? Don't we fucking pay for the National Trust for taxes? Somebody tell me. I don't know. I mean, sure, but I would say that sufficient signage on a nature walk is probably easier to argue than I should be able to sleep in Alistair Crowley's

house if I want to. Look, I fully bought into the idea of Satanism, fuck the government, fuck the man, we're taking it back, power to the people, I want to sleep in Alistair Crowley's house and I would just like some proper signage when I go on a ramble in a National Trust park, please. I think, you know what, after researching this episode, I think I'm leaning much more towards Satanism than I was previously. Oh, yeah, we'll go on to like talk about, you know, our own personal feelings towards this. I think maybe this is just like, I'm revealing my deeply held narcissism, perhaps in that I just can't be in organised things. I just can't be in anything organised. I just can't be in anything organized.

I don't like revering people. I think that's my issue. Whether it's celebrities, whether it's anybody, I just don't like revering people. So I find it very hard to be a part of an organization. I think I'm not quite libertarian enough. I think that's my only hang up. You have to be very libertarian to feel like.

Anyway, we're getting off track. Sorry, sorry. Yes. Okay. So, friends, Romans countrymen. Almost all Satanists don't actually worship Satan at all. They don't even believe he exists. But they believe in you. The Satan-worshipping, child-eating, ceremonial, robe-wearing, blood-drinking, orgy having, wine bathers, are kind of made up. So in the way that we collectively understand them,

Satanists don't really exist. To understand modern Satanism and its genuine attempts to make the world a better place, hear us out, we'll get there, we have to start with the man who founded the Church of Satan and dug Satanism out of fiction and threw it onto America's TV screens. Anton Sander LeVay died in 1997 at just 67 years old. But before that, he had lived quite a lot of life. He was born in Chicago on the 11th of April 1930, which apparently makes him an Aries, which is, of course, the ram, perhaps foreshadowing the famous Baphomet sigil that would come to represent his philosophy

and his life's work in years to come Now Anton wasn't actually born an Anton His parents had named him Howard Stanton LeVay which is much less intimidating I have to admit And also like here's baby Howard like what the fuck like that makes no sense Much less intimidating, I have to admit. And also, like, here's baby Howard. Like, what the fuck?

Like, that makes no sense. I just think you get so many names, so many names, where I'm like, that's just like, you've been named by very pragmatic parents who were like, this name is going to suit you for longer in your life, but just not for the first, like, 15 years of life. But maybe in the 30s, there was heaps of baby Howards. Maybe.

Now it's all, what, Oliver? I feel like that's a popular baby name. I feel like I know a lot of, this is, I'm really exposing myself here, a lot of Archies I feel like are knocking around at the moment. Oh, okay. Alfies, lots of Alfies. I feel like Alfie's quite popular. I don't know why Oliver is sticking in my head. I feel like Harry's always quite popular. When I went to, not normal, but Catholic state school,

there was like four other Hannas in my year. And then when I went to posh private school, I was the only one, but there were four Olivias. I had like six Emilias. Of course, Olivia. Eleanor. Imogen, Amelia. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All the populars. Then my friend just had a baby. Oh, two of my friends just had babies this year well and end of last year baby boy joshua which i think is a very cute name i don't hear enough of that yeah and the other one little girl peggy oh no oh my god i'm so annoyed that's what i was gonna make my daughter if i ever have one which i'm never sorry danielle beat you to it baby i'll go around her house and tell her off. No, I'm joking.

Peggy, you're fine. It's all right because I'm not going to have one, so it's okay. There you go. You could name a dog Peggy. I don't think she'd mind. So anyway, Baby Howard Stanton LeVay. Like we said, much less intimidating name. But still, even as a baby Howard, he was a real spooky bitch,

even as a child. And I think this is where, you know, we have quite a bit in common with little Howard, because he was absolutely fascinated by the occult and stories to tell under duvets in the dark. And this interest, very much like me, was encouraged by his maternal grandmother, who was both Roma and of Jewish heritage. Both traditions filled with myth, intrigue, and dare we say, magic. His Romanian roots logically led to a vested interest in everyone's favourite Transylvanian treat, Dracula, and he read everything he could possibly find on vampires. His grandmother filled little Howard with tales of warring factions in her homeland, and of her husband, a Georgian Marxist, and of her animal trainer brother, who travelled around the world with his bears. Little Howard

LeVay was much more concerned with these estranged relatives than he was with children his own age. I would be too if my uncle was a literal bear trainer. What the fuck? I'd be like, I don't care about you, baby Alfie. I want to read about vampires and bears and I want to talk to my grandma about like Roma fairy tale. What the fuck? Like, obviously, obviously that's what you'd want to do.

Oh my God. If somebody had told me the story of Dracula or even obviously because there's like Transylvanian links here for him of like the real story of Vlad the Impaler as a child oh my god I would have just become an absolute social freak and never spoken to anyone else and just spent all my time reading about that I don't give a fuck about your Wiggles concert asshole some vampire books I don't want to play the fucking recorder I want to read about Vlad the Impaler. Fuck you. So little

LeVay, determined to set himself apart, decided to change his middle name to Sander, which is the Hungarian equivalent of Alexander. And if you're thinking maybe he did this, you know, at like age 20 or something, you know, when he's a bit of an edgelord. Oh, no, no, no. He did this at the age of 10. And he also decided that the name Howard was totally not his vibe either and insisted on being called Tony. Anton would come much later on. Parents listening, how normal slash abnormal is it

for a child to just completely change their name and tell you, no, I'm not going to be Howard anymore. My name is Tony. Like, how normal is that? I think it's like middling normal because I definitely have like, this is not quite the same thing because it's not changing. But like, for example, Nikki, my friend, like she had to have a conversation with her mum being like, I don't want to be Nicola anymore.

I want to be Nikki. And now her mum calls her Nikki. But I remember it being a real transitional period of her mum like kind of refusing not to call her Nicola but also on the similar thing everyone everyone everyone calls my sister Izzy apart from me I can't do it Isabel or nothing weird I know and because it's his middle name I can kind of possibly in this time period a bit of a standout but I do think it happens. And I think also, whether it does or not, I think what it says about Howard slash Anton slash Tony, is that from a very young age, you start to see that rebellious streak.

And that it's very much outlying because yes, absolutely children, you know, they start to develop that sense of self I guess at around age eight to ten which I think AJ is like what they say when your personality is kind of there or thereabouts fully developed so I can understand that sense of self really being created in that space but the fact that he's willing to change his name entirely and be like I'm not Howard anymore call me Tony that becomes a running theme throughout this episode and his life. It's kind of like myth-making about himself in a way. Like he's like, I'm not Howard. Like I'm so much bigger than Howard. Like I'm Tony. Anton. He does it a lot. But while he's still Tony, little Tony jumped into the exploration of the occult and he was disappointed by what was out there. So being a precocious shit, he decided that he could do a much better job than the dark magic books and grimoires

that he could get his hands on. Later on, LeVay would give many interviews explaining that he couldn't understand why no one had called forth demons as their friends. And he was sure that someone somewhere must have managed it and they were just keeping it a closely guarded secret. I guess at this point,

had he found out about people like Gilda Ray, for those of you who don't know, you should get your hands on the book because there is a whole section in there on Gilderay for some reason. For those of you who know, he's obviously an old and timey pasto French knight who decided to sacrifice a bunch of children so that he could summon a demon to do his bidding. Spoilers, it didn't really work, but he definitely did it. Molested and chopped up a lot of kids. Yeah, I think La lave at this stage is like very like someone somewhere has to be doing it i'm just not finding the right people and like he would just like buy a magic book and be upset that he couldn't

like summon a demon yeah and i also think that's a really important point to make actually at this stage when we say the idea of you know know, the kind of child eating, human sacrifice making, ceremonial robe wearing, orgy having, Satanists as like a group of people who practice that don't exist. Absolutely, you do have individual serial killers and stuff who are motivated by what they perceive to be Satanism. So what we would more likely akin to something like devil worship, who do go out and kill saying that it's because they believe in the devil, etc. So individuals perpetrating that as the reason for why they kill absolutely exist. What we're saying is that there's not actually like groups of people who do this kind of thing. That's the difference worth

mentioning. Little Tony LeVay quickly tired of other children. They never played the game long enough. Their interest in his fantastical magical landscape was short-lived. So he never claimed to be a rebel. He never rebelled against anything because he was never accepted in the first place. Which is of course what he says about himself. Make of that what you will. Like a lot of children who struggled to identify with their peers, LeVay turned inwards and read all about Rasputin, who he fashioned himself after, John Milton, Jack London, and other rationally self-interested people. He would point to these people as de facto Satanists when he eventually took his show on the road. For all of his showmanship that would make him famous, LeVay was actually a man of substance too. I think there's like a bit of a

reputation around him of like he's all just smoke and mirrors like he didn't actually do anything and I really don't think that's true. I think he's incredibly talented and interesting intelligent person. He was a multi-instrumentalist for one and played second oboe with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra at age 15 or so he said we don't know. LeVay's older than the Golden Gate Bridge. How nuts is that? That is crazy. So that makes it difficult to fact check his own stories of his childhood. There are many books written about him. A lot are now quite difficult to get hold of. And the ones you can get hold of are written by his fierce supporters,

including like his ex-girlfriend. So I think it is wise for everyone to take it with a pinch of salt. We're only as good as our sources and these are what our sources are. But this is a good story. Even if it isn't 100% true. This is one of my favourite ones. LeVay pinpointed his satanic epiphany featuring Christian disillusionment happening as a child when a friend of his spied his Sunday school teacher naked in a show called Sally Rand's Nude Ranch, which seems to be something like a ghost train but like with naked women inside it not cobwebs and pop-up vampires like it's very bizarre like there's a lot of carnivals in his early life which I suppose is like a 40s 50s thing I mean there's fuck all

else to do apart from like be at war I think a lot of people are going to carnivals in a way that they don't really anymore but like how bizarre because when I think of a carnival I think of like I don't know kind of like good old-fashioned nostalgia clean fun you know like I don't know and then there's just like Sally Rand's nude ranch full of naked women. I think it's like carnival after dark. I think there's like the kids bit which like the ferris wheel and the like ducks on hooks and then there's like the naked bit I think. Okay think there's like the kids bit with like the ferris wheel and the like ducks on hooks. And then there's like the naked bit, I think. Okay. And it's just like the ghost train ride then turns into like a sex show filled with naked Sunday school teachers. Got it. Yes. Yeah. And this sort of dichotomy of the like hypocrisy of Christians is a heavy feature. So on the subject of naked people,

LaVey was much less impressed with his own naked body because he had a tail, a literal tail, like an extra vertebrae. Apparently, tails happen in one in every 100,000 births. So it's not that rare, really. He had it removed when he was 11 or 12 with only a local anaesthetic. It's bone, cutting bone off him. And a rubber pad to bite on. So that probably was extremely traumatic.

And this tail situation no doubt attracted unpleasant attention from his peers, who he grew to despise. He was also permanently written off PE, which is, that's going to make you a target. Yeah. You don't want to be that kid. Oh God.

No. So at this point, he dropped out of high school and began working at a carnival in San Francisco. His parents had relocated to California soon after he was born, and LeVay began work as a cage boy. And I really tried to find out what a cage boy meant, and I don't know. Do you want my best guess?

Yeah, yeah. I have, like, a guess, but you go first. I think want my best guess? Yeah, yeah. I have like a guess, but you go first. I think it's a pooper scooper. I think it's going into the animal cages and clearing out the poo. That's what I think it is. Oh, that makes sense. I was thinking something completely different.

I don't know really what I was thinking. What, like a go-go doctor? No. Still something to do with cages well i was like maybe they have like those batting cages at car i don't know that's a terrible guess i don't really fucking know i don't think that's a terrible guess that's a very carnival american thing i think yeah and then maybe it's like how you have the ball boys at wimbledon and then they just go get the cages but they call them cage boys for some reason i don't know we don't know what a cage boy is, but that's what he was.

But eventually he gets possibly a promotion. Sounds like a promotion because we don't really know what a cage boy is. From being cage boy to being the carnival's organ player. And he would go around playing the organ at various carnivals. And again, during this time, he noticed the same men who were gawping at the naked women in the topless shows would then take themselves off to the evangelical christian services on sunday where levay would also be playing the organ he's kind of like he's not a serial killer not

even slightly a serial killer but it's kind of like if there was like a true crime drama of a man who just lost it and went on a rampage and killed a bunch of Christian men because he was working at the carnival and saw them doing this. This is literally the plot line to that. And LeVay noted this hypocrisy. It struck him that people will always do what the church called sin because that's what they wanted to do, because it feels good. And so he decided that we should all just stop feeling so bad about it all the time. For LeVay, it seemed obvious that firstly, the Christian church existed entirely on claiming to have higher standards while not actually adhering to them. And secondly, that man's carnal desires will always out. Which again, I think is a very sensible conclusion to come to.

I agree. This isn't just Christianity. This is all religion. All religion likes to place itself on a moral high horse and use that as a means to control the populace. Of course, we all know that that's not a fucking, you know, hell and hot take situation. We all know this. The fact that even as a young man, as a child, at this time period, the fact that LeVay thinks critically enough, and we are going to criticise LeVay, you know, we're not going to just be here like soft soaping him the entire time. But at this point, up until now, I agree and I applaud him for noticing

this hypocrisy. Because it wouldn't have been the norm, I don't think. No, absolutely not. I mean, it shows critical thinking, at the very least, which obviously I'm a big fan of, especially when it's about Christianity. So carnal desires were actually a pretty big part of LeVay's pre-Satan existence. According to him, in his younger years, he bopped around the burlesque houses in and around Los Angeles, where he struck up a romantic affair with a then little-known Marilyn Monroe. All I'm seeing is Maison Derriere. It's all I'm seeing in my head. Like a burlesque house. That's all it can be, honestly. Are they putting the spring in Springfield? I hope so. I fucking hope so. He better be. So LeVay claimed that he had accompanied Monroe's burlesque act that involved dragging chains around. And we have briefly looked into this, and it doesn't really look like Marilyn ever did burlesque even when she was

Norma Jean yeah it's a load of shit it's a fucking load of shit it's utter bollocks and this is why you have to be careful because all of the biographies of LaVey that are available are written by people who like love him like his partner when he died people who were very close to him so the mythmaking is in their interest. So I think that's important. So do I think that he actually fucked Marilyn Monroe? No. Like final answer, no.

I would tend to agree with you on that. But all this being a load of shit does fit in with that kind of Rasputin of the 50s, 60s vibe that LaVey was after. Obviously, if you guys know anything about Rasputin of the 50s, 60s vibe that LaVey was after. Obviously, if you guys know anything about Rasputin, you know that he's reported to having had this almost like animal magnetism where he slept with women who were much higher social class to him, much more attractive than him, all of those kind of things. And that's the vibe that LaVey wants. Especially if you're trying to build a career for yourself as a personality, which is essentially

what he's doing. And a part of that personality is being a fucking sex machine. Who is the one person? Exactly. Who you're going to say you slept with? Obviously, it's Marilyn Monroe. Like, duh. Exactly.

And LeVay would keep up this insatiable ladies' man persona for years, for decades to come. In the last months of World War II, LeVay accompanied his uncle to Berlin, where he watched confiscated Nazi horror films, which just sounds fucking horrendous. No, even for me. No, thank you. Not even out of morbid curiosity. Disgusting. But LeVay, he loved it. And obviously the rumoured black order of Satan within Hitler's ranks, because remember, like we said, Hitler was big into the occult, also, of course, piqued LeVay's interest. And he was very inspired by the whole film noir aesthetic.

Which we will see he makes giant use of later on. When LeVay returned to San Francisco filled with all of the joys of the globe he started his very own magic circle called the Order of the Trapezoid which I think is because LeVay had this theory of like people and where people fit.

At the very top of the pyramid are the like creatives which he obviously put himself in that category. And then the next trapezoid down is people who are productive, but they're not at the top. And then the bottom layer is just people who will just fucking do what they're told. But I can't remember the specific word that he uses. He's obsessed with trapezoids, basically. Magic circles also in California,

specifically in Los Angeles, where there's the Magic Castle. It's not a particularly out there idea, especially in that area of the world at that particular time. Friends of mine who live in New York now, but when they lived in LA, Ben's neighbor in the apartment below him was a magician. And he would go to the Walk of Fame on the anniversary of the famous people's death and do like an interpretive dance on their star and that was his thing that he did all the time and then he would put it on YouTube. So magicians in California are around. So he started the Order of the Trapezoid for other magic enthusiasts and people with a similar interest in the occult but nothing seemed to

work. He tried everything. None of Crowley's stuff worked for him, no Hermetic Order stuff, no black magic book or the lesser key of Solomon. He couldn't find anything that ticked all of his philosophical boxes. So by the time 1966 rolled around, LeVay was ready to start something else. Magic was fine, but it wasn't getting enough attention. He really wanted to start with a bang. And so the self-appointed sorcerer philosopher of the 20th century started his own religion based on indulgence and carnal pleasures. He started it on his birthday, which also happened to be Walpurgisnacht, which is almost like a second Halloween in Germanic countries. Basically, it's like Saint Walpurga, I think, is like the patron saint of anti-witches, basically.

There's like bonfires are lit to ward off evil spirits. And there's this atmosphere of like witches flying around and you're supposed to obviously not engage with them and scare them off with your fires. So it fit what LeVay wanted perfectly. And so Anton LeVay announced the formation of the Church of Satan, proclaiming, quote, Since worship of fleshly things produces pleasure, there would then be a temple of glorious indulgence. This temple was not built on the rock of St. Peter, but in LeVay's house that he had somehow managed to buy

while playing the organ at Maison Derriere. Like, I mean, I know it's the olden days, but, like, it seems outrageous to be able to buy a house in San Francisco when you're an organ player at Burlesque Houses. That seems bizarre. Before LeVay made this declaration, he shaved his head. The Church of Satan's website, which is very much out there, and you can go and have a look at it,

claims that LeVay did this in keeping with the traditions of the Yazidi devil worshippers. But if that's why he did it, he hadn't done his homework well enough. Yazidis are not devil worshippers at all. They're a religious minority group native to northwestern Iraq, Syria and southeastern Turkey and you may have heard about them being persecuted by ISIS. And that's because the Yazidi religion is an ancient faith that combines elements from Zoroastrianism, Freddie Mercury, Zoroastrianist, Mithraism, which is an

ancient religion from the Mediterranean, and Islam. And so ISIS see them as heretics to be enslaved and killed. But accusations of the Yazidi being devil worshippers started as early as the 16th century. And it's likely because, on top of their religion just not aligning with the region's Sunni majority, they got this title of devil worshippers because their central deity, Tawizi Melek, is a fallen angel who defied God.

Familiar? I fucking love this shit, man. I love this so much. I could do this for the rest of my life. It's completely fascinating. And of course, to Muslims in that area, because like Hannah said, this persecution of the Yazidis began as early as the 16th, 17th century, because when the story of their deity came to the surface to Muslims in the area and

also those within the Abrahamic belief system it sounded a hell of a lot like of course the devil or satan or in Arabic shaitan and this is despite Tawazi Malek being a quote-unquote good god in the Yazidi religion and even though the word Yazidi literally translates to worshipper of God. And this is the thing, it's the typical, isn't it? We fear the different, they are different. They are in an area surrounded by majority Sunni Muslims going back centuries. And they were a religious minority. And so of course, they were persecuted. Of course, they were called devil worshippers. Of course, they were called devil worshippers. Of course, they were called this, that, and the other.

And that tradition has just continued. And it's almost that we've just absorbed that belief system of what the Yazidi were, when they're just a religious minority group. That's literally it. So whether LeVay ever figured this out, we don't know. But his reign of infamy was just about to begin. His house was dutifully painted black and unimaginatively named the Black House,

where for a period of time he kept a pet lion. For LeVay, Judeo-Christian religions had got it all wrong. Satan doesn't tempt man, he motivates him. The devil was the one keeping the church in business after all. Glavayan Satanism is an atheistic philosophy that sees Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and liberty. He believed that humans are just animals, and he created a religion to deal with the reality of the human animal. Satan was chosen as the figurehead

because the biblical Satan doesn't submit to tyranny. You're probably familiar with the story of the Garden of Eden, but let's go over it anyway. Satan, Lucifer, the devil, whatever you want to call him, appears in the book of Genesis in the form of a snake to tempt Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge, even though God told her specifically not to. Eve, of course, listens to the snake and eats the fruit and then she knows a load of stuff and God makes her and Adam live on earth and then they suddenly feel embarrassed to be naked for some reason.

Eve? Not Adam's first wife? Is it Lilith? It is Lilith. I will tell that story on Under the Duvet because it's pretty sexy. It's all about sex. It's all about sex, fully. I still can't do the sound effect, but you guys get it. Tune in soon to the debate for Lilith's story.

If you ever have a little girl, I think you should call her Lilith. I can't because Fraser's terrible wife in Fraser is called Lilith and she sucks. I can't do that. Fucking ruin it for everybody, Fraser. I sound like I'm a real Fraser stan. I'm not.

I just used to be on in the mornings. Do you know what I mean? I was going to say, we literally have never spoken about Fraser ever before. No, it's literally just because when we only had four channels, sometimes on a Saturday morning, or if you were off school,

the only thing that was on was Fraser. So I just like have memories of it, but I don't care. I literally do not care about it. And also, Kelsey Graham is a fucking asshole. Don't get me. He was so mean to Camille. So if we look at the Garden of Eden story,

Satanists look at this allegory as Satan actually being the voice of reason. Don't stay in the garden, Eve. Clothes is great and there's a whole world out there. It's fine. Don't stay here with God and in ignorance. And there are a lot of other examples that Satanists use in the Bible of stories that in sort of Judeo-Christian religions, the devil is painted as the bad guy. But actually, when you look at what's happening,

it doesn't really seem like that. For example, it's Satan who tries to tell Jesus that fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights is legitimately a terrible idea. And that he shouldn't do it. Which, like, fair enough. It's good advice. It's good advice. And it's Satan who tells Abraham maybe not to stab his son to death on top of a mountain just because God told him to. Precisely.

Satan, the bringer of critical thinking. Yes. And common sense. And it's really interesting linguistically because Satan isn't actually synonymous with evil. In some books of the Bible, he's actually called the accuser, even the opposition. So for Satanists, Satan is the symbolic embodiment of sticking it to the man. And I'm with that. I can get down to that. That's my get down.

I love that. So what does that actually mean? What does the Church of Satan preach? Lucky for us, we have a website so we can look it up. So let's start with the nine satanic statements, which is the equivalent of the Ten Commandments. I'm assuming you all know what the Ten Commandments are. I'm not going to run over there, but I had a reread and some of them are really confusing. It just made me like realize how like the infantilized version of the bible I had been given like just like a pop-up book with the ten commandments like literally my mom's parents

not super thrilled that she married a catholic so every like communion or whatever sort of like religious celebration they would buy us bibles that specifically said for catholics on them even though it's the same it's exactly the. Like they just buy us like special like Bible books that are like, oh, a special moment for Catholics. It was very amazing. I'm pretty sure I still have one. The nine satanic statements are, one, Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence.

These all finish in exclamation marks, by the way. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams. Fine. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit. I feel fine about that. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates. A bit aggressive in that language. I saw a lady explain it and she was like, what Satanism is, it's not unconditional love. I love you because I want to.

And I think that is such an important idea. You don't have to do anything just because you have to. Like, that doesn't exist. Everything is a choice. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. LeVay actually coined the term psychic vampire. Oh, really?

Interesting. Yes, really? Interesting. Yes, yeah. If you don't know, psychic vampire is someone who just, like, fucking sucks the life out of you. We all know them. They just take all of your energy and just are miserable. And he came up with that idea. Which is pretty cool. Next one. Satan represents man as just another animal,

sometimes better, more often worse than those who walk on all fours, who because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development has become the most vicious animal of all. Spot on. Satan represents all of the so-called sins as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification. That one I'm not 100% on, but I can kind of see the like, obviously this is deep rooted in my Catholic trauma, but like feeling bad about sex, let's get over it. We'll just stop feeling bad about it. Yeah. And then last one, Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had as he has kept it in business all these years. Also true. You could

argue. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Of course. I mean, we've talked about this before, but even stuff like when the church was starting to lose its grip on the public to an extent, and then you saw the rise of like horror films like The Exorcist coming out. And I'm not saying at all this was William Peter Blatty's intention behind writing The Exorcist, because if you've read the book, it's a fantastic book. And it absolutely doesn't lean into an immediate divine or religious undertone of the story. It's about a man losing his faith. But they absolutely transformed the way people even saw something as simple as the Ouija board,

which used to be up until then just a parlor game that people played with their families for fun and into like a real life tool to summon demonic forces. And this kind of thing, the satanic panic, which we'll go on to talk about, directly absolutely drove people back into the pews of churches. So for sure, the church needs Satan all day long. Just like we need sponsors. Let's take a very quick break. made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983,

there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime,

The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts.

But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've

had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And we're back. So the next thing we need to understand is the term self-transformational psychodrama, which is a phrase I just really love saying. I just really love saying that. It's a great phrase. We had some in the past, didn't we?

Esoteric Gothic Hitlerism or something. I can't remember all of them now. Oh, yeah. I've forgotten about that. That was a good one. There's some good ones. So self-transformational psychodrama. Basically, this is what the church calls its ritual practice.

The famous Black Mass is the most famous of these rituals, and it is rumored to have been around for centuries. It directly mocks the Catholic Mass by inverting everything, and is one of the reasons the tabernacles have locks on. LeVay's Black Mass is outlined in his book, The Satanic Rituals. The idea being that through acts of indulgence, by stopping feeling bad for feeling good, we can all become better people by getting rid of our emotional baggage. Which is like, true. It's definitely true. I mean, this is the thing I kind of feel about all of Satanism. Well, not all of Satanism, that's a huge sweeping statement about LeVay and Satanism, is that everything he's saying on the surface absolutely makes sense, completely, just in the same way that a lot of people, and I'm not conflating the two,

I'm just saying like oversimplified ideologies will always appeal to people because they seem to offer like quick fixes through mantras or through nine simple ways to change your life. And that's the reason that self-help books do well. That's the reason why Jordan Peterson is a millionaire. You know, it's like simple things that you read and you're like, oh, yeah, that's it. But the problem is we're just so much more complicated than that as human beings. And if it was this simple, then we'd all be fine. I'm not taking away from the help that self-help books or any kind of

people like this give other people. I just think it's never going to be a cure-all. Take what you can from these people, but take it with a pinch of salt. That's all I'll say. Yeah, for sure. I think like the most effective explanation I've heard of Satanism is in the documentary. It's called An American Satan. There's a lot of Satanism documentaries out there. The two best ones are An American Satan and also Hail Satan? which is about the Satanic temple. We'll come on to that. And there's a lady in the American Satan documentary. She was like, it's all about responsibility. It's the same as like the secret, like all of this like law of attraction stuff of like, if you want something, you can go out and get it. But you have to accept that if your life

is shit, it's shit because of you because of nothing else it's not groundbreaking now but it was 50s 60s for sure absolutely and also when we go on to discuss where levee's influences came from you will see that a lot of these are interestingly quite conservative beliefs you know you could argue that small c conservatism is based on the idea of personal responsibility yeah yeah, yeah. And that kind of thing. So, you know, it's all a jumble of like mixed ideologies. Nothing here is particularly groundbreaking, but it is interesting. So let's carry on.

Because there are three types of satanic ritual practice. One, compassion for oneself and others. Two, lust to release unrequited sexual urges. And three, destruction to cleanse oneself of anger towards someone who has done you an injustice. And you can read about all of these in the Satanic Bible. They are fairly straightforward. Sword, altar, bell, naked ladies, incantations invoking Satan. Probably not as dramatic as you were imagining, but it's all there. If anything,

we've been surprised by how small LeVay's satanic church sanctum actually was. Sometimes, it looks like it could barely fit the cameras in there. The rituals that are filmed involved him speaking Latin, wearing a cape and little devil horns, and you can very easily find pictures of all of this. There is usually a lot of wine and naked women lying around too. Other than that I'm sorry to say they just really aren't that interesting or shocking and I don't know if that's kind of us looking at it from our modern day lens where like it takes a hell of a lot to shock people these days especially people our age. Maybe back then it was a bit more shocking but looking at it now retrospectively it's not aged well no I think you're spot on like I can

completely imagine someone watching this in the 50s and being absolutely aghast I mean people were fucking being sick at the Blair Witch when that came out in like what was it the like early to like 2004 or something and you're like what i don't get me wrong still love the film but yeah we've just come a long way in terms of what scares us i suppose yes yeah but what's also important to note is that these rituals where you're dressing up like a little devil drinking wine with a bunch of naked ladies and a sword these rituals are not essential the church of satan doesn't force you to do anything you don't want to. That's one of the key things that people in the Church of Satan repeatedly say in that documentary, An American Satan. I would recommend watching it because it is well made and it's interesting and

the pace is good. And like, you're just looking at these incredibly interesting people. And one of them, the guy with the moustache who like walks around like he's in Greece, that guy, he does do satanic rituals in his house, but he's like, I do them because I want to it's like it's my like meditation substitute is doing like a satanic invocation and that's fucking fine you to you my friend they're not making anyone do it who doesn't want to do it unlike other organized religions yeah absolutely and I think like with the ritual stuff you can be like well why are they doing it like what's the purpose of it like you said this guy's like I'm just doing it because it's fun but I also think it's interesting because rituals can also I think be put down to that idea of pageantry because pageantry is fun freaking people out is

fun and I do think that is like a core part of that rebellious attitude that comes from being a satanist and also which I think is quite interesting and I think we have touched on this before in like a way way back episode If you consider something like even the placebo effect, the more ritualistic a process is, the more belief we as humans place in the idea that it will work. This is why religious ceremonies are so ritualized. That's why there are so many steps to them. That's why they're so specific. And studies, even if you look at it from a medical context, studies have shown that when the taking of a placebo has more steps to the process and it's more complex, so it's not just here is this pill you have to swallow.

Maybe you say here's a tablet. You have to grind it up. You have to mix it with this powder. You have to wait until it changes color to this, and then you have to slip it under your tongue six times a day for three weeks, something like that. this and then you have to slip it under your tongue six times a day for three weeks, something like that. Apparently a placebo that is exactly the same makeup chemically works better when the ritual of taking it is more complicated. Isn't that fascinating? So rituals nowadays, not something

that people have to do, but they were originally how Anton LaVey got everyone's attention. He would hold black masses in his black house regularly, and slowly but surely, he started to recruit members. One can be baptised into the Church of Satan, but you don't need to have a ceremony if you don't want to, because the Church believes in free will. And because the Church believes in free will and consent, the baptism of children is not allowed. That's from the website

today. Having said that, there is a video, we've linked it in the show notes, of LaVey baptising his very own daughter, who does look a little bit too young to consent. Things have developed since then. Obviously, we've watched the video. Apart from all the black and the devil horns and the sword, it doesn't seem that different to a Christian baptism. There are men in dresses, bells being rung, and unintelligible passages being read from a book no one except the man leading the ceremony has read all the way through. But something I do recommend reading all the way through

is the FAQ section on the Church of Satan's website. It is absolutely hysterical. It's very like, if you do not read these FAQs, we will not respond to your email. Do not ask us these questions because we will just tell you to come and read this part of the website. It's very funny. So here are some of the FAQs. Is abortion a sacrament in Satanism? And here is the answer. It is not. It is an optional medical procedure which should be within the rights of the pregnant person to choose if they so desire since being pregnant or not should be their decision. Limits on the gestational age of the fetus that may be aborted are up for discussion as a part of a social contract which should be

based on scientific data medical necessity and personal value systems. How one views abortion is a matter for our members to decide individually based on personal standards, but they may not enforce their values upon others who are equally free to make their own decisions on this issue. Cool. That's it. Next one. I'm having unusual dreams about things like Satan, Lucifer, devils, demons, and I believe that I have special powers. Can you help me with these?

Answer. Dreams are simply an indication of your personal psychology. They have no other meaning. If your dreams are bothering you, seek help from a local mental health professional. There are no special powers. It should be enough of a challenge to find any real talents that you have and work hard to develop them so they will enhance your life. Top advice.

Also, yeah. And this is obviously something that might be a bit surprising, Satanist being like, there is no such thing as magic. There are no magical powers. There's no, you know, you can't conjure fireballs from your hands. That might be surprising. But that's because any magic that might have been attempted by LaVey in the beginning of his church,

in the beginning of his foundation of Satanism, is really no longer kicking around in the Church of Satan. At least it's not on their website there's only reference to extended mind which is basically the law of attraction as in willing something into being which you can find on any self-help bookshelf and it's that idea again of that kind of placebo effect of the rituals maybe not even a placebo effect just that idea of like something that is meditative even for people because while levain satanism does make use of rituals and spells there are definitely people who burn candles of all shapes and sizes and if you watch the satanism documentary that we recommended there's a guy

who's just like burning on his altar a giant pink one that is in the shape of a massive penis and he's like it's because that's the one i want to use. Like those spells and those rituals, like Hannah said, seem much more like they're really about the practitioner projecting their will. So, you know, like that kind of idea that you'd see in any self-help book of like, visualize what you want and then make it real. Manifest into reality the life that you want to live. And that idea of Satanism, at least LeVayian Satanism, is that only you have the power to make things happen in your life. That idea that you are your own personal God. That's the philosophy that I took away, at least from what LeVay is saying. But despite the fact that, like we've said, they don't really believe in magic,

they're not believing in that kind of thing, LeVay hit the daytime TV circuit, shocking the middle-aged all across America in his signature cape. And what is interesting is that a lot of the Satanic Bible, the first book that LeVay published in 1969, given everything we've just told you, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is ripped off directly from Ayn Rand and John Dee. John Dee is a 17th century British mathematician and occultist who heavily inspired LeVay. LeVay was also inspired by Nietzsche. Surprise, surprise. I know, I was going to say, surprise, surprise. And it was from Nietzsche that LeVay took the idea of Christianity being slave morality,

which I absolutely couldn't agree with more. The idea of all religion is slave morality. The idea that one should only behave in a certain way because they're God-fearing is in and of itself a weird mentality to me. Why? Like, we are evolved enough beings to be able to think critically about what is right and wrong and take personal responsibility. I'm not libertarian enough to say that we shouldn't have laws and everyone should think for themselves.

For the love of God, why are the Tories removing the mask mandate? We should absolutely keep that in place. Don't tell people to just make the right decision. They won't make the right decision. We saw them fucking spitting on kids at Wembley last week. No. But absolutely, when it's linked to religion, I feel that way. And LeVay also took from Nietzsche the notion of rejecting spiritual redemption in some longed-for afterlife and to rather focus our time and energies and efforts

on achieving things in this life, which, again, completely obviously agree with. And from Ayn Rand, LeVay got that materialism, the idea of selfishness as rational. And so you can see from his influences, the Church of Satan's version of Satanism is not based in good and evil, but merely in that of the self, self-aggrandizement, self-belief, self-empowerment, all geared towards enjoyment, hedonism, materialism, and pleasure in this life.

But despite, as we have said, LeVay and Satanism had nothing to do with the devil as a deity, LeVay still became the authority on Satan at just the right time. He consulted on films involving the devil, and even made an appearance in Rosemary's Baby. I cannot remember where he is in Rosemary's Baby. He's the devil. Is he?

It's an uncredited role, but he's the one that lies on top of Mia Farrow, Saint-Anne-de-Vey. And I think it's so hysterical that, like, this guy is like, I do not believe in Satan, but everyone in Hollywood is like, but tell us all about Satan. Do you know what I mean?

But again, it totally kind of fits though, doesn't it? Because he's like, I don't believe in that fucking shit. And everybody else is like, oh yeah, that's fucking sick. We're going to make a load of horror films and we want to know all about it because it's going to sell books, it's going to sell movies, TV shows, chat, radio, whatever. And he's like, my sense of self would quite like that. My sense of materialism would really love that and therefore I'm going to use it and it's that sense of cynicism of like I'm gonna take what I

can get that sums him up you know what I'm here for it like do what you gotta do you could even hire LaVey this is how much he wasn't even just keeping himself to the Hollywood elites you could hire him as like an individual person to spend the night in a graveyard waiting for ghosts. Or you could have him attend your haunted house. There are no small roles, only small actors. He was doing all of it. He would literally do anything, which I have so much respect for. I've got so much time for that, you know, just like you got to work, you got to graft. And he was doing that. And of course,

the satanic weddings followed soon after. The first satanic wedding was performed in 1967. And of course, predictably, the press lapped it up. LeVay even appeared in men's magazines, on TV, and he was constantly all over the news. And on the subject of the press, we all know what makes the world go round, especially in Hollywood. Marilyn may have been the most famous bombshell in Hollywood history, but she wasn't the only one. We're all reminded for the fact in the iconic diner scene in Pulp Fiction, there were of course three Hollywood M's. Please tell me you've seen Pulp Fiction. Oh my God. Okay, so for the Saruti Barlers out there,

this is what happens in the scene. John Travolta and Uma Thurman are sitting in this like American diner. They're sitting inside a car table situation. And Uma Thurman's like, oh, there's two Marilyns. And he's like, no, there's not. That's Mamie Van Doren. And that's Marilyn. Jane Mansfield must have had the night off is the joke.

Okay. Because all of the waiters in this diner are dressed as like Hollywood icons. Okay, got it. I think. So yeah, there was, as Hannah just said, Marilyn, Mamie Van Doren and Jane Mansfield. Mamie Van Doren, I believe, is still alive. Oh, okay.

That's nice. She's the only one though, obviously. Obviously, because we're about to tell you what happened to Jane and it wasn't very nice because it was the story of Jane Mansfield that actually very first attracted us to want to tell the story of the Church of Satan at all on this show. Jane Mansfield was actually appointed a high priestess within the Church of Satan by Anton himself. And there are those who claim that the devil killed Jane. Which sounds very salacious and exciting. Can you imagine a movie called The Devil Killed Jane?

Make it now. It doesn't even matter what fucking crap is in it. You'll make like 100 million at the box office. The documentary about Jane Mansfield's association with the Church of Satan is called Mansfield 66 slash 67. So 666. And it is odd. It is very weird. There's a dance stream sequence at some point with loads of people dressed up as Jane Mansfield. I mean, it's on Amazon Prime. If you want to feel completely bemused for an hour and a half, give it a go. Don't watch it with a COVID fever, I would say. Avoid it then. Oh my god, no, no, no, you would never recover. So let's have a closer look at this. It is true that Jane Mansfield

spent time at the Black House hanging out with the Church of Satan and with Anton LaVey. Whether they had a sexual affair is unconfirmed, but suspected by many, as LaVey's Rasputin-esque reputation for being a love machine never seems to end. So the legend goes that Jane and her live-in boyfriend-slash-lawyer-slash-associate-slash-gentleman-of-questionable-affection Sam Brody went to the Black House to attend either a black mass or a meeting or just have a drink in the inbuilt bar, aptly named the Den of Iniquity. Whilst they were in the Black House, Sam Brody offended Anton LaVey by either lighting or blowing out a skull-shaped candle. So enraged was LaVey that he placed a curse on Sam Brody and warned Jane, who was by the way the

first woman ever to appear nude in a Hollywood film, that she had to stay away from Sam Brody and warned Jane, who was, by the way, the first woman ever to appear nude in a Hollywood film, that she had to stay away from Sam Brody because he couldn't control the curse. He's essentially saying if she stayed near Sam Brody, her live-in boyfriend, bad things would happen to her too. Contagious curse. Exactly. He was like, you know, if a piano falls on him and you happen to be next to him, there's fuck all I can do about that. And bad things certainly did happen to Jane Mansfield. How much they were to do with Satan is up for debate. Jane was already having a pretty bad time before she met Anton LeVay at a film festival in 1966. She had always been seen as a sort of second-rate Marilyn. She took on the role of dumb blonde, even though she was extremely intelligent, spoke five languages, and played the violin and the piano. She knew how

to play the game. She was an over-the-top version of herself and it worked for a while. But as the parts dried up, she ended up making nightclub appearances to pay the bills. Shortly after the notorious offence at the Black House, Jane's son, who's called Zoltan, was attacked by an actual lion. Wow. In like a zoo. I think he was just like left unattended and this lion got his head like in his jaws. Jesus. So yes, Zoltan's little head was crushed by this mighty beast, but fortunately he did manage to survive. And this incident has been attributed to LeVay because of his affinity for big cats, including, of course, the Nubian lion he kept as a pet in his basement. So they're saying LeVay sent the lion after Jane's kid. After this lion

incident, Jane went on a USO tour that was widely reported to be a total disaster. And her boyfriend lawyer, Sam Brody, the subject of the actual alleged curse, was in six car accidents in very quick succession. Those accidents were followed by a very famous seventh accident, which killed Sam Brody and Jane Mansfield. They were driving to and from nightclub appearances in Biloxi, Mississippi, when they plowed into the back of a truck and the top of the car was totally sheared off. Jane's three children were in the back, but thankfully all of them survived. The papers reported that Jane had been fully decapitated in the crash.

You can very easily find pictures of what that car looked like and it literally is the whole top sheared off. And because of that accident, trucks now have something on the back of them to stop that from happening and it's called like the Mansfield Bar or the Mansfield something. Anyway, so it's had like a really long effect

on vehicles in America. After Jane died, LaVey gave an interview in which he said that he had been cutting up newspaper clippings at home and he turned one over to find that he had inadvertently cut through the neck of a picture of Jane Mansfield. And then the phone rang and someone told him that she was dead.

Which would be a really creepy story if it was one, true, and if Jane Mansfield had been decapitated. She wasn't. A lot of people think that she was. She definitely had a significant head trauma, but she wasn't decapitated. It's not true. So, did the devil kill Jane Mansfield? Short answer, no. Her boyfriend's terrible driving did. A lot of people are like, oh my god, but how

can you be in that many accidents in such quick succession? I'm like, because you're a bad driver. And there's something to do with like, in the Mansfield documentary, they explain that like, where her house was, was on like a blind bend. You know, it's the 50s and the 60s. Everyone's driving drunk all the fucking time. And she lived on a difficult curve of road, which is probably much more to do with why he kept getting in accidents, not because of the devil. I would say so.

But of course, the devil related murder of Hollywood starlets didn't end there. Though obviously, you know, not saying this was a murder. I'm saying this was very much an accident. But what wasn't an accident was the next year in 1969 when Sharon Tate was murdered and Satanism was very much on everybody's mind. Susan Atkins, one of the most famous Manson family, was actually one of LeVay's dancers in his topless review. That's quite interesting. Apparently LeVay said that Susan Atkins was an accident waiting to happen. And if it hadn't been Manson, it would have been someone else, which is easy to say after the fact. But again, you could be like, why didn't he do something? But then, you know, they're all about taking personal responsibility.

I don't know. Yeah, exactly. I think it's just easy for him to be like, oh, yeah, she was fucking nuts. Nothing to do with me. I mean, yeah. Apparently, LeVay was like very anti the like hippie movement. He thought it was ridiculous. Oh, yeah, of course he is, though, because again, like his beliefs, they come from people like Ayn Rand. This is the thing. I think you look at Satanism and yes, there is that rebellious streak of like stick it to the government. That comes from the libertarian side of the belief system. It is very much rooted in, I'm not saying far right or anything like that. I'm saying it's in small c conservatism, the idea of like you need to take responsibility for yourself. It's unconditional love as well, which like Satan is just not.

Exactly. They're both like, fuck the system. But the hippies are like, hey, fuck the system. And like, maybe I can just not do anything super productive and everything will still be okay. Whereas LeVay's like, no, fuck the system and then build your own system and then succeed within that system. So as the 70s approached, LeVay calmed down a bit.

He had heart problems and not wanting to appear weak in front of those he didn't know, he receded from public life, only doing the occasional interview. In 1997, he died in a Catholic hospital, having spent his final years making music and hanging about with his children. He was survived by his partner Blanche, who wrote his biography. Today, the Church of Satan very much lives on, despite the loss of their founder and the Satanic Panic. You know we couldn't do an episode on Satanism without talking about the Satanic Panic, so here we go.

If you don't know, the Satanic Panic was a load of total nonsense that caused serious problems and also started a lot of the misconceptions about the Church of Satan that still fly around today. We've covered the Satanic Panic before, but here's a reminder. In 1980, a book came out called Michelle Remembers. It was written by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazda, who she later married, by the way. The book is full of memories of black magic and satanic sacrifice

that Michelle accessed in a trance during therapy. The book was full of baby eating and blood drinking, and it was passed around fundamental Christian groups like Communion Wine, and it had an enormous impact on the public consciousness. So much so that in 1988, a survey of psychiatrists in the Seattle-Tacoma area showed that a quarter of the psychiatrists who participated in the survey, that is, said that they had treated victims of satanic ritual abuse. And all of these cases bore a striking similarity to Michelle Remembers.

On top of that, there was the famous NBC special, Devil Worship Exposing Satan's Underground, which remains one of the most widely watched documentaries in television history. And it's made up. It's made up. It's like, it's completely, it's not a documentary. It's a fucking fictionalization it's ridiculous absolutely and we talk quite a bit about michelle remembers and also the other book which we'll briefly mention here which is the satan's seller i think that's what it's called yes yeah in our episode on what's his name paul ingram

yeah paul ingram paul ingram on our episode on paul ingram name? Paul Ingram. Yeah, Paul Ingram. Paul Ingram. On our episode on Paul Ingram. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I can't remember what number it is, but just stick Paul Ingram in your search engine with red-handed and you will find it because we do a big old deep dive into it there. This NBC special, let's come back to that now. This documentary told terrified parents that if their children were playing Dungeons and Dragons and or listening to heavy metal, then they would be morphed into baby-eating Satan worshippers. If they weren't abducted by the Satanists themselves,

that is. Then, like we said, there was the Satan Seller, which was marketed as a factual autobiography of a young boy abducted by a cult who sacrificed him to time-travelling demons. The author was later totally discredited. Being bullshit doesn't stop people from writing factual accounts of satanic ritual abuses that they claim to have suffered because they made a lot of money and everybody loves money. But the knock-on effect of this was that by the mid-80s, the alleged number of satanic murders was in the hundreds of thousands in that american satan they play a clip from this nbc special and they're like dead serious they're

dead serious there's like a picture of a fucking gravestone a dead serious news reporter's voice being like and it's estimated that somewhere in the region of 600 000 murders have been committed or like 50 to 60 000 murders every single year take place at the hands of self-styled Satanists. And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Oh my God. And it's even more ridiculous, not just because the idea that this is happening,

and you can really see the kind of early roots of the modern phenomenon of QAnon having started back then. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This idea that there is an underground satanic cabal that is running everything is not a new phenomenon. It's just been re-sparked by the internet age and by our continuing levels of ignorance. But back then, the reason this is so ridiculous that they were putting forward numbers of those murdered at that scale

is because no bodies were ever found and nor have they ever been found. Not a single piece of actual evidence has ever been discovered. But that didn't stop the satanic panic ruining people's lives, even though it was all completely made up. And there was not one confirmed case. It was quite literally a witch hunt. And what's really interesting is in the Hail Satan documentary, which I think is on Netflix, definitely on Amazon Prime, the Satanic Temple conducted a black mass in Boston.

Well, they tried to and they were shut down. And there's a guy in it who's an anonymous founder of the Satanic Temple. And he's like, after that, I felt awful. I felt really guilty. And I was like, what have I done? And then I was like, I upset the Catholic Church of Boston that has been covering up child sex abuse for decades. Fuck them.

And that is so true. It's the same thing with the satanic panic. The satanic panic was made up and it ruined lives. It ruined lives. That's where the evil is, if it exists. Absolutely. There are still people in prison today who are caught up in a satanic panic.

I mean, this is lunacy. There is no other word for it. I've always found, like, obviously being so interested in the occult, et cetera, I've always found reading about satanic panic extremely unsatisfying. And that's because it never happened. And I think it's probably why some people will probably find this episode about Satanism unsatisfying.

It's because it's not what you think it is, you know? Again, yeah, it comes back to the idea of like, we're not here to discredit our own work when we talk about satanic serial killers. Satanic serial killers absolutely exist. They exist. That is a fact. But this idea of like a secret cabal of Satanists or a group of organized Satanists sitting around practicing child sacrifice doesn't exist. That is not true.

So despite the satanic panic, the Church of Satan survived, although it's now left San Francisco. The new black house is in Poughkeepsie, New York, and it is currently being led by a guy called Peter H. Gilmore, who looks a lot like Kris Kringle, do I have to say? He really does. He really does. So what does post-panic Satanism look like? Well, basically the same when it comes to the Church of Satan. Some people call it modern Satanism, but others, usually Satanists, have a bit of a problem with that term, arguing that there was no Satanism before it was codified by Anton LaVey in 1966. Before the foundation of the Church of Satan, there were no actual Satanists.

There were no people who called themselves Satanists or identified as Satanists. It was just a word used by Christians to label and vilify things that they did not like. So the Church of Satan may not believe in actual Satan. They are atheistic. But they are not the only Satanists out there. There are Satanists who are theists, as in those who believe in a real prince of darkness. One of them is called the Temple of Set.

It's a splinter cell of the Church of Satan that shares similar individualist ideology, but they incorporate a lot more mysticism. The Temple of Set, unsurprisingly, are all about the Egyptian god Set, who they reckon is the real Prince of Darkness, not a Judeo-Christian version of Satan at all. They believe that the word Satan is a corruption of the word Set, and that Set is a very real entity that can be communicated with.

The Temple are very focused on being distinct from what they refer to as the materialism of the latter-day Church of Satan. Essentially, the Temple of Set are a lot more involved with the early Church of Satan views where LaVey was much more interested in magic and Alistair Crowley. More traditional magic, less psychology and metaphysics. Yeah, so like what I took from it was the idea of like, the Temple of Set is very much like more spiritual and mystical with a belief in an actual deity or Satan existing as like an actual supernatural being who should be or could be worshipped rather than just being focused on oneself like with the Temple of Satan. But again like you said the Temple

of Set are not devil worshippers because their beliefs at least most groups like the Temple of Set are not devil worshippers because their beliefs, at least most groups like the Temple of Set that we're discussing, state that their beliefs don't stem from or align with Abrahamic or Judeo-Christian religions. So if you're saying that our Prince of Darkness doesn't come from Judeo-Christian beliefs or Abrahamic religions, then how can they be devil worshippers because they're pulling it from a completely different religion. And that's an important point to make. So the Temple of Set is like a theistic version of Satanism, whereas Levian Satanism is, as we mentioned at the top of the show, an atheistic version of Satanism,

where Satan is merely a metaphor or a symbol of rebellion and opposition. Former Temple of Set and Church of Satan member Portland local Diabolus Rex takes it even further. If you've watched the documentary on American Satan, Diabolus Rex features heavily in this. Just watch it, it's really interesting. He says that he's a fervent follower of the left-hand path, which focuses on magic, not miracles. And these days diabolus rex is a part of the chaos imperium which is a closed black magic order that has only eight members and he claims to be the only human representative because the rest are entities which is interesting this fucking guy man so i found a podcast that he appeared on because my impression of him was very much like,

he's as close to like what you would imagine a theistic Satanist to be as we're going to get, I think. He has implanted horns in his forehead, like under his skin, takes it all very seriously. The left hand path is like, I've tried really hard to like quantify what it means and it's so difficult to explain, but the left-hand path is black magic, basically. It's the practice of black magic rather than white. And Diabolus Rex, for a start, when I listened to his podcast, he has these huge black dogs, right? And one of them is snoring during this podcast, which sounds exactly like a demon rumbling in hell. And don't fall asleep listening to it, and then wake up at three o'clock in the morning to this like sound.

You don't want that. He's got this big mechanical project, which he calls the Ragnarok engine. And the Ragnarok engine is supposed to open some sort of portal, and he is literally building it. It's absolutely huge. So either it's a very long con or he takes it extremely seriously. And I'm also like, where is your money coming from, Diabolus Rex? How are you making this? I mean, he is a very accomplished artist. Like he is a

sculptor and I do think he sells his work to people. I think he's probably making money from that. I just Googled Diabolus Rex when we were doing the research for this, just to see like a picture of him again after I'd watched the documentary. One of the first things that pops up on the first page of Google is an interview that he gives with the Portland Mercury. I think that's what it was called which is like a local newspaper and it is like employee of the week and I was like what does he work at the Portland Mercury and he's employee of the week and you're interviewing him to put it out there? Or is he employee of the week at his own organization where he seems to be the only person who works there? I'm not quite sure, but he's an interesting character.

And like we said, artist, sculptor, doing all of that, also building this experimental machine called the Ragnarok engine. And essentially, Diabolus Rex believes in a connection with what he calls a super consciousness. And he says that he doesn't worship this consciousness, but rather he has a student-teacher connection with it. It's all very complicated. I mean, what? Okay, fine. I'm not in a position to extrapolate that any further. You're just going to have to like find an understanding within your own minds. And he says that he's learning from that relationship, the best path to self-evolution, to becoming something greater, something that the human brain is not yet evolved enough to comprehend or even attempt to describe. So yeah, there you go. That's what he's doing.

Yep. That's Diabolus Rex. He's also on Facebook. That's basically the only place you can find him. He's a fascinating, fascinating guy. But I am also scared of him. So please don't say anything horrible. I don't want to be transported into an alternate dimension that's full of fiery demons. I just don't want that. So that's that.

Let's throw in one more group of theistic Satanists, just for fun. And they're called the Order of the Nine Angels. And these are neo-Nazi flavour Satanists, and they just so happen to be british of course they are lucky lucky us the order of nine angels was founded in the 70s by a person using the name anton long with the intention of promoting a supernatural hateful system of thought which quote condemns liberal judeo-christChristian society and longs for a new imperial age. The Order of Nine Angels, or ONA, encourages its members to commit random acts of violence, like sexual assault, to subvert their current ideologies. So they're unpicking your

Western liberal way of thinking by raping people, apparently, is how they're doing that. I see. Most people seem to agree that Anton Long is actually a chap called David Myatt, who, after being a neo-Nazi, converted to Islam and then back again. But Myatt denies this. But that is exactly what a former Satan-worshipping neo-Nazi would say. It's definitely him. It's not definitely him. Don't come and get me. The ONA has different names in different countries.

In Australia, it's called the Temple of Them. In Italy, it's called Sekrunter 9. And you can also find affiliated blogs in Russian and Chinese. There are heaps of other Nazi Satanists, including fundamentalist Hindu ones. You can find a list of them in the show notes. But let's wrap up by going back to atheist Satanists. In particular, let's pay a visit to freedom of religion and separation of church and state enthusiasts, the satanic temple. So let's be very clear. The temple of Satan is

different from the satanic temple. They are two different things. They just both so happen to be atheistic versions of satanism. All of us clear? Great. Let's move on. So the Satanic Temple, their philosophy is essentially that atheism is not enough. One cannot dismantle an oppressive system whilst operating within it. So basically, they work to expose Christian privilege. And also, it helps if you want to be a part of the Satananic temple if you like a bit of trolling if you like doing a bit of that i think it's very like because like it is atheistic but it is a community and i think humans like community that's not a secret and i think the satanic temple the impression i have which may be incorrect but the impression i had is it's very sort of community focused and

people who feel strongly that they want to be a part of something but just have literally no time for theist religions. And also exposing Christian privilege is extremely important. So like we've said, the Satanic Temple does a lot of work exposing the hypocrisy of Christian privilege, especially in the United States. Famously, they campaigned for a statue of Baphomet, complete with adoring children staring up at him to be erected on government property in Oklahoma. The argument being that the state capitol building was state property

and therefore had a responsibility to abide by the First Amendment of the Constitution, being that all religions be treated equally. They also pointed out that the monument to the Ten Commandments outside the state capitol building was the actual opposite of the separation of church and state. But the separation of church and state doesn't actually mean that religious symbols, references, statues, books can't be in public government spaces.

We've talked about this on another episode. I cannot remember which episode, but I remember doing a big old deep dive into this. It does not mean that you live in like a kind of society that is anti-religious. It's not societal secularism like in France, for example. No, exactly. It is not that concept.

The concept which in France, we've talked about in the Samuel Patti episode, which is the idea of laïcité, which is that the removal of religious discourse or religious symbolism from public life. That is not what the separation of church and state means. All it means is that one religion should not be given preferential treatment over the other. Whether that really exists in the US and in the West is up for debate, but that is all that it means. It's a very narrow thing in terms of how it is defined. I think that we can safely say that there is definitely Christian privilege in the US. God is on the literal money of the one nation under God. But it hasn't actually been that way for always. The idea

of America being a Christian nation is a relatively new one, and it was born out of a propaganda drive against those nasty godless communists. And you can go back and listen to our Most Hated Women in America episode to hear the discussions of atheism in America and how unacceptable it is, or is seen to be, especially in the political system. The American Atheist Society is still around today and their spokesperson appears in the documentary Hail Satan. They are like a talking head on a talk show. There are other religious representatives on the panel, like a priest and a rabbi, amen, and they're losing their minds about this statue of Baphomet. And the spokesperson from the American Atheist Society just says, you believe in imaginary man in the sky too, so what's the difference? Which is obviously an inflammatory thing to say, but not necessarily false. The

difference, obviously, is what is accepted ideology and what isn't. I don't think anyone can argue that Christian privilege doesn't exist. In the West, for sure. Before anybody says, I know that particularly I can speak towards India and that the rise of the far-right Hindu nationalists are leading to more attacks than ever on Christians in India. That is a fact. In the Middle East, they're also obviously not having a fucking great time. But I think we can agree in the West, Christian privilege most certainly exists. One more fun fact is that the Ten Commandments monuments that were featured on the grounds of several government buildings in the US, including the one in Oklahoma, were gifts to promote the release of the 1956 MGM film, The Ten Commandments.

It's a monument to capitalism is what it is. That is outstanding. That is outstanding. And of course, Christians can have difficult lives. No one is suggesting that it's impossible for you to have a hard time if you're a Christian in the West. And what Christian privilege means, and again, we are talking about the West here,

is that Christianity is the benchmark against which all other religions in the Western world are measured. And specifically in the UK and the USA, Christian morals have been applied in legal and government settings, notably when it comes to what a woman can keep in her uterus. So the Satanic Temple has ongoing campaigns to protect the reproductive rights of women. They have an initiative called Grey Faction that protects people against pseudoscience, especially that vile, life-destroying idea of repressed memories, which again, if you listen to our Paul Ingram episode, you will remember Dr. Richard McNally, professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, a leader in the field of memory, who said that, quote,

the notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for recovered memory therapy, the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era. And if you've got a problem with that, I'm afraid you'll have to take that up with Dr. Richard McNally, because those are his words. The Satanic Temple also have a child protection project, which primarily supports children who are being forced or pressured to take part in religious practices in schools, which is a lot more than can be said for the Catholic Church,

whose leaders just seem to like touching those little kids and then covering it up. Absolutely. And I think that's the big difference. Because again, the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple, both again, atheistic, satanic groups. but the difference does seem to be that the satanic temple is a lot more socially driven and insert themselves into that yes it's very like community based and very like the protection of people who can't protect themselves and blah blah blah so like it's like children for example which is not the church of satan vibe really exactly which is where to me it kind of feels like the church of Satan is much more purely libertarian, capitalistic, focus on yourself, it's about

your pleasure, hedonism, get what you can out of this life, and don't worry about anybody else. And that is a perfectly fine way to live your life if you're not hurting anybody else. Of course it is. And it feels like the satanic temple is more of that, do what you will and oppose and stick it to the man, but with an underpinning of social agenda, which I quite like. Yeah, I also like that too. There are millions of reasons why I like the Satanic Temple. And here are a few more. They've made their own additions to atheistic Satanism, Levaean Satanism,

and they're called the Seven Fundamental Tenets. And they're all pretty good. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. The freedoms of others should be respected, including their freedom to offend.

To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused. And then finally, every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility and action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written and spoken word. I can't really pick many holes in that, to be honest. No. Again, I fundamentally agree with all of those principles. Again, though, that number six is the one that solidifies why any just list of affirmations or principles are ultimately flawed because people are so fallible and they look at it through the lens of their own perceptions and experiences. And it's never going to be something that fits all. But I think naturally anyone who is drawn to the principles of the temple of Satan

would hopefully have good intentions anyway. I guess I'll just have to draw a line there. I hope so. And actually, when you think about it, all of the things that Christians say Satanists do, blood drinking, sacrifice, child abuse, are all things the church does. I mean, I know not Protestants, but Catholics fully believe

that they are actually drinking the literal blood and eating the actual flesh of Jesus Christ. It's not a symbol. Is it transubstantiation? Yes, you're right. Whereas anything that is not Catholicism, don't believe that. They believe it is a symbol. So yeah, cannibalism and child abuse.

The Satanists are going to leave the Christians to it because they're so good at it and they've been doing it for so long. So there you go. That is Anton LaVey, The Church of Satan. So are you a Satanist now, Hannah? Am I a Satanist now? Like, I kind of don't know. I'm definitely more towards the Satanic temple than I am to the Church of Satan because I sort of believe that people should help other people. But similarly, dedicating any of my time to any sort of organized religion is something I'm not going to vibe with. But I do love a protest. Maybe I am a Satanist. I don't know. I'm still figuring it out. I think you could easily fit into the Satanic Temple. I do believe that.

I, yes, agree. Yeah. I fundamentally agree with everything that the Satanic Temple say. In terms of Levian Satanism, I am very much a believer in like taking personal responsibility. I like that message. But again, I just, I can't be a part of anything organized, not even religion. I just can't be part of anything organized. She won't even follow a recipe.

I won't. I fucking refuse to follow a recipe. Don't tell me what to do, fucking Nigella. Shut up. Anyway, let's leave it there, guys. That has been a beast of a case. And thank you so much for bearing with us last week when we missed an episode. I'm feeling much better.

My voice might still sound a bit weird. I can't really tell anymore. You sound way better than you have. I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you again. And for everybody who messaged me with kind wishes on my recovery from COVID, thank you very much. It was really, really appreciated. And here are some lovely people who became patrons at some point last year. Thank you so much. Adele McNeill, Becky Johnson, Audrey Elgin, Tasha, Rebecca Leaf-Brown, Martha Hall, Catherine, Sarah O'Connor, Adelaide Charbonnet. I love that surname. That's a great surname.

Rachel Young, Tori Centani, Tiffany Johnson, Pip Watnerby, Dana Christensen, Bridget Curtin, Amanda Young, Katerina Perina. Excellent. Laura Bennett, Courtney Seal, Natasha Zinso, Lisa Yates, Laura Crabb, Shelley Franklin, Samuel Voulouyami. Voulouyami? Sorry. Kate.

Carmen Leigh, Kelly Grace, Michelle Erica, Lily Makepeace. I think we've had you before, Lily Makepeace. Oh, was that Roy Makepeace from Cindy? Maybe. We've definitely had a Makepeace before. Maybe we've got a couple. Charis Parslow, Laura Robinson, Amy Goy, Claire Taylor, Lexi Immink, Ali Bauer, Brittany Dare, Katerina Simu,

Jennifer Jeffries, Amy Zed, Sarah Bushnell, Jessica Lopez, Alexandra Wood, Gerardo, Yevarino, Lauren Coles, Thank you. Tori Cummins, Amber Fry, Anne Coy, Abby Dashfield, Joanna Horne, Kate Gordon, Jodie Sloss, Stuart Baker, Flippity Gibbet, Louise Coe, Brittany Baker, Lauren Flannery, Laura Bland, Lady Danger, Morgan, Rosbra, Jodie Litz, Karen Munoz, Hannah Jones, Brittany, Erin Jackson-Neve, Krista Rhodes, Ellie, Jack Ceron, Kyra, Leigh Conaway, Tara Barrett, Anna Nesbitt, Erica, Hannah Yates, Courtney Giorgio, Felicia Finacol, Gillian Miller, Abby Black, Stacey Macleo,

Ellie Taylor, Katie Hill, Danielle Blinker, Jen C, Ashley Kirker, Jordan Farrell, Farrell, sorry, Angela Hofstetter, Kathleen Kelly, Charlotte Stemp, Erin Kane, Marina Hammond, Megan Johnson, Emma Louise Mason, Roxanne Ellis, Sophie Hall, and Pat. Thank you ever so much. Go and watch those documentaries. They're super interesting. We've got so many copies of the Satanic Bible in the office now, the cleaners don't like cleaning it anymore, but we're just going to display them proudly along with our podcast awards.

So thank you ever so much, and we will see you next time. Bye. Bye. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy.

Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan,

a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.