The Satanic Bible Anton Szandor LaVey


INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe


PREFACE


PROLOGUE


THE NINE SATANIC STATEMENTS








(FIRE) --BOOK OF SATAN-- The Infernal Diatribe [I] [II] [III] [IV] [V]








(AIR) --BOOK OF LUCIFER-- The Enlightenment


Wanted!: God - Dead or Alive The God You SAVE May Be Yourself Some Evidence of
a New Satanic Age Hell, the Devil, and How to Sell Your Soul Love and Hate
Satanic Sex Not all Vampires Suck Blood Indulgence... NOT Compulsion On the
Choice of a Human Sacrifice Life After Death Through Fulfillment of the Ego
Religious Holidays The Black Mass






(EARTH) --BOOK OF BELIAL-- The Mastery of the Earth


Theory and Practice of Satanic Magic: (Definition and Purpose of Lesser and
Greater Magic) The Three Types of Satanic Ritual The Ritual, or "Intellectual
Decompression", Chamber The Ingredients Used in the Performance of Satanic
Magic: Desire Timing Imagery Direction The Balance Factor The Satanic
Ritual: Some Notes Which are to be Observed Before Beginning Ritual The
Thirteen Steps Devices Used in Satanic Ritual






(WATER) --BOOK OF LEVIATHAN-- The Raging Sea







INTRODUCTION Burton H. Wolfe* On a winter's evening in 1967, I drove crosstown
in San Fransisco to hear Anton Szandor LaVey lecture at an open meeting of the
Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper articles describing him as
"the Black Pope" of a Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and funeral
ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. I was a free-lance magazine writer, and
I felt there might be a story in LaVey and his contemporary pagans; for the
Devil has always made "good copy", as they say on the city desk.



It was not the practice of the black arts itself that I considered to be the
story, because that is nothing new in the world. There were Devil-worshipping
sects and voodoo cults before there were Christians. In eighteenth-century
England a Hell-Fire Club, with connections to the American colonies through
Benjamin Franklin, gained some brief notoriety. During the early part of the
twentieth century, the press publicized Aleister Crowley as the "wickedest man
in the world". And there were hints in the 1920s and '30s of a "black order" in
Germany.


To this seemingly old story LaVey and his organization of contemporary Faustians
offered two strikingly new chapters. First, they blasphemously represented
themselves as a "church", a term previously confined to the branches of
Christianity, instead of the traditional coven of Satanism and witchcraft lore.
Second, they practiced their black magic openly instead of underground.


Rather than arrange a preliminary interview with LaVey for discussion of his
heretical innovations, my usual first step in research, I decided to watch and
listen to him as an unidentified member of an audience. He was described in some
newspapers as a former circus and carnival lion tamer and trickster now
representing himself as the Devil's representative on earth, and I wanted to
determine first whether he was a true Satanist, a prankster, or a quack. I had
already met people in the limelight of the occult business; in fact, Jeane Dixon
was my landlady and I had a chance to write about her before Ruth Montgomery
did. But I had considered all the occultists phonies, hypocrites, or quacks, and
I would never spend five minutes writing about their various forms of
hocus-pocus.


All the occultists I had met or heard of were white-lighters: alleged seers,
prophesiers, and witches wrapping their supposedly mystic powers around
God-based, spiritual communication. LaVey, seeming to laugh at them if not spit
on them in contempt, emerged from between the lines of newspaper stories as a
black magician basing his work on the dark side of nature and the carnal side of
humanity. There seemed to be nothing spiritual about his "church".


As I listened to LaVey talk that first time, I realized at once there was
nothing to connect him with the occult business. He could not even be described
as metaphysical. The brutally frank talk he delivered was pragmatic,
relativistic, and above all rational. It was unorthodox, to be sure: a blast at
established religious worship, repression of humanity's carnal nature, phony
pretense at piety in the course of an existence based on dog-eat-dog material
pursuits. It was also full of sardonic satire on human folly. But most important