Episode 667: Anton LaVey Part II - Paint It Black

There's no place to escape to this is the last on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. I'm ready. All right, all right, Marcus, you've brought a special instrument in that we have to exhibit for the audience. Yeah, this is my stylophone theremin. The antenna is a little wonky on it, so I'm just going to use the trigger on it. Just remember, before you listen to the sounds, these sounds are so powerful, so esoteric that 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. I mean, they can't handle it because it's weird. I like the theremin because it's the only instrument you can play with your asshole. Someone help 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? Yeah, he's my career. You are not fit to smell my shit. I look at the theremin as the reason, like, people don't use an orchestra to score a film. You don't need it. You don't need it at all. You don't need to have it, dude. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks, badly playing the theremin. Here with me is Henry Zebrowski, the man who's just sitting there letting his tongue hang out of his mouth. Like, half his brain isn't working. It isn't. It isn't. It's me. It's Henry Zebrowski. And I love the theremin because it 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. A true con man. Yeah. A true con man. A true con man. A true con man. A true con man. The theremin is one of the most difficult instruments to play in existence. What are you talking about? You should listen to. That was great what you just did. Dude, listen to real theremin. There's some real. Listen to Clara Rockmore. Clara Rockmore? It will blow your fucking mind out of the back of your skull. All right. Clara Rockmore. And we have the man who's getting into theremin music over the next week. It's Ed Larson. Oh, how's everyone doing? You know, I had a question. What? Is this 666 or 667? This is 667. 667. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But the thing. Well, 6-7 is the thing. If this was episode 6-7, we would do this. But it's not episode 6-7. It's 6-6-7, which is a number most zoomers can't count to. And also, we're not Catholic. We don't do 6-7. You see the Pope got in on it? Oh, I don't even. I'm just even also straight up. Pope is beginning the Butlerian Jihad. Huh. The dude. I don't know what that means. Anti-robot, like, whole thing. It's written by. If you remember, he wrote this anti-AI thing. It started in Dune with the Catholics. We're not here to talk about Dune. Thank you, Marcus. This is Anton LaVey, part two. Yeah, one nerdy thing at a time, Henry. Hey, I just want to make sure. Please. If you're listening to this, fucking is impossible. 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 carny novel, Nightmare Alley. And instead of spending a life in the chains of the mundane world, LaVey had decided to bet everything on a life in the circus. Fuck yeah! Supposedly, Anton joined the Clyde Beatty Circus in the spring of 1947, where he was given the responsibility of feeding and watering the circus's. big cats as a roustabout and so-called cage boy at the age of 17. Roustabout, by the way, is the dudes who set up and tear down the carnival at each town. Oh, okay. And you know, if you don't water those big cats, they don't grow. I hate you, man. Fucking. They just stay small cats. I know. You're so angry. I was angry even thinking about it. Well, LaVey 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 a Count Dante. In other words, Anton claimed that in order to better work with the lions and tigers, he ate his food with them and mimicked their growling noises as they ate. Grr. Meow. Hey. Hey, leave me alone. This is my soup. You're not supposed to be eating soup, tiger. Okay, this is my soup. Chicken noodle soup. I don't know how you got a taste for this. Leave me alone. Meow. Shut up. Meow. Meow. Hey, meow. Hey, listen. You got any bread to dip in this soup? Oh, well, then I guess we're not at lunch together, are we? Said he even slept in their cages. Said he'd get clawed or knocked to the ground. But these incidents were chalked up as, quote, unintentional mishaps. For those of you that are following Long and are also potential students of the esoteric, I would submit to you to go and read Michael Aquino's two-book-long, personally published, his own version, biography of the Church of Satan and the whole thing. Because Michael Aquino. More fucking homework? Oh, yeah, buddy. Because one book's the book and the other second book is the book to reference. You got it. You got it. You got to read when you're reading the first book. Now, it's important to remember Michael Aquino. Seriously, so many footnotes that he had to do in second volume just to hold the footnotes. Oh, just amendments. It's fucking infuriating. For those of you that don't know, Michael Aquino is the Eddie Munster-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. 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 utter dweeb. And when you read his. How do you even grow your eyebrows like that? Practice. He made his eyebrows roll thorns. 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. He writes his whole book. He's all like, Anton LaVey, he lied about going to the circus. And he definitely didn't affect Marilyn Monroe. And it's like, yeah, buddy. We know. Anton LaVey even said it's a lie. Yeah. You constantly go like, and there was just no possible way. He was at the circus. Because if you look at the rules of the circus performers that happened at the time, you don't see Tony LaVey's name in there, do you? I would like to know. And you're like, bro, you lost the whole fucking point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing we do know. Good Daffy Duck. He really captured his essence. It is him. It's good. But one thing we do know that Anton LaVey did in the circus, he did learn how to become a master of one of the most powerful and legendary of all organs, quite possibly the hottest pipes in all existence. Oh, shit. Crack organ. Burned the lips. Well, at the circus, Anton LaVey became a master of the instrument most associated with the circus. The mighty collider. Calliope. Yeah. Now, calliopes, as Anton LaVey played them, were steam-powered organs that used train whistles for their pipes, which made calliopes so painfully loud that even the smallest of calliopes could be heard from miles away. Even the smallest. You know, the elephants love it. Oh, yeah. All the animals do. The horses, the lions, the tigers. They love being blasted in the face with loud noises and hot steam. Here's an example of a calliope from my favorite calliope album, Big Top Circus Calliope, played Out of Doors, Volume 1, by Paul Eakins. Oh, yeah. Doesn't that make you feel good? No, it does. It does. It just sort of feels like the general noise in my head at all times. Yeah, yeah. It just kind of feels like me desperately trying to do my taxes. Whatever. It's just, any moment of silence I have is just. When I hear music like this, I forget that law exists. Yeah, yeah. I just want to swing and a hand. Get out of my way, kid. God, I love it so much. I love calliope music. I love that it's your first favorite, that's your favorite calliope album, because mine is Getting Gapes to Calliope by Gay Jenkins. You ever listen to that? Yeah, they turn the guy into a calliope. And he's like. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The calliope player for the circus that had taken in the young Anton LaVey, he was reportedly. I mean, they say he was an alcoholic. I think most calliope. players are alcoholics most circus people from this time period are alcoholics reportedly this guy leaned on the keys more than he actually played them which also sounds awful just to do in one version of the story lave said that one day the calliope player was simply too drunk to play and anton stepped in and another far more satanic version of the story anton claimed that he was so hell-bent on getting behind 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 lave 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 yeah and then life just sort of took care of it for him so bad it's gonna happen to you like it's all he did because he'll look like i get it because like we all want this like i do think that every time he talks like this remember he's serving a fantasy for you to fulfill everybody wants to hear that you can go i curse you and then you can just move on and do all this stuff he even knows anton lave 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 sure yeah there's always a little like i curse you 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 yep welcome to america you're hired well anton stepped in played a rousing version of the william tell overture and the alcoholic player was put on permanent sabbatical anton lave was now a performer so after he was elevated to the resident calliope player at the clyde baity circus he changed his name from tony levy to anton sandor lave after his great uncle as a performer he came to be known as the great and this is a clip of him years later playing a synthesizer mimicking a calliope cool this is me just trying to just desperately put together the tv stand i'm like going through the forms this is me looking at ikea forms and ikea plans just thunder blazes thunder blazes i'm actually starting to like him now yeah he's really fun yeah that's part of his like big top medley it goes on for good four or five minutes oh i was hoping 40 i do have uh an anton lave uh album which he plays the organ throughout it's uh it's a really fun album it's great it's part it's part of the organ section in my uh record collection which is apple yeah the organ section yeah love them hot pipes now anton lave 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 lave 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 baity circus anton settled down in long beach california at the end of the year to play anton lave 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 francesco lentini francesco lentini and the two-faced bill dirks you know i'm looking at this for me these guys are great i love it bill dirks his little third leg just kind of comes out of his butt that a lot of that's really i mean when they say like three-legged performers the 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 because usually when you walked into the tent it really was just kind of like a weird thing that's not appendage and usually and that's the thing is that it was actually so disappointing sometimes that usually the sideshow performers would also have like a secondary act so you'd walk in with a thing yeah you'd walk in and they wouldn't just be like oh you know here's a couple of conjoined twins and always be like oh here's two conjoined twins who also know how to play the fiddle and sing yeah of course because that's a show that's your show yeah and like we just watched the elephant man last night and i cried watching it god i fucking love that movie yeah we just forgot that was the whole thing is the guy who ran in some 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 pennies burlington coat factory uh but the elephant man that was the whole thing is that he didn't have to because of just how he was the only one that wasn't underwhelming no he was the closer yeah the elephant man was a yeah good old good old joseph merrick but bill dirks i've never experienced the love of a woman it's the sad it's the saddest death of all it really is yeah is it do you know how the elephant man died yeah well i watched the bradley cooper stage version that was fucking awful yeah so he died by there was that the reviews after the fact i was so close i literally went at one point and i really covered my mouth oh live theater no no way they can see me 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 it's fucking awesome it's like i'm not enough let's talk about lack of confidence trust me buddy you're ugly yeah lave 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 talented who would uh swallow and eat like a bunch of fish and then he would regurgitate through a hoop into a fish bowl that's awesome yeah again that's a show yes fish died but except for fish yeah fish don't count yeah 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 bills themselves as the human ostrich just to see what the fuck it is oh yeah yeah better be tall yeah you just got to give them a fun name yeah just pick an animal yeah especially if he kind of looks like it that's awesome yeah but out of all the sideshow acts that anton lave 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 fucking amazing it's like sort of a retelling of todd browning's freaks but yeah they would say yeah it's dude i got off vinegar syndrome it's fucking 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 lave said is where he truly watched and learned but anton lave 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 a difference in anton lave's life and i think it's really interesting to see what anton lave has to say about his role in the circus lave 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 lave truly leaning in to playing a sort of villain or at least appearing to be a villain and this was certainly something his villain persona the circus also reinforced lave'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 lave 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 and that is the key to what really the church of satan is all about it's not really about what we keep talking about it's really an anti-hypocrisy stance it's about being true to yourself you know it's like if you're gonna go out like it's basically like make a choice like either you're gonna 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 fucking do both well he did both yeah exactly he's a hypocrite but also understood he was getting a paycheck but he got a paycheck he also understood like there is i do think that this is the core to really try to understand of all of us is that if this is as deep as it really was supposed to go for anton lave like this was the beginnings of a the idea of we're setting ourselves free we're trying to get out of all of this stuff we're trying to because how many times have we seen the issue be you're something that you're not yeah and so you are showing up every day what why is it such a problem that you're not showing up every day and you're not showing up every day and you're not showing up every day and you're not showing up every day thing now that we especially now that we're seeing that the guy that's anti doing anti trans laws is more likely than not using trans sex workers it's like that's the thing now like it's it's like the way to be so this is he kind of uh broadcast that early on very much so yeah i mean it's and that's it's also a crowleyan idea you know like alistair crowley would say the same thing what 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 uh by those who are not true to themselves or who are not being their true selves if you're going against what you're supposed to be that's where you're you're only going to cause pain to yourself and to everybody around you especially everybody around you i legitimately think the world would we would be different if a time traveler dresses an artist went back in time into adolf hitler's fucking class went took all his stupid ass paintings put him in a gallery and said adolf these are amazing that is literally all he would needed and we would not be here we wouldn't be dealing with any of that i think we'd be dealing with different things but i always find it weird when people say i'd go back in time to kill baby hitler you kill him as an art student it's more fun oh no i'll tell you what though talk about finally this is really all about killing babies with impunity yeah that's really what it's about that everybody who says that is just super curious about like wholesale just fucking murdering a baby and you can do it without feeling any form of guilt if it's hitler yeah yeah we we did have this conversation at home not too long ago and we settled on um teenage hitler yeah yeah like you said like you you kill him at 15 yeah oh that's a good one yeah yeah yeah you hear that you fucking evil 15 year olds now lave 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 lave 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 lave claims that one of the dancers at the mayan was a pre-famed 22 year old marilyn monroe nice lave 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 lave lave lave when marilyn monroe orgasmed she quote gnashed her teeth and farted well he wished he definitely wished because he does we know he likes his peepee and he likes his farts and he loves his farts but i you know what i really do think that happened is sniff my sinful fart yes you smell the sin smell the sin did they not know what creeps were back then i think that to be honest no i think that that's what he meant but i you know what i do think is that because he's anton levain these stories all 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 sure 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 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 fucking marilyn monroe sure it's about choosing the marilyn monroe form i get it now following his supposed you fucking idiots now following his supposed fling with marilyn monroe levain 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 levain said that he also got a job taking pictures of women modeling clothes and underwear even though the census lists his status in 1948 as unemployed let's just say a lot of guys who take pictures of women in their underwear are technically by the state but regardless of what the paperwork says the draft was still in effect in 1948 so to avoid military service levain enrolled at san francisco city college as a criminology major supposedly this led to levain getting a job as a crime scene photographer at the san francisco police department now the sfpd has no record of anton levain working for them under any name but levain maintained that his record must have been expunged they were ashamed of having anton levain on their ranks but even so levain said that his time photographing the grotesque blood soaked bodies of car accident and murder victims led to another revelation in his words anton decided that quotes there's no god there's nobody up there who gives a shit man is the only god so man must be taught to answer to himself and other men for his actions forget about yeah i unfortunately agree with anton levain unfortunately here this i do have to agree with him at the very bottom so this is my belief he looked at the works of ouija while he was taking classes as in criminology ouija being the in the famous crime scene photographer from new york city fantastic now i know there's a book out of all of his stuff that i have forgot to include into what is the one of the biggest inspirations for anton levain in the church of satan and it's a book by william montgomery the photographer called the command to look he became obsessed with this book it was a thing that william montgomery who took these pictures very similar to diane arbus naked a lot of naked ladies but also like really intense effects monsters like very german uh expressionist and also grizzly things people would deform in these and old stuff and he made them beautiful and he built this whole aesthetics world of like of of tips that he wrote in this book and each one of them is satanism to its core and so i think that the photography angle is partially his own obsession with william montgomery that then he fed into he fed these things to his own saying i did them yeah and said but he's just studied them very thoroughly yeah because it's it if you're building a myth like like anton levain was building a myth um like first of all it's the mid-20th century ain't no internet ain't no way to check nothing uh so if you tell a good enough story and anton levain 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 yeah exactly the thing nobody wants to hear that so when you say studied the works of ouija ouija is a photographer not like the ouija board no no no we 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 beautiful honestly most beautiful way possible it's kind of insane beautiful and brutal he would show up to these he really was this like weird character and sometimes he'd like show up before the cops did oh it's one of those guys like la confidential style exactly i'm pretty certain that that is kind of based on him oh so he studied the works of ouija but he's such a nerd he should have studied the works of wedgie i hate you he wasn't even interested he wasn't even actually interested in the material like you explained it it was interesting i will say that it was a bait but it didn't you know i didn't work on it in anton levay's personal life it's known that he married for the first time at the age of 21 but since it was 1951 nobody batted an eye when anton married a nice 15 year old middle class girl named carol lansing and after the two of them moved into an apartment near a san francisco amusement park called playland carol gave birth to anton's first child carla but while anton levay was starting a family he was also actively seeking out other people who shared his point of view although he was not a fan of carla's first child carla was a fan of carla's first child carla was a fan of carla's first child carla he was having a hard time finding his people he drove to berkeley where he found alistair crowley's order of the lama but after looking into crowley's life and workings a little bit deeper levay decided that crowley was quote druggy poser whose uh greatest achievements were as a poet and a mountain climber forget about it fair fair enough i suppose according to him which just makes all sense by that point if you could even see crowley 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 alistair crowley the man the most evil man to ever live he walked the walk he went through the fucking he crossed the rubicon he met them he met the fucking awas he did all this shit and i'll look at him yeah and it's just like look what he's fucking he's just fucking he's basically just some schmuck that's dying of heroin abuse and all and he's just this garbage guy so of course like you're like it must be a lesson yeah like there's the grand magus yeah he's just some mumbly fuck who's looking for his next fix yep now while the san francisco police department has no record of anton levay's employment it was still the sfpd that seemingly introduced anton to the next phase of his increasingly spooky career in 1953 anton levay became one of the first ghostbusters in america yeah that's cool you don't think that's cool you're stupid that's your plan see according to anton levay he was basically san francisco's version of the x files anytime the sfpd got a 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. And we know that this stuff happens because of when we covered the warrants. We know that cops do, they are people, they're like, all right, you can go look at this weird shit. Yeah. Anton would investigate by camping out in haunted locations in a sleeping bag with a camera loaded with infrared film to capture ghosts. And to monitor fluctuations in the pitch and intensity of the hauntings, he used a 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. It's just, you can just hear the ghost. Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, Tony. Move the antenna to the right. We know you didn't go to the circus, Tony. Yes, I'm having trouble getting fucked. Now, what Anton discovered from his time as a ghost hunter was that people would insist on believing what they wanted to believe, regardless of evidence. Even when Anton would find a real cause for strange noises, like old pipes or a settling house, customers would insist on exorcisms to rid them of their supposed poltergeist. Anton, of course, leaned in. 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. No, it doesn't, dawg. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. If this was a black arts podcast, we wouldn't be one. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know, this had to be a bit of a true crime podcast to begin with, yeah. Yeah. 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. Ooh, cool. That's a really good name for a cocktail lounge. It's a great cocktail. That's exactly where I want to be, dude. And I think it's, I mean, I know, I found a picture of it from like 1979, so it survived, it was a very long-running, you know, San Francisco bar. Wow. It's such an interesting thing, because he's a ghost hunter who helps people, like, fix their pipes. So, I feel like he's actually helping them fix their problem. He is. But, like, he's fixing the pipe, and he's like, ah, ghost is gone. Yeah. But, dude, but think about it, that's like the ultimate, like, thing, because you got something, you paid for it, he fixed the issue, you know what I mean? Everybody's happier, you still believe in ghosts, he got money, everybody's happy. Ghost plumbers. Yeah. That's how it started. That is literally how. Ghost busters, I believe it was called Ghost Smashers. Oh, yeah. Was the original name. Well, it all goes back to the magical principle of, uh, doesn't matter if it's real or not, only thing that matters is if it works. Yep. 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. The thing about being the weirdest guy in San Francisco is that it puts you in the running for being one of the weirdest guys in the world. So when Anton LaVey opened the door to local character status, the enterprise sort of ran away with itself within about a decade. Well, I also think you and I kind of picked up on something that I've been thinking about more and more about Anton LaVey, that I do believe that he wanted to be in the movies. Yes, that is, that, again, local character was the status he wanted, being in the movies was the job he wanted. I think that what we'll see. Every single thing kind of comes up against that, where I think in the very, very end, he really just wanted to make art. I think, well, I think he just wanted to make movies and TV. Yeah. Like, I think that's it. He just, he wanted to be in show business. Did he ever run with, like, Neil Cassidy or The Dead or anything like that? No. Weirdos doing drugs in San Francisco. He hated hippies. Oh, okay. Anton LaVey, the whole point of the Church of Satan was anti-hippie. 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. Oh, wow! Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, who didn't? But, you know. As far as how Anton became a local character, he did indeed have multiple big cats in his possession throughout the 1950s and 60s. He must have had some experience. He had to have. Yeah, he started with a leopard named Zoltan. Smuggled through Burma and then Israel by an associate of LaVey's, Zoltan the leopard became like any other pet in the LaVey household. Seemingly, Anton LaVey did have enough experience with big cats. To train and tame Zoltan the leopard. Because this big cat was safe enough to sometimes take naps with Anton's young daughter. Now, in 1956, Anton's parents bought Anton and his growing family a two-story home at 5114 California Street in San Francisco for the paltry sum of $9,500. Two-story townhouse in San Francisco. $9,500 in 1956. That's not even rent for the fucking place now. God, no, it's not. No, it absolutely is not. But later, even though his parents bought it for him, Anton LaVey would lie and say that he had discovered that this house was not only a former bordello and speakeasy, but it had 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. The rumor was that a servant had seen Pleasant pulling apart the bones in her partner's skull to pick out bits of his brain to use in voodoo rituals. In reality, though, this was all just slander. Mary Ellen Pleasant was not only an essential link in the Underground Railroad, but she was also one of America's first black millionaires. She was a brilliant businesswoman by all accounts, but Mary Ellen Pleasant didn't take no shit from nobody. She was also, naturally, an abolitionist, and her dedication to the cause was so strong that when the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for insurrection in 1859, there was a note from Pleasant detailing escape instructions in John Brown's pocket. But because the people of San Francisco simply couldn't handle that a black woman could be so successful in the mid-19th century, it was said, in the press, mind you, this is what the newspapers printed, that Mary Ellen Pleasant was only successful because. That's the type of shit they've been doing for all of time, like starting with Cleopatra. Well, voodoo is famously bad for making money. It's like, it's really, honestly, for all of the magical purposes, it's not super good at it. Now, Pleasant actually was a trained voodoo priestess. Oh, okay. She might have, like, sorta been highly trained in it. I mean, voodoo is a religion just like any other. Of course. And she, and the things about Mary Ellen Pleasant. She had been born into slavery. Her mother was Haitian. Her mother had taught her the voodoo practice. But, you know, Mary Ellen Pleasant's story is fucking incredible. Yeah, it's amazing. That's a fucking amazing American story. That's a movie. Yeah, that's a movie. But when the press found out about her practice and tried exposing her, Pleasant doubled down and started carrying around a crystal ball as a prop. She therefore went down in San Francisco legend as the city's voodoo queen. The Marie Lovato. Laveau of the Bay Area. And Anton LaVey was trying to capitalize on that spooky reputation by saying that his new house had once been hers. Yeah, that makes sense. Why not? Yeah. But it's not true. No, no, it's not. No. No, you know how it is. What are you gonna do? But I also kind of always wondered how he retrofitted his house in the way that he did. Well, that's the thing, is that while the house did not belong to Mary Ellen Pleasant, it could have been a bordello. There was something going on in there. Yeah, what's that? A lot of rooms. A lot of rooms. A lot of secret entrances. A lot of hidden passages and shit. Yeah, hidden passageways. Bedroom had multiple entrances. There were multiple secret entranceways that 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. Yeah, it was awesome! This, of course, would be the Church of Satan's infamous Black House, where Anton would create the church and hold its first satanic black masses. And also, the windows were permanently boarded up and permanently painted over and shit. I'd call it the first satanic tourist attraction in history. I would say so, yeah. Yeah. It was a really tiny house smashed in between two giant houses, which is kind of funny, too, because then all the things grew around it, and it was just this, it's this little two-story, completely matte black house. And it's gone now, right? Yeah, it's gone. It's just an empty lot. You should paint your house black. Well, we actually have competition. Yeah? We have a goth house also in the neighborhood. Oh, yeah. You can't be chasing that dragon, and also, horrific for temperature, horrific for the fucking L.A. heat. It's bad to do. Yeah. It fucking just drives bills up. Yeah, I got a Halloween house on my street. Yeah. It's black with, you know, all the molding is painted orange. And, you know, it's also nice that, 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. Interesting, you figured black would be fine. No. You just cover it with shit, no one would know. No, no, no. It's a real bad idea. It's bad. No. It's hard to maintain. No, don't do it. I'm just saying, I wish I could. I wish I could. Well, in the late '50s, the black house served as a beach. for other people who were into occult and paranormal subjects like Anton. And before long, LeVay had gathered enough of a crew to form a group called the Magic Circle. Of course, he couldn't find them anywhere else, so he made a way for them to come to him. Oh, yes. Now, the Magic Circle was basically a prototype for the Church of Satan. Made up of a bunch of California weirdos who liked to talk about magic with a K, the Magic Circle threw parties at LeVay's Black House, where they would perform rituals, give lectures on occult topics, and generally socialize with other freethinkers. Amongst the early members of the Magic Circle was a magician and dentist named Cecil E. Nixon. Dr. Cecil E. Nixon, DDS. Dr. 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. And the way 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 top of a box, he'd open up one door and you'd see all the gears underneath it. He'd open another door, he's like, this is also where all the gears are. And he'd open 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'd turn a big crank. And then he's like, okay, now name a song. Yeah. And there were actually little speakers on Isis that you would, like, go down and you would ask for the song that you wanted. That's awesome. Yeah, well, not as impressive in reality as it sounds in theory. Shit! Just like the real Isis. Always. Every day, right? You're like, you guys are fucking. Not as cool as I thought you'd be. Yeah, you're just the sequel to Al-Qaeda. It's always worse. Too much CGI. Let's hear a demonstration of Isis during a televised British magic show in 1989 after someone asked the automaton to play Home on the Range. No, you know what? Hmm. It is. It really is, isn't it? It really is Home on the Range. It's really not. It's absolutely not in any way whatsoever Home on the Range. That guy's more of a liar than Anton Mouffet. Well, those are guys are two. Those are two magicians. He did it. He did it. He did it. I promised it'd happen. How it operated. It did happen right in front of us. We heard it. So for years, everybody said, right? But for years, there were so many people baffled by Isis. Yeah. And they thought that it was magic. And he said, like, Nixon said, I had worked on this for 20 years in secret, and I'm continuing to work on it, and it's the mysterious mechanism. The owner of Harris Casino bought Isis from Nixon and couldn't figure it out. He said he couldn't figure it out. Because it doesn't work. Well, how it works is that what happens is, is that there's a guy in it. Yeah. And then when you lower the crank, you show all the stuff, because that's like the front of where the guy's sitting. And then when you lower, when you hit the crank, it lowers the inner working. So the guy that's in the closed box can crawl into this thing underneath Isis. That has this little keyboard in which you try to play the zither by looking through this little slot with this keyboard. So that's why it sounds like that. Yeah. Because the guy can barely fucking see, and he's trying to do it from the inside in this weird cockamamie-like thing. Yeah. And is that shit that's still going on today? I went to the Magic Castle last night. Oh, cool. Oh, you went last night? I went last night. It just randomly was there. I'm thinking about the whole episode today. Where'd you go with now? Where'd you go with? With your wife? No, I didn't go with your wife. I named a wife. I named a wife. No, I went with Julie's friends. It was like a double date thing. You went looking at a suit and everything. Yeah, I put a suit on. Wow. Yeah, like a big monkey man. And they got one of these things. They didn't bring you back to the zoo or anything. They didn't ask you to wear your shots. It's called Irma. You're right. And it's a piano that just plays. And what it is is like you talk to Irma, and Irma doesn't exist. It's just an empty piano. But you speak at Irma. You're like, Irma, please play. I asked for Autumn Leaves. I was like, Irma, please play Autumn. And then Irma goes, and then you tip Irma a dollar in her birdcage. And it's like, you know, there's just someone watching from another room. You know, but it's very cool. It's very cool. It's my favorite part of the Magic Castle. Yeah. So if you ever go, you would love Irma. You'd spend the whole time in there. I know. Yeah. You would love the close magic. All the close magic is my favorite things. But yeah, they definitely will touch your wife. Magicians, you can't trust them. No, you really can't. They make their panties disappear. Yep. 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 Beausoleil, who was convicted in the murder of Gary Hinman. That was the family's first victim. Kenneth Anger, to me, is also the exact reason why Anton LaVey was really interested more in getting into the movies. No, because of Hollywood Babylon. And how they, their real. Which is also full of lies. It is. Their real love was. It 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've ever read Hollywood Babylon, it's so entertaining. Anton LaVey should have lived in L.A. He liked San Francisco. It was his hometown. San Francisco was still cooler. It was. Back then it was. Especially. Yeah. But I mean, really, when these guys got together, like they talked a lot more about what was the name of the guy that supposedly, you know, used the Coke bottle on the girl and almost got, you know, Chris Farley was supposed to play in the movie. Fatty Arbuckle. Fatty Arbuckle. They talked far more about shit like Fatty Arbuckle and whether or not he actually did it than they did about Satan. Yeah. Like that's the type of shit they talked about. But through Kenneth Anger, LaVey was introduced to the brilliant artist Marjorie Cameron, who was also Jack Parsons. 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 Magic Circle. 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 or romantic satisfaction, or the elimination of their enemies. Put differently, it was a bunch of nerds focusing their energies so they could get the things they wanted out of life. Which is what magic is all about. Now, Order of the Trapezoid, I had, Natalie and I, I had made Order of the Trapezoid pendants for us to wear, right? And Order of the Trapezoid all comes from William Montgomery. The idea of what it's considered to be magical interest and the idea of a trapezoidal shape, which is what he uses. But again, it was just the drinking group. You know what I mean? The Order of the Trapezoid was just, he'd be like, okay, guys, leave. We're having the Order of the Trapezoid secret meeting now. And then they'd like. All right, now we can hang on. When you gave that to Natalie, was she like, could you get me something else? No. No. No. We're all with the women we're supposed to be with. It's too late for that. That's what she gets. Now, 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 Hegarty, 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, Carla, stayed in the black house with her father rather than leave with her mother. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't that bad at the time. Yeah. It's probably all the trap doors she couldn't find a way around. I mean, that's what's fun to do. Diane Hegarty would take LaVey's last name, and while the two would never marry, she would 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. Oh, unless you believe fucking Michael Aquino. He's like, he talked to a, he had a publicist friend, explaining him all the way to do 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. It's like, you don't realize, Aquino, like, if you were like a fat, complaining loser, people are just going to like the other guy. 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. No. They really didn't. You fucking, every time you talk, they probably went, shut up, Michael. Shut the fuck up. I hope we never do an episode on him. Oh, we will. Oh, no, he's coming up next episode. Yeah, he'll be a part of the next episode. A part of an episode. get his own episode god no no because this shit's too fucking boring and i we are past as a group i and you can be thanked you thank us thank me we're not going to talk about the magical workings okay because we know it bores people yeah because guess what i just tried to do read the temple of set book and guess what it is it's about all of his workings to form the temple of set and guess what it is boring as fuck if nothing's happened his eyes are closed now once diane moved into the black house it became in the words of author doug brode in his book born with the tail quote a canvas on which lave could project his wicked feverish art creating a total environment out of his grisliest dreams cool arthur and diane painted their bedroom glossy red while the kitchen and living room were just as black as the house's exterior you'll like this eddie the exception in the kitchen was a mural which featured a cartoon bat demon modeled after schirnebog from the night on bald mountain segment in fantasia hell yeah wow yeah yeah and what i love is below schirnebog that's where he put all of his organs i mean organ in the kitchen is pretty great yeah it's really fucking cool man i would love if someone played the organ for me while i cook i know i had that same thought well 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 lave claimed belonged to rasputin a coffee table made from a tombstone belonging to some guy named lucas machado and of course dozens of lave's own paintings i actually looked i couldn't really find lave's paintings i couldn't either 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 lave well maybe he's not an anton lave he never did it and just lied about it no no no they were everywhere in fact actually the family just might not be in all in private hands yeah maybe i mean i i know he was good in the very first press that he got was for his paintings in like 1956 so they were apparently good he was a good artist yeah so they got it was a real skeleton yeah they got a real skeleton 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 it was a lot easier to get back then too far easier oh yeah i mean just like you know speaking of like disney the pirates of the caribbean used to be all skeletons yeah yeah real skeletons that was when it was awesome and then they switched it out when someone was like this is disgusting i mean it's not that hard there's a i mean i know there's a fucking antique store in pasadena right now that's selling a skeleton for like two thousand dollars i mean i know it's expensive yeah but it's not hard to sell a skeleton for like two thousand dollars it's not that hard to get 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 look what i've got old eddie's pinky well they 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 trap door in a fake fireplace that led to the basement that must have been so much fun so fun was it a slide i know i hope so i don't know i made just a big ladder it was probably a net at the end well basically i mean he turned his house into a carnival it was a spook house it's the whole thing is a carnival spook house because in my view just about everything it just keeps coming back to the carnival for another example when diane and anton had their daughter they named her after a character from the carny novel nightmare alley this child perhaps one of the most infamous children in occult history was xenon but her part in the story will come later now by 1960 after levay and diane turned the black house into a fun house for the occult anton began formalizing the magical lectures he'd been giving casually at magic circle gatherings he held these formal lectures every friday night at midnight in his red walled living room eventually levay opened these lectures to the public charging two dollars and fifty cents 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 levay would give lectures on vampirism lycanthropy sideshow freaks torture methods sex theories recipes for aphrodisiacs gland transplants 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 and he did it in a cool ass house with a guy dressed up as the devil you're all hanging out it's awesome yeah did he do was he like playing the organ and stuff while he did it too i mean some of the things that he did were sometimes he played the organ yeah but yeah but mostly yeah they were just these like formalized lectures like hey i just i studied vampires all week here's what i learned about vampires man i bet that was fun as hell oh yeah yeah yeah for 250 like it'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 made out of tin and triple sec and served with fried bananas yams tonka bean wine and caterpillars and after a lecture on cannibalism was given it was said that while some in the magic circle were squeamish about eating caterpillar they had no problem feasting on human flesh but if we're being realistic here it was probably just pork it was pork because in the end we all know that he doesn't believe in human sacrifice that whole thing it's just like a funny thing to do and it's funny but it wasn't sacrifice they just stole the leg yeah it was bad yeah it was a i think i think they said it was like it had been amputated or something like that it's not real it's not real yeah although it could be i'd like to think that it could be well to me the idea of like the idea that because i held a cannibal dinner and there's something about that where it's way it's more fun to just be like we're cannibals like then you don't have to worry about it just fun if it looks like people yeah yeah yeah you shouldn't you shouldn't eat people no just because it can lead to brain problems you get a prion disease yeah that's the main issue so don't eat dolphin either yeah a lot of too much mercury that's right that's the main issue now once anton levay started opening his home to the public he also completely transformed his look in 1966 looking to copy the style of medieval executioners carnival strongmen and black magicians like alistair crowley anton levay shaved his head donned a cloak and shaped his goatee into an aggressive point now levay claimed that he did this to mimic the faustian depiction of as the devil's liaison or the devil's agent or cat yeah yeah but it has been noted that anton levay may have taken inspiration from a far less highfalutin source instead of faust it's speculated that anton levay took his look from don rickles yes he did of course he did that fucking hockey yeah well you want to look good you know you gotta look like the man yes i'm polish just about a month before anton levay debuted his new look in 1966 don rickles had appeared as a supernatural villain in an episode of a now forgotten espionage western tv show called the wild wild west which i watched a little bit of it kind of seems like a cross between mission impossible and gun smoke interesting yeah it's interesting whoa he's so funny looking in this yeah oh my god eddie i've never seen him in a movie wow i've never seen him looking like that that's hilarious well rickles in a rare dramatic turn he played it totally straight plays a sinister black magician named as modius 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 burned someone alive in a seemingly supernatural fashion but ultimately the deaths are exposed as simple murder using smoke and mirrors much like a very dark episode of scooby-doo wow that's very cool i can't wait to watch this yeah but in the end it cannot be denied that while the character design of asmodius definitely took from depictions of faust mephistopheles the style of don rickles in this role broadcast just a month before anton levay unveiled his own look is incredibly similar to levay's bald-headed pointed goatee style he also looks like what like there's also that famous guy was ming the merciless was like a thing yeah ming the merciless from a flash gordon yeah man you know that pissed rickles off like the first person that looked like him was like a satanist oh he probably had no fucking idea wait you believe a guy you believe in satan satan that's better no have you heard of us anyway anyway you now while anton levay was certainly getting attention for all this occult imagery he was also gaining local notoriety in san francisco in the mid-1960s as the big cat guy this kind of tells you like what san francisco was about in the 60s god it's just so much fun yeah see in 1964 his leopard zoltan i mean cat's a cat no matter if it's big or small cats sometimes run out of the house when you open the door of course they do this time zoltan ran out of the house got hit by a car it's a fucking leopard yeah it's different than a cat you know what i mean it's definitely way different than a cat a cat a cat's a cat You leave the door open, cat's going to get out. That leopard's 150 pounds. It's pretty big. I can only imagine also the person who hit the cat. To walk a living book. I'd be so scared. What kind of dog is that? Well, Zoltan was killed and buried in Anton's backyard. LeVay and his family were devastated by Zoltan's death. So in November of 1964, a member of the Magic Circle bought a baby Nubian lion for Anton LeVay. Yeah, he did such a good job with the first one. At least it killed itself. Come on, we've all, you know, gotten a pet after one pet died. Yeah, of course. To be honest, I recommend it. But not when they're leopards. I don't think you have to worry about being sad. I think as soon as your pet dies, get a new pet. That's my view. Oh, yeah, you got to. Replace a new pet. I have multiple pets, and I'm ready for them to die. Yours are staggered out in generational. You get to really play with that. That's awesome. Great roster. Yeah. We do the same thing at our house. It's always going to be two dogs, one young, one a little bit old. That's the goal. But you stagger them, so that way you're never without a dog. That's the idea. Because they're going to die. Every time. But, you know, you never know which one's going to go. 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. She ain't going nowhere. No, she did not fight. She did it because she's an evil woman, just like her fucking mother. Yep. Makes sense. And 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 Togar to his daughter's kindergarten class for show and tell. I mean, like, it's got to be something. I mean, this lark was actually reported in the San Francisco Chronicles. That absolutely happened. But it was still a kitten at that point, right? At that point, yeah. But even so, you remember, like, Count Dante, people would say, like, every time we tried to feed the cat, you had to feed it. You had to hold down all four of its paws, because it would scratch the shit out of you. Anton LaVey knew what he was doing. Yeah, Anton LaVey is better than Count Dante. Yes! On this one thing. Yeah, because Count Dante is 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. 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. So that's where he set the lore. Yeah, and this legend was set. This was before. This was two years before he started the Church of Satan. It's much easier to lie back then. 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 fucking sold his. his family down the river when he broke character. That can't matter. He broke character. That was his biggest problem. Now, Togar the lion was, after all, still a lion. While Togar was well-behaved enough where Anton could walk it through his local supermarket just to get a reaction from the public, the lion did once almost kill the grandson of the 21st President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur. Not Chester A. Arthur! Yeah, I'm sorry. You share a birthday. I'm attached to him. Wow, well, it's Chester A. Arthur's grandson. I still love him. Yeah, Arthur A. Arthur. Well, President Arthur's grandson was also Chester A. Arthur, but he called himself Gavin to set himself apart. Called himself Gavin Arthur. Great. Gavin Arthur was yet another fascinating figure in Anton LaVey's orbit. By the mid-60s, Arthur had established himself as both an astrologer and a sexologist. God. Think Albert Kinsey, but if he was obsessed with horoscopes. It's a perfect time to be a sexologist. It really is. And slash fucking astrologer. Yeah, and you know who was like super into Gavin Arthur's sexologist stuff? It's Alan Watts. Alan Watts loved it. Fascinating. 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 wow yeah it came in came on came out whatever and he was also an early leader in san francisco's hate ashbury scene before the whole thing fell apart that's what he means when 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 but he was the guy he was one of the guys at the very beginning that's very cool and those were the guys that anton lave hung out with and when gavin arthur dined with anton lave he found himself suddenly trapped under 250 pounds of lion as togar ripped arthur's suit to shreds in the middle of dinner he smelled the president on him but ever the wag gavin later quipped to the chronicle this is what i get for not hiring a lion center you just see him i guess it is a bit of a snaggle post line oh yeah this is what i get for not hiring a lion center sometime in 1966 anton lave decided that his profile was not quite high enough after shaving his head and putting on a cape and devil horns lave officiated a wedding as a high priest of satan complete with a naked woman on the altar the ceremony was of course both public and covered by the press but after the ceremony 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 yeah it makes sense yeah there's a lion attacking the neighborhood we'll deal with the satan stuff later it's kind of an esoteric issue that we're all sort of trying to sort out but there's a lion on the street yeah it really does show you everything about san francisco's there's this great there's news footage there's archive footage of uh people interviewing like neighbors and like i don't care about the satanism stuff who really cares but this lion keeps startling my husband when he roars at 2am it's so loud he's so loud the walls are so thin eventually though togar got to be too much to handle because it's always a bad idea to have a lion on the street as a pet diane higarty tried brushing tabasco sauce on the furniture because togar kept chewing everything to pieces and togar was known to go into rampages within the house that would cost thousands of dollars to repair gotta get a scratching post it really does yeah or scratching across that'd be good man that would be so much fun upside down cross yeah it's fucking awesome i should have worked for anton now lave had tried and failed to sell togar to circus for five thousand dollars you should have tried for four yeah yeah but after togar clawed and burst a water pipe one day flooded the basement of the black house lave said fuck 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 i cursed you and many of them thereafter moved away died or disappeared i think that mostly that was just what happened with san francisco also just uh they were all the people that were complaining were old and that's what old people do also he got rid of the lion because it destroyed his house yeah it was difficult to do and expensive to keep and it was a feeling you know it was coming out of my ability he had a lot of feelings he didn't know how to deal with them yeah and he also for some reason decided to curse the director of the san francisco zoo who was seemingly doing anton a favor yeah dude honestly he's trying to fucking help bro 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 yeah lave said that shortly after he made all these curses on the baboon figure the director of the san francisco zoo was killed by apes well i just did the whole thing on the san francisco zoo and that was definitely not in their list of incidents yeah i don't think he was killed by apes yeah no if anything he would have been killed by tatiana who wasn't born yet exactly yes togar meanwhile was renamed neil and that's a terrible name for a lion it's a lion yeah and in 1972 he was sold to a film director named noel marshall who kept togar in his home in sherman oats here in the san fernando valley in los angeles oh yeah it's like i i pretty certain i know the house yeah they kept a ton of animals there because marshall had a thing for lions as well and in 1981 he directed the notoriously disastrous lion movie roar oh that's fucking melanie griffin's dad 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 lave because coincidence is something that follows anton lave everywhere it's just the truth yeah and togar by the way was one of the stars of roar now this lion movie described as both the most dangerous movie ever made and the most dangerous movie ever made and the most expensive home movie ever made it is fucking insane It stars Tippi Hendren from The Birds, who was married to Marshall, their daughter, Melanie Griffith, she's the co-star, and Jan de Bont, who directed Twister and Speed, was the cinematographer on this movie. Whoa! It took five years to complete this film because the big cats like Togar were less than cooperative, and as a result, over 70 cast and crew members were injured by big cats in both small and nearly fatal incidents during filming. Yeah. A lion cutely named Cherries, she bit Tippi Hendren's head hard enough to scrape her skull, Melanie Griffith almost lost an eye to another lion, she had to get cosmetic surgery. I mean, the rumor is. I don't know how true it is, but, like, that she was almost scalped, and, like, her fucking top of her head was flopping up and down. Well, actually, that's what happened to Jan de Bont. Oh. Yeah. That happened to Jan de Bont? Yeah, or is it Jan de Bont? Jan de Bont, yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's what happened to Jan de Bont. He wasn't even a fucking actor. He was the cinematographer. He was fully scalped by the same lion that almost ate Tippi Hendren. Whoa! He had to get two. They said it took 220 stitches to put his scalp back on. Also, I gotta say, Roar is unwatchable. It is a bad film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the director himself. almost lost an arm after a lion bit his hand. That was just one of 11 serious injuries sustained by Noel Marshall, including gangrene and blood poisoning from all the bites. All this shit took years for him to recover from. Togar was actually one of the lead lions in the movie, but his previous good behavior was forgotten. He bit the assistant director in the throat and jaw before trying to chew off the AD's ears. And this is after the AD accidentally cued and attacked. Yeah. Because that's what would happen. They could just. You could make one movement. A hand movement. a hand movement, lion goes. Yeah. It's because they refused to pay all the animal sag, you know, rates. That's the problem. They're like, you want me to get the union representative in here? And then they fucking just attack them. That's how it always is. Believe me, I work with Jeffrey Tambor. I know what goes on. And this is just a small, small sampling of all the shit that went down during the production of Roar. And the amount of sheer mayhem around this movie has caused people to call it a cursed production. But it's said that Roar's curse is merely an extension of another movie curse. Marshall had funded Roar with the money that he had made as a producer for The Exorcist. Oh, hell yeah. And it was rumored that Roar was plagued by the same satanic curse that made The Exorcist so difficult to film. Which, I'm sure, was all very amusing to Anton LaVey. I mean. It's just because William Friedkin's kind of an asshole. Yeah, he's an asshole and he refrigerated the set and all that shit. And then, I mean, Roar was. It was not cursed. It was filled with lions and tigers. Bloodthirsty. Literally bloodthirsty predators. The Exorcist just had a very perfectionist director that made things hard on the cast. Yeah, and there was elephants, too. Like, an elephant almost killed someone during the filming of Roar. Hell yeah. Yeah. Get at him. Just makes me think of Katy Perry. Why? Roar. Oh, yeah. And you just think of her just fucking just floating. Just floating through space naked. Mm-hmm. I don't know why that's my default. Yeah, well. Just her spinning through space, frozen and naked. Hell yeah. Dead? No. If she's frozen and naked in space, she's gonna be dead. I guess so. I guess so. Chili! All right, chili. I didn't really think about it that way, but. 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 asking, Is God Dead? Yep. If you gotta ask, he is. Yeah, man, yeah. Exactly. I guess he hasn't shown up in a long time. Well, the whole point of the article was basically, you know, we used religion for something, so many years to explain the things about the natural world that we didn't understand. But now that we're in this era of modern science, and we understand so many more things than we once did, what role does God play? Do we need God anymore? And therefore, is God dead? No! Just asking the question naturally caused a lot of outrage in the Christian establishment, and also amongst Christians worldwide. But Anton 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 the Hellfire Club and Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Philema, and then sprinkling a lot of carnival atmosphere over the whole thing, Anton LaVey announced the founding of the Church of Satan on Volpurgisnacht 1966, 60 years ago this month. And it is incredible that all of these sixes show up in the same month that we did episode 666. And Volpurgisnacht is your birthday. Yep. No, it's kind of a whole thing. It's really strange. I'll always kind of think about the fact that all of that material was handed to me as I then also was cast on a show in which I played a devil, and then I dealt with all that. It's very funny how it all shakes out. I also think that Anton LaVey was inspired, inspired by Scientology, in terms of the money. Yeah, well. And understanding that you can do that. Sure. That you can just set up an actual religion. I'm really excited next episode to talk about Sammy Davis Jr., poor devil, and your pretty face is going to hell, and how they all come together. I just love Sammy Davis Jr. and fucking the whole thing. Yeah, cat. Yeah, see? Hail Satan now, baby. He's amazing. 666 always was a big day for me, too, because that was the day I moved to New York City to become a comedian. That's amazing. And, you know, my very first apartment, in New York City, the address was 666 St. Nicholas Avenue. St. Nicholas is another word for Santa, and Santa is an anagram for Satan. That's awesome. Fuck yeah, dude! Fuck yes! He fucking made us, man! Fucking, I feel his power in my fucking veins! I love your 40 cock, Satan! I will fucking. I'm gonna kill God! I'm gonna fucking kill God! I threw it last week! LaVey declared 1966 to be Anno Satanis. Year one of the Satanic calendar. But considering the year and the city in which it was founded, the Church of Satan was not the party you'd assume it to be. The church actually forbade the use of drugs and hallucinogens because they, quote, impeded the effective control over one'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, there was a hint. Of, like, you know, don't get too drunk. Yeah, you might want to, yeah, which is, he was always about that. He was always like that. He was, he's not a teetotaler, but he was close to it. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Catholics are giving wine to children. Yeah, and then the old kids get fucking chlamydia from sharing the goblet with everybody. Yeah, yeah, and herpes. Yeah. Now, after the Church of Satan opened its doors, they began attracting misfits of every type, from the mentally ill with delusions of grandeur to curious knowledge seekers who felt like the hippies and hippie counterculture was lacking a distinct edge. LeVay, in fact, hated hippies. He called them the final de-evolution of man. Whatever, bro. No, he was, well, because I actually fully believe. Well, he saw them as lazy. They're lazy. He's like, they're just smoking, they're just doing drugs, and they're not doing anything. Fuck yeah. Well, the one thing that he did. His real point was, you know what he was really against was the idea of, at the time, the idea of free love. Yes. That is what he was specifically. He was specifically against. Yeah, he liked to pay for it. Yes, he liked to pee-pee and to poo-poo. But, no, his thing was, I don't think 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 LeVay is trying to say, earn my love. Yeah. And I will say that I believe, I could be wrong, because I don't know much about Anton LeVay, the hippie movement was invaded by bikers and criminals, and I don't think this one was. Well, the hippie movement failed. Yeah. Yeah, they all became fucking bankers and shit. Yeah, oh yeah, no, they failed completely. Well, and it's also just the simple fact that free love doesn't work. No, it's actually caused quite a bit of rape. Yes, it did. Yeah, it caused a lot of, a lot, a lot, a lot of problems. And that's the thing is that Anton, 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, right? We do need some, we need at least a personal 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 shit. Like, you know, every man and woman needs to do things because it's the right thing to do. For society. Yeah, for society. Yeah, and I think the only hippie band that could use the calliope was Blood, Sweat, and Tears. I mean, they would really be able to back that up because they got the sound. Yeah. But it's hard. It's a very loud instrument. Yeah. It's hard to do. It's loud, man. Whether the people coming to the Church of Satan were mentally unbalanced or merely weird, many of them that were attracted to the Church of Satan, they wanted to use ritual magic to gain successes that they felt they were rightfully owed, but had been denied for one reason or another. In one example of a revenge ritual, the 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 congregants 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. Hey, I'm a lady. Oh, I'm just a lady. Oh, don't worry about me. Lady best actor in the whole world. So skinny and wonderful. No, yeah, but I do think that magically this kind of makes sense. But, you know, what's funny is that, practically, I think you'd be surprised what you learn walking around in the shoes of the person you hate all night. Probably. 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. Hey, man, I'm going to hate Jimmy John no matter how many sandwiches I eat. Well, he's a piece of shit. Yeah, and this is. It's incredibly nerdy shit. But the idea was that the participant would gain new confidence from the magical act. And they would return to the world with the poise needed to obtain success in the realms of money, love, or vengeance, depending on their wish. Now, one of the things that's often left out of the history of the Church of Satan is that it was co-founded and built from the ground up by LaVey's partner, Diane Higarty. Diane took care of the administrative duties at the church, including collecting the $25 membership, 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! Everybody likes a lanyard! She made sure that all of that shit made it out to the growing number of Satanists around the country. And so, with Diane's help, Anton LaVey became the first person to found an organization that was dedicated to Satan and the delights of the flesh. Basically, Satanism is a. 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, it's interesting that a man who married a child wanted to protect them so much. Who was back in the 1950s? They weren't there. They weren't children yet. In fact, well, you just made them kids now. See, I do think the most important thing the Church of Satan enters, which is the thing that I think why it's worth anything, is all of the layers of consent. Yes. In Satanism, there are many, many layers of consent. It is all about you choosing. The idea that what Christianity proposes is a boilerplate view of reality. They think that, like, when you're Christian, that you're just like, and it's a Christian world, and there's nothing. There's nothing you can do about it, and you're walking around with these rules created arbitrarily by an unknowing, unfeeling deity far above you that you now are supposed to walk around like a fucking puppet. This thing's supposed to be like, no, you choose. Yeah. Also, it seems like the Church of Satan is better to women. Far better. Well, he stole everything from women that ever. Every idea he had was stolen from women. He loved women, truly, and I do completely understand it. Anton LaVey worshipped women, and he definitely played. plagiarized most of his best ideas from women. Yeah. That is true. Yep. All right, I'll take it back. Yeah. He's great. No, he loves what. He trusted women. Women were an extremely important part of the Church of Satan. He actually viewed women as morally superior to men. Yeah. And as far as, like, consent goes, the stuff the Church of Satan was doing, like, they were talking about ideas of consent in the late 60s that really. That really only became a part of, like, the culture at large. Just, I would say, American culture at large in 2020, maybe 2015. You know, like, those ideas of consent, yeah, they were around for a long time. It's just that they were buried in the Church of Satan. Yeah, because the hippie movement was a whole misogynistic thing that we didn't really understand that was game towards being like, oh, no, man, we all ball each other, man. It's like. A lot of dangerous people hid inside of the hippie movement. A lot of them did. Many dangerous people. I'm a hippie sympathizer, and I know that's true. Charles Manson, number one. Yeah. Now, one of the things that made the Church of Satan so successful, both in gaining supporters and in attracting enemies, was its effectively spooky imagery, much of which is styled around the sigil of the goat-headed occult figure, Baphomet. That's why, if you can get a chance, get the out-of-print book that command to look. It is all this. It is. This is everything. It's the heart of. I had no idea. I'm a fucking student of Satanism, and I had no idea until I just got this book. Hell yeah. Well, the sigil of the Church of Satan was an inversion containing a goat's head, surrounded by five stylized Hebrew letters that spelled out the words, Leviathan, one of the crown princes of hell. Leviathan is one of the crown princes of hell. It's no big deal. It's no big deal. 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 occultism. That's pretty awesome. To jog your memory, Baphomet is the hermaphroditic goat-headed figure with gigantic, gigantic horns and wings, sitting cross-legged with one hand pointed up and the other hand pointed down. It certainly appears demonic, but it was in no way meant to be a representation of Satan. Every single time, I'm going to let you know this. This is one of my fucking biggest pet peeves. If I see Baphomet being used as a representative of Satan in a movie, I shut it off. I literally shut it off. It shows that everything else is wrong. You've just completely fucked it all up. As soon as you're saying that Baphomet's like the devil and it's supposed to be scary, the pentagrams are scary, it's like, oh, you're a moron. I remember in Boca, we had the Christmas tree, and then everyone was like, well, if you're going to have a Christmas tree, you've got to have a menorah. And then the Satanists in Boca, they applied and got a Baphomet sculpture in the middle of the same place. That's fun as hell. Hell yeah, that's great. I love Baphomet statues around. Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah, actually, I have a Baphomet statue in my home. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that my brother-in-law got me for Christmas. It was great. I was really trying to see you. Very sweet. Well, the word Baphomet actually first appears during the Crusades in 1307 as a sort of weapon to be used by the French crown against the warriors of the Crusades, the Knights Templar. See, the King of France felt that the Templars were becoming too powerful, so he declared that the Templars were worshipping an idolatrous bearded figure called Baphomet, and he had many of the Templars arrested and tortured based on this accusation. And you remember the reason why they did that, too, was because they, 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 them Satanists. It's about money. Well, I mean, it's not even Satanists. I mean, it's weird. In reality, Baphomet was a corruption of the medieval European word for Muhammad, who, of course, was worshipped by the other side in the Crusades. That medieval European word was Mahomet, which became Baphomet. Oh. Yeah. Basically saying that they were worshippers of Muhammad, but they kind of created a new sort of person. An extra evil Muhammad. Yeah, an extra evil Muhammad that only the Knights Templar worshipped. But it was all based on, basically, Islamophobia. Baphomet came back in the 19th century when it was said that he became the subject of worship of another secret society, the Freemasons. Fritj Kultist, Eliphas Levi, took this rumor and ran with it. He gave Baphomet light. He designed it. He named 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. Fuck yeah. 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 Alistair Crowley and eventually Anton LeVay, who both understood how powerful of an image Baphomet was. LeVay 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. 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 not an evil figure at all. It just looks evil, which works great for people. And also the devil card, it's not about something bad happening to you. It's about you getting. several temptations. And thinking about And possibly changing what you're doing. It's about opening up your mind to other possibilities. Sounds like it's a similar image as justice. Certain. And justice doesn't even have her tits out. And she should. She should. If she wanted us to pay attention, yeah. Why are there no nipples on justice? I mean, they're there. There's no tits on justice. There can be. There sometimes is. She should flop them out. Sometimes they are flopped out. I remember in high school, there was somebody who got real upset about an exposed nipple on a justice statue. It's just unbelievable. Like, you're going to jerk off to marble? I guess if you can, good on you. You know? I need more than that. Suction machines, candles, alcohol. How is your suction machine? Is it clean yet? It's honestly been struggling. It's really been struggling. I think it's going through depression. It's clogged. Yeah, you should change out the vacuum tubes. Oh, that's what it is. Yeah. I got it all wabbed up. Now, upon its founding, the Church of Satan almost immediately began attracting celebrities. But the first real celebrity to darken the door of the Church of Satan's black house was sex symbol and all-around groovy chick, Jane Mansfield. Fucking love Jane Mansfield. As a busty blonde who was far smarter than she appeared, Jane Mansfield was supposed to be 20th Century Fox's answer to Marilyn Monroe. But after the blonde bombshell trope fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mansfield started taking risks. She became the first American actress to perform a nude scene in a starring role, which naturally came with a lot of judgment and tut-tuts from the general public. This wasn't at all out of character for Jane Mansfield, because she'd already appeared in Playboy spreads throughout the 1950s, so she was sort of bad, like, what the fuck, who cares? Yeah, yeah, I already did this thing. But according to some theories, Mansfield was looking for something to put her back into the spotlight in the mid-1950s. 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, however, was also a very interesting person. So she participated in a few rituals as a curiosity. Jane Mansfield was also highly intelligent and 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. And man, Michael Aquino's such a jealous little fucking bitch. That's my whole take on it, too, because he's like, um, Jane Mansfield, she had maybe a sort of passing fancy of Anton. Jane Mansfield, however, was also highly intelligent and just as self-aware as Anton LaVey, so the two of them formed a sort of symbiotic friendship. Jane Mansfield, however, was also highly intelligent and just as self-aware as Anton. Certainly Anton's drive. There was no way that Jane Mansfield would ever be into Anton LaVey on its own. And it's like, whole thing being like, you just, you fucking unfuckable nerd. It was definitely, I do believe it was a two-way street. No chicks were in Aquino. Not a single one. Look at his eyebrows. He was like, yeah, sometimes I want to fuck the bad boy, dude. Sorry. Mansfield's a good get, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Well, interestingly, while Jane Mansfield's life, it was certainly rocky before she even got married. When 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. Whoa. He became enamored with the lion. Uh-oh. 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. Zoltan, hard enough to fracture the child's skull, and then bit him again and ruptured his spleen. What the fuck? Zoltan survived, but just barely. What happened next, though, is shrouded in mystery, multiple versions of the same story, and a lot of legend. That event, of course, is the grisly and gruesome death of Jane Mansfield in 1967. And this is just a year after she met Anton LaVey. In one version of the story, the whole tragedy began when LaVey gave a tour of the city. LaVey took the black house to Mansfield and her boyfriend, Sam Brody, who was also her divorce lawyer. He is one of those. He really worked it out. 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. Look what I did. Honey, I directly divide the magus's orders. Isn't this a wonderful evening? You're still going through that divorce, right? Yeah, yeah, just wanted to make sure. Now, 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, LaVey 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. Handel, LeVay got agitated and shouted, You will both be killed in a tragic car accident within a year. And when it happens, it will be very something. Like, oh, boom, ah, boom, ah, dang, ding, dang, boom, whoa, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah I love people who can exploit a good old tragedy. Of course! When he was before the tragedy, he just set it up. Yeah, he's not even done yet. In yet another account, LeVay 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 LeVay. LeVay 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, LeVay said Jane's boyfriend grabbed the phone and told him to cease all communication. Stop talking to Jane! So, LeVay cursed Brody, declaring that he would be dead within one year. I cursed you. As it went. Brody was dead within a year. But so was Jane Mansfield. On June 29th, 1967, Jane, her boyfriend Brody, her driver, and three of her kids were driving to New Orleans when their Buick slammed into a truck. The top of their car was sheared off, killing Jane and the two men instantly. She was not decapitated, as the legend goes, but her skull was crushed. As far as the kids in the car went, they all survived. Including Jane Mansfield's daughter. That daughter was Mariska Hargitay, who you probably know best as Detective Olivia Benson from Law & Order SVU. No nonsense, ladies. She's super tall. She's beautiful. Jane's Mansfield should have been shorter. She would have lived. You're right. It's her fault. You're right, Eddie. Fuck her, man. Fuck her huge breasts. No! No, never. No, she's got one of my favorite graves at Hollywood Forever. Oh, it is. She's got a really great stone. It does. All of her dogs are with her, too, right? Mm-hmm. Well, according to legend. What a beautiful, beautiful woman. Yeah. God damn. But when Jane Mansfield was killed. God fucking damn. We could talk all day about the attractiveness of Jane Mansfield. Oh, yes. But when Jane Mansfield was killed, Anton LaVey tried including himself in the story, although I do not think it came off anywhere near as cool as LaVey thought it would. He claimed that one day, in 1967, he made a fatal mistake while making a Church of Satan scrapbook. No, I lost my movie stump! I knew I should have hired a historian! Well, 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 LaVey's 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. I thought she was until this moment. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm kind of sad that she wasn't. Actually, it's all Anton LaVey. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Hey, you know, it's a great story. Don't get me wrong. Head was crushed. Yes. Unrecognizable. Completely. But the beat popped off. I mean, again, that's a little X-factor that Anton LaVey kind of adds that we miss. We miss around here. Yeah. But Jane Mansfield? Jane Mansfield was not the only celebrity to become interested in the Church of Satan, nor was the Church of Satan free from other infamous figures. Join us next week as we cover Anton's involvement with Susan Atkins of the Manson family, his fight with Temple of Set founder and satanic panic figure Michael Aquino, and the fascinating story of how Mr. Show Business himself, Sammy Davis Jr., became heavily involved with Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, reportedly until the day he died. Oh, yeah, man. Cool. Sammy Davis Jr. loved Satan. Mr. Bojangles, man. I love it, man. You know? Sammy is cool as hell. He really is. I actually plan on telling his full story, because for me, Sammy Davis Jr. as a Satanist always sounded like a joke, but in looking into it, it was absolutely real. And of course, then there's the question, it's like, it's Sammy Davis Jr. How does. How does one of the Rat Pack become a Satanist? It makes total perfect sense. It literally all makes sense. I just watched an amazing documentary of Sammy Davis Jr. And it makes total sense because he really was like he was more Jewish than any other Jewish guy around him. Like literally they all went to him like that. He became so Jewish that like Billy Crystal said he treated him like his own personal rabbi. That anytime he had problems with he would like call Sammy Davis Jr. up and he would go on about the Torah. And he taught himself Hebrew. He was primed for Satanism in a way. He was primed. He was a seeker. He was a seeker. Yeah. Because his evolution went Scientology, Judaism, Satanism. That's awesome. It's really interesting. We'll get there. And also next week we'll talk about how I can already hear you fucking, which is the use. I'll use the slur that Anton 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 shit about Michael Aquino. Because we do know he's technically a good guy, which is hilarious. Like he's technically a good man. He's a way better guy than Anton LaVey. He just happens to be way worse at everything else. It's just super annoying. Yeah. He's very annoying. But the people love his fucking ass. That's why no one trusts the Democrats. We're so annoying. That's wrong. Look at his ass. Don't fucking put we in there. Look at his Eddie Munster fucking ass. Yeah, he's ugly. I ain't no fucking Democrat. I also want to say. You can't do nothing. You don't even know. I'm a libertarian. The true way of the future. Oh, and I also want to say RIP to schooners in Lubbock. My long, my longtime bar. Oh, really? Yeah, the old fucking, you know, muck and grime that was schooners. After 30 years, it's finally closing down. So I guess RIP to schooners, all you folk out there in Lubbock that are still going. Go have one on me. Go, go have a schooner. A Bud Light and a fucking Marlboro Red and relive my college days. Don't make me thirsty for it, man. Don't make me thirsty for it. So go to patreon.com to listen to our show ad free. You also can see Last Stream on the Left live, our streaming show on YouTube, every Tuesday at 5 p.m. PST. Go check it out. Go also look at all of our social media at LP on the Left, blah, blah, blah. But please see us live. LastPodguestontheLeft.com. See us live. We are lots of different. Places. June 27th. Grand Rapids, Michigan at the GLC Live at 20 Monroe. July 17th. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Canes Ballroom. And July 18th. Oklahoma City Tower Theater. Those are the last three JK Ultra shows. But don't worry. We will be announcing some more down the pipe. Interesting. We cannot wait. So go check out. Also check out HGX2. It is kicking. Season two on LPN TV. And the brighter side's got new shit going on. The finals are coming, dude. It's coming, dude. Some place. It's underneath. It's got new material coming out. LP on Romantasy. Go check that shit out on our YouTube page. Hell yeah. And I'm hitting the road myself. I got a lot of shows coming up. Go and see that on EddieTunes.com. I'm coming to all kinds of cities, including San Francisco. So it's going to be some fun. Great. Well, hail sweet, sweet. And hail Satan. And it's good to say it when it's proper. Yeah. Full-throated. Hail Satan. Sure. Now game. Yeah. And on these like six, six, six, six, six, seven episodes, I would like to hail the wonderful Rob. Okie. For all the work you do on this show, buddy. Rob. Rob. Hail Rob. Yeah. Rob works his ass off. Thank you, Rob. Hail 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.