Episode 667: Anton LaVey Part II - Paint It Black

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 667: Anton LaVey Part II - Paint It Black

Release Date: June 5, 2026
Main Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, Andrew
Special Appearance: Ed Larson

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Episode Overview

In the second installment of their multi-part series on Anton LaVey, the Last Podcast On The Left team dives deep into LaVey's formative years during the late 1940s and 1950s, separating fact from fiction in the stories he spun about his life prior to founding the Church of Satan. This episode details LaVey's claimed experiences with circuses, the odd jobs and myths that built his persona, the origins of his famous Black House, and the eclectic group of oddballs that became his early entourage. They also explore the creation of the Church of Satan, LaVey’s flair for publicity, and how his carefully curated image blended con artistry, Carny glamour, and a keen sense of the American appetite for spectacle.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

LaVey’s Circus and Carnival Mythmaking

• LaVey’s Circus Stories Debunked

  • LaVey often claimed to have worked as a lion tamer and calliope player (circus organist) with the "Clyde Beatty Circus" at age 17. But records show this is likely exaggerated or invented ([05:01]–[08:37]).
  • Michael Aquino, LaVey's future rival, took great pains in his memoirs to debunk these tales, critiquing the lack of evidence:

    “There was just no possible way he was at the circus. If you look at the rolls of the circus performers... Tony LaVey’s name isn't there!” – Andrew imitating Aquino ([07:55])

• But Some Big Cat Experience Was Likely True

  • LaVey did own and train big cats later in life, suggesting some experience:

    “He was not Count Dante. In other words, he worked with big cats enough to get a feel for them.” – Marcus ([05:35])

• Learning the Organ and Calliope

  • While circus anecdotes are likely overstated, LaVey did play organ and developed his persona as "The Great Xandor."
  • Unique anecdotes about circus calliope music’s impact:

    “By playing live music, he learned how to affect the moods of not just the audience at the circus, but also of the big cats, elephants, and human performers.” – Marcus ([13:11])

Carney Life, Sideshow Performers, and Villain Persona

• Exposure to Sideshow Acts

  • LaVey rubbed shoulders with sideshow legends like Francesco Lentini (the "three-legged man") and Bill Dirks (the "two-faced man"), and observed "human ostrich" regurgitators ([14:32]–[17:23]).
  • These experiences influenced his thirst for the outlandish and for building a mythic persona.

• Hypocrisy and Christianity

  • A core formative lesson came from witnessing men indulge at carnival sideshows on Saturday, then pray piously at church services where LaVey also played organ:

    “This is the key to what really the Church of Satan is all about. It's really an anti-hypocrisy stance.” – Andrew ([19:37])

Building the Black House and Local Legend Status

• LaVey’s Black House

  • Inherited with parental help, LaVey transformed his San Francisco home (5114 California St.) into the infamous Black House:
    • Painted black, with windows boarded/painted over ([43:51]).
    • Loaded with trap doors, a coffin, secret passageways, and a kitchen mural of the demon Chernabog ([56:10]).
    • Served as a prototype for future "satanic tourist attractions."

• Curated Reputation and Myth

  • LaVey built legend as San Francisco’s "weirdest guy," owning leopards and lions (e.g., Zoltan and Togar), and parlayed it into local press coverage.
  • He cultivated stories of the house’s supposed "voodoo queen” past, which turned out to be myth leveraging the legacy of Mary Ellen Pleasant ([41:30]–[43:09]).

The Magic Circle and Order of the Trapezoid

• Early Occult Social Club

  • Pre-Church of Satan group, the Magic Circle, included magicians, artists, aristocrats, and weirdos talking about magic and performing rituals ([45:21]).
  • Featured oddball members like automaton-builder Dr. Cecil E. Nixon, and later filmmaker Kenneth Anger (linking LaVey to Manson family lore), and Jack Parsons’ widow Marjorie Cameron.

• Emergence of Rituals & The Order of the Trapezoid

  • Small inner circle with custom medallions, colored by art theory and William Mortensen’s “The Command to Look.”
  • Rituals were often theatrical and sometimes included supposed cannibal dinners (likely just pork), recounted for shock value ([60:08]).

Launching the Church of Satan

• From Midnight Lectures to a Church

  • Midnight lectures at the Black House ranged from vampires to lycanthropy, "cool zombies," and cannibalism – prefiguring the podcast/radio model:

    “Basically, it's what people like us have been doing with podcasts for the last 15 years, but in lecture form.” – Marcus ([59:52])

• Public Debuts, Publicity, and the Power of Image

  • LaVey officiated public "satanic weddings" and, with new look (bald head, goatee), modeled after Mephistopheles and possibly Don Rickles in Wild Wild West ([62:19]).
  • Leveraged media interest, and carefully trademarked the Baphomet sigil ([98:39]).

• Key Church of Satan Tenets

  • Emphasis on anti-hypocrisy, self-gratification, and consent.
  • Strict policy against hurting others, especially children—an explicit response to defuse later Satanic Panic allegations ([91:25]).
  • No drugs/hallucinogens, moderate alcohol only (served as "Goblin Juice" in a toilet) ([85:04], [86:29]).
  • Famous for "revenge" rituals where members would act as their nemesis and symbolically “kill" them ([89:58]).

Celebrity Entanglements and Notorious Followers

• Jane Mansfield’s Satanic Sidestory

  • Movie star Jane Mansfield’s visits to the Black House and rumors of LaVey’s participation in her "curse" and her death via car crash ([102:33]–[107:32]).
  • LaVey’s attempts to attach himself to her legend:

    "I accidentally cut a photo of Jane Mansfield across the neck… This put a curse on Mansfield.” – Marcus, paraphrasing LaVey ([107:24])

• Big Cats as Publicity and Problem

  • Owned and publicly displayed big cats, culminating in neighbor protests and legal headaches.
  • The lion Togar eventually ends up starring in the infamously disastrous and dangerous movie Roar ([78:59]).
  • Discussion of the “curse” associated with big cats and The Exorcist film money ([81:37]).

• Church of Satan’s Relationship with Women

  • Repeated emphasis that LaVey trusted and was influenced by women, notably Diane Hagarty (administration, branding, and organizing the church) ([53:59], [91:25], [93:00]).
  • Acknowledgement that many of his best ideas were adapted or outright "stolen" from women ([93:01]).

Image, Symbolism, and Influence

• Sigil of Baphomet and Esoteric Branding

  • Deep dive into where the goat-headed symbol comes from—its roots in Knights Templar legend, Eliphas Levi, and tarot ([94:25]–[98:39]).
  • Clarification: Baphomet is about balance of opposites, not an evil figure:

    "It's not evil… Technically just a symbol of the balance of the flows of male and feminine, dark and light, all of these things. It’s about balance.” – Andrew ([98:39])

• Legacy and Cultural Timing

  • The Church of Satan benefited from the swirling uncertainty about religion in 1960s America (cf. Time cover “Is God Dead?” [83:16]).
  • LaVey hated hippies and saw the Church as a “third way” between pious repression and self-indulgence without discipline ([87:05]–[89:02]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Calliope:

  “Calliopes so painfully loud, even the smallest could be heard from miles away… elephants love it.” – Marcus ([09:21])

• Regarding Michael Aquino (future rival):

  “Anton LaVey is the Bugs Bunny to [Aquino’s] Daffy Duck.” – Andrew ([07:55])

• On the Church of Satan’s Philosophy:

  “It’s about being true to yourself…there’s no more pain in the world than by those who are not.” – Marcus ([20:06])

• On Early Rituals:

  “He would give lectures on vampirism, lycanthropy, sideshow freaks, torture methods, sex theories, recipes for aphrodisiacs…basically what people like us have been doing with podcasts for the last 15 years.” – Marcus ([59:52])

• On Baphomet Misrepresentation:

  “If I see Baphomet being used as a representative of Satan in a movie, I shut it off. Shows everything else is wrong.” – Andrew ([95:23])

• On Celebrity and Showbiz Dreams:

  “I do believe that he (LaVey) wanted to be in the movies... every single thing kind of comes up against that.” – Andrew ([38:43])

• LaVey vs. Count Dante (other pop-culture “big cat” occultist):

  “Anton LaVey is better than Count Dante.” – Henry ([71:18])

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Timestamps for Important Sections

• [04:41] – LaVey’s carnival backstory, real and exaggerated
• [08:57] – Circus organ and calliope, musicality myth
• [14:32] – Sideshow personalities and lesson in performance
• [19:37] – Anti-hypocrisy as the Church’s central value
• [41:30] – The Black House origins, mythologizing real estate
• [45:21] – The Magic Circle: nucleus for future Satanists
• [50:01] – Kenneth Anger, Manson Family, magical subgroups
• [53:59] – Diane Hagarty’s role as administrator and co-founder
• [59:52] – Friday night lectures and early Black Masses
• [62:19] – Origins of LaVey’s devilish look (Don Rickles?)
• [68:34] – Big cat ownership, publicity, and neighbor disputes
• [78:59] – The lion Togar’s journey to cinema disaster (Roar)
• [85:04] – Building of the Church of Satan, rules and order
• [91:25] – Emphasis on consent and women’s prominent role
• [94:25] – Origins and meaning of the Baphomet sigil
• [102:33] – Jane Mansfield’s relationship with the Church and her mythic “curse”
• [108:17] – Preview of next episode: Sammy Davis Jr. & Michael Aquino

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Additional Highlights

• The “revenge ritual” concept: Symbolic roleplay as your enemy ([89:58])
• LaVey’s anti-hippie stance: Saw free love as destructive, not liberatory ([87:05])
• Clarifications on famous Church of Satan myths: No actual cannibalism, no real “satanic powers,” but plenty of showmanship and con-artistry
• Recurring theme: LaVey as an American con artist, making savvy use of mid-century media, myth, and the public’s appetite for spectacle

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Coming Next Episode:

• The Manson Family connections (Susan Atkins)
• Showbiz Satanists: The full story of Sammy Davis Jr.
• The rise of Michael Aquino and Satanic Panic lore

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Hail Satan!

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Transcript

[Andrew]

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[Marcus Parks]

place there's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left.

[Andrew]

That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? I'm ready. Yes. All right. All right, Marcus, you've brought a special instrument in that we have to exhibit for the audience.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, this is my stylophone, theremin. The antenna is a little wonky on it, so I'm just going to use the trigger on it.

[Andrew]

Now, just remember before you listen to the sounds, these sounds are so powerful, so esoteric, they, in fact, may drive you insane. So this is your warning. If you can't handle the theremin, you shut off the radio right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, they can't handle it because it's, you know, weird. I like the theremin because it's the only instrument you can play with your.

[Andrew]

Someone helped me with my pants. Oh, no. I am running out of blood pressure medication. Oh, what a horrible set of circumstances. Where is my heroin? Where is my cake? Where is my career? You are not fit to smell my.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I look at the theremin as the reason, like, people don't use an orchestra to score a film.

[Andrew]

You don't need it.

[Marcus Parks]

You don't need it at all.

[Andrew]

You don't need to have it, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

Welcome to last podcast on the left, Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks Badly playing the theremin. Here with me is Henry Zabrowski, the man who's just sitting there, letting his tongue hang out of his mouth like half his brain isn't working. It isn't.

[Andrew]

It isn't. It's me. It's Andrew Zabrowski. And I love the theremin because it's sounds like a ghost having an orgasm. But also, Anton Lavey is the only unionized theremin player that was ever in any of these all of these musician unions. He was the only ever full on union man. Theremin player.

[Henry Zabrowski]

True con man.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, the theremin is one of the most difficult instruments to play in existence. Go. Talking about, you should listen to, because that was great.

[Andrew]

But it's in a real therapy.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, listen. Listen to Clara Rockmore. Listen to Clara Rockmore. It's. It will blow your mind out of the back of your skull. All right, and we have. And we have the man who's getting into theremin music over the next week. It's Ed Larson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, how's everyone doing? I got a question. Is this 666 or 667?

[Marcus Parks]

This is 667.

[Henry Zabrowski]

667.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. With the thing.

[Andrew]

Well, 67 is the thing. If this was episode 6 7, we would do this. But it's not episode 6 7. It's 667, which is a number most zoomers can't count to.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And also, we're not Catholic. We don't do 6 7. See the Pope.

[Andrew]

Oh, I'm just even. Also, straight up, Pope is beginning the Butlerian jihad.

[Marcus Parks]

Huh?

[Andrew]

The Dude. I don't know what that means. Anti robot. Like a whole thing. It's written by. If you remember, he wrote this anti AI thing. It started in Dune with the Catholics.

[Marcus Parks]

We're not here to talk about Dune. This is Anton lavey, part two.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. One nerdy thing at a time,

[Andrew]

please. If you're listening to this is Impossible.

[Marcus Parks]

So when we last left Anton Lavey, the year was 1947. According to the tale Lavey spun for himself, he had become inspired after reading William Gresham's classic Carney novel, Nightmare Alley. And instead of spending a life in the chains of the mundane world, Lev had decided to bet everything on a life in the circus.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Supposedly, Anton joined the Clyde Beatty Circus in the spring of 1947, where he was given the responsibility of feeding and watering the circus's big cats as a roustabout and so called cage boy at the age of 17. Roustabout, by the way, is the. The. The dudes who set up and tear down the carnival at each town.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, okay. You know, if you don't water those big cats, they. They don't grow.

[Andrew]

I hate you, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They just say small cats.

[Marcus Parks]

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

[Andrew]

This is my soup. You're not supposed to be eating soup, tiger. Okay, this is my soup. Chicken noodle soup. I don't know how you gotta taste for this. Leave me alone.

[Marcus Parks]

Meow. Shut up. Meow.

[Andrew]

Meow. Hey, hey, listen. Got any bread to dip in this soup? Oh, well, then I guess we're not at lunch together.

[Marcus Parks]

Even slept in their cages. Said he'd get clawed or knocked to the ground here and there. But these incidents were chalked up as, quote, unintentional mishaps.

[Andrew]

For those of you that are following along and are also potential students of the esoteric, I would submit to you to go and read Michael Aquino's two book long personally published his own version biography of the the Church of Satan and the whole thing. Because Michael Aquino fucking homework. Oh yeah buddy. Because one book's the book and the one the other second book is the book to reference. You got to read. When you're reading the first book now,

[Marcus Parks]

it's important to remember so so many footnotes that he had to do its second volume just to hold the footnotes of just amendments. Infuriated.

[Andrew]

For those of you that don't know, Michael Aquino is the ed monster looking man that would eventually spin off from the Church of Satan. He was Anton lavey's right hand man, as we'll get into more in the next episode. But he wrote in the Church of Satan he took everything that he could to essentially roast Anton lavey from the inside out. Because Michael Aquino, if you do read any of his stuff, he works for the government, he worked in the CIA. He did psyops. He's a very crazy looking guy, but he's also a complete and honor dweeb. And when you read it, even grow

[Henry Zabrowski]

your eyebrows like that.

[Andrew]

Practice he made his eyebrows an old thorn. So Michael Aquino wrote all this book and he heavily debunks all of Anton lavey's claims in the book because he's so bitter. Because Anton lavey is the Bugs Bunny to his Daffy Duck. And as he's rewriting this whole book. He's all like, anton lavey, he lied about going to the circus. And he definitely in the effect miracle Monroe. And it's like, yeah, buddy, we know. Anton lavey even said, it's a lie. You constantly going like. And there was just no possible way he was at the circus. Because if you look at the roles of the circus performers that happen at the time, you don't see Tony lavey's name in there, do you? I would like, you know, and then. And you're like, bro, you lost the whole fucking point.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Well, one thing we do know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Good Daffy duck. He really captured his essence.

[Andrew]

It is him.

[Marcus Parks]

It's good. One thing we do know that Anton lavey did in the circus, he did learn how to become a master at one of the most powerful and legendary of all organs. Quite possibly the hottest pipes in all existence.

[Andrew]

Oh, shit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Organ

[Andrew]

burns the lips.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, at the circus, Anton lavey became a master of the instrument most associated with the circus. The mighty calliope. Yeah, calliopes, as Anton lavey played them, were steam powered organs that used used train whistles for their pipes, which made calliopes so painfully loud that even the smallest of calliopes could be heard from miles away.

[Andrew]

Even the smallest.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, the elephants love it.

[Andrew]

The lions, the tigers, they love being blasted in the face with loud noises and hot steam.

[Marcus Parks]

Here's an example of a calliope from my favorite calliope album, Big top circus calliope played out of Doors or Volume 1 by Paul Eakins.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Doesn't that make you feel good?

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, it does, it does.

[Andrew]

It sort of feels like the general noise in my head at all times kind of feels like me desperately trying to do my taxes, whatever. It's just any moment of silence I

[Henry Zabrowski]

have is just when I hear music like this, I forget that law exists.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. Just want a swing of the hammer. Get out of my way, kid. Get out of my way, kid.

[Marcus Parks]

God, I love it so much. I love calliope music.

[Andrew]

I love that it's your first favorite. That's your favorite calliope album because mine is getting gapes to calliope by Gay Jenkins.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they turned the guy into a calliope.

[Marcus Parks]

The calliope player for the circus that had taken in the young Anton lavey, he was reported. I mean, they say he was an alcoholic. I think most calliope players are alcoholics.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think most circus people from this time period are alcoholics.

[Marcus Parks]

Reportedly, this guy leaned on the keys more than he actually played them, which also sounds awful just to do. In one version of the story, lavey said that one day the calliope player was simply too drunk to play and Anton stepped in. In another, far more satanic version of the story, Anton claimed that he was so hell bent on getting the calliope that he cursed the circus's alcoholic calliope player who fell ill a few days later. And that's also. That's going to be a theme you'll see amongst Anton lavey is him saying, yes, I cursed him. And then everything fell apart. It's like, no, mostly it's just people who already had a lot of problems.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And then life just sort of took care of it for him.

[Andrew]

Base going to happen to you. Like, that's all he did. Because you'll look like, I get it. Because, like, we all want this. Like, I do think that every time he talks like this, remember, he's serving a thing, fantasy for you to fulfill. Everybody wants to hear that. You can go, I curse you. And then you can just move on and do all this stuff. He even knows. Anton Levay himself knows how detrimental curses are to your own personal health. So a lot of the times he talks about this, I always say it's. There's always a tongue in cheek thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

There's always a little like, I curse you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He became a calliope player the same way I became a chef. You just show up to work and don't be the guy on heroin.

[Andrew]

Yep. Welcome to America. Hired.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Anton stepped in, played a rousing version of the William Tell Overture, and the alcoholic player was put on permanent sabbatical. Anton lavey was now a performer. So after he was elevated to the resident calliope player at the Clyde Beatty Circus, he changed his name from Tony Levy to Anton Sandor lavey after his great uncle. As a performer, he came to be known as the Great Xandor. And this is a clip of him years later playing a synthesizer mimicking a calliope.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cool.

[Andrew]

This is me just trying to just desperately put together the TV standard house. I'm like, going through the forms. This is me looking at IKEA forms, IKEA plans.

[Marcus Parks]

Just thunder, blazes. Thunder, blazes. Thunder, blazes, Thunder.

[Andrew]

My fucking key. I really.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm actually starting like him now.

[Marcus Parks]

He's really fun. Yeah. That's part of his, like, Big Top medley. It goes on for good four or five minutes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, I was hoping 40.

[Andrew]

He has a whole album of this dude. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I. I do have an Anton lavey Album in which he plays the organ throughout. It's. It's a really fun album. It's great. It's part, it's part of the organ section in my record collection, which is ample. Wow, the organ section. Yeah. Love them hot pipes. Now, Anton lavey said that by playing live music, he learned how to affect the moods of not just the audience at the circus, but also the moods of the big cats, the elephants and the human performers. It was said that lavey had an unusual ability to add special life to the circus performers acts with his own inimitable style of calliope playing. But after traveling through much of the American west with the Clyde Beatty Circus, Anton settled down in Long Beach, California at the end of 1947 for a regular gig at the Pike Amusement Park. And through his Carney connections, he joined various traveling shows for small tours up and down the west coast. During those days, Lave met legendary sideshow performers like the three legged Franchesco Lentini.

[Andrew]

Franchesco Lentini, Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And the two faced Bill Dirks.

[Andrew]

You know, I'm looking at me, these guys are great.

[Marcus Parks]

I love Bill Dirks.

[Andrew]

His little third leg just kind of comes out of his butt.

[Marcus Parks]

That a lot of that's really. I mean, when they say like three legged performers, the posters that they painted were beautiful. I have a whole book of them. They're fucking great. All those old sideshow posters that are just so massive, but they definitely do a lot of heavy lifting on the imagination. Usually when you walked into the tent, it really was just kind of like a weird thing, that appendage. And usually. And that's the thing is that it was actually so disappointing some that usually the sideshow performers would also have like a secondary act. So you would walk in a thing? Yeah, you'd walk in and they wouldn't just be like, oh, you know, here's a couple of conjoined twins. It'll always be like, oh, here's two conjoined twins who also know how to play the fiddle and sing.

[Andrew]

Yeah, of course. Because that's a show. That's your show.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And like we just watched the Elephant man last night and I cried watching it. God, I love that movie. We just forgot that was the whole thing. Is the Guy who Ran Story. Yes, yes. And it's about him searching for pants. It's four and a half hours long. They go to Macy's, JC Penny's, Burlington Coat Factory. But the Elephant man, that was the whole thing that he didn't have to because of just how he was the only one that wasn't underwhelming. No, he was the closer.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. The Elephant man was a. Yeah, good old. Good old Joseph Merrick.

[Andrew]

But Bill Dirks never experienced the love of a woman.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the sad. It's the saddest death of all.

[Andrew]

It really is.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Do you know how the Elephant man died?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, well, I watched the Bradley Cooper stage version. That was awful. Yeah.

[Andrew]

So he died by the. Was that the reviews after the fact?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was so close. I literally went at one point and I like, covered my mouth.

[Andrew]

Oh, live theater. No, no.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Bill Dirks, he actually just had a severe cleft palate that went all the way up to splitting his nose into. But to give the full two faced illusion, he was known as the Two faced Man. He would paint a third eye on his forehead to sell the act fully.

[Andrew]

It's awesome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's like I'm not enough. Talk about lack of confidence.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I'm not ugly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Trust me, buddy, you're ugly.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey got to know a particular kind of performer calling himself the human ostrich. I love this act. The human ostrich had the ability to eat and regurgitate almost any object at will, usually objects made of metal or glass, because otherwise you're just watching a guy throw up. Although there were some regurgitators who were massively popular and really talent. Like there was one guy who would swallow and eat like a bunch of fish and then he would regurgitate through a hoop into a fishbowl.

[Andrew]

That's awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Show.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Fish died.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But except for the fish.

[Andrew]

Yeah, fish don't count. Fish don't count.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, human ostriches were so named because real ostriches ate rocks to help with digestion. And even besides that, I'm definitely going to see anyone who builds themselves as the human ostrous just to see what the it is.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Better be tall.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I mean, that's what they did with the Elephant Man. You just got to give him a fun name.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Just pick an animal.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Especially if it kind of looks like it. That's all said.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But out of all the sideshow acts that Anton lavey got to know, he paid the most attention to the so called mitt camp at the carnival where fortune tellers read palms. Like, give me a mitt, I'm gonna read your fortune. That's why they would call it a mitt camp. I actually saw this term in a recent carnival movie that I watched called she Freak. It's amazing. It's like Sort of a retelling of Todd Browning's Freaks. But yeah, they would say, it's dude, I got off vinegar syndrome. It's great. Yeah, yeah, I'll lend it to you. But alongside the fortune tellers were the mentalists who cold read unsuspecting customers to see how much money they could bilk out of them. And this, Anton Levy said, is where he truly watched and learned. But Anton lavey was also all about style. And he, like any cultural figure worth their snuff, went through many iterations before finally settling on the Mephistopheles core look that made him famous. In the circus, lavey modeled himself after film noir gangsters who wore wide, lapelled, big shouldered suits, pocket squares, panama hats, and of course, immaculately landscaped facial hair. This seems to be among the first instances of Anton lavey truly leaning into playing a sort of villain, or at least appearing to be a villain. And this was certainly something that lavey would later use while creating the Church of Satan. But besides helping him develop his villain Persona, the circus also reinforced lavey's attitude of hypocrisy concerning Christianity. He said that he would see men lusting after women at the carnival on Saturday nights as he played calliope. But when Anton lavey went in to play organ at the church services at the tent revival the next morning, those same lusty men would be in the pews. Hypocrisy.

[Andrew]

And that is the key to what really the Church of Satan is all about. It's not really about, as we keep talking about it, it's really an anti hypocrisy stance.

[Marcus Parks]

It's about being T.R. to yourself. You know, it's like if you're going to go out, like, it's basically like make a choice, like either you're going to go out and, you know, lust after women on Saturday night. With carnivals, that's totally cool. That's fine. If you want to do, you know, church on Sunday and be a pious individual, that's totally fine too. But don't try to do both.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, he did both.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, exactly. He's a hypocrite.

[Andrew]

But he also understood, like getting a paycheck, but he got a paycheck. He also understood like there, there is. I do think that this is the core to really try to understand of all of this is that this is as deep as it really was supposed to go for Anton Lavey, like this was the beginnings of a. The idea of we're setting ourselves free, we're trying to get out of all of this stuff we're trying to. Because how many times have we seen the issue be you're something that you're not.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And so you are showing up every day. Why is it such a common thing now that we, especially now that we're seeing that the guy that's anti doing anti trans laws is more likely than not using trans sex workers? It's like, that's the thing now. Like, like it's, it's like the way to be. So this is. He kind of broadcast that early on.

[Marcus Parks]

Very much so, yeah. I mean, it's. And that's, it's also a Crowley idea, you know, like Aleister Crowley would say the same thing. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of like, there's no more pain in the world caused than by those who are not true to themselves, who are not being their true selves. If you're going against what you're supposed to be, that's where you're. You're only going to cause pain to yourself and to everybody around you. Especially everybody around you.

[Andrew]

I legitimately think the world would be different, would be different if a time traveler dressed as an artist went back in time into Adolf Hitler's class, went, took all his stupid ass paintings, put them in a gallery and said, Adolf, these are amazing. That is literally all he would needed. And we would not be here. We wouldn't be dealing with any of that. I think we'd be dealing with different things.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But I always find it weird when people say I'd go back in time to kill baby Hitler. You kill him as an art student. It's more fun.

[Andrew]

Oh no. I tell you what though, talk about this is really all about killing babies with impunity. Unity. Yeah, that's really what it's about is that everybody who says that is just super curious about like wholesale just murdering the baby. And you can do it without feeling any form of guilt of it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Settler.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, we, we did have this conversation at home not too long ago and we settled on teenage Hitler. Yeah, like you said, like you kill him at 15.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, that's good one.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You hear that, you evil 15 year old?

[Andrew]

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[Andrew]

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[Marcus Parks]

Lavey claimed that after just a year behind the calliope, he had earned a reputation as a flamboyant personality and a reliable musician. With the men who own the burlesque theaters around the greater Los Angeles area, Lavey, at the age of 18, was hired to play a far less abrasive organ at the Mayan Burlesque Theater. And it's here that Anton claimed to have his first brush with celebrity. According to the almost certainly not true story, lavey claims that one of the dancers at the Mayan was a pre famed 22 year old Marilyn Monroe.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey said that they had an intense love affair that only lasted a few weeks, but that they were very sexually compatible. The owner of the Mayan, however, maintained that Monroe never even performed there. But according to lavey, when Marilyn Monroe orgasmed, she quoted, gnashed her teeth and farted.

[Andrew]

Well, he wished. He definitely wish. Because he does. We know he likes his pee pee

[Marcus Parks]

and he likes his farts and he loves his farts.

[Andrew]

But I you know what I really do think that happened is sniff my sinful farts. Yes, you smell the sin. Smell the sin.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did they not know what creeps were back then?

[Andrew]

I think that to be honest, no, I think that that's what he meant. But I, you know, what I do think is that because he's. Anton loves these stories are like, it's not true. But I bet you he had sex with really hot blonde chick that looked just like her. And I bet that when he had sex with her, he used that version of that to be the satanic ideal from then on out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So whatever it was that he, whoever it was that he had sex with then that was like this story, what it is about is the allegorical choosing of the satanic dual other nature. So what he did as a dark, dark, weird, gross man. Right. He idolizes the blonde bombshell as a way to get things out of life very easily. So this is the first thing in his mind. It's like that's kind of what it's about. Like it's not about Marilyn Monroe.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[Andrew]

It's about choosing the Marilyn Monroe form.

[Marcus Parks]

I get it now. Following his supposed

[Andrew]

idiots.

[Marcus Parks]

Now following his supposed fling with Marilyn Monroe, lavey claimed that he returned to San Francisco where he expanded his professional pursuits to include photography. While still playing organ for local strip joints and private stag parties, lavey said that he also got a job taking pictures of women modeling clothes and underwear. Even though the census lists his status in 1948 as unemployed.

[Andrew]

Let's just say a lot of guys who take pictures of women in their underwear are technically by the state, unemployment.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I'm sure he got cash under the table. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But regardless of what the paperwork says, the draft was still in effect in 1948. So to avoid military service, Lavey enrolled at San Francisco City College as a criminology major. Supposedly this led to lavey getting a job as a crime scene photographer at the San Francisco Police Department. Now, the SFPD has no record of Anton lavey working for them under any name, but lavey maintained that his record must have been expunged. They were ashamed of having Anton lavey on their ranks. But even so, lavey said that his time photographing the grotesque blood soaked bodies of car accident and murder victims led to another revelation. In his words. Anton decided that quotes, there's no God,

[Andrew]

there's nobody up there who gives. A man is the only God. So man must be taught to answer to himself and other men for his actions. Forget about

[Henry Zabrowski]

it. Unfortunately agree with Anton.

[Marcus Parks]

Unfortunately here I do have to agree with him.

[Andrew]

It's the very bottom. So this is my belief. He looked at the works of Ouija while he was taking classes. As in Criminology.

[Marcus Parks]

Ouija being the. The famous crime scene photographer from New. Fantastic.

[Andrew]

Now I know there's a book out of all of his stuff that I have forgot to include into what is the. One of the biggest inspirations for Anton lavey in the Church of Satan. And it's a book by William Montgomery, the photographer called the Command to Look. He became obsessed with this book. It was a thing that William Montgomery, who took these pictures very similar to Diane Arbus, Naked. Naked Ladies. But also, like really intense effects monsters. Like very German expressionist and also grizzly. Grizzly things. People with deformities and old stuff. And he made them beautiful. And he wrote this whole aesthetics world of like, of. Of. Of tips that he wrote in this book. And each one of them is Satanism to its core.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And so I think that the photography angle is partially his own obsession with William Montgomery that then he fed into. He fed these things to his own saying, I did them. Yeah. And said. But he's just studied them very thoroughly.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Because it's. It. If you're building a myth like. Like Anton lavey was building a myth, like, first of all, it's the mid 20th century. Ain't no Internet, ain't no way to check nothing. So if you tell a good enough story and Anton lavey was smart enough to tell a good story where, you know no one's going to question you, people are going to pay far more attention to say, I did. Someone who says, I did this, rather than. Well, I've studied the works of William Montgomery.

[Andrew]

Yeah, exactly the thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Nobody wants to hear that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So when you say he studied the works of Ouija. Weegee is a photographer. Not like the Ouij.

[Andrew]

Ouija board.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, no. Ouija was the name of a crime scene photographer in New York City who. It's. He's possibly my favorite photographer ever. Like, he would just the way that he would just show up to a crime scene and. And photograph it in just the most beauty, honestly, most beautiful way possible. It's kind of insane.

[Andrew]

Beautiful and brutal. He would show up to these. He really was this, like, weird character.

[Marcus Parks]

And sometimes he'd, like, show up before the cops.

[Andrew]

It.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, he's one of those guys like LA Confidential style.

[Andrew]

Exactly. I'm pretty certain that that is kind of based on him.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, so he studied the works of Ouija. But he's such a nerd. He should have studied the works of Wedgie.

[Andrew]

I hate you. He wasn't even interested. He wasn't even actually interested in the material.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Interested, though. Like you explained it, it was interesting, I will say that it was a bait, but it didn't, you know, I, it did work.

[Marcus Parks]

In Anton lavey's personal life, it's known that he married for the first time at the age of 21. But since it was 1951, nobody batted an eye when Anton married a nice 15 year old middle class girl named Carol Lansing. And after the two of them moved into an apartment near a San Francisco amusement park called Playland, Carol gave birth to Anton's first child, Carla. But while Anton lavey was starting a family, he was also actively seeking out other people who shared his point of view. Although he was having a hard time finding his people, he drove to Berlin, Berkeley, where he found Aleister Crowley's Order of Thelema. But after looking into Crowley's life and workings a little bit deeper, lavey decided that Crowley was quote, druggie poser whose

[Andrew]

greatest achievements were as a poet and a mountain climber. Forget about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Fair enough. I suppose according to him, which just

[Andrew]

makes total sense by that point, if you could even see Crowley with, at the very end of his life, he was such a heroin addict and such a gross ass fucking guy that. But to me it also formulates the next levels of the Church of Satan just being there's Aleister Crowley, the man, the most evil man to ever live. He walked the walk, he went through the fucking, he crossed the Rubicon, he met them, he met the fucking awas, he did all this shit. Now look at him. Yeah, and it's just like he's fogging, he's just fucking, he's basically just some schmuck that's dying a heroin abuse and all. And he's just this garbage guy. So of course like you're like, it must be a lesson. Yeah, there's the Grand Magus, then he's

[Marcus Parks]

just some mumbly fuck who's looking for his next fish.

[Andrew]

Yep.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, while the San Francisco Police Department has no record of Anton lavey's employment, it was still the SFPD that seemingly introduced Anton to the next phase of his increasingly spooky career. In 1953, Anton Lavey became one of the first Ghostbusters in America.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's cool. If you don't think that's cool, you're stupid. That's your plan.

[Marcus Parks]

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

[Andrew]

And we know that this stuff happens because of when we covered the warrants. We know that cops do. They are people. They're like, all right, you can go look at this. Weird.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Anton would investigate by camping out in haunted locations in a sleeping bag with a camera loaded with infrared film to capture ghosts and to monitor fluctuations in the pitch and intensity of the hauntings, he used a theremin as a so called intrusion detector. And this theremin that I have here, this is a. It's a stylophone theremin. It's got an antenna. It's a little buggy, I'd say, but this is a little bit what it would sound like.

[Andrew]

It's just because you hear the ghost. Shut up. Shut the fuck up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Ton, move the antenna to the right.

[Andrew]

We know you didn't go to the circus, Tony.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, I'm having trouble getting foxed now.

[Marcus Parks]

What Anton discovered from his time as a ghost hunter was that people would insist on believing what they wanted to believe, regardless of evidence. Even when Anton would find a real cause for strange noises like old pipes or a settling house, customers would insist on exorcisms to rid them of their supposed poltergeist. Anton, of course, leaned in devising charms and spells for his Cl to complete the act. But in 1955, Lavey had enough of a reputation as a ghost hunter to quit his crime scene photographer gig. Instead of taking pictures of grisly deaths, lavey now claimed that he could spend all his time, quote, exploring the black arts. Yeah, but exploring the black arts don't pay the bills.

[Andrew]

No, it doesn't, dog. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. If it was a black arts podcast, we wouldn't be one. You know what I'm saying? You know, they said, bit of a true crime podcast to begin with. With you. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So Lavey also joined the San Francisco Musicians Union in 1955 as an organist, which got him a gig playing the Wurlitzer organ at a cocktail lounge ominously called the Lost Weekend.

[Andrew]

Oh, cool.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a really good name for a cocktail.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a great.

[Andrew]

Exactly where I want to be, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

And I think it's. I mean, I know I found a picture of it from, like, 1979. So it. It survived. It was a very long running, you know, San Francisco bar.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's such an interesting thing because he's a ghost hunter who helps people, like, fix their pipes, so feel like he's actually helping them fix their problem, but, like, he's fixing the pipe and he's like, ah, ghost is gone.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but dude, but think about. That's like the ultimate like thing. Cuz you got something, you paid for it. He fixed the issue, you know what I mean? It's. Everybody's happier. You still believe in ghosts. He got money, everybody's happy. Ghost plumbers. Yeah, that's how it started. That is literally how Ghostbusters, I believe it was called Ghost Smashers. Yeah, was the original.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it all goes back to the magical principle of a Doesn't matter if it's real or not. Only thing that matters is if it works. In 1955 was the year that Anton Lavey truly started developing his reputation as a local character in San Francisco. In fact, it's my personal opinion this is, and this is just me, I think that all Anton lavey ever really wanted to be was a local character. I think he just wanted to be the weirdest guy in San Francisco. But the thing about being the weirdest guy in San Francisco, Cisco, is that it puts you in the running for being one of the weirdest guys in the world. So when Anton lavey opened the door to local character status, the enterprise sort of ran away with itself within about a decade.

[Andrew]

Well, I also think you and I kind of picked up on something that I've been thinking about more and more about Anton lavey that I do believe that he wanted to be in the movies.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. That is that again, local character was the status he wanted. Being in the movies was the job he wanted.

[Andrew]

I think that what we'll see, every single thing kind of comes up up against that where I think in the very, very end he really just wanted to make art, I think.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I think he just wanted to make movies and tv. Yeah, I think that's it. He just, he wanted to be in show business.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did he ever run with like Neil Cassidy or the Dead or anything like that? I mean, weirdos doing drugs.

[Andrew]

He hated hippies. Oh, Anthony, the whole point of the Church of Satan was anti hippie.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he didn't run with Neil Cassidy, but he ran with people who ran with Neil Cassidy, which actually we'll get to one of those people here in a second who actually had sex with Neil Cassidy.

[Andrew]

But.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, who. But you know, as far as how Anton became a local character, he did indeed have multiple big cats in his possession throughout the 1950s and 60s.

[Andrew]

He must have had some experience.

[Marcus Parks]

He had to have. Yeah, he started with a leopard named Zoltan, smuggled through Burma and then Israel by an associate of lavey's. Zoltan the leopard became like any other pet in the lavey household. Seemingly, Anton Leve did have enough experience with big cats to train and tame Zoltan the leper, because this big cat was safe enough to sometimes take naps with Anton young daughter. Now in 1956, Anton's parents bought Anton and his growing family a two story home at 5114 California street in San Francisco for the paltry sum of $9,500 to two story townhouse in San Francisco. 9,500 bucks, 1956 rent for the place now. God, no, it's not. No, it absolutely is not. Well, but later, even though his parents bought it for him, Anton Lave would lie and say that he had discovered that this house. House was not only a former bordello and speakeasy, but it also once been home to San Francisco's voodoo queen. According to lavey, his house had at one point belonged to a woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant, who according to the local press, had been responsible for the deaths of four people, including her longtime business partner, all in the pursuit of voodoo. The rumor was that a servant had seen Pleasant pulling apart the bones in her partner's skull to pick out bits of his brain to use in voodoo rituals. In reality, though, this was all just slander. Mary Ellen Pleasant was not only an essential link in the underground railroad, but she was also one of America's first black millionaires. She was a brilliant businesswoman by all accounts, but Mary Ellen Pleasant didn't take no from nobody.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

She was also naturally an abolitionist. And her dedication to the cause was so strong that when the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for insurrection in 1859, there was another note from Pleasant detailing escape instructions in John Brown's pocket. But because the people of San Francisco simply couldn't handle that a black woman could be so successful in the mid 19th century. It was said in the press, mind you, this is what the newspapers printed, that Mary Ellen Pleasant was only successful because she used voodoo.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's the type of they've been doing for all of time. And like starting with Cleopatra.

[Andrew]

Although voodoo is famously bad for making money, it's like not. It's really honestly, for all of the magical purposes, it's not super good at it.

[Marcus Parks]

Pleasant actually was a trained voodoo priestess.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah,

[Andrew]

she might have sort of been highly trained in it.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, voodoo is a religion just like any other, of course, you know, and she. And the thing is about Mary Ellen Pleasant, she had been born into slavery. Her mother was Haitian. Her mother had Taught her the voodoo practice. But, you know, Mary Ellen Pleasant story is incredible.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's amazing. That's a amazing American story. That's a movie.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's a movie. But when the press found out about her practice and tried exposing her, Pleasant doubled down and started carrying around a crystal ball as a prop. She therefore went down in San Francisco legend as the city's voodoo queen, the Marie Lavo of the Bay Area. And Anton Lave was trying to capitalize on that spooky reputation by saying that his name, new house, had once been hers.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it makes sense. Why not?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But it's not true.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, it's not.

[Andrew]

No, no. You know how it is. What are you going to do? But I also kind of always wondered how he retrofitted his house in the way that he did.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's the thing, is that while the house did not belong to Marielle Ellen Pleasant, it could have been a bordello. It was.

[Andrew]

There's something going on in there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Rooms.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. What's that?

[Henry Zabrowski]

A lot of rooms.

[Marcus Parks]

Lot of rooms. Lot of secret entrances, secret passages. Yeah. Hidden passageways. Bedroom had multiple entrances. There were multiple secret entrance ways that lavey would later customize that ran throughout the entire house. In other words, lavey saw the possibilities here. So to further advance his local character status, he immediately upon moving in, painted the house's exteriors black.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it was awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

This, of course, would be the Church of Satan's infamous black house, where Anton would create the church and hold its first satanic black masses.

[Andrew]

And also the windows were permanently boarded up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Permanently painted over.

[Marcus Parks]

And I'd call it the first satanic tourist attraction in history.

[Andrew]

I would say so. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

It was a really tiny house smashed in between two giant houses, which is kind of funny too, because then all the things grew around it and it was just this. It's this little two story, completely matte black house.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's gone now.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You should paint your house black.

[Andrew]

Well, we actually have competition.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

We have a goth house also in the neighborhood, so we can't be chasing that dragon. Also horrific for temperature. Horrific for the LA heat. It's bad to do. Yeah. Just drives your bills up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I got a Halloween house on my street. It's black with, you know, all the molding is painted orange.

[Andrew]

You know, it's also nice. You know, I found out because I did want to paint it black. Is that the problem is that you do have to. You have to repaint your house, like every year. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's really expensive.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Interesting. You figure black would be fine?

[Andrew]

No, just cover it with. No, no, no.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a real bad idea.

[Andrew]

It's bad. It's hard to maintain.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Don't do it.

[Andrew]

I'm saying. I wish I could. I wish I could.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, in the late 50s, the Black House served as a beacon for other people who were into occult and paranormal subjects, like Anton. And before long, lavey had gathered enough of a crew to form a group called the Magic Circle. Of course, he couldn't find him anywhere else, so he made a way for them to come to him.

[Andrew]

Oh, yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, the Magic Circle was basically a prototype for the Church of Satan, made up of a bunch of California weirdos who like to talk about magic with a K. The Magic Circle threw parties at lavey's Black House, where they would perform rituals, give lectures on occult topics, and generally socialize with other free thinkers. Amongst the early members of the Magic Circle was a magician and dentist named cecil E. Nixon. Dr. Cecil E. Nixon. Dr. Nixon, DDS. His main hobby was the construction of automatons, which, in essence are somewhere between an animatronic and a robot, usually made of clockwork. Nixon's most famous automaton was isis. Isis was a representation of an Egyptian woman who could supposedly play 3, 000 songs on a zither that sat on its lap using a complex system of gears, cams, sprockets, solenoids and electromagnets.

[Andrew]

And the way that it worked is that the guy would come out, he'd be like, okay, let's get the system ready. So he'd first show you all the gears. So you have this lady sitting on

[Henry Zabrowski]

top of a box.

[Andrew]

He'd open up one door, and you'd see all the gears underneath it. He opened another Gore He' this is also where all the gears are. And he opened another little door that had, like, buttons and little things on it. He's like, here's all the controlling mechanisms. Then he'd close it and he's like, all right, now I gotta go get her prepped. And he turned a big crank, and then he's like, okay, now name a song.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. And there would. There were actually little speakers on ISIS that you would, like, go down and you would ask for the song that you wanted.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, not as impressive in reality as it sounds in theory.

[Andrew]

Shit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Just like, they're real.

[Andrew]

Isis, always. Every day, right? You're like, you guys are not as cool as I thought you'd be.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're just the sequel to Al Qaeda.

[Andrew]

It's always worse. Too much cgi.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's hear a demonstration of ISIS during a televised British Magic show in 1989, after someone asked the automaton to play Home on the Range.

[Andrew]

No, you know what.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It is?

[Andrew]

It really is, isn't it?

[Henry Zabrowski]

It really is Home on the Range.

[Marcus Parks]

It's really not. It's absolutely not in any way whatsoever. Home on the Range.

[Henry Zabrowski]

More of a liar than Anton Lev.

[Andrew]

Well, those are guys are two. Two magicians.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We heard it.

[Andrew]

So for years everybody said.

[Marcus Parks]

Right.

[Andrew]

But for years there were many, so many people baffled by isis.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And they thought that it was magic. And he said, like Nixon said. I'd worked on this for 20 years in secret, and I'm continuing to work on it. And it's the mysterious mechanism.

[Marcus Parks]

The owner of Harris Casino bought ISIS from Nixon and couldn't figure it out.

[Andrew]

He said he couldn't figure it out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It doesn't work.

[Andrew]

Well, how it works is that what happens is, is that there's a guy in it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then when you lower the crank, you show all the stuff because that's like the front of where the guy's sitting. And then when you lower, when you hit the crank, it low, the inner working. So the guy that's in the closed box can crawl into this thing underneath ISIS that has this little keyboard in which you try to play the zither by looking through this little slot with this keyboard. So that's why it sounds like that. Because the guy could barely fucking see and he's trying to do it from the inside in this weird cockamamie like thing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's shit that's still going on today. I went to the Magic Castle last night.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, cool.

[Andrew]

Oh, you went last night?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I went last night. It just randomly was there. I'm thinking about it all the whole episode today.

[Andrew]

But why would you go with. Now would you go with.

[Henry Zabrowski]

With your wife? No, I didn't go with your wife.

[Andrew]

I named no wife. I named a white.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I went with with Julie's friends. It was like a double date thing.

[Andrew]

And you were looking a suit and everything.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I put a suit on. Yeah, yeah, like a big monkey man. And they got a. They got.

[Andrew]

They didn't bring you back to the zoo or anything. They didn't ask you where you're called Irma.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's a piano that just plays and it. What it is, is like you talk to Irma and Irma doesn't exist. It's an empty piano. Piano. But you Speak at Irma. Like, Irma, please play. I. I asked for autumn leaves. I was like, please Irma, please play autumn leaves. And then Irma goes. And then you tip Irma a dollar in her birdcage. And it's like, you know, it's just someone watching from another room, you know. But it's, it's very cool.

[Andrew]

It's very cool.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's my favorite part of the Magic Castle.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So if you ever go, you, you would love Irma spend the whole time in there.

[Marcus Parks]

I know. Yeah.

[Andrew]

You would love the close magic. All the close magic is my favorite things. But yeah, they definitely would touch your wife. Magicians, you can't trust them.

[Marcus Parks]

No, you really can't.

[Andrew]

They make their panties. Yep, their panties disappear.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Anton lavey's magic circle also counted filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger as an early member. This marked the first of lavey's two connections to the Manson family. One of Anger's films, Lucifer Rising, starred Manson family member Bobby Boselle, who was convicted in the murder of Gary him. And that was the family's first first victim.

[Andrew]

Kenneth Anger, to me is also the exact reason why Anton Lavay was really interested more in getting into the movies.

[Marcus Parks]

No, because Hollywood Babylon and how they. Their real is also full of lies.

[Andrew]

It is their real love was the collection of those stories about Hollywood. Yeah, that was their real time passing that they would do. Just talking about all these old ideas of like conspiracy theories. Like old ideas of like Cecil B. DeMille, like having like a girl mill and like having all these things. Like if you ever read Hollywood Babylon, it's so entertaining.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Until the ve should have lived in la.

[Marcus Parks]

He liked San Francisco. It was his hometown.

[Andrew]

San Francisco was. Is. Was still cooler.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was back then. It was especially.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but I mean really when these guys got together, like they talked a lot more about. What was the name of the guy that supposedly, you know, used the coke bottle on the girl and almost got, you know, Chris Farley was supposed to play Fatty Arbuckle, baby. They talked far more about shit like Fatty Arbuckle and whether or not he actually did it than they did about Satan. Yeah, like that's the type of they talked about. But through Kenneth Anger, lavey was introduced to the brilliant artist Marjorie Cameron, who was also Jack Parsons widow. The magic circle also boasted aristocrats, taxidermists, anthropologists and gastroenterologists as members. In other words, lavey was attracting intelligent, curious people into his orbit. Lavey was also exploring so called demonic geometry at this time. So he designed an oddly Shaped black and red medallion adorned with a batwing demon for the most devoted members of the Magic circle to wear. These nerds then formed a subgroup called the Order of the Trapezoids. This was a group within the Magic Circle and those members would eventually become the leaders in the Church of Satan. In fact, what this early group was doing with their rituals really wasn't that much different from what the Church of Satan would eventually do. Their rituals helped with professional advances, unexpected rewards, money, sexual romantic satisfaction, or the elimination of their enemies. But differently, it was a bunch of nerds focusing their energies so they could get the things they wanted out of life, which is what magic is all about.

[Andrew]

Now. Order of the Trapezoid. I had, Natalie and I, I had made Order of the Trapezoid pendants for us to wear in Order of the Trapezoid all comes from William Montgomery idea of what it's considered to be magical interest and the idea of a trapezoidal shape which is what he uses. But again, it was just the drinking group, you know what I mean? The Order of the Trapezoid was just. He'd be like, okay guys, leave. We're having the Order of the Trapezoid secret meeting now. And then they'd like, all right, now we're going to hang out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. When you gave that to Natalie, was she like, could you get me something else?

[Andrew]

No, no, no, no.

[Marcus Parks]

We're all with the women we're supposed to be with.

[Andrew]

Y that's what she gets now.

[Marcus Parks]

Anton Lavey's first marriage didn't last long. In 1959, when Lavey was 29 years old, he met a 17 year old girl named Diane Hagarty who was going by the name of Diane Von Jew. Diane was working as an usher at a movie theater near a bar where Anton was playing the organ. And Anton apparently caught her eye. Shortly after their affair began, lavey divorced his wife for Diane. Although interestingly lavey's daughter Carl Carla stayed in the black house with her father rather than leave with her mother.

[Andrew]

He wasn't, you know, he wasn't that bad at the time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's probably all the trap doors she couldn't find a way around.

[Andrew]

I mean, that's just fun to do.

[Marcus Parks]

The Diane Hagarty would take lavey's last name. And while the two would never marry, it is almost certain that the Church of Satan would have never gotten off the ground without Diane's input, organization and ideas. But just as important was the fact that Diane fully encouraged Anton lavey to finally become Anton Zandor lavey.

[Andrew]

Oh, unless you believe Michael Aquino, who's like, he talked to a. He had a publicist friend explaining him all the way through church things. So they went to the state, they filled out all the paperwork, because that's what they do. So it was not his idea at all. It was the other guy's idea.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's like you don't realize, you know, like, if you were like a fat, complaining loser, people are just gonna like the other guy.

[Andrew]

Damn. This is the whole thing, man. Yeah, sure. But guess what? Everybody liked him, bro. Yeah, everybody liked Anton. No one liked you, Michael.

[Marcus Parks]

No, they really didn't.

[Andrew]

You every time you talk, they probably went, shut up, Michael. Shut the up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I hope we never do an episode on him.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, we will.

[Andrew]

Oh, no, he's coming up next episode,

[Marcus Parks]

you know, he'll be a part of next episode of an episode. A part of an episode.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He doesn't get his own episode.

[Marcus Parks]

God, no.

[Andrew]

Because his shit's too fucking boring. And we are past as a group, you can be thanked. You thank us, thank me. We're not going to talk about the magical workings, okay? Because we know it bores people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because guess what I just tried to do. Read the Temple of Set book, and guess what it is. It's about all of his workings to form the Temple of Set. And guess what it is. Boring as fuck. His eyes are closed.

[Marcus Parks]

Once Diane moved into the Black House, it became, in the words of author Doug Broad in his book Born with the Tale quote, a canvas on which lavey could project his wicked, feverish art, creating a total environment out of his grisliest dreams.

[Andrew]

Cool.

[Marcus Parks]

Arthur and Diane painted their bedroom glossy red, while the kitchen and living room were just as black as the house's exterior. You'll like this, Eddie. The exception in the kitchen was a mural which featured a cartoon bat demon modeled after Shabo from the Night on Bald Mountain segment in Fantasia.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. And what I love is below Shabog. That's where you put all of his organs. I mean, organ in the kitchen is pretty great.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Pretty cool, man. I would love if someone played the organ for me while I cook.

[Marcus Parks]

I know.

[Andrew]

I had that same thought.

[Marcus Parks]

They then decorated the house with skulls. A full size human skeleton probably obtained from someone at a San Francisco hospital. Taxidermied animals, a coffin, a chair that lavey claimed belonged to Rasputin, a coffee table made from a tombstone belonging to some guy named Lucas Matur Machado, and of course, dozens of lavey's own paintings. I actually looked. I couldn't really find Levay's paintings.

[Andrew]

I couldn't either.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, it's insane when you look all. It's just. I mean, I guess it's just a Google thing, but. Yeah, Google is only gives you paintings of Anton Levy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, maybe he never did it and just lied about it.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, they were everywhere. In fact, actually, the.

[Andrew]

They might just belong to his family. This might be in all in private hands.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, maybe. I mean, I, I know he was good at the. The very first press that he got was for his paintings in like 1956. So they were apparently good.

[Andrew]

He was a good artist.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So they got. It was a real skeleton.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they got a real skeleton. They, they. No one knows where they got it from, but they knew so many people. Especially like, you know, they knew gastroenterologists, they, you know, they knew dentists. They knew people in the medical world that, you know, probably could get them a human skeleton.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was a lot easier to get back then too.

[Marcus Parks]

Far easier.

[Andrew]

Oh yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, just like, you know, speaking of like Disney, the Pirates of the Caribbean used to be all skeletons.

[Andrew]

Yeah, real skeletons. That was when it was awesome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And then they switched it out when someone was like, this is disgusting.

[Andrew]

Like, whatever, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, it's not that hard. There's a. I mean, I know there's a antique store in Pasadena right now that's selling a skeleton for like $2,000. I mean, I know it's expensive. Yeah. But it's not hard to get.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I would love. I want my skeleton to end up in a classroom somewhere just so like, some kid would steal my arm one day.

[Andrew]

Look what I've got. Old Eddie's pinky.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Leve also installed a trick bookcase that connected their purple painted sitting room with their bedroom. A replica of King Tut sarcophagus in the living room that also led to their bedroom. And a trapdoor in a fake fireplace that led to the basement. That must have been so much fun to use. I know. I hope so. There's probably a net at the end. Well, basically, I mean, he turned his house into a carnival. It was a spook house. The whole thing is a carnival spook house. Because, you know, in my view, just about everything, it just keeps coming back to the carnival. For another example, when Diane and Anton had their daughter, they named her after a character from the Carney novel Nightmare Alley. This child, perhaps one of the most infamous children in occult history, was Xena. But her part in the story will come later. Now, by 1960. After LaVey and Diane turned the Black House into a funhouse for the occult, Anton began formalizing the magical lectures he'd been giving casually at Magic Circle gatherings. He held the these formal lectures every Friday night at midnight in his red walled living room. Eventually, Lavey opened these lectures to the public, charging $2.50 per person. These Friday night occult lectures came to be known as the first Black Masses, which were intended to be an inversion of the Catholic mass. Instead of speaking on biblical subjects, lavey would give lectures on vampirism, lycanthropy, sideshow freaks, torture methods, sex theories, recipes for aphrodisiacs, gland transpl on monkeys or goats, cool zombies, haunted houses, esp. Homunculi. Basically, it's what people like us have been doing with podcasts for the last 15 years. But in lecture form. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And he did it in a cool ass house with a guy dressed up as the devil hanging out. It's awesome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did he do, was he like playing the organ and stuff while he did it too?

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, sometimes he play the organ, yeah, but yeah, but mostly, yeah, they were just these like formalized lectures. Like, hey, I just, I studied vampires all week. Here's what I learned about vampires.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Man, I bet that was fun as hell.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. For two, 250. Like that's a great Friday night. But taking it far beyond talk, Anton also held activities at these Black Masses. Like the time one of the members of the Magic Circle allegedly obtained an actual human leg from a physician. The supposed leg was cooked in fruit juice, grenadine and triple sec, and served with fried bananas, yams, tonka bean wine and caterpillars. After a lecture on cannibalism was given, it was said that while some in the Magic Circle were squeamish about eating caterpillar, they had no problem feasting on human flesh. But if we're being realistic here, it was probably just pork.

[Andrew]

It was pork. Because in the end we all know that he doesn't believe in human sacrifice. That whole thing, it's just like a funny thing to do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's funny, but it wasn't sacrifice.

[Andrew]

It just stole the leg.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it was, but yeah, it was. I think, I think they said it was like it had been amputated or some. Something like that.

[Andrew]

It's not real.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not real. Yeah. Although it could be. I'd like to think that it could be.

[Andrew]

Well, to me the ideal of like the idea that because I held a cannibal dinner and there's Something about that where it's way. It's more fun to just be like, we're cannibals. Like, then you have to worry about it. It's just fun if it looks like people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You shouldn't. You shouldn't eat people.

[Andrew]

It's just because it can lead to brain problems. You get a prion disease. Yeah, that's the main issue.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Same thing with don't eat dolphin either.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

A lot of too much mercury.

[Marcus Parks]

That's right.

[Andrew]

That's the main issue.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, once Anton Lavey started opening his home to the public, he also completely transformed his look. In 1960, looking to copy the style of medieval executioners, carnival strongmen, and black magicians like Aleister Crowley, Anton lavey shaved his head, donned a cloak, and shaped his goatee into an aggressive point. Now, lavey claimed that he did this to mimic the Faustian depiction of Mephistopheles, who's usually seen as the devil's liaison or the devil's agent or cat.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But it has been noted that Anton lavey may have taken inspiration from a father far less high futin source instead of f. It's speculated that Anton Lave took his look from Don Rickles.

[Andrew]

Yes, he did. Of course he did. That hockey puck.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Well, you want to look good, you know, you got to look like a man.

[Andrew]

I'm Polish. My father used to do every time he saw Don Rickles.

[Marcus Parks]

Just about a month before Anton the Vade debuted his new look in nineteen nineteen sixty six, Don Rickles had appeared as a supernatural villain in an episode of a now forgotten espionage western TV show called the Wild Wild west, which I watched a little bit of. It kind of seems like a cross between Mission Impossible and Gunsmoke.

[Andrew]

Interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's interesting.

[Andrew]

Whoa. He's so funny looking in this. Yeah. Oh, my God, Eddie. I've never seen him looking like that. That's hilarious.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Rickles, in a rare dramatic turn, he played it totally straight. Plays a sinister black magician named Asmodeus who uses occult imagery, rituals, and black magic to frighten and manipulate the townsfolk in a typical 19th century Western settlement. In his episode, awesomely titled the Night of the Druid's Blood, Rickles character even burns someone alive in a seemingly supernatural fashion. But ultimately, the deaths are exposed as simple murder using smoke and mirror, much like a very dark episode of Scooby Doo.

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's very cool. I can't wait to watch this.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But in the end, it cannot be denied that while the character design of Asmodeus definitely took from depictions of Faust. Mephistopheles. The style of Don Rickles in this role, broadcast just a month before Anton lavey unveiled his own look is incredibly similar to lavey's bald headed, pointed goatee style.

[Andrew]

He also looks like what? Like there's also that famous guy was Ming the Merciless was like a thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, man. You know, that pissed Rickles off. Like the first person that that looked like him was like a Satanist.

[Andrew]

Oh, he probably had no idea.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, you believe a guy, you believe in Satan. Satan. That's better.

[Andrew]

Have you heard about this? Anyway, anyway.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh,

[Henry Zabrowski]

I see. I hate looking out my window. Every day I get up and I. I look outside of my window and I When what do I see? Cyber truck. Every day a guy who lives across from the street from me, he's got a cyber truck. And you know how I fix that? Blinds.com. that's right. Go grab the little pole to the left of the blinds and you squeaky squiky squiky, squiky squiky. And they shut. Cybertruck. No more. Blinds.com saves the day again. They'll help you not not look at all kinds of stuff outside your house

[Andrew]

and keep all those peeping toms from

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

From your grave.

[Andrew]

Now.

[Marcus Parks]

While Anton lavey was certainly getting attention for all this occult imagery, he was also gaining local notoriety in San Francisco in the mid-1960s as the big cat guy. This kind of tells you like what San Francisco was about in the 60s.

[Andrew]

God, so much fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. See, in 1964, his leopard, Zoltan. I mean, cat's cat. No matter if it's big or small, cats sometimes run out of the house when you open the door.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Of course.

[Andrew]

Course they do.

[Marcus Parks]

This time, Zoltan ran out of the house, got hit by a car.

[Andrew]

It's a leopard.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Different than a cat, you know what I mean? It's definitely way different than a cat. No, a cat.

[Marcus Parks]

A cat's a cat. You leave the door open, cat's going to get out.

[Andrew]

A leopard's £150.

[Marcus Parks]

It's pretty big. I can only imagine the. Also the person who hit the guy.

[Andrew]

Walk a living I'd be so scared. What kind of dog is that?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Zoltan was killed and buried in Anton's backyard. Lev and his family were devastated by Zone Zoltan's death. So In November of 1964, a member of the Magic Circle bought a baby Nubian lion for Anton. Le did such a good job with the first one.

[Andrew]

At least it killed itself.

[Marcus Parks]

Come on. You, you, I. We've all, you know, gotten a pet after the one pet died.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To be honest, I recommend it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now when they're leopards.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you have to worry about. About being, like, sad like I think you should, as soon as your pet dies, get a new pet.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's my view.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, you got replaced.

[Andrew]

New pet, always done.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I have multiple pets and I'm ready for them to die.

[Andrew]

Yours are staggered out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Andrew]

In generational, you get to really play with that. That's awesome. Great roster.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. We do the same thing at our houses. It's always going to be two dogs. One young, one a little bit old. But you stagger them so that way you're never without a dog. That's the idea, because they're going to die every time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But, you know, you never know which one's going to go. Tootsie was supposed to, like, make it okay for me to deal with Rambo dying, but then he died and she's still around a year later.

[Andrew]

She ain't going nowhere. She did it. She's an evil woman, just like mother, you know?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Makes sense.

[Marcus Parks]

When Anton got a new big cat, he got a lion, and he named it Togar after the stage name of an Austrian lion tamer. Now, again, Anton lavey must have had experience with big cats because as opposed to Count Dante, who couldn't stop his lion from attacking his students, lavey was able to take. Take Togar to his daughter's kindergarten class for show and tell.

[Andrew]

I mean, like, it's gotta be something.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, this lark was actually reported in the San Francisco Chronicles. That absolutely happened.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But it was still a kitten at that point.

[Marcus Parks]

At that point. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But even so, you remember, like, Count Dante, his people would say, like, every time we tried to feed the cat, you had to hold down all four of its paws because it would scratch the out of you. Anton lavey knew what he was doing.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Anton lavey is better than Count Dante.

[Andrew]

One thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Because Count Dante is a. A pale imitation of Anton lavey. And seemingly Anton lavey parlayed this lion coverage into Getting a part time job writing a column for the Chronicle himself, in which he cemented his reputation as one of San Francisco's weirdest characters. While the column was mostly about his time as a paranormal investigator, it was also where lavey made his first claims about being a lion trainer, a carnival organist, a police photographer and an accordion teacher. Teacher.

[Andrew]

So that's. That's where he set the lore.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And this legend was set. This was before. This is two years before he started the Church of Satan.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Easier to lie back then.

[Andrew]

It really is. And honestly, you say that, but it's easy to lie now. You just gotta keep doing it. That's the key, Eddie. Never give in. Ever dig in. Never change. Alex Jones sold his family down the river when he broke character. Okay, man, he broke character. That was his biggest problem.

[Marcus Parks]

Togar the lion was, after all, still a lion. While Togar was well behaved enough where Anton could walk it through his local supermarket just to get a reaction from the public. The lion did once almost kill the grandson of the 21st president of the United States. Chester A. Arthur.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not Chester A. Arthur.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm sorry I share a birthday. I'm attached to him.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Well, Chess. It's Chester A. Arthur's grandson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I still love him.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Arthur A. Arthur.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, President Arthur's grandson was also Chester A. Arthur, but he called himself Gavin to set himself apart. Called himself Gavin Arthur.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Great.

[Marcus Parks]

Gavin.

[Andrew]

Gavin.

[Marcus Parks]

Gavin Arthur was yet another fascinating figure in Anton Lavey's orbit. By the mid-60s, Arthur had established himself as both an astrologer and a sexologist. Think Albert Kinsey. But if he was obsessed with horoscopes,

[Andrew]

it's a perfect time to be a sexologist.

[Marcus Parks]

It really is.

[Andrew]

Slash astrologer.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And you know who was like super into Gavin Arthur's sexologist stuff is Alan Watts. Alan Watts loved it. Like, like he would write all like. And he knew Alan Watts. He was like, Gavin Arthur was in that scene with Alan Watts and all those guys. Well, and you know, Gavin Arthur would call himself the pre hippie hippie. He was active in the early gay rights movement as a bisexual. He was friends with and had sex with various writers amongst the Beat generation. That's where Neil Cassidy came in.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it came in, came on, came out, whatever. And he was also an early leader in San Francisco's hate ashberry scene before the whole thing fell apart. That's what he means when he says he's the pre hippie hippie. He was. He was there in the beginning when they were like, okay, there's something going on here. Something's changing. You know, perspective is changing. And then of course, the hippie movement just did what it did. Yeah, like he was the guy. He was one of the guys at the very beginning.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's very cool.

[Marcus Parks]

And those were the guys that Anton lavey hung out with. And when Gavin Arthur dined with Anton LeVay, he, he found himself suddenly trapped under 250 pounds of lion. As Togar ripped Arthur's suit to shreds in the middle of dinner, he smelled

[Henry Zabrowski]

the president on him.

[Andrew]

Gotta get the Chester.

[Marcus Parks]

But ever the wag, Gavin later quipped to the Chronicle, this is what I

[Andrew]

get for not hiring a lion.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sit up.

[Marcus Parks]

You just see him. I guess it is a bit of a snaggle post line.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh yeah, this is what I get

[Andrew]

for not hiring a lion sitter.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Exit stage right. Even

[Marcus Parks]

sometime in 1966, Anton Lavey decided that his profile was not quite high enough. After shaving his head and putting on a cape and devil horns, lavey officiated a wedding as a high priest of Satan, complete with a naked woman on the altar. The ceremony was of course both public and covered by the press. But after the second ceremony, Lave started gaining national attention as both a big cat guy and as a Satanist. But his neighbors, instead of going after the Satanist angle, they started getting very vocal about Togar.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it makes sense. You know, there's a lion attacking the neighborhood. We'll deal with the Satan stuff later.

[Andrew]

Yeah, Satan's kind of a esoteric issue that we're kind of all sort of trying to sort out. But there's a lion on the street. There's a lion in that house over there.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it, it really does show you everything about San Francisco. There's great, there's news footage, there's archive footage of people interviewing like neighbors. And they're like, I don't care about the Satanism stuff. Who really cares? But this lion keeps starving. My husband when he roars at 2am

[Andrew]

it's so loud.

[Marcus Parks]

He's so loud.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The walls are so thin.

[Marcus Parks]

Eventually though, Togar got to be too much to handle cuz it's always a bad idea to have a lion as a pet. Diane Hagarti tried brushing Tabasco sauce on the furniture because Togar kept chewing everything pieces. And Togar was known to go into rampages within the house that would cost thousands of dollars to repair.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Got to get a scratching post.

[Andrew]

Really does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, or scratching a cross.

[Marcus Parks]

That'd be good.

[Andrew]

Man, that would be so much fun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Upside Down. Cross.

[Andrew]

Scratch, scratch. It's awesome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I should have worked for Anton.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Lev had tried and failed to sell Togar to a circus for $5,000.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You should have tried for four.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But after Togar clawed and burst a water pipe one day, flooded the basement of house. Lavey said it, and got on the phone to the San Francisco Zoo that very day to donate the beast. Lave, however, wasn't happy about the circumstances that led to him losing Togar. He said he cursed his neighbors for complaining.

[Andrew]

I curse you.

[Marcus Parks]

And many of them thereafter moved away, died, or disappeared.

[Andrew]

I think that mostly that was just what happened with San Francisco.

[Marcus Parks]

They're also just. They were. All the people that were complaining were old, and that's what old people do.

[Andrew]

I got a feel.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, he got rid of the line because it destroyed his house.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

It was difficult to do. An expensive to keep. And it was a liability was he

[Marcus Parks]

had a lot of feelings. He didn't know how to deal with them.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And he also, for some reason, decided to curse the director of the San Francisco Zoo, who seemingly doing Anton a favor.

[Andrew]

Yeah, dude, honestly, he's trying to help, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Lave claimed that he put all of his frustrations into a crystal baboon figure in a ritual chamber belonging to a friend. And while we could find no articles whatsoever about this supposed incident. Because you'd think the paper would have covered this.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey said that shortly after he made all these curses on the baboon figure, the director of the San Francisco Zoo was killed by apes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, I just did the whole thing on the San Francisco Zoo, and that was definitely not in their list of incidents.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I don't think he was killed by apes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah. No. If anything, he would have been killed by Tatiana, who wasn't born yet.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. Yes. Togar, meanwhile, was renamed Neil.

[Andrew]

And Neil, we're calling a lion Neil.

[Marcus Parks]

That's a terrible name for a lion.

[Andrew]

It's a lion.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And in 1972, he was sold to a film director named Noel Marshall, who kept Togar in his home in Sherman Oates here in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah. It's like, I. I pretty certain I know the house.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And they kept a ton of animals there because Marshall had a thing for lions as well. And in 1981, he directed the notoriously disastrous lion movie Roar.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, Melanie Griffith's dad.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. We're gonna get into that right now because the production of this movie, weirdly, has an occult angle that has nothing to do with Anton Lavey. Because coincidence is something that follows Anton lavey everywhere.

[Andrew]

It's just the truth.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And Togar, by the way, was one of the stars of Roar. Now this lion movie, described as both the most dangerous movie ever made and the most expensive home movie ever made. It is insane. It stars Tippy Hendren from the Birds, who was married to Marshall.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Their daughter, Melanie Griffith, she's the co star. And Jan De Bont, who directed Twister and Speed, was the cinematographer on this movie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

It took five years to complete this film because the big cats like Togar were less than cooperative. And as a result, over 70 cast and crew members were injured by big cats in both small and nearly fatal incidents during filming.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

A lion cutely named Cherries. She bit Tippy Hendrin's head hard enough to scrape her skull. Melanie Griffith almost lost an eye to another lion. She had to get cosmetic surgery.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, the rumor is. I don't know how true it is, but like, that she was almost scalped and, like, her top of her head was flopping up and down.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, actually, that's what happened to Jan De Bont.

[Andrew]

Oh, Yana Bond.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Or I guess it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's what happened to Yan De Bon. He wasn't even a actor. He was the cinematographer. He was fully scalped by the same lion that almost ate Tippy Hendrin. He had to get two. They said it took 220 stitches to put his scalp back on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, I got to say, Roar is unwatchable.

[Andrew]

It is a bad film.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. The director himself almost lost an arm after a lion bit his hand. That was just one of 11 serious injuries sustained by Noel Marshall, including gangrene and blood poisoning from all the bites. All this took years for him to recover from. Togar was actually one of the lead lions in the movie, but his previous good behavior was forgotten. He bit the assistant director in the throat and jaw before trying to. Trying to chew off the 80s ears. And this is after the ad accidentally cued an attack, because that's what would happen. They could just. You could make one movement. Hand movement, hand movement. Lion goes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because they refuse to pay, all the animals sag, you know, rates.

[Andrew]

That's the problem.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The union representative in here, and then they just attacked them.

[Andrew]

That's how it always is. Believe me, I work with Jeffrey Tambor. I know what goes on.

[Marcus Parks]

And this is just a. A small, small sampling of all the. That went down during the production of Roar. The amount of sheer mayhem around this movie has caused people to Call it a cursed production, but it said that Rohr's curse is merely an extension of another movie curse. Marshall had funded Roar with the money that he had made as a producer for the Exorcist.

[Andrew]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And it was rumored that Roar was plagued by the same satanic curse that made the Exorcist so difficult to film, which I'm sure was all very amus to Anton the Vape.

[Andrew]

I mean, it's just because William Fren's kind of an.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he's an. And he refrigerated the set and all that. And then. I mean, Roar was not cursed. It was filled with lions and tigers, literally bloodthirsty predators.

[Andrew]

The Exorcist just had a very perfectionist director that made things hard on the cast.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there was elephants, too. Like an elephant almost killed someone in the film during the filming of Roar.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hell, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Get at him.

[Andrew]

This makes me think of Katy Perry.

[Marcus Parks]

Why Roar? Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

I just think of her just. Just floating through space, naked. I don't know why that's my default. Yeah, well, just her spinning through space, frozen and naked.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hell, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Dead. No, she's frozen and naked in space. She's going to be dead.

[Andrew]

I guess so. Chili. Chili. I didn't really think about it that way.

[Marcus Parks]

But partly, the Church of Satan's great success was very much a case of right place, right time. While San Francisco was already well established as a counterculture hotspot by 1966, Lavey was also riding a wave of uncertainty sweeping America when it came to the role that religion was supposed to play in the modern world. On April 8th of that year, Time magazine published a now infamous cover story with a headline. Headline asking, is God Dead?

[Andrew]

Y.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If you gotta ask, yes.

[Andrew]

He hasn't shown up in a long time.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the whole point of the article was basically, you know, we used religion for so many years to explain the things about the natural world that we didn't understand. But now that we're in this era of modern science and we understand so many more things than we once did, what role does God play? Do we need God anymore? And therefore, is God dead?

[Andrew]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Just asking the question naturally caused a lot of outrage in the Christian establishment and also amongst Christians worldwide. But Anton lavey was paying attention to not only the content of the article, but also the reaction. He immediately saw how publicly questioning the Christian God could translate into a lot of attention and a lot of publicity if you did it in the right way. So taking inspiration from such occult institutions as they Hellfire Club and Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Fma and then sprinkling a lot of carnival atmosphere over the whole thing. Anton lavey announced the founding of the Church of Satan on volpur just nacht 1966. 60 years ago this month. And it is incredible that all these sixes show up in the same month that we did episode 666. And while purchase knocked. Is your birthday.

[Andrew]

Yep. No, it's kind of a whole thing. It's really strange. I'll always kind of think about the fact that all of that material was handed to me as I then also was cast on a show in which I played a devil. And then I dealt with all that. We like. It's just. It's. It's very funny how it all shakes out. I also think that Anton Lave was inspired by Scientology in terms of the money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Well. And understanding that you can do that, then you can just set up a actual religion.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm really excited. Next episode to talk about Sammy Davis Jr. Poor devil. And your pretty face is going to hell. They all come together.

[Andrew]

I just love Sammy Davis Jr. And fucking the whole thing. Yeah. Cat.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

She. Hail Satan now, baby. He's amazing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

666 always was a big day for me too, because that was the day I moved to New York City to become a comedian.

[Marcus Parks]

That's amazing. And yet my very first apartment in New York City, the address was 666St. Nicholas Avenue. St. Nicholas is another word for Santa, and Santa is an anagram for Satan.

[Andrew]

That's awes. Yeah, dude. Yes. He made us, man. I feel his power in my vein. I will. I'm gonna kill God. I'm gonna kill God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I Last week.

[Andrew]

I'mma kill God.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey declared 1966 to be Anno Satanus, year one of the satanic calendar. But considering the year and the city in which it was founded, the Church of Satan was not the party you'd assume it to be. The church actually forbade the use of drugs and hallucinogens because. Because they, quote, impeded the effective control over one's surroundings. Alcohol was allowed, but only in moderation. And it was often served at Church of Satan parties as a concoction called Goblin Juice. And it was usually served from a toilet. So it kind of gave you, like, it. There was a. A hint of like, you know, don't get too drunk.

[Andrew]

Yeah. You might want to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Which is. He's. He was always about that. He was always like that. He was a. He's not a teetotaler. But he was cool. Close to it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Meanwhile, the Catholics are giving wine to children.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And then all kids get chlamydia from sharing the goblet with everybody.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. And herpes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, after the Church of Satan opened its doors, they began attracting misfits of every type, from the mentally ill with delusions of grandeur to curious knowledge seekers who felt like the hippie counterculture was lacking a distinct edge. Lave, in fact, hated hippies. He called them the final de. Evolution of man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whatever, bro.

[Andrew]

No, he was. Well, I actually saw.

[Marcus Parks]

He saw them as lazy. They. They're lazy. Like, they're just smok. They're just doing drugs and they're not doing anything.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Well, the one thing that he did, his real point was, you know, what he was really against was the idea of at the time, the idea of free love.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Andrew]

That is what he was specifically against.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He liked to pay for it.

[Andrew]

Yes. He liked to be being a poo poo. But no, his thing was, I don't think you. You deserve to be loved just for existing. The free love movement was all about how everyone should be loved no matter what they do. And you create an absolution type environment for anybody that wants to come and kind of try to forgive themselves first, and then you guys can all be like this idea that we all should be loved no matter what. Anton lavey is trying to say, earn my love.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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

[Andrew]

The hippie movement failed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. They all became fucking bankers and shit.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. No, they. They fail completely. Well, and it's also the. Just the simple fact that free love doesn't work.

[Andrew]

No. It's actually caused quite a bit of rape. Yes, it did.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It caused a lot of. A lot. A lot, a lot of problems. It just was. And. And that's the thing, is that Anton Levay did understand people. At the very least, he did understand people. And he did realize that, you know, people do need. We need rules.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Right.

[Marcus Parks]

We do need some. We need at least code that we need to live by. And. But he also understood that having a deity as the arbiter of those rules didn't work. It's like, if you're only not committing crimes and doing horrible things because you're afraid that God will punish you for it, then you're a real piece of, like, you need Every man and woman needs to do things because it's the right thing to do.

[Andrew]

For society.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, for society.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And I think the only hippie band that could use the calliope was Blood, Sweat and Tears.

[Andrew]

I mean, they would really be able to back that up because they got the sound.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But it's hard. It's very loud instrument.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's hard to do loud, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Whether the people coming to the Church of Satan were mentally unbalanced or merely weird, many of them that were attracted to the Church of Satan, they wanted to use ritual magic to gain successes that they felt they were rightfully owed but had been denied for one reason or another. In one example of a revenge ritual, the congregants would arrive to a satanic black mass dressed as the person they hated and wanted to curse. They would then spend the evening acting and talking like their nemesis. Then, at the end of the night, the congregates would symbolically kill their nemesis through the casting of spells. Henry, for example, if he were to do this, would show up, act, and talk like Eddie Redmayne all night.

[Andrew]

Oh, I'm just a lady. Oh, don't worry about me.

[Marcus Parks]

Lady.

[Andrew]

Best actor in the world. So skinny and wonderful, no? Yeah. But I do think that mad this kind of makes sense. But you know what's funny is that practically, I think you could. You'd be surprised what you learn walking around in the shoes of the person you hate all night.

[Marcus Parks]

Probably.

[Andrew]

Like, I actually bet you, you end up getting a form of empathy from doing it. And that's kind of what he was even saying. Like, even just the curse part of it, it's not even that. It's more like you need to accept it yourself. Like, you need to figure out how to get over other people's thoughts of you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, man, I'm gonna hate Jimmy John no matter how many sandwiches I eat.

[Andrew]

Well, he's a piece of shit.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And this is. It's incredibly nerdy. But the idea was that the participant would gain new confidence from the magical act, and they would return to the world with the poise needed to obtain success in the realms of money, love, or vengeance, depending on their wish. Now, one of the things that's often left out of the history of the Church of Satan is that it was co founded and built from the ground up by lavey's partner, Diane Hagarty. Diane took care of the administrative duties at the church, including collecting the $25 membership FE and producing and distributing all the merch. As we all know, merch is key to being sticky. And Diane made sure that lavey's books, records, plaques, medallions and membership cards. Everyone loves a lanyard.

[Andrew]

Everybody likes a lanyard.

[Marcus Parks]

She made sure that all of that shit made it out to the growing number of Satanists around the country. And so with Diane's help, Anton lavey became the first person to found an organization that was dedicated to Satan and the delights of the flesh. Basically, Satan is, is a sort. It's. It's kind of a mix of like Ayn Rand style selfishness and hedonism, but with the caveat that nothing you do should ever hurt anyone else. Children, especially the child. Caveat was added early on because it seems like Lavey predicted the satanic panic of the 80s in which Satanists would be accused of molesting and or murdering children en masse without a single shred of evidence. Wow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's interesting that a man who married a child wanted to protect them so much.

[Andrew]

Who was back in the 1950s. They weren't there. They weren't children yet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Back then.

[Andrew]

We just made them kids.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now.

[Andrew]

See, I, I do think the most important thing the Church of Satan enters, which is the thing that I think why it. It's worth anything is all of the layers of consent. Yes, there are in Satanism. There are many, many layers of consent. It is all about you choosing the idea that, that the. What Christianity proposes is a boilerplate view of reality. They think that, like, when you're Christian, that you're just like. And it's a Christian world and there's nothing you can do about it. And you around with these rules created by an arbitrarily, by an unknowing, unfeeling deity far above you that you now are supposed to walk around like a puppet. This thing's supposed to be like, no, you choose.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, it seems like the Church of Satan is better to women.

[Marcus Parks]

Far better than.

[Andrew]

Well, he stole everything from women that ever. Every. Every idea he had was stolen from women. He loved women truly. And I duly, completely understand at Anton Lavey worship women, but he, and he definitely plagiarized most of his best ideas from women.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that is true.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Take it back.

[Andrew]

Yeah, he's great. No, he loves what he trusted. Women. Women were an extremely important part of the Church of Satan. He lo. He actually viewed women as morally superior to men.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And, and as far as like, consent goes, the stuff the Church of Satan was doing, like, they were talking about ideas of consent in the late 60s that really only became a part of the culture at like just, I would say American culture at large in 2020, maybe 2015. You know, like, like those, those ideas of consent. Yeah. They were around for a long time. It's just that they were buried in the Church of Satan.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Because the hippie movement was a whole misogynistic thing that we didn't really understand that was game towards being like, oh no, man, we all ball each other, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's like sometimes dangerous people, people hid inside of the hippie movement.

[Andrew]

A lot of them did.

[Marcus Parks]

Many dangerous.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm a hippie sympathizer and I know that's true.

[Andrew]

Charles Manson, number one.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now one of the things that made the Church of Satan so successful both in gaining supporters and in attracting enemies, was its effectively spooky imagery, much of which is styled around the sigil of the goat headed occult figure Baphomet.

[Andrew]

That's why, if you can get a chance, get the out of print book, the command to look. It is all this. It is, this is everything. It's the heart of. I had no idea. I'm a student of Satanism and I had no idea until I just got this book.

[Marcus Parks]

Hell yeah. Well, the sigil of the Church of Satan was an inverted pentagram containing a goat's head surrounded by five stylized Hebrew letters that spelled out the words Leviathan, one of the crown princes of hell.

[Andrew]

Leviathan is one of the crown princes of hell. It's no big deal.

[Marcus Parks]

But that goat was based on Baphomet. Now, Baphomet was the right figure for Anton lavey to choose here, and not just because Baphomet is the coolest looking and most recognizable figure in all of Occultum. To jog your memory, Baphomet is the hermaphroditic goat headed figure with gigantic horns and wings, sitting cross legged with one hand pointed up and the other hand pointed down. It certainly appears demonic, but it was in no way meant to be a representation of Satan.

[Andrew]

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

[Henry Zabrowski]

remember in Boca we had the Christmas tree and then like everyone was like, well, if you're going to have a Christmas tree, you got to have a menorah. And then like the Satanists in Bokeh got a, they were, they applied and got a Baphomet sculpture in the middle of the same place.

[Andrew]

That's fun as hell. Yeah, that's great.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I, I love Bath Met staff statues around.

[Andrew]

Yeah, they're awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Actually I have a Baphomet statue in, in my home.

[Andrew]

Oh yeah?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that my brother in law got me for Christmas. It was great.

[Andrew]

It's really trying to see you.

[Marcus Parks]

Very sweet. Well, the word Baphomet actually first appears during the Crusades in 1307 as a sort of weapon to be used by the French Crown against the warriors of the Crusades, the Knights Templar. See, the King of France felt that the Templars were becoming too powerful. So he declared that the Templars were worshiping an idolatrous bearded figure called Baphomet. And he had many of the Templars arrested and tortured based on this accusation.

[Andrew]

And you remember the reason why they did that too is because they were running protection for all the treasures coming back from the Crusades. And eventually they said, what if we just keep the treasures? Yeah. And then they just said, then they made him Satanists.

[Marcus Parks]

It's about money. Yeah, well, I mean it's not even Satanists. I mean it's weird. It's. In reality, Baphomet was a corruption of the medieval European word for Muhammad, who of course was worshiped by the other side in the Crusades. Interesting that medieval European word was Mahamat, which became Baphomet. Yeah, it's basically saying that they were worshipers of Muhammad but they kind of created a new sort of person.

[Andrew]

It was a whole extra evil.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, an extra evil Muhammad that only the Knights Templar worshiped, but it was all based on basically Islamophobia. Baphomet came back in the 19th century when it was said that he became the subject of worship of another secret society, the Freemasons. Fritz occultist Eliphas Levi took this rumor and ran with it. He gave Baphomet light. He designed the Baphomet we all know today for his 1854 book, the Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic. Looking for a figure that would represent a balancing of opposing forces, Levi reimagined Baphomet as a hermaphroditic winged figure with the head and feet of a goat. He then adorned his illustration with esoteric symbols galore and in doing so created one of the most metal images in history. But as Far as how Baphomet came to represent Satan, Levi's illustration was simplified and used for the Devil card in the popular Rider Waite tarot deck in 1909. That, of course, sealed Baphomet's association with the Christian devil. This imagery was picked up by Aleister Crowley and eventually Anton lavey, who both understood how powerful of an image. Image Baphomet was. Lavey also understood how valuable his image of Baphomet was, and in 1981, his depiction of the occult figure became a registered trademark of the Church of Satan.

[Andrew]

Excellent. See, this is the thing. It's not evil like Baphomet is. The reason why it works so well for esoteric symbolism is because when you look at it, you're like, oh, my God, this evil God, this evil horn thing. But it's exactly what you said. It's technically just a symbol of the balance of the flows of male and feminine, dark and light, all of these things. It's about balance. It's a not an evil figure at all. It just looks evil, which works great for people. And also the Devil card, it's not about something bad happening to you. It's about you getting several temptations and thinking about and possibly changing what you're doing. It's about opening up your mind to other possibilities.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sounds like it's a similar image as Justice.

[Andrew]

Certain. And justice doesn't even have her tits out. And she should. She should. If she wanted us to pay attention.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Andrew]

Why are there no nipples on Justice?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, they're there.

[Andrew]

There's no tits on Justice.

[Marcus Parks]

There can be. There sometimes is.

[Andrew]

Should you flop them out?

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes they are flopped out. I remember in high school there was a, A. There was somebody who got real upset about an exposed nipple on a Justice statue.

[Andrew]

It's just unbelievable. Like you're going to jerk off to marble, I guess, if you can. Good on you. You know, I need more than that. Suction machines, candles, alcohol.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How is your suction machine? Is it clean yet?

[Andrew]

It's honestly been struggling. It's really been str. I think it's going through depression. You should clog.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you should change out the vacuum tubes.

[Andrew]

Oh, that's what it is. Yeah, I got it all webbed up now.

[Marcus Parks]

Upon its founding, the Church of Satan almost immediately began attracting celebrities. But the first real celebrity to darken the door of the Church of Satan's black house was sex Symbol and all around groovy chick Jane Mansfield. Love Jane Mansfield. As a busty blonde who was far smarter than she appeared. Jane Mansfield was supposed to be 20th Century Fox's answer to Marilyn Monroe show. But after the blonde bombshell trope fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mansfield started taking risks. She became the first American actress to perform a nude scene in a starring role, which naturally came with a lot of judgment and tut tuts from the general public. This wasn't at all out of character for Jane Mansfield because she'd already appeared in Playboy spreads throughout the 1950s. So she was sort of bad. Like, what. What the. Who cares?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I already go, yeah, I already did this thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But according to some theories, Mansfield was looking for something to put her back into the spotlight in the mid-1960s. And after being judged harshly for her sexuality, here was Anton lavey, who had founded a church, no less, saying that it was all right for you to be yourself. Mansfield therefore visited the Church of Satan when she was in San Francisco for a film festival in 1966. While Mansfield maintained that she remained Catholic, she thought that Anton lavey was a genius or at the very least a very interesting person. So she participated in a few rituals as a curiosity. Jane Mansfield was also highly intelligent in just as self aware as Anton lavey. So the two of them formed a sort of symbiotic friendship. Mansfield made the Church of Satan sexy, while Anton lavey made Mansfield a little dangerous and a little hip.

[Andrew]

And man, Michael Aquino, such a jealous little. That's my whole take on it too, because he's like James Mansfield. She. She had a. Maybe a sort of passing fancy of Anton, but it was certainly Anton's drive. There was no way Jane Mansfield would ever be into Ant on the Bay on its own. And it's like whole thing being like, you just. You unfuckable nerd. It was definitely, I do believe it was a two way street.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No chicks were in Kino.

[Andrew]

Not a single one. Look at his eyebrows. He was like, yeah, sometimes I want to fuck the bad boy, dude. Sorry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Mansfield's a good get there.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, interestingly, while Jane Mansfield's life, it was certainly rocky before she even met Anton lavey, it truly began falling apart in the most tragic ways after their friendship began. See, this is when Anton still had Togar the Lion and Mansfield's young son Zoltan, who just coincidentally had the same name as lavey's leopard.

[Andrew]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

He became enamored with. With the lion.

[Andrew]

Oh.

[Marcus Parks]

So when Mansfield took Zoltan to an animal park called Jungle Land usa, Zoltan got too close to a wild lion because the Kid thought that the big cat wanted to play the lion attacked, bit Zoltan hard enough to fracture the child's skull, and then bit him again and ruptured his spleen.

[Andrew]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

The Zoltan survived, but just barely. What happened next, though, is shrouded in mystery. Multiple versions. Versions of the same story and a lot of legend. That event, of course, is the grisly and gruesome death of Jane Mansfield in 1967. And this is just a year after she met Anton lavey. In one version of the story, the whole tragedy began when lavey gave a tour of the Black House to Mansfield and her boyfriend, Sam Brody, who is also her divorce lawyer.

[Andrew]

He really worked it out.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey warned both of them as they were walking through the house, don't touch anything, but particularly stay away from the candles shaped like skulls. But Brody wandered off and lit a skull candle anyway while lavey was presenting Mansfield with an official Baphomet pendant.

[Andrew]

Look what I did, honey. I directly divide the magus's orders. Isn't this a wonderful evening? Still going through that divorce right now.

[Marcus Parks]

When lavey saw that the candle had been lit, he told Jane Mansfield that the skull candles were only used for curses. And since there was no magical direction when Sam Brody lit the candle, Levey had no idea what was going to happen to the two of them now that Brody had lit one. In another account, far more dramatic, upon seeing the lit candle, lavey got agitated

[Andrew]

and shouted, you will both be killed in a tragic car accident. Accident within a year. When it happens, it will be very subtle, Like, oh, boom, boom, whoa, Crashing kind of thing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love people who can exploit a good old tragedy, of course.

[Andrew]

Well, he was before the tragedy. Just set it up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's not even. He's not even done yet. In yet another account, lavey said that Mansfield had asked him to put a curse on her ex husband, Mickey Hargitay, so she could get full custody of her children. This, however, is a lie, because Mansfield had already been granted full custody before she even met lavey. Lavey also claimed that he and Mansfield had a sexual relationship, that Jane was madly in love with him and would call several times a day to ask him to cast spells that would help her career. During one phone call, lavey said Jane's boyfriend grabbed the phone and told him to cease all communication, stop talking to Jane. So lavey cursed Brody, declaring that he would be dead within one year.

[Andrew]

I curse you.

[Marcus Parks]

As it went, Brody was dead within a year, but so was Jane Mansfield. On June 29, 1967, Jane, her boyfriend Brody, her driver, and three of her kids were driving to New Orleans when their Buick slammed into a truck. The top of their car was sheared off, killing Jane and the two men instantly. She was not decapitated, as the legend goes, but her skull was crushed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

As far as the kids in the car went, they all survived, including Jane Mansfield's daughter. That daughter was Mariska Hargitay, who you probably know best as Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order svu.

[Andrew]

No nonsense, ladies. She's super tall. She's beautiful.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

James Mansfield. Should have been shorter. She would have lived.

[Andrew]

You're right. It's her fault. You're right, Eddie. Her man, her huge breasts. No, no, never.

[Marcus Parks]

No. She's one of my favorite graves at Hollywood Forever. Oh, she's got a really great stone. It does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All of her dogs are with her, too, right?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, according to legend, beautiful, beautiful woman. Yeah.

[Andrew]

God damn.

[Marcus Parks]

But when Jayne Mansfield was killed. God, we could talk all day about the attractiveness of Jane Mansfield. Yeah. But when Jane Mansfield was killed, Anton Levade tried including himself in the story. Although I do not think it came off anywhere near as cool as Levay thought it would. He claimed that one day in 1967, he made a fatal mistake while making a Church of Satan scrapbook.

[Andrew]

No, I lost my movie stuff. I knew I should have hired a historian.

[Marcus Parks]

While cutting out an article on Marilyn Monroe, lavey said his scissors slipped and he accidentally cut a photo of Jane Mansfield across the neck. This put an accidental curse on Mansfield. And the vase scrapbook story, which he told over and over and over again, that did a lot of the heavy lifting in contributing to the still persisting rumor that Mansfield was decapitated during the car crash that killed her.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I thought she was until this moment.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I'm kind of sad

[Marcus Parks]

that she wasn't it actually. That all. It's all Anton Levey.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Really?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You know, it's a great story.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't get me wrong. Head was crushed.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Unrecognizable.

[Andrew]

Completely popped off. I mean, again, that's that little bit of a. That's a little X factor that Anton lavey kind of adds that we miss. We miss around here.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But Jane Mansfield was not the only celebrity to become interested in the Church of Satan. Nor was the Church of Satan free from other infamous figures. Join us next week as we cover Anton's involvement with Susan Atkins of the Mansfield family, his fight with Temple of Set founder and satanic panic figure Michael Aquino, and the Fascinating story of how Mr. Show Business himself, Sammy Davis Jr. Became heavily involved with Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, reportedly until the day he died.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool.

[Andrew]

Sammy Davis Jr. Loved Satan. Mr. Bojangles, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love it, man. You know, Sammy is cool as hell.

[Marcus Parks]

He really cool. No, I actually plan on telling like his full story because you, because for me, like, Sammy Davis Jr. As a Satanist always sounded like a joke. But I, you know, I disc in looking into it, it was absolutely real. And of course, then there's the questions. Like, It's Sammy Davis Jr. How does Sammy. How does one of the Rat Pack become a Satanist? It makes total perfect sense.

[Andrew]

It literally all makes sense. I just watched an amazing documentary, Sammy Davis Jr. And it makes total sense because he really was like, he was more Jewish than any other Jewish guy around him. Like, literally they all went to him like that. He became, became so Jewish that like, Billy Crystal said he treated him like his own personal rabbi that anytime he had problems with, he would like, call Sammy Davis Jr. Up and he would go on about the Torah. And then he taught himself Hebrew. He was primed for Satanism. In a way. He was primed.

[Marcus Parks]

If he was a seeker, he was a seeker. Yeah, because it went, his, his evolution went Scientology, Judaism, Satanism. That's awesome.

[Andrew]

It's really interesting. We'll get there. And also next week we'll talk about how I can already hear you, which is the use, I'll use the slur that Anthony Anton lavey used for all of you occult nicks I've heard about. I know that you occult nicks are already kind of upset about the fact that I'm talking about Michael Aquino because we do know he's technically a good guy, which is hilarious. Like, he's technically a good man. He's a way better guy than Anton lavey. He just happens to be way worse at everything else.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just super annoying.

[Marcus Parks]

He's really, he's very annoying, but the

[Andrew]

people of his ass.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's why no one trusts the Democrats. We're so annoying.

[Andrew]

That's Bro, look at his ass.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't put we in there.

[Andrew]

Look at his Eddie Monster ass.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he's ugly.

[Marcus Parks]

I ain't no Democrat. I also want to say do nothing.

[Andrew]

You don't even know. I, I, I'm a libertarian. The true way of the future.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, and also I want to say rip to Schooners and lck, my, my long, my longtime bar. Yeah, the, the, the, the old, you know, muck and grime that was schooners. After 30 years, it's finally closing down, man. So I got to say rip to schooners, all all you folk out there in LCK that are still going, go have one on me. Go. Go have a schooner, a Bud Light and a Marlboro Red and relive my college days.

[Andrew]

Don't make me thirsty for it, man. Don't make me thirsty for got to pay. Patreon.com podcast to listen to our show ad free. You also can see Last Stream on the Left Live, our streaming show on YouTube every Tuesday, 5pm PST. Go check it out. Go. Also look at all of our social media at LP on the Left, blah blah blah. But please see us live. Last podcast on the left dot com. See us live. We are lots of different places.

[Henry Zabrowski]

June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan at the GLC Live at 20 Monroe Joel. July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Canes Ballroom and July 18th, Oklahoma City Tower Theater. Those are the last three JK Ultra shows. But don't worry, we will be announcing some more down the pipe.

[Marcus Parks]

Interesting.

[Andrew]

We cannot wait. So go check out also check out HDX2. It is kicking season 2 on LPN TV and the brighter side's got new going on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Finals are coming, dude.

[Andrew]

It's coming, dude. Someplace underneath it's got new material coming out. LP on Romantasy. Go check that out on our YouTube page.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hell yeah. And I'm hitting the road myself. I got a lot of shows coming up. Go and see that on eddytunes.com I'm coming to all kinds of cities, including San Francisco. So fun.

[Andrew]

Great. Well, hail sweet, sweet Hail Satan. And it's good to say it when it's proper.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Full throated Hail Satan.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure. Hell game.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And on these like 666, 667 episodes, I would like to hail the wonderful Rob Oakey for all the work you

[Andrew]

do on this show, buddy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Rob works his ass off.

[Andrew]

Thank you, Rob. Will some woman buy him? Can some woman come and buy my Rob, please? He's for sale. I'll sell you to him. Hey podcast listeners. Mr. Ballin here to let you know we are now publishing four times a week on my podcast, Mr. Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories. That's right. You'll be getting four new episodes a week covering unbelievable mysteries, chilling through crime and stories so strange they sound made up, but they aren't. They're all true. Don't miss an episode. Listen to and follow Mr. Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most of your journey. A partner like the Love's Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride,

[Marcus Parks]

you earn points on food, fuel, drinks and more every time you scan.

[Andrew]

Then you can spend those points at Love's just like cash, so every stop is even more rewarding. Download the app today and watch the points roll in mile after mile. Love's Rewards save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. See website for details.