Pod Insights Last Podcast On The Left Episode 668: Anton LaVey Part III - The Devil's Rain About this episode Marcus, Henry, and Ed return to the story of Anton LaVey as the Church of Satan enters the spotlight, crossing paths with Susan Atkins, Michael Aquino, and the heavily borrowed Satanic Bible. But as the rituals get bigger and the followers get weirder, LaVey finally makes it in Hollywood, where his influence reaches The Devil’s Rain and Mr. Show Business himself, Sammy Davis Jr.
Transcript 19,491 words · 8 speakers
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0:30 Speaker 01 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.
0:56 Speaker 02 There's no place to escape to.
0:57 Speaker 03 This is the last. On the left.
1:03 Speaker 02 That's when the cannibalism started.
1:19 Speaker 04 Oh, is that what's happening?
1:20 Speaker 05 I'm trying to figure out the Suzy Atkins voice. It's been a while since I even thought of her.
1:24 Speaker 04 You're gonna...
1:26 Speaker 05 I would say more Jan. It's like, for sure. I think it's more Janis.
1:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:36 Speaker 04 I mean, really, the Manson girls, they're far more, like, tough than, like, when you listen to them talk, like, Charlie Manson is the fucking genius man in this fucking world. Ain't nobody gonna take Manson down.
1:47 Speaker 05 It's kind of crazy to see tiny little ladies going like, I'll kill a fucking police officer for Charlie. He's my Christ. He's my Satan in arms. Yeah, they're all hot chicks at Eight Rocks. You know? They weren't as hot as you, you know, when you look back on, they're They're dirty. They're younger man's energy, I'd say. I bet you clean them, them little Manson girls up, you take them anywhere you want. You disgust me.
2:11 Speaker 04 Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.
2:17 Speaker 05 And I'm taking a Swiffer to the Manson girls. That's my job is to scrub them up, scrub them down, get them ready for Ed's consumption.
2:25 Speaker 04 We've got the man who'll give any woman a chance, it's Ed Larson.
2:28 Speaker 05 All right, uh, here comes the hose there, Twiggy, who's the one of them?
2:34 Speaker 04 There's Sneezy, Dopey, yeah, there's a lot of them. You're thinking of Squeaky from, is who you're thinking of as Squeaky.
2:45 Speaker 04 And here we are, at Anton LaVey, part three, part three of four.
2:51 Speaker 05 We're gonna get into it, we are doing Satanism fully.
2:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, and Anton LaVey fully, because it's not just Anton LaVey, that's the thing about Satanism, it's not just him, it's everybody around him. There's so many fascinating stories within the story of Anton LaVey.
3:06 Speaker 05 Also, if you come to believe Anton LaVey, which I do over time, he even pushes, he even positions himself as one of the least important people within the organization. He is, when he starts it, the whole thing is like, oh no, what have I done? The second he starts it, it's all like, oh fuck, these losers are coming, which is where we've hit right now.
3:27 Speaker 04 I really go back and forth on him the whole time, like, this guy's a fucking schmuck, and it's like, ah, I get it.
3:32 Speaker 05 Yeah, of course.
3:34 Speaker 04 And you know what? That's by design.
3:36 Speaker 05 Yeah.
3:37 Speaker 04 So when we last left Anton LaVey, the year was 1967, and the Church of Satan had publicly established itself using Anton's infamous Black House as the church's headquarters, right in the heart of San Francisco. But while Anton LaVey's theatrical style and freedom forward ideas were attracting celebrities like Jane Mansfield, the Church of Satan also began to cross paths with far more infamous characters entirely by coincidence. See, by 1968, Anton LaVey expanded ceremonies beyond On the Black House to public occult ritual performances in other venues. And in February, he chose a lounge club called Gigi's in San Francisco
4:18 Speaker 04 as the site of a highly-produced ritual called "The Witch's Sabbath."
4:23 Speaker 06 And the key word is "produced."
4:25 Speaker 04 Yes. Amongst other moving parts, one aspect of the performance called for a bare-breasted young woman to jump out of a coffin and walk around acting like a vampire onstage.
4:35 Speaker 06 Fuck yeah.
4:37 Speaker 04 LeVey thought that he'd found the perfect girl for the role after seeing an 18-year-old dancing at a local topless bar, a girl who called herself Sharon King. History, however, knows Sharon King better by her real name.
4:50 Speaker 06 Sharon Stone. Man, oh, fool me.
4:54 Speaker 04 Hello. Susan Atkins.
4:56 Speaker 07 Yeah, it's me. Yeah, that's that. Oh, just the idea. I know Anton LeVey had a type, but just her going like, "Ay, ay, ay, you buzz, hon, you buzz, honey."
5:10 Speaker 06 Sharon King was her group sex name. Yeah. Because she was the sharing king.
5:14 Speaker 07 Oh, fun.
5:16 Speaker 04 Well, if the name Susan Atkins doesn't ring a bell, Susan Atkins, AKA Sexy Sadie.
5:22 Speaker 07 I'm the sexy one.
5:25 Speaker 07 Yeah, I'm the sexy one. I'm the one they bring out for public consumption.
5:30 Speaker 06 God, here's some Listerine.
5:31 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's good, good, good, good, good. Get some spicy beer.
5:35 Speaker 06 You're supposed to spit it out.
5:36 Speaker 07 Yeah, they all say that.
5:39 Speaker 04 She was the only member of the Manson family present at all three murder scenes. It's Gary Himmern, the Tate massacre, and the La Bianca massacre. And it was Susan's bragging while in jail on car theft charges that eventually led authorities to link the Tate/La Bianca murders to Charles Manson, central figure in the Manson story. But just a couple of years earlier, Susan Atkins was just another abandoned child of the 1960s who'd made her way to San Francisco as a teenager. But instead of joining the love and peace side of the Flower Generation, Atkins had become a stripper at 17 and lived an extremely reckless life of drugs and sex.
6:20 Speaker 06 Judgey, judgey, judgey.
6:23 Speaker 04 Right? It's reckless! Do you know how reckless you gotta be to get a case of gonorrhea so bad that you gotta be hospitalized?
6:31 Speaker 07 Yeah, the doctor didn't understand. When I showed him my gonorrhea, my gonorrhea said hi.
6:38 Speaker 04 This is supposed to be yellow, not green.
6:40 Speaker 05 There I go. Congratulations to me, I go.
6:46 Speaker 04 After she was cured and released of this-
6:49 Speaker 05 They needed to bring in a priest. They had to take a priest and they came in, they blessed my coochie and the demon jumped out of me and into hell.
7:02 Speaker 04 After the gonorrhea was cleared up, Susan Atkins met Charles Manson in San Francisco shortly following Charlie's release from prison.
7:09 Speaker 07 Let me tell, let me guess, you're just freshly clean, right? I can tell, I have a psychic ability to tell when gonorrhea has just left the body.
7:19 Speaker 04 Man, I can smell antibiotics on a woman.
7:22 Speaker 07 Yeah, I know you did. I know you got, you went to a doctor for that and it was no witch, you're the witch bitch.
7:30 Speaker 04 Well, this is back when Charles Manson was just an older guy in his early 30s with a guitar and a good line of bullshit. Incredibly though, not long after Atkins met Manson, Anton LaVey noticed Susan Atkins dancing at her club. And LaVey figured that she'd be perfect for the role of the vampire girl in his new public ritual performance at Gigi's, set to premiere in February of 1968.
7:53 Speaker 05 There is a distinct difference between the public performances and the stuff that Anton LaVey and his inner crew would do at this time period. And that is here really the distinct difference is that he was obviously a PR machine.
8:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:06 Speaker 05 So a lot of this really was straight up performances.
8:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:10 Speaker 05 This is all about advertising.
8:11 Speaker 04 It's attention.
8:12 Speaker 06 Would he, uh, charge a cover?
8:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, oh god, yes. $2.50.
8:15 Speaker 06 Oh, so it's a show.
8:16 Speaker 04 It's, no, oh, it's 100% a show.
8:19 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, this, it had reviews, like the newspapers came out.
8:23 Speaker 05 You know what you'd call it? The term would be psychopump.
8:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:26 Speaker 05 It was the, the idea of doing a public thing that was kind of an example of your magic.
8:31 Speaker 04 Yeah. So after being invited back to the black house to participate in dress rehearsals for the Witches Sabbath show at Gigi's, Susan Atkins reportedly got spooked by all the trappings of the satanic church.
8:42 Speaker 06 So funny.
8:43 Speaker 04 She was actually too scared to perform her part on stage until, of course, someone gave her a tab of acid.
8:49 Speaker 05 I need my acid. I only perform when I have my acid.
8:53 Speaker 07 I gotta have it.
8:54 Speaker 05 Oh, God, just fucking her, just so scared. Scared what of the fireplace? Scared of the what?
9:00 Speaker 07 Blue sunshine, I asked for orange sunshine. Get that what I like, I'm allergic to the orange.
9:05 Speaker 06 She's an 18-year-old, she's an idiot.
9:11 Speaker 04 Wildly hallucinating, Susan Atkins got into a coffin wearing two-inch-long red fingernails and a jet-black wig. And when it came time for her to pop out in the middle of a psychopomp, she did her best as the bare-breasted vampire.
9:24 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah, but, but, I don't drink. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, my bad, my camera, yeah, I'm sorry. I know how to do this.
9:39 Speaker 04 But since both audience and newspaper reviews for the witches' Sabbath were lukewarm at best, that was the end of Anton's working relationship with Susan Atkins and the end of Susan's involvement with the Church of Satan. Soon after, though, the house where Susan Atkins and Charles Manson were living in San Francisco got raided by the police. So Manson asked Atkins if she wanted to join him for a summer road trip down to Los Angeles. They were gonna drive down in a converted school bus with all the other lost souls Manson had gathered in San Francisco since he'd arrived. This, of course, was the first iteration of the Manson family. They would all soon settle at Spawn Ranch, and by August of 1969, just 18 months after
10:24 Speaker 04 Atkins performed in Le Vase Show, Atkins was writing the word "pig" on Sharon Tate's front door with Sharon's own blood.
10:32 Speaker 05 It's all about coming to play where the work is. That's what Hollywood's always been about, it's where the work is, and that's where you go. So of course she got picked up that quickly because she went where it was. If Sharon Tate was in San Francisco, she'd carve out the baby there. You gotta come to Los Angeles.
10:50 Speaker 06 How many people got murdered in Tate?
10:52 Speaker 04 Uh, there's five, five or six.
10:54 Speaker 06 You know, it sucks for everyone else that wasn't a hot blonde, like, movie star. They just, they're just lumped in in the Tate murders.
11:01 Speaker 04 Oh, Abigail, yeah, Abigail Folger, Stephen Parent, um, there was, uh, was Wojciech Frykowski.
11:08 Speaker 06 It's because of Sharon. Job to fucking know their name.
11:10 Speaker 05 Yeah. But Sharon Tate's one was really sad.
11:13 Speaker 06 Yeah.
11:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, the other ones were just, you know, obviously just acceptable losses.
11:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, Stephen Parent was just there to buy a radio from a guy.
11:21 Speaker 06 Oh.
11:22 Speaker 04 That lived in the back house. Like, he was just completely, like, completely wrong place at the wrong time. Wojciech Frykowski, uh, was kind of in love with Sharon Tate. Uh, Abigail Folger was just, she was an heir, she was the heiress to the Folger fortune.
11:36 Speaker 06 Oh, wow.
11:36 Speaker 04 Folger Coffee.
11:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:37 Speaker 04 And they were just all there hanging out because Roman Polanski was out in, uh, I think, London, uh, scouting for, I think, a dolphin movie, something really stupid.
11:46 Speaker 05 Honestly, I will say, I'm gonna take that back immediately because they said a lot, you know, the other ones were acceptable losses. They weren't. The only acceptable loss that's ever been was that godforsaken meddling waiter when he got between OJ and Nicole, my favorite couple.
11:59 Speaker 06 Listen, man, I'm not gonna take this bad talk on waiters.
12:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
12:03 Speaker 06 All right?
12:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been a waiter.
12:06 Speaker 06 Oh, I know.
12:07 Speaker 04 I was a bad one.
12:08 Speaker 05 But guess what you didn't do? Meddling the affairs of a Hall of Famer.
12:11 Speaker 04 I did not.
12:14 Speaker 04 Now, Anton LaVey certainly commented on his association with Susan Atkins, as he did with any infamous character who crossed his path. Susan Atkins was not even close to the last one.
12:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, he probably fucking loved it.
12:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, I mean, he said that Susan's downfall came mostly because of drugs, which was a fair point because events with the Manson family certainly would not have gotten as out of hand as they did without the excessive amount of acid that Manson was providing to family members. Of course, whether or not Manson was being provided that acid by the CIA is another matter altogether.
12:45 Speaker 06 Long story.
12:50 Speaker 05 We'll get into it. We are doing that.
12:51 Speaker 04 We are doing it, yeah. LaVey actually-
12:53 Speaker 05 Acid? That's great.
12:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, fuck yeah, bro.
12:55 Speaker 05 Yeah, come on, dude. I wanna do some fucking CIA acid.
12:58 Speaker 04 Dude-
12:58 Speaker 05 Dude, we have some.
12:59 Speaker 04 Orange su- orange sunshine.
13:01 Speaker 05 Is that what it is?
13:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's the CIA, that's CIA made, baby.
13:04 Speaker 05 Alright, well you know the P.O. box there.
13:08 Speaker 05 You wanna send a rainbow.
13:12 Speaker 04 LaVey actually had no sympathy whatsoever for the kids who fell under Manson's spells. Nor did he care for the unwashed masses flocking en masse to San Francisco in the late 60s. Same time that he was trying to build the Church of Satan. Anton called Susan Atkins "an average hate street burnout", "flaky", "and made to order for someone like Charles Manson to control". But really, that is what sets LaVey apart from people like Charles Manson, and what makes LaVey just kind of a bad person, rather than a figure of evil. From what it seems like, LaVey never wanted to control anyone. Or at least, he never wanted to control people collectively. Control comes with responsibility. And as the story goes on, we'll see that responsibility was the last thing Anton LaVey ever wanted.
13:57 Speaker 05 Anton LaVey viewed responsibility as coming hand in hand with hypocrisy. Because at some level, as a boss, you're gonna have to do things that are against your own rules because you have to set up, "Oh, because they are for me and not for thee", it's just how it happens. So he specifically never wanted that shit. He never wanted it, he thought, this is, we'll get, obviously as we go, this was all supposed to stay local.
14:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was supposed to stay local, and I think it was just supposed to stay theatrical.
14:24 Speaker 05 Yes.
14:24 Speaker 04 Like, it was supposed to be like a theatrical thing, but you know, we're gonna get into, uh, uh, pretty soon, about, um, what happens when you let the nerds in the door.
14:33 Speaker 05 Always.
14:33 Speaker 04 Yeah. Now, as the Church of Satan grew in popularity and membership, so too did the rituals and the organization. Because Anton LaVey quickly surmised that the rituals were what got him the most press and the most attention. So, on May 23rd, 1967, Anton LaVey held the first public satanic baptism, using his three-year-old daughter, Xena, as the "baptisand", as it's called.
14:56 Speaker 05 Cute.
14:56 Speaker 04 According to LaVey, the- Ceremony was designed to delight the child by welcoming her into a world of indulgence with the sights and the smells that she liked. Instead of being dunked in water, which is usually a terrifying experience, I don't know if the two of you were, you know, almost drowned.
15:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, I screamed.
15:13 Speaker 06 Yeah, I was a baby, I don't care. But I watched my nephew do it recently and he was screaming like a fucking lunatic. And I literally looked at Julie and I was like, I get it.
15:23 Speaker 04 Yeah. I watched my dad do it in his 30s and I was like, I'm not doing that ever.
15:29 Speaker 05 Oh, he got baptized late or he did?
15:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, late. No, he got baptized late.
15:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, fuck that shit.
15:35 Speaker 04 It didn't, yeah, yeah. Didn't take.
15:37 Speaker 05 No.
15:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they tried to do it again to me, but it was hard to get past my fists.
15:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead and give it a shot. Yeah. I'd rather you suck my dick, priest.
15:47 Speaker 04 Instead of a dunk, Xena sat, basking in the attention of admirers and the press. Although, having a naked woman present during the baptism was, in my opinion, gilding the lily just a bit. There's of course, nothing wrong with nudity. I do think that Americans have been far too prudish about the human body for far too long. But LaVey had to know that in 1968, having a naked woman present at a ritual involving a three-year-old, it was gonna make all the wrong waves in the press, if press indeed was his main goal.
16:20 Speaker 05 I think he just wanted a naked chick there and you forget, man, you know what it is? When we were just in Fairbanks, right? We were just there, we went to that great place, and they were all talking about how like, you forget how hippies live.
16:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:30 Speaker 05 Like, these guys all like, they were all talking about how they're like, "Yeah, last night, all the babies were upstairs, we were partying down here, man. You know, it's nice 'cause all the babies are up there." And you're like, you have to forget, that was like a thing.
16:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:44 Speaker 05 And my parents partied around me, I know Natalie was scarred by their partying around him. And so I feel like it was just different times.
16:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:54 Speaker 06 Also, you live in a counterculture. You know, it's surprising, you know, when you're like, the press is bad, it's like, well, yeah, of course the reaction's gonna be bad. I was talking to Henry earlier, we used to have this show at the Creek in the Cave Murder Fest called Brown Sabbath. And I had Henry make the flyer and I was like, "Hey, can you make a church with a big pile of shit on top of it?" And I went around flyerin', I'm out there in Long Island City, trying to put this in bike stores and people were like, "No, I don't want that up my store." And I'm like, "Why not? It's hilarious."
17:20 Speaker 05 This is the funniest thing in the world. You just don't understand.
17:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's like when I was in college and I was in a band, we called ourselves Hugs a Bunch Pedophile. And when we went out to put flyers around town, that's when we realized not everyone finds that funny.
17:34 Speaker 05 It's so funny.
17:35 Speaker 04 It's not that funny, of course. Now it's stupid some a bunch of kids come up with, but yeah, no one wanted that in their, in their window.
17:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. And that's why we're where we're at, man. They should have listened to us, dude. Round Sabbath is a funny name. That's a funny ass name, dude.
17:50 Speaker 06 Yeah, and I just played a bunch of like, there was like a Black Sabbath mariachi band. I played their music before the show. It was a lot of fun.
17:56 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, that's a great band.
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20:32 Speaker 01 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper 7-Up Inc.
20:57 Speaker 03 Live from your grave.
21:00 Speaker 04 Now, as the Church of Satan grew in popularity, Anton LaVey's Black Masses became more ornate. Although I made a discovery just this last weekend in Pittsburgh at my favorite store in America, E D's Entertainment, that put the creation of the Black Masses in a whole new light. See, I'm a collector, and one of the things I collect are the more obscure men's magazines from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The ones outside of your standard Playboys, Penthouses, and Hustlers. Playboys too high class, Hustlers too low class.
21:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, you don't like the pissing on the ankles or anything.
21:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, and Penthouse, it's too middle of the road. And while the pornography contained therein is naturally a bonus, I live in the year 2026 for Christ's sake. I don't need magazines to obtain pornography.
21:42 Speaker 05 I also kind of feel weird. You know what's funny is that I don't mind pre-fluffing to a woman that's definitely dead, but there's like something about masturbating to completion to a woman that is very much a skeleton in a grave.
21:57 Speaker 04 I have no problem with that, but that's neither. Here nor there.
22:00 Speaker 05 Cause you're not jerking off to these magazines, are you?
22:02 Speaker 04 No, no, no.
22:03 Speaker 05 Oh, sure.
22:03 Speaker 06 It was funny.
22:04 Speaker 04 It might lead to that, but it's not.
22:06 Speaker 06 It's a bonus. It's already stated, it's a bonus.
22:09 Speaker 04 It's a bonus.
22:09 Speaker 06 It's a cherry on top. I went to the store also with Marcus. It was a lot of fun, but we like separated, you know, cause I like got a DVD from like Bonnaroo 2008.
22:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:18 Speaker 06 And I'm walking around and then all of a sudden I, there's like an area that you can't see. And then all of a sudden from inside I go here. Oh.
22:26 Speaker 05 Yeah. Which is normally the guy in that pornography section coming in his pants.
22:31 Speaker 06 And then I was like, oh, that's Marcus.
22:32 Speaker 04 I found a lot of great shit.
22:34 Speaker 06 You had a full crate that you walked out of there with.
22:36 Speaker 04 I absolutely did. And the main reason why I collect these magazines is because the articles work as a sort of secret history of the 20th century. If you know what to look for and if you know the historical context in which these articles were written. At Edie's in Pittsburgh, for example, I found an issue of a magazine called Rogue from 1962, which contained an article by one of Anton LaVey's favorite authors, William Lindsay Gresham, author of Nightmare Alley.
23:04 Speaker 05 Who he stole his whole life story from.
23:06 Speaker 04 The content of this article was the history of the so-called black mass, published a full four years prior to the founding of the Church of Satan. Now, the article is filled with exaggerations and half-truths, as many of these articles are, but I can almost guarantee that Anton LaVey read this article. Not only was Anton also a fan of men's magazines. Hell, we got an email from a fucking listener who said that he bought a whole stack of them from Anton LaVey once.
23:34 Speaker 05 He famously was a magazine collector.
23:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, but Gresham was also one of Anton's favorite writers. And this article was most likely the last thing Gresham wrote before he died that same year in 1962. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. And a lot of the things that Gresham talked about in this article, it's a fucking fantastic article, talks about fictional 19th century depictions of black masses, talked about historical rumor. They are all the same things that showed up in Anton LaVey's black masses four years later, all the way down to using a naked woman. As an altar. It's all there.
24:11 Speaker 05 Yes, I think that he was definitely inspired. And he knew what to do from it because he was a collector of all these things. But then he did refine it because he talked about.
24:22 Speaker 04 Did refine it, absolutely.
24:23 Speaker 05 The idea that.
24:24 Speaker 04 Framework is in.
24:25 Speaker 05 He saw it.
24:25 Speaker 04 This fucking article is the framework.
24:27 Speaker 05 Yes, he saw it because the black mass is really fun.
24:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:30 Speaker 05 Technically, in many ways, it could be quite funny.
24:33 Speaker 06 I'm surprised nothing ever happened. I mean, like as a magazine collector and a guy who loves candles that much, he really could have lit a fire.
24:39 Speaker 04 You really, you gotta be careful.
24:40 Speaker 05 He's super good with fire. He's, you know, the pope of the Church of Satan.
24:44 Speaker 04 Okay.
24:44 Speaker 05 You'd think he'd have at least that on lockdown. It's more water.
24:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:48 Speaker 05 I think he had problems with water.
24:50 Speaker 04 Now, Anton may have taken the framework from the black masses from Gresham's article. He certainly added his own flair as we can see from this description of a black mass in 1968. When the Church of Satan was firing on all cylinders. LaVey read a recitation of the Lord's Prayer backwards. Then he inserted a triangular holy wafer into the vagina of a naked woman acting as the altar.
25:17 Speaker 05 You always made that sound.
25:18 Speaker 04 Henry, could you explain for the listeners, like when I say use a naked woman as an altar, could you explain to them what that means?
25:24 Speaker 05 Legitimately, she's lying on a, she's lying on a table. She is the thing that you put stuff on.
25:30 Speaker 06 Oh, see, I thought it was gonna be her back and she was on all fours. I'm actually glad you said something.
25:35 Speaker 05 No, normally she's lying.
25:36 Speaker 04 No, she's not like playing table.
25:38 Speaker 05 She's not the table. She's normally on a table and people put things on her. There's also been those where they just stand because they'll stand next to the two things. I've seen that. But largely it's that and then literally they go, all right, damn, here comes the airplane. And then they bring in, they bring in the, the host and they go, let's open up the hangar. And then they, they spread her open and then they just.
26:02 Speaker 04 Put crackers in her?
26:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, like a Pez dispenser. are upside down. Yes.
26:06 Speaker 04 Yes.
26:09 Speaker 04 Well, after removing the moist cracker from the vagina, LaVey broke it up into six pieces and placed those pieces on the tongues of six congregants.
26:18 Speaker 06 That's hot.
26:18 Speaker 05 I want to have that first.
26:19 Speaker 06 All right, give it, give it, give it.
26:21 Speaker 05 I love it, I love it.
26:22 Speaker 06 I love the devil.
26:22 Speaker 05 Devil, great.
26:23 Speaker 06 Devil, I love the devil.
26:26 Speaker 04 At the same time, because there's a lot going on in a black mass. There's a lot going on in every corner of the room. At the same time that this is happening, a redheaded congregant laid naked across the lap of another naked acolyte who whipped the redhead with a cat o' nine tails.
26:40 Speaker 05 Not a table, working up to the table.
26:41 Speaker 04 Working up to the table, yeah. That's the intern.
26:44 Speaker 05 Yes. She still giggles too much.
26:48 Speaker 05 They're here, honestly, they're here, it's their semester from UCLA. We love them here, it's just so nice to have you here, Gregory.
26:57 Speaker 04 Meanwhile, another participant, dressed like the Pope, was thrown to the floor by black-robed men who all pulled down their pants and pretended to take a shit on the Pope's stand-in.
27:07 Speaker 05 That's fun.
27:08 Speaker 06 It is fun, it is fun.
27:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, a bunch of guys.
27:11 Speaker 05 Ooh, I pooped. I pooped on the Pope. Poop on the Pope. Poop on the Pope, who's putting poop on the Pope?
27:18 Speaker 06 Obviously, I'm into it from what I stated earlier just moments ago about the Brown Sabbath show.
27:24 Speaker 04 Obviously. And even though it's pretend, there was still a lot of stagecraft here. They managed to splatter brown mud all over the Pope's fa- the fake Pope's vestments. I don't know if they had like a, you know, like one of those like little squirt things in the sleeve or if their butts were filled with mud, I don't know.
27:42 Speaker 05 It might have been all been very symbolic.
27:44 Speaker 04 It might, no, no, this was literal mud splashed over him.
27:48 Speaker 05 But I mean, even the pressing it upon him was probably like a, they blif- they all brought the mud in and they brought it up and he'd go, "No, the Duke has arrived." And then they have to like smear him with the Duke by hand and then he's just like, "I'm Dukeeth."
28:03 Speaker 04 Well, after the man was adequately covered, the robed men dragged him out of the room while a Wagner record played, and the whole congregation began the standard shouts of hail Satan.
28:12 Speaker 05 Hail Satan! Hail Satan. Hail Satan! Hail Satan. And music- I said hail Satan. Music is by far the single most important thing in every single one of these presentations.
28:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
28:24 Speaker 05 Anton LaVey specifically say that because, again, of the presentation of it, everything has to do with classical music. And he said, well, again, one of the natural Satanists was Wagner, and another one was a guy before Wagner named like Schnush, some guy that also did like that kind of music.
28:40 Speaker 04 Karl Orf? Well, I know. He also loved like Archibald Joyce.
28:44 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
28:44 Speaker 04 Like, he was big into Prokofiev.
28:46 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
28:46 Speaker 04 You know, as Jack Parsons.
28:47 Speaker 05 And Rachmaninoff and De Bussé.
28:51 Speaker 04 So, after covering the Pope in mud, LaVey brought out a guy playing Jesus wrapped in a white sheet and carrying a cross on his back.
28:57 Speaker 05 Ooh, ah, ooh.
28:59 Speaker 04 LaVey would curse Jesus himself, calling him, quote-
29:01 Speaker 05 That bellied monstrosity that hangs limply bound the cross still.
29:05 Speaker 04 And LaVey then crushed a plastic Christian figurine and threw it into a chamber pot, proclaiming-
29:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, don't swig around him, and prove that he had never walked on water and he never shall again.
29:16 Speaker 04 LaVey then ambled over to the pot, unzipped his fly, and tried, in vain, to piss on the remains of the figurine. Even LaVey, it seemed, occasionally got stage fright.
29:26 Speaker 05 Ah, ah, fuck, ah! You know when you hear your dad in the morning?
29:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:31 Speaker 05 Like, that's gotta be hard to hear that, ah! Come on, come on, evil piss! Come on!
29:37 Speaker 04 Come on, little devil, let's do it.
29:39 Speaker 05 Why didn't I piss before this? I knew I had to piss.
29:42 Speaker 04 But while Anton did get a little pee shy during this particular Black Mass, he still took it in stride and asked the organist to, quote, "Play him some water music." The organist drollly responded with an Irving Berlin song called "How Dry I Am", which caused the congregation to break character with various knowing chuckles.
30:01 Speaker 05 Fucking good comedic piano, man.
30:03 Speaker 04 Yeah. But perhaps the levity was needed, for Anton's stream did flow from that point forward.
30:11 Speaker 04 Oh. There it is. And after he finished, the nude female acolytes in the room all took turns as well, including one who pissed in the bucket for what was said to be an uncomfortably long period of time.
30:26 Speaker 05 Jesus Christ, Sandra.
30:30 Speaker 05 Three and a half minutes. Some people have to catch a bus. Hey, Sandra, you have a problem. Is that, are you just bleeding? What is happening to you? I don't even understand how you can have that much water inside of you. You're only 70%. Is your mother a camel?
30:44 Speaker 04 All this piss, I'm sure, was much to the pleasure of Anton LaVey, who had figured out how to make his personal sexual fetish, urophelia, a central tenet of the Church of Satan Black Mass.
30:54 Speaker 05 I mean, he's in charge.
30:56 Speaker 04 But after the urine part of the ceremony was over, a woman dressed as an nun came out and did a striptease to a particular waltz by Archibald Joyce, which very much reminds me of the type of music Jack Parsons listened to when he did magic. Let's listen to some of that striptease.
31:18 Speaker 04 Vision of Salome. It was used in a movie, I can't remember which one.
31:22 Speaker 05 Can we take this back? We need to do this for strip clubs. We need to go back to this. So jumpy. What if we go back to like Mata Hari and like the dance of the seven veils?
31:34 Speaker 04 Hey, it's still, there's someone in Los Angeles tonight stripping somewhere to a song like this. You can find it.
31:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
31:42 Speaker 04 It's out there. Just go to the magic castle and start asking people. That's where you gotta, that's where that line starts, unfortunately.
31:48 Speaker 05 I don't know if those magicians know a lot of ladies.
31:51 Speaker 06 Man, those guys love ladies. That's why they get into magic, otherwise they'd never talk to a woman.
31:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's true. Now, in the conclusion of the Black Mass, Anton LaVey would open his cape in front of the naked altar and hold his hands in a sign of the horns. Now, if you didn't know, the devil horn sign actually has meaning, because today, the horns of Satan have pretty much evolved into a more intense thumbs up. When you like something, you do the devil horns.
32:15 Speaker 05 But it used to be, it's again, this is one of those things, it used to freak people out?
32:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, the two points of your And pinky fingers represent goat horns thrust upwards in defiance of heaven. While the three fingers turned down are supposed to be in denial of the Holy Trinity. You know, but not everyone does.
32:31 Speaker 06 And if you put the thumb out, that's I love you.
32:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's I love you. Yeah.
32:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, everybody.
32:36 Speaker 04 Anybody can do ASL.
32:37 Speaker 06 Only for deaf people.
32:38 Speaker 05 You know what, Marcus? That's for you.
32:40 Speaker 04 Oh, thank you.
32:41 Speaker 05 You get nothing.
32:41 Speaker 06 I hear nothing. I see nothing.
32:43 Speaker 05 You get nothing.
32:44 Speaker 04 Back to you.
32:45 Speaker 06 Thank you. I take it.
32:46 Speaker 04 I mean, today, it's amazing that this thing that used to be, it's a well-established fixture in American culture. Like, you see this anywhere and everywhere.
32:54 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. P-Funk uses it.
32:55 Speaker 04 You see it at little league games, you know?
32:57 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah, Joe Biden did it once.
32:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, but concerning-
33:00 Speaker 05 He was having a stroke.
33:00 Speaker 06 Yeah, hang out with the guy in the prom.
33:04 Speaker 04 But concerning the end of this black mass, after three shouts of hail Satan, LaVey put out a candle, covered the naked woman who acted as the altar in a leopard skin blanket, and carried her out of the room. After the ritual was complete, the members of the Church of Satan, including Anton LaVey, retreated to his kitchen where they schmoozed over not alcohol, drugs, nor virgins' blood, but coffee, tea, and cake. And not cum cake either. Regular cake.
33:28 Speaker 05 Just normal ass cake.
33:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, no cakes of light, just tea and cake.
33:31 Speaker 05 This is really what Anton LaVey was trying to strip away from all of the stuff. Is that after I read all the Aleister Crowley stuff, he's trying to remind people that the whole magic thing is actually here.
33:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:45 Speaker 05 It's here amongst us. It's here in this room. Like, yeah, sure, it's, we're praying to Satan, but what we're actually doing is building a community.
33:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:54 Speaker 06 And nothing builds community like late night coffee.
33:57 Speaker 05 It really doesn't. And a piece of cake?
33:58 Speaker 06 Yeah.
33:59 Speaker 05 That is just one of my favorite ways to live life.
34:02 Speaker 06 It is one of the things that they did that every other fucking religion did.
34:06 Speaker 05 Is that funny? Hilarious. It's like they all do that. You know, it's always coffee and cake.
34:11 Speaker 04 Yeah. Now, Anton LaVey was certainly enjoying all this attention, because by the end of 1968, he was advertising black masses in San Francisco newspapers. And these gatherings became so popular that he would do the same performance two nights a week. By 1969, Anton LaVey claimed that the Church of Satan's membership had reached ten- 1,000 worldwide, although the real number was almost certainly far lower. But even so, there were enough people paying attention for Anton to release his first book. This, of course, was the foundational text of the Church of Satan, the infamous Satanic Bible. Now, I didn't read the Satanic Bible until around 2012, but what surprised me most is that while it is incredibly judgmental and more than a little fascist, it basically reads
34:56 Speaker 04 like a guidebook for how to balance being a good person with standing up for yourself in the modern world. It's actually a great place to start when you're trying to figure out your own personal guidelines for living outside of a Christian framework, because it really is far more of a philosophy book than a religious tome. It also isn't meant to be taken that seriously, nor is it meant to be the end-all, be-all. You don't end with the Satanic Bible, you begin with it.
35:21 Speaker 05 The key is to read it, because then you can really see what the actual tone is, which is mostly funny. Largely, it is a lot of wink, it's a lot of tongue-in-cheek, mixed with passionate belief systems that largely have to be included in context to the Christian church. That's what kind of the main issue about Satanism in general, is that even on its own as a religion, it doesn't kind of like stand up, because it's not supposed to. Like, if you read all just the stuff inside the Satanic Bible without realizing why it's there, or like what the point of it is, it can't, it doesn't serve as a bunch of lessons.
35:58 Speaker 04 Well, it really, it's defined by its opposition.
36:01 Speaker 05 Yes.
36:01 Speaker 04 And when something is defined by opposition, then, you know, it really can't stand on its own, and you really need something that stands on its own.
36:07 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:08 Speaker 04 Which is why it's a good place, which is why it's a good place to start.
36:09 Speaker 05 Yes, and that's why Anton Lavey, which we'll get to, was trying to fight it becoming a huge-ass religion.
36:15 Speaker 06 Yeah, and if you don't got time to read it, you can always read the jump-off-a-cliff notes.
36:20 Speaker 05 You fucking got it. Fucking.
36:24 Speaker 04 The Satanic Bible, however, is also largely plagiarized from many dubious sources.
36:29 Speaker 05 It better be.
36:31 Speaker 06 Who, did someone like, like, did like Penguin put it out? Like, did someone like buy the?
36:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was a publisher, I think Avon was the publisher. Um, it's been, you know, put out through various publishing houses throughout the years.
36:42 Speaker 06 It takes a lot of fucking balls.
36:43 Speaker 05 It does.
36:44 Speaker 04 Yeah. See, according to Anton LaVey's daughter, Xena, who later did an expose on LaVey's past after she broke with the church, the Satanic Bible was more of a cash grab meant to capitalize on the recent success of the Roman Polanski classic Rosemary's Baby, which had greatly increased the public's appetite for Satanist and occult content. In other words, it's merch.
37:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
37:05 Speaker 04 But when Anton LaVey and his partner Diane Higarty gathered everything Anton had written about the Church of Satan for a book, it was far too short and it was an absolute fucking mess. It's actually said that its editor, a woman named Carol Smith, who mostly did cookbooks, she was the one who made the Satanic Bible readable.
37:24 Speaker 05 Oh, I bet that a hundred percent. Honestly, cookbook's a great way to start for the, it's actually really good for ritual writing. Yeah. You're gonna need like two ounces of blood. One new side.
37:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's instructions. But to meet the length requirements laid out by the publisher, LaVey and Higarty heavily borrowed from authors like the infamous Ragnar Redbeard, author of the antisemitic, white supremacist, social Darwinist garbage book, Midas Right. In this book from 1896, Ragnar argued that weakness should be met with hatred and that social Darwinism should be the law of the land. Now, LaVey stripped out the antisemitism, the misogyny, and the racism, but large parts of one section of the Satanic Bible, the Book of Satan, were lifted from Ragnar Redbeard's writings. In fact, while it has been removed from recent printings, early editions of the Satanic Bible list Ragnar Redbeard as an influence.
38:20 Speaker 04 Midas Right, by the way, has since had a resurgence among the more foul, far-right manosphere influencers who have all spent the last few years absolutely ruining the internet for reasonable people like ourselves.
38:32 Speaker 05 Say as what now this is I like that we're getting into this.
38:36 Speaker 04 Of course.
38:36 Speaker 05 This is one of the big, major problems that Satanism has is this problem, which is this idea of people don't understand fundamentally what all of this means and what Anton LaVey meant by it. So that is, so go through this, you can kind of see, and you can see why he chose this topic and then stripped it of all the quote unquote hate. I can see why he chose it, but we'll, we'll, let's, let's get into it now.
39:03 Speaker 06 Well, you can't keep all that shit in there because he needs women to love it.
39:07 Speaker 05 Oh, no, it's not about that because again, it was all, it's not, how do you say this is the problem when something isn't that deep? That that's the problem almost is that when something becomes an Anton LaVey, this is a problem. He set up of an issue for himself in the future by not really thinking about it hard enough.
39:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:27 Speaker 05 About what it was he was adding without the, later on in The Devil's Notebook and Speak of the Devil. Anton LaVey will couch this, package this more, explain more what he kind of did, like he kind of does that over time, but in the beginning, you know.
39:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, Satanic Bible is kind of rushed.
39:44 Speaker 05 It is.
39:45 Speaker 04 It's just sort of, it's put out because like, hey, we can make a lot of money because people are really into this Rosemary's baby shit. Like, let's get this thing out there. So it's, you know, so, yeah, there's a lot of shit in there that probably shouldn't be in there.
39:54 Speaker 05 Yes.
39:55 Speaker 04 Even more than Ragnar Redbeard, Anton LaVey also stole from the much maligned Objectivist writer Ayn Rand for his nine Satanic statements. And those were meant to replace Christianity's Ten Commandments. Then he wanted statements instead of commandments. In fact, LaVey himself said that LaVeyan Satanism was, quote, "Just Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added."
40:17 Speaker 05 Which doesn't, even if you listen to Anton LaVey, I'm sorry, he has no idea what the fuck he's talking about because Anton, because Ayn Rand specifically doesn't believe, that's what Objectivism, it can't have rituals in it. So it doesn't make any sense for them to have any rituals in it. So, yeah.
40:30 Speaker 04 Yeah. Well, ironically though, considering how much Republicans love Ayn Rand because she helped bring their "fuck you, I got mine" philosophy to the modern world, I'd say that today's Christians actually follow Church of Satan philosophies far more than the teachings of Jesus Christ. For example, this blessing written by Anton LaVey as a parody of Jesus's "Blessed are the meek" speech, this might as well be the guiding light for the modern Republican Party. Henry, please.
40:54 Speaker 05 Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke. Blessed are the iron-handed, for the unfit shall flee before them. Cursed are the poor and spirit, for they shall be spat upon.
41:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:14 Speaker 05 But the key is, okay. The Church of Satan, more than anything, is a direct offense against the hippie movement and the Christian church. So in this world, the idea is, God, you're supposed to be afraid of God. And you're supposed to inherently obey God. You're supposed to obey your parents, you're supposed to obey the priests, you're supposed to do all these things, and you're supposed to turn the other cheek when they punish you. So when they punish you, when something bad happens to you, you're just supposed to walk away. You're supposed to just lay down your arms and just take it. That is the whole thing. And with Christianity, that tenet makes you easy to control. Because eventually, it's like, you're just gonna do what I say. Because I'm telling you to say it.
41:58 Speaker 05 And this, you're, literally, you're, you, like, groveling and obeying me is a virtue. The idea of you, that being a virtue. So this is an overcorrection. The whole point of this is to give to dweebs and nerds the ability to be like, no. Like, you know when your mom, my mom said, would your mom have the same philosophy? I don't want to see you start in a fight, but you can finish a fight.
42:22 Speaker 04 Sure.
42:23 Speaker 05 Right? So it is that idea of being like, no, fuck God. So like, oh, so God plays his little games with me? And I'm not supposed to be fucking angry about it for his lessons? So everything bad he does to me is just a challenge that I'm just supposed to suck up and take? Fuck you! And it's like a genuine, like, all of these people, just because you're wearing a suit? I'm supposed to think you're better than me just because you're, you act like you have some moral agency? You have, you act like you are the guy, the arbiter of morality? And I just have to believe you because you're on fucking television? Fuck you!
42:55 Speaker 04 Sure. I mean, to bring the satanic bible down to its absolute basics, it really comes down to living a life that makes you happy and successful while doing everything in your power to ensure that your happiness does not come at the expense or the pain of others. And that's despite all of the book's negative influences. In my opinion, Anton LaVey took a lot of really ugly shit and made a religion that when you strip away a lot of the edginess, it's actually quite nice. And it's far more realistic than Christianity as Christianity is actually practiced. Your opinion on that, of course, depends a lot on your opinion about the true nature of mankind. If we're inherently good, inherently bad, or as LaVey sees it, and honestly, how I see it, we're somewhere in between.
43:39 Speaker 05 Because Christians believe we're bad. Do you know that, right?
43:43 Speaker 04 Original, no, original sin. That's the whole fucking thing. We're born sinful.
43:47 Speaker 06 The devil exists to scare them out of doing bad things.
43:51 Speaker 05 Which, guess what they do? They do bad things, especially the ones that have the mandates, because they've been given God's mandate. They've been told that they're chosen by God, and so they can do whatever the fuck they want.
44:02 Speaker 06 Mike Pence was too scared to be alone with another woman.
44:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's how fucking...
44:09 Speaker 05 So, yes, yes, I do understand this, and then this will be the thing that will cause problems in the future for him. This will cause problems. But it's because of the, like, it's the not understanding it almost on purpose, and also where he got it from.
44:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, and I met a bunch of Satanists when I lived in Tallahassee. I was pretty close-minded about Satanism at that point in my life, because I was like, you know, 23 years old. I just think of like Satanism as evil, you know?
44:34 Speaker 04 Sure, and you're a good Catholic boy.
44:36 Speaker 06 I wasn't, at this point, I was an atheist. But like, but I met a couple Satanists, and they were so kind. They were like, literally like, helped me. My car was stuck in the side of the road, and they came and helped me. And then like, they helped, well, a couple of them helped me move. I barely knew them. And then I started working with some of them at Hooters, and they were just like, the guys who show up to work on time. And it's like, I don't know what to say.
45:00 Speaker 05 The guy you're describing, Eddie, is the guy that just now arriving in the story was Michael Aquino. So, Michael Aquino is... An example of this is that in Satanism, the most effective members have an extremely high moral viewpoint of the world. Like, that is the, that's the only way it works.
45:18 Speaker 06 Annoyingly so.
45:19 Speaker 05 Yes, it is the only way it even works is that you have, the whole point is that you are annoyingly moral.
45:24 Speaker 04 I would say a- almost aggravatingly normal or moral.
45:27 Speaker 05 Yes, that is the, you are, because you have believed, you come to believe, which is what I come to believe, that the Christian world is a, is a place of sickness.
45:37 Speaker 06 Yeah.
45:37 Speaker 05 Like, it's like a place of, of rot and poison, and then it's, and then until it's fixed from the bottom up, it's not, it's not helping anybody.
45:45 Speaker 06 I've seen way more evil in, in the Christian church than I have in the Satan church.
45:49 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
45:50 Speaker 04 We all have. No, anyone who says any different isn't paying attention.
45:53 Speaker 05 No.
45:54 Speaker 04 Now, in March of 1969, Anton LaVey's inner circle grew to include a member who would be far more of a pain in the ass to Anton LaVey than he probably suspected. That man was the future founder of the Temple of Set, Michael Aquino.
46:07 Speaker 07 Hell, Satan. He is just, he's my best friend. And Anton's just, you don't get it. You made up a bunch of rules. You don't follow them. I don't understand.
46:18 Speaker 06 He was a big old boy, though. You portray him like such a dweeb. He looks scary.
46:22 Speaker 05 No, he's ch- he's chunker. He's chunker.
46:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, he, he's a, he's a chubby man.
46:26 Speaker 06 Yeah.
46:26 Speaker 05 He's also army trained.
46:28 Speaker 06 I wasn't gonna do it, alright.
46:29 Speaker 04 And reportedly, Michael Aquino met Anton LaVey at a showing of Rosemary's Baby when Aquino was just 22 years old.
46:36 Speaker 05 Do you know that story?
46:37 Speaker 04 No.
46:37 Speaker 05 It's so funny, because Anton LaVey would just show up, so, again, an example of why he was just a local character. Anything that was remotely evil, Anton LaVey and his crew would just show up.
46:46 Speaker 06 Oh.
46:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, literally. It's so funny. And Michael Aquino said, he got out of the car, and it was the premiere of Rosemary's Baby in San Francisco, and he said he watched the doors fling open, and Anton LaVey in his full hood was out with all of his coterie, and he watched them all walk into a hearse, and he got in a hearse and drove off, and it was just Michael Aquino being like,
47:09 Speaker 07 "I wanna be just like that."
47:15 Speaker 04 Well, Michael and his wife quickly applied for membership in the church, and before long, they were participating in their first satanic rituals. Aquino, however, does not in any way fit the profile of an average Satanist, or at least how people think an average Satanist would be. When Aquino met Anton LaVey, Michael was an officer in the army who'd grown up as a conventionally respectable boy. Aquino was an Eagle Scout who joined the ROTC at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 1968 as a distinguished military graduate. Do you know how much of a fucking nerd you have to be to join the ROTC in Santa Barbara in the 1960s?
47:55 Speaker 06 It's so much, just go surfing. He's too fat. He was too fat for surfing.
47:59 Speaker 07 He definitely was a Santa Barbara Goth. And for those of you that know other Santa Barbara Goths or beachside Goths, you know for a fact it's just him just going, "All these people, their tight little tummies on their surfboards. They don't understand that the universe is complicated. I mean, I know many things." Meanwhile, everybody's fucking and dancing and having a great time, and he's just sitting there just being like, "They don't fucking read like I read. They don't understand all my references. My necklace is a cut, my fish neck glove."
48:36 Speaker 04 He was in Santa Barbara from 1964 to 1968, and he chose the ROTC.
48:42 Speaker 06 Yeah. What a nerd.
48:44 Speaker 04 Well, after that...
48:45 Speaker 06 He joined the army!
48:47 Speaker 04 After that, Aquino joined the army and soon found himself as a PSYOP Special Forces Officer at Fort Bragg during the Vietnam War. Reportedly, Aquino's PSYOP ideas included experiments to disorient North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers using amplified sounds, sometimes using so-called demonic screams blared from helicopters overhead.
49:08 Speaker 07 And a lot of them I did myself. It was kind of fun, just going, "Said I was out! Said I was out! Said I was out! Said I was out!"
49:15 Speaker 05 I speak it up.
49:16 Speaker 04 When Aquino traveled to Vietnam for an active duty tour in June of 1969, he brought a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost with him. If you'll remember, Anton LaVey based his ideas about the character of Satan on Milton's interpretation. Like LaVey, Aquino saw Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. And since Aquino was going through a heavy existential and philosophical crisis at the time, he latched on to the idea that Satan might have better ideas than God. It must be said, however, that his crises had nothing to do with his career in the armed forces, nor did it have anything to do about his feelings concerning Vietnam. Because Michael Aquino stayed in the military as a powerful and influential figure
49:59 Speaker 04 throughout his entire life, up until the 2000s. And that was even with his incredibly goofy eyebrows, which were styled into points to mimic devil horns.
50:11 Speaker 05 You're a diabolical?
50:14 Speaker 04 But that really shows you how good Michael Aquino was at his job. He was so fucking good that the army put up with that.
50:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, but the army also likes scary shit.
50:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:24 Speaker 05 They like weirdos, and they like people, patriotic weirdos. Michael Aquino is a patriot through and through.
50:32 Speaker 04 Hundred percent.
50:33 Speaker 05 He is very similar to Mormons.
50:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:35 Speaker 05 Like, that's why they use Mormons in the intelligence services, and they use Mormons for those types of things, because they are... Mormons have an ability to believe in something entirely not real. And they... and just be able to dispel reality so hard that it makes him really good at being a part of the CIA.
50:50 Speaker 06 Who do you think Michael Aquino's more, uh, who likes more? The United States of America or Satan?
50:57 Speaker 04 I would say, I would say America.
50:58 Speaker 05 Well, I'd say he loves that he lives in America, but he wishes that you could understand that the power of Set himself would release you to an ocean of endless knowledge. Boring.
51:12 Speaker 05 Exactly.
51:13 Speaker 04 When Anton LaVey met Michael Aquino at the Rosemary's Baby screening, LaVey simply gave him his card. It wasn't until Aquino was on leave in San Francisco in March of 1969 that he would see an ad in an underground newspaper advertising the performance of a so-called Satanic Circle at Anton's Black House.
51:32 Speaker 05 They're gonna love me there.
51:35 Speaker 05 They're just gonna be so happy I came. So excited for my presence.
51:40 Speaker 04 The circle that Aquino attended featured all of Anton's greatest hits, including a robed henchman stationed at the door, who is actually just a history professor, and a grand entrance from LaVey himself emerging from an Egyptian sarcophagus. Now, Aquino was impressed by LaVey's charisma, confidence, and philosophy. So, he went all in on the Church of Satan. He later wrote, in the nerdiest way possible, quote,
52:03 Speaker 05 "I reached out, and I took the apple."
52:07 Speaker 06 Ugh.
52:09 Speaker 04 Makes me...
52:11 Speaker 04 Fucking, god damn it, how do you take it and make it just so not cool?
52:17 Speaker 05 That's the thing, Anton LaVey was just so like... But he knew he needed these guys. That's the problem, he needed the guys.
52:24 Speaker 04 But did he, though?
52:25 Speaker 05 I mean, not with what they would do, but he originally is like, okay, I need guys that aren't just drug addicts and losers and strippers. I need like...
52:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, someone's gotta work the books.
52:35 Speaker 05 Yes.
52:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, not just intellectuals. Like, that's where it is, because that's really the people that he's surrounding himself at this point is like, it's intellectuals, it's, you know, people who say they're magicians, but they're really dentists. But there are people who have other shit going on. He needed some, he thought at least that he needed someone who could take care of the admin.
52:54 Speaker 05 It was highly curated as well. That's what also people don't particularly understand is how curated this environment was in the beginning. It really was friendly.
53:06 Speaker 05 Thinkers that were all willing to talk about this in a fun way and then just leave. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it was like, very hip, people.
53:13 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's like guys who get into like, Magic the Gathering, but they're cool and then they just gotta go deal with these fucking nerds all the time.
53:19 Speaker 05 That's how it is. That's what Anton LaVey, he, yes, he was, it was his punishment.
53:25 Speaker 04 Now, within just a few years, Michael Aquino was a major insider at the Church of Satan, although he took on all the nerd roles that Anton LaVey couldn't be bothered with. Like, for example, editing the church's internal publication, The Cloven Hoof.
53:38 Speaker 05 Excellent, because I love templates. And I have two hooves for hands. Just get the fuck out of here. I just feel like there were so many good conversations, like, okay, Michael, now, get the fuck out of here.
53:48 Speaker 04 I'm done. I'm done. I'm done with you for today.
53:50 Speaker 05 I don't wanna hear that. I don't wanna hear a single more thing about the email list. If I hear one more fucking thing about an email list, I'm gonna fucking sacrifice you to myself.
53:58 Speaker 06 How many empty doorways did Michael Aquino talk through? Yeah, yeah. People just walking away slowly.
54:05 Speaker 05 Now, that's another part that I wanted to... Yeah, that's fine. I'll save it. I'll save it for when we're on a plane together.
54:15 Speaker 04 Most importantly, though, Michael Aquino was a member of the Church of Satan's governing body, the Council of Nine. This presumably is how Aquino came to be so heavily involved in a short-lived organizational structure called the Grotto System. Now, incredibly, the Grotto System was modeled after the Boy Scout troops that both Aquino and LaVey loved. The idea was that the Grotto System would give each member a chance to be more than a so-called mail-order Satanist. Using the Grotto System, members could share in ritual practice and discussion with their own local Satanists outside of San Francisco, wherever in the country they may be.
54:52 Speaker 04 By July of 1970, 25 satanic grottos had been established around America with names like the Plutonian Grotto, the Esmodius Grotto, the Babylon Grotto, the Karnak Grotto, and the Yugaht Grotto.
55:06 Speaker 05 Oh!
55:07 Speaker 04 Each grotto, which was required to have at least five members...
55:10 Speaker 05 Can I ask which grotto had a cold brew? That's like my main thing.
55:14 Speaker 04 Karnak Grotto.
55:15 Speaker 05 Okay, I'll be there.
55:16 Speaker 06 Whatever one was in Connecticut.
55:18 Speaker 04 Well, each grotto, which was required to have at least five members, was led by someone who was at least a second-degree witch or warlock. Each grotto also had to be approved by Michael Aquino and the rest of the Council of Nine, who were all fourth-degree witches or warlocks.
55:35 Speaker 05 graduated. I'm fifth degree now. That is. You make the rules. Yes, I know.
55:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, that kinda is the problem.
55:44 Speaker 05 Yep.
55:44 Speaker 04 That is actually the main problem.
55:46 Speaker 05 When you just make up a bunch of stuff and you say, okay, all of you individuals, form a group.
55:52 Speaker 06 So other than San Francisco, where was the next biggest community, do you know?
55:55 Speaker 04 I actually don't know, but they were all over the country. Like I said, there, there were 25 of them. Uh, I would guess probably New York.
56:02 Speaker 05 It was New York and the UK.
56:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
56:04 Speaker 05 Yeah.
56:05 Speaker 04 Well, grottoes also had to make monthly reports about its members, what everyone's up to, how are the rituals going? And some even had their own local newsletters, like Satan Spawn, Devil's Advocate, Children of the Night, and my favorite, the Typhon Tusk.
56:19 Speaker 06 Ooh.
56:20 Speaker 04 Now, as far as Michael Aquino's role in the grotto system went, he handled some of the administration and of course, wrote the Articles of Protocol for the whole system.
56:29 Speaker 05 Of course.
56:30 Speaker 04 Which outlined the purpose of the grottoes.
56:31 Speaker 05 Thanks.
56:32 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, anytime there's something with artic- the words articles or protocol in it, Aquino's all over.
56:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, Mike, why don't you take care of that?
56:41 Speaker 05 I was actually gonna volunteer. This is my first, this is the best thing in the world. I was thinking of a 12-point full of points system. Where you go, that's great. Get the fuck out of here. Great, Michael, I do I need to hear every fucking minute of it? Do I get to hear every fucking second of it?
56:58 Speaker 04 Basically, Aquino believed, because he was both an army man and an Eagle Scout, that people who work in formal organizations can realize their desires for power more easily. Grottos allowed Satanists to help each other rather than go it alone, and black magic ceremonies were of course, far easier to pull off if you had friends helping.
57:17 Speaker 05 But what does that do, Marcus? It creates a series of hierarchies.
57:21 Speaker 04 Yes.
57:22 Speaker 05 And guess what Satanists don't like? Series of fucking hierarchies, we don't like them!
57:29 Speaker 04 Nope.
57:29 Speaker 05 I hate them!
57:30 Speaker 06 But they also hate being alone.
57:32 Speaker 05 Well, all humans do.
57:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, but that's the thing. Just because I'm hanging out with a bunch of people, do I have to put a bunch of rules around it?
57:41 Speaker 05 Why we gotta fuckin' all have titles?
57:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, can't we just hang out?
57:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
57:45 Speaker 04 But even though things were going swimmingly for the Church of Satan on paper, it seems like Michael Aquino's influence in the organization took a lot of the fun out of the enterprise for Anton LaVey. And LaVey began getting disillusioned with the whole affair within just a few years. In 1972, Anton LaVey ended his public ceremonies at the Black House. In his mind, he'd wanted the Church of Satan to evolve into a quote, "cabbalistic underground", instead of the long-running pageant it had become. And that is, of course, his words, "long-running pageant". And furthermore, the grotto system under Michael Aquino had, again, in LaVey's words, "turned the church into a Satan penpal club".
58:25 Speaker 05 It's kinda funny.
58:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, it went from like ceremonies to meetings.
58:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly.
58:29 Speaker 04 Yeah. But concerning the pageantry, LaVey began feeling embarrassed to be seen with members who wanted to show the whole world that they were Satanists all the time, wherever they went. LaVey said that he'd step off a plane and there his dark children would be, huddled together in black velvet robes and capes with huge Baphomet necklaces, at the fucking airport. Because there's a time and place for this shit, and it ain't the fucking airport.
58:57 Speaker 06 I've learned. Yeah, he's got a target on his back. He doesn't need the moment he lands for there to be a crowd waiting for him.
59:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, be like, "Here's the Church of Satan guy, everybody kill him!"
59:07 Speaker 06 Yeah.
59:08 Speaker 04 See, how LaVey saw it, the grassroots people around the country didn't know much about subtlety or decorum. In other words, LaVey was disappointed that as Satanists, they didn't know how to just be cool. Just fucking hang out. It doesn't have to be like this all the fucking time. He said, and this is my favorite Anton LaVey quote:
59:28 Speaker 05 "I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image. And their idea of protest to shock was to wear their lodge regalia into the nearest bennies." This is a thing that I, I, I think about all the time because this is kind of what I've even modeled myself after in a way because Anton LaVey, he straight up gets what he kept saying. He's like, "The Church of Satan part of me is only like a 20% part of me." Like, I actually have all these other things. I am actually, I have all these other abilities and all these other interests. And I started this thing and it was actually never supposed to be a merch carrying club. Like, this was supposed to go underground for me. This is supposed to be for me.
1:00:10 Speaker 05 And for the people like minded to me. Cause Satanists, if you believe how the Satanists believe themselves, we're the fucking elite. That's the idea, right? We're supposed to be the fucking top of the top that don't get fucking pulled in the nets of these religions and shit. It makes you naturally a very divisive human being. But the dude fucking just was like, "Can't you just do it with style?"
1:00:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, or just hang out.
1:00:34 Speaker 06 He was right about the Denny's thing. I feel like that's wherever I see a Satanist is in like a Denny's or a shitty diner.
1:00:40 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, I don't know what it is, but just, I mean, it's a well-known fact that Goth kids are drawn to Denny's.
1:00:45 Speaker 05 It is a, it's a safe place.
1:00:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:00:47 Speaker 06 A Perkins as well. They like Perkins.
1:00:49 Speaker 04 Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know how many times we just hung out and it's, it was because you could sit, hang out in a Denny's, unlimited coffee, and you could smoke.
1:00:56 Speaker 06 And they won't kick you out.
1:00:57 Speaker 04 And they won't kick you out and it's open 24 hours.
1:00:59 Speaker 06 As long as you don't fight nobody, you good.
1:01:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, now I am. Now, the inevitable backlash against the Church of Satan started getting dangerous by 1974. While the Black House was among the world's first satanic tourist destinations, the crowds of looky-loos and admirers also included people who genuinely wanted to hurt or kill Anton and his family.
1:01:19 Speaker 05 That's what we were talking about in the first episode. That's the inherent problem about being a Satanist is that you're asking people to punch you in the face.
1:01:25 Speaker 06 And the star does look like a target.
1:01:28 Speaker 04 It does, very much so. LaVey and his family therefore moved to a house in Sonoma, north of San Francisco, after enduring a barrage of bricks, eggs, spray paints, bullets, and even a bomb. LaVey became reclusive, fortifying the Black House with surveillance cameras and a 10-foot tall electrified fence, even though he wasn't even living there. anymore. It was more of the Black House basically became like the Church of Satan's office.
1:01:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:01:53 Speaker 04 Then around the Halloween of nineteen seventy-four, LaVey went public with his dissatisfaction. He said in an interview that he wanted to be nowhere near San Francisco during Halloween.
1:02:03 Speaker 05 I get it.
1:02:04 Speaker 04 He didn't want to be the center of attention for a bunch of Satanists. He didn't like a respect. Further explaining that for him, which I totally fucking get, Halloween was like New Year's Eve to a bartender.
1:02:14 Speaker 05 It's just the truth. Hanging out with LaVey was more fun. Tuesday night, man, that's when you want to meet the fucking Pope of the Church of Satan.
1:02:23 Speaker 04 I want to meet the Pope of the Church of Satan on April fourteenth.
1:02:26 Speaker 05 Yes, middle of the day.
1:02:28 Speaker 04 Actually, now April fourteenth back is he's gonna be, he's in preparations for Vol Purgis Nacht.
1:02:32 Speaker 05 Yes.
1:02:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, I want to meet him sometime in like June.
1:02:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, what after, during the normal anti-Christian celebration.
1:02:41 Speaker 04 LaVey also announced that in an attempt to steer the church back to a dignified place, he was done doing performative satanic rituals. He said that the new type of Satanist is not ostentatious nor garish, but a substantial, responsible citizen who prefers to keep his Satanism on the inside rather than on his sleeve. LaVey had also dismantled Michael Aquino's beloved grotto system because the majority of the grottos couldn't get their shit together due to rivalries, scandals, and the general types of antics that well, we would expect more in a high school glee club than in a satanic mini cult.
1:03:14 Speaker 05 Can I speak as the charismatic leader of a small group of people that do form side groups? And explain that every single time you do that, when you form a Facebook group or you form a Reddit group, it begins to suck. And does begin to eat itself because the internet, because groups of people in those areas, for some reason, just slowly become like evil, dark rats to each other.
1:03:39 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, whenever you're like group, like a chat on there or like text chat, like changes names for the fifth time, it's time to go.
1:03:47 Speaker 05 I'm out.
1:03:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's, yeah, it's time to get out of there. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's, it's not just Satanist, it's any group of people.
1:03:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:03:53 Speaker 04 Like you get too many people in one place and just for too long, everything has an end. And you kind of just need to say like, okay, that's enough. But Anton LaVey saying like, we're not doing the grotto system anymore. That was also, it seems like the beginning of the split between him and Michael Aquino.
1:04:08 Speaker 05 Very much so, because they were also, what he's not telling the world is that he himself was taking magic more seriously on his own personally.
1:04:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:04:18 Speaker 05 And that was like the thing he started to understand, I wanted to do it for me. And the Michael Aquino and the Order of the Trapezoid shit, all of that was supposed to be for his own private practice and for him to sort of teach himself. Because according to Michael Aquino, that's the idea, is that they started doing fake rituals and then one day, they met something real.
1:04:34 Speaker 04 Yes.
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1:05:50 Speaker 03 Comedy.
1:05:54 Speaker 04 Now, LeVey did continue as a leader of the church, but he narrowed his focus on the more intellectual and, of course, the wealthier followers. Mainstream fame, as it turned out, resulted in mainstream people all up in your shit. And from what it seems like, LeVey didn't want to be a mainstream figure. Instead, it seems like after the Church of Satan began to be far more troubled than it was worth, Anton LeVey became far more concerned with how he could worm his way into Hollywood. Because Anton LeVey was, first and foremost, an entertainer.
1:06:24 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, baby.
1:06:25 Speaker 04 Now, LeVey had claimed that he'd worked as a satanic consultant on Rosemary's Baby, and it was rumored that it was LeVey himself who played Satan during the movie's impregnation scene. Neither of those things, of course, are true, but it is interesting.
1:06:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, it was Roman Polanski himself.
1:06:41 Speaker 04 Really?
1:06:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, he did it. No, no, that's not true. He just, you know, he just.
1:06:45 Speaker 04 He's just, he's an evil man.
1:06:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, apparently.
1:06:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, seriously. But it is interesting that Anton's detachment from the church does coincide with his increasing involvement in Hollywood productions, even if all of his contributions were in the decidedly B-movie category.
1:07:01 Speaker 05 He just wanted to make movies at this point. He knew, he knew. He just wanted to make movies. He never wanted to make a religion, really.
1:07:09 Speaker 04 No. It's entertainment. Yeah, exactly. He wanted to make entertainment. Movies, TV, whatever. Music, yeah.
1:07:14 Speaker 05 But this is the big lesson here. The big lesson is that the way all of this magic shit works is that what Anton LeVey understood, did not fully understand, even in his creation of it, is that you can't control it.
1:07:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:07:27 Speaker 05 And you really do become what you pretend to be. It is real. That is fucking real. It's why the senators change. It's why these people change. It's because as soon as you get to that place, it changes you.
1:07:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, it does. Well, in 1973, Anton LeVey advised on a script for a TV movie starring William Shatner called "The Horror at 37,000 Feet." Whoa! Shatner, I suppose, was trying to recapture the magic of his classic Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Oh!
1:07:58 Speaker 05 I was the other fan.
1:08:01 Speaker 04 I know. No, it's incredibly stupid. Yeah. And which, and that's also, it's interesting that remember William Shatner's other Twilight Zone episode was the one, the little devil creature, you know, the, we're at the diner, you know, just one more, just one more.
1:08:15 Speaker 05 Yes, which is honestly incredible allegory for chat boxes and chat GPT.
1:08:19 Speaker 04 It is. It really is. Yeah. What do I do? Tell me what to do next. But instead of a gremlin tearing the plane apart, that was nightmare at 20,000 feet, horror at 37,000 feet.
1:08:29 Speaker 05 Completely different, entirely different pitch. I don't want to hear this. It's entirely different.
1:08:35 Speaker 04 15,000 yards.
1:08:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I like that. I like yards. It makes you think of football. Okay, football ghosts on a plane.
1:08:43 Speaker 04 Terror at 30,000 inches.
1:08:46 Speaker 05 That's what I like. It's a real low one, but I like that.
1:08:50 Speaker 04 Well, horror at 37,000 feet was a high concept mess about a bunch of demonic Druid ghosts causing havoc from an airplane's baggage compartment by torturing the passengers with demonic visions.
1:09:03 Speaker 05 Yes.
1:09:03 Speaker 04 It is considered to be William Shatner's worst film, which is saying a lot.
1:09:08 Speaker 05 Yeah. Just the idea of being like, okay, all right, now you had a ghost. Yeah, absolutely. All right. When he goes on the plane, or he had a grandma and that's fine. When he goes on the plane, it's fine. Druids, perfect. Yeah, exactly. Boom. Irish, done. British, people, so scary. Absolutely. Where did Druid ghost, where did, where did British ghost go? Baggage, in the baggage, in the bags, in the bag. Yeah, yeah. Cause that's where crazy shit, no one knows what's in the bags. Nobody knows what's under the plane. Yeah, that's the scariest part of the plane. Aren't we all mentally carrying a lot of? That is what I'm saying. It's writing itself. It's writing itself.
1:09:41 Speaker 04 You know, people say you can't do art with TV. This is wrong. It's wrong. We're doing it. But even though horror was a fucking flop, LaVey also consulted on a movie called The Mephisto Waltz, about a dying Satanist piano player who transfers his soul into the body of a younger man. That younger man was played by Alan Alda, you know, from MASH.
1:10:01 Speaker 05 Wow. Wow.
1:10:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, I haven't seen Mephisto. The, the poster from Mephisto Waltz is fucking awesome. It's very cool. It's got a girl on the floor and she's drawing a pentagram. It's, it's very cool, but I hear like the set is really cool, but overall like, they say Alan Alda's the worst part of the movie.
1:10:17 Speaker 05 Wow.
1:10:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, they say he flubs it.
1:10:20 Speaker 06 Can't, no, not all done.
1:10:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's young.
1:10:24 Speaker 05 Well, I will say if we're saying that the set is good, it's not a good movie. You know what I mean? We're at that point being like, you know, I just, I'm proud of them for getting it all together.
1:10:33 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:10:34 Speaker 05 You know, wow.
1:10:34 Speaker 06 I just can't believe-
1:10:35 Speaker 05 About Frankenstein. Wow, they really put a lot of work in that, huh?
1:10:39 Speaker 04 Well, I'm, I'm a massive B-movie guy. So like, so whenever someone says like, the set is incredible, I'm like, watch that.
1:10:47 Speaker 04 And this one got better reviews, but the praise was mostly focused on the occult imagery, the set, you know, all, all the various, you know, things in the background. That of course was all LeVey's doing. Critics, however, were less kind about the car, which involved a possessed Lincoln Continental that runs people over for no good reason and was parodied many years later in an episode of Futurama called The Honking.
1:11:10 Speaker 05 Had everything to do with Christine.
1:11:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, I, I think it was, um, somewhere around the same time as Christine. But while LeVey bragged that the car was filled with occult symbolism, the film's writers denied all that, saying that they had simply written a quick ripoff of Jaws, using a car instead of a shark and a few vague occult elements.
1:11:30 Speaker 05 That's Duel. Which is the movie- No, no, no, no, no. That's Spielberg making for a draw. Listen to me asshole, no. No, no, no, no. It's called The Car. You know, that actually kind of mentions, that's two cars. This is not about those, several cars. It's about one car. It's the car.
1:11:48 Speaker 04 The car.
1:11:48 Speaker 05 It's the car.
1:11:49 Speaker 04 And it's a Lincoln, which is nice.
1:11:52 Speaker 05 And it goes on a song.
1:11:54 Speaker 06 And we all know what Lincoln did.
1:11:56 Speaker 05 Suck dick until he's like, ah.
1:12:02 Speaker 04 But out of all the movies Anton LeVey was involved with in ways big and small, none were more insane, more satanic, more entertaining, nor more incoherent than The Devil's Reign.
1:12:15 Speaker 05 Oh, it's awesome.
1:12:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, starring again William Shatner, as well as Tom Skerritt as the hero, and Ernest Borgnine in one of his best roles as a manic, satanic priest.
1:12:26 Speaker 06 Dude, it was awesome. Marcus made me watch it last night and I can't tell if I know more or less about Satanism now.
1:12:32 Speaker 04 You know less.
1:12:33 Speaker 05 You know less.
1:12:35 Speaker 05 Ernest Borgnine's amazing in this movie.
1:12:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
1:12:39 Speaker 05 And he disavowed it afterwards.
1:12:40 Speaker 04 Yes, although it was, you know, he said later, there's, oh, I hid my trailer the whole time. He didn't. He had a fucking great time. Everyone on the, everyone on the set had a great time except William Shatner. And the only reason why William Shatner had a bad time was because it was filmed in Mexico and nobody in Mexico knew who the fuck William Shatner was. No one's seen Star Trek. And so he was jealous.
1:13:00 Speaker 06 The set was nice.
1:13:01 Speaker 04 The set was amazing.
1:13:02 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:13:03 Speaker 05 It was.
1:13:04 Speaker 04 Oh, and bonus horror movie fact, a plastic mold was made of William Shatner's face for the big climax in The Devil's Rain. And that mold was turned into a mass-produced Halloween mask. And that same model of mask was later painted white and turned into the face of Michael Myers for the Halloween movies.
1:13:19 Speaker 06 Hell, yeah.
1:13:19 Speaker 05 Fascinating. So it did lead to something good.
1:13:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, it did. Oh, it actually, we're gonna get to it here in a second. It led to a lot of shit. Now, concerning The Devil's Rain, the plot barely makes sense. And I've seen it like a few times.
1:13:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, they melt.
1:13:37 Speaker 05 Cause of the rain.
1:13:39 Speaker 05 That's cause of, that's cause of the doings of the rain.
1:13:42 Speaker 04 Well, best as I can tell it, Ernest Borgnine plays a satanic priest who's been trying for hundreds of years to obtain a book from a family of former followers. The book is filled with the names of followers Borgnine has obtained for Satan. You know, the, remember all the Salem witch trials stuff, you know, that put the name in the devil's book? But those souls cannot be claimed by Satan until Borgnine gets the book back, and therein lies the plot.
1:14:05 Speaker 05 Oh, it's kinda like when you left all your Marlboro miles, like if you had left them behind and you can't get them. So that's what he need, oh, that's what it is.
1:14:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
1:14:12 Speaker 05 Cause it don't count.
1:14:13 Speaker 04 No, it don't count. No.
1:14:15 Speaker 05 Ain't no Marlboro miles in heaven. Nah. Oh, hell.
1:14:19 Speaker 04 You can smoke as much as you want, but if you don't turn them in, you ain't getting the windbreaker.
1:14:22 Speaker 06 No.
1:14:24 Speaker 04 Now, The Devil's Rain was a full-on production, and Anton LaVey was present for the entire five-week shoot down in Mexico. He did set design, costume design, and his name is prominently displayed in the opening credits as technical advisor and high priest of Satan. Which, I mean, it's more of a publicity stunt than anything.
1:14:43 Speaker 05 I'm happy for him.
1:14:44 Speaker 06 This was his dream.
1:14:45 Speaker 04 It was, but Anton LaVey did put quite a bit of Satanism into the movie and he did work both as an advisor and as crew when needed. During the filming of one scene, for example, LaVey led the local Mexican extras playing satanic cult members in a recitation of actual magical rituals from the lesser key of Solomon, which were also printed in the Satanic Bible. But since the extras didn't speak English, LaVey wrote out syllable by syllable cue cards for the scene and he stood next to the cards during the filming, pointing to each syllable for the extras' benefit. This actually happened. There are pictures of him doing it.
1:15:24 Speaker 05 Alright, so everybody, I just wanna say just first of all, I'm so happy you all here. Muy contento. Esta apprehendo, esta lasciando, and just wanna say, okay, here we go, we do something here, so regia. Regia. Regia. Very good. Satanis. Say, say, say, say.
1:15:46 Speaker 04 Satanis no bueno.
1:15:47 Speaker 05 No, no, no, no. I know why you're saying that, but today, Satanis is bueno.
1:15:55 Speaker 04 He did actually have to search like far and wide for locals who were willing to be in the movie because most of them were scared shitless.
1:16:01 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:16:02 Speaker 04 All the whole thing, the whole production being around them.
1:16:04 Speaker 05 I had to, you know, we have our handyman, Arturo, and we talked with him quite a bit about the devil imagery and now he understands quite a bit about it.
1:16:11 Speaker 04 That's, that's good. That's really good. I did once have a cleaning lady leave my, leave my home halfway and through the job after she cleaned my office. Actually, she just walked into the office and then just left without saying a word.
1:16:25 Speaker 05 Well, the lady that came and cleaned our, we have a wonderful lady, I won't name her by name because, you know, she's wonderful, she works for here at the network too, but I'll always say that after that Murder Fish show we did on the 20th anniversary, and I didn't know I'd left the dildo inside of my pants for this scene, you know, it's like a whole thing, it was like a dildo just there amongst my pants and she cleaned it after.
1:16:42 Speaker 06 You can take it out when the scene's over.
1:16:44 Speaker 05 Didn't even think about it.
1:16:44 Speaker 04 Was the nacho cheese still on it?
1:16:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, and she cleaned it all off and left it on top of the sink.
1:16:50 Speaker 06 That's so nice.
1:16:51 Speaker 05 That was one of the nicest things, because I know it wasn't on the sink before and then I came back and it was definitely just on the sink.
1:16:57 Speaker 06 That's fucking Ray's move.
1:16:59 Speaker 05 Oh no, I gave her, I gave her a, I gave her a little bit more.
1:17:02 Speaker 04 You get a bonus for that one.
1:17:03 Speaker 05 No, I gave her just being like a shoo, shoo, you know, like we don't always fuck my, my ass, you know?
1:17:07 Speaker 06 You don't have to clean the dildos, but if you do.
1:17:12 Speaker 06 Could you use the scented oil?
1:17:14 Speaker 04 Not satisfied to stand behind the camera, LeVey even talked his way into cameos in a few scenes. But interestingly, when you watch those scenes, Anton LeVey looks uncomfortable, almost nervous, which is why I think Anton LeVey never quite made it in Hollywood. See, LeVey could hang with intellectuals, magicians, and even movie stars, one-on-one. But in the end, I think that Hollywood as a whole, it may have been just a little too intimidating of an experience for the Dirty Pope to handle.
1:17:44 Speaker 05 Everybody thinks they can do it. Everybody thinks they can do it. They really do. And then you step on stage sometimes and you realize, oh, what have I done? And I think that he's used to being the coolest guy in the room.
1:17:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:17:56 Speaker 05 And that when you're there and you're the very-
1:17:58 Speaker 06 With Ernest Borgnine, you ain't gonna be the coolest guy in the room.
1:18:01 Speaker 05 Oh, no, sir. Not on a movie set.
1:18:03 Speaker 04 Especially not Ernest Borgnine when he puts on that fucking amazing devil makeup.
1:18:06 Speaker 06 Oh, my God. It's incredible.
1:18:08 Speaker 04 Dude. So cool.
1:18:08 Speaker 06 The makeup in that movie is really good.
1:18:10 Speaker 04 It's insane.
1:18:10 Speaker 05 That's a movie star. That's not just, that's Ernest, we forget the time. That's that wild bunch. That's fucking a movie star.
1:18:17 Speaker 06 Oscar winner, Marty.
1:18:18 Speaker 05 You know, like, so he's, I can feel him being like, oh, I'm second fiddle here.
1:18:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:18:22 Speaker 05 And he, yeah, he does the Beijing Mr. Herman, like he does that, the thing where he's like looking down the pipe.
1:18:29 Speaker 04 No, it's, there's the first scene that he's in, he's kind of in the background and his, you can see his eyes darting around. He's like looking at the members of the production.
1:18:37 Speaker 06 He even has a giant gold helmet on. He's still like fucking kid to it.
1:18:41 Speaker 04 Yes. Yeah. But the most interesting bit of trivia about The Devil's Reign concerns the actor who played the head henchman in the Satanic cult. He only had one line, but The Devil's Reign was indeed the first movie to ever feature John Travolta.
1:18:57 Speaker 06 They gave him billing too, even though he had one line.
1:18:59 Speaker 04 Well, they gave him billing because of the job that he booked after filming was done.
1:19:03 Speaker 06 Ah.
1:19:04 Speaker 04 See, we've mentioned this many times before, but it was on the set of The Devil's Reign that someone gave the stressed-out young actor a book that they said would help manage his life. That book was, of course, Dianetics. And it was that book that set Travolta down the path towards Scientology.
1:19:20 Speaker 05 I just got to say, thank you so much for giving me this book. It's one of the nicest things I've ever read. But you think that maybe you could give me one of them gay hand jobs? Come on, Mr. Cop.
1:19:33 Speaker 06 It is because Devil's Rain is like Anton LaVey's Battlefield Earth.
1:19:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, a little bit.
1:19:38 Speaker 06 Sure, yeah.
1:19:39 Speaker 04 Wow. Interestingly, though, even though Travolta's role was a smaller one, it was, and even though John Travolta was at this point, it was his first movie, he was not a star in any way whatsoever. It was said that he and Anton LaVey became fast friends and a picture does indeed exist of the two of them standing together in a candid moment. And it really shows you Anton LaVey is like, he's sitting there wearing a fucking t-shirt.
1:20:02 Speaker 05 Anton LaVey, everybody says, was the most charming man in the room when you met him. As that when you met him, he's the exact, he's everything you wouldn't think he's be, he's like warm and ingratiating.
1:20:17 Speaker 06 He's a salesman.
1:20:17 Speaker 05 And sweet and like, like memorizes your name, does all the stuff.
1:20:21 Speaker 04 He's a carny.
1:20:22 Speaker 05 Yes, he's really good at it.
1:20:24 Speaker 04 See, Travolta was fascinated by old Hollywood, particularly Marilyn Monroe and LaVey claimed to have known Monroe biblically. But Travolta's obsession with Marilyn was not about her looks or her gnashing and farting during orgasm, as LaVey had put it. Instead, LaVey said that John Travolta wanted to know how Marilyn moved and acted because Travolta could do the most convincing and realistic Marilyn Monroe impersonation that Anton LaVey had ever seen.
1:20:51 Speaker 05 Wow.
1:20:52 Speaker 04 Straight as an arrow, that John Travolta.
1:20:55 Speaker 06 I'd just like to see it, I'd just like to see a straight guy give a, give a lady a shot. Straight as a dildo.
1:21:02 Speaker 04 Love that, John Travolta. I mean, I mean, fucking, I mean, Hairspray, he's an incredible drag queen.
1:21:08 Speaker 06 Oh, he's incredible in Hairspray.
1:21:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:21:10 Speaker 06 Ooh, happy birthday, Mr. President. I'm trying to figure it out, dude.
1:21:17 Speaker 04 LaVey also said that he took such a shining to Travolta that he did a satanic success ritual for John Trav during filming. And sure enough, shortly after, Travolta did indeed book the role that would make him famous. That's when he booked Vinnie Barboreno on Welcome Back Cotter. And that is why John Travolta is in the opening credits because between the filming of the movie and the release of it, he got on Welcome Back Cotter and was immediately famous.
1:21:45 Speaker 06 Wow.
1:21:46 Speaker 04 It happens all the time.
1:21:47 Speaker 06 Such a funny thing to do a ritual for, a giant satanic ritual to get Welcome Back Cotter. It's such a great.
1:21:56 Speaker 04 To become a sweat hog.
1:21:58 Speaker 05 Let me just hear that name, let me hear you do it one more time. I just need to hear to make sure.
1:22:01 Speaker 06 Oh, oh, oh, oh, Mr. Cotter.
1:22:05 Speaker 05 Yes, I can see it now.
1:22:07 Speaker 06 Travolta was brutal in Carrie, though.
1:22:09 Speaker 04 He was. He very much was.
1:22:11 Speaker 06 Yeah, but that wasn't, well, he wasn't brutal in Welcome Back Cotter.
1:22:14 Speaker 05 He should have been. That would have been awesome.
1:22:15 Speaker 06 But, you know, he got, he had his little taste of Satanism. I think he was able to channel it in the other place.
1:22:20 Speaker 05 There's many people that have had a run in with both.
1:22:22 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm. But while John Traw's encounter with Anton LaVey is one of those forgotten pieces of Hollywood trivia, the celebrity relationship that has become legendary over the decades is Anton's long friendship with the singer, actor, and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
1:22:39 Speaker 05 Mr. Bojangles. I love Sammy Davis Jr.
1:22:43 Speaker 06 Oh, how could you not? I love him.
1:22:45 Speaker 04 He's amazing. Now, I always thought that Sammy Davis Jr.'s reputation as a Satanist was a joke, a passing fancy, overblown throughout the years, because it is objectively insane that a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack was a devoted Satanist. But while it is insane, it is also very true.
1:23:04 Speaker 05 And it shockingly makes a lot of sense.
1:23:05 Speaker 04 It does.
1:23:06 Speaker 06 Was it public?
1:23:07 Speaker 04 At times, yeah. He would talk about it. He wrote about it in his books.
1:23:11 Speaker 06 So Sinatra knew?
1:23:12 Speaker 04 Sinatra, well, we're gonna get to that here in a bit, about Sinatra's, uh, opinions on it and how it may have affected Sammy Davis Jr.'s relationship with Anton LaVey.
1:23:22 Speaker 06 Oh, okay, yeah, that's interesting, because it also brings Anton LaVey one step closer to Don Rickles again. Yeah, right?
1:23:30 Speaker 04 By the way, the information about Sammy Davis Jr. and Anton LaVey mostly comes from this fantastic Rolling Stone article written a couple of years ago, uh, called Inside Sammy Davis Jr.'s Secret Satanic Past by Alex Bhaticharchi. It's fucking, it's a really great read.
1:23:45 Speaker 05 And I watched a great, uh, documentary on him, uh, and he real, Sammy Davis Jr. is just one, what a complicated figure.
1:23:53 Speaker 04 Extraordinarily complicated.
1:23:55 Speaker 06 His song "The Joker" is a must for any comedian.
1:23:57 Speaker 05 It is. Mr. Bojangles is incre, I love, I love the song "Mr. Bojangles."
1:24:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, but Sammy Davis Jr. was a singer, not a writer.
1:24:05 Speaker 06 Exactly.
1:24:06 Speaker 04 He just did a fantastic version of "Mr. Bojangles," and his version of "Mr. Bojangles" was sad.
1:24:10 Speaker 06 Yes, yeah. That was Nitty Critty Dirt Band, I believe, the real Bojangles? I, I, that's who I'm gonna say it is without Googling. Good.
1:24:19 Speaker 04 It was either them, Jerry Jeff Walker, or maybe Bob Dylan, I don't know. But to understand how and why Sammy Davis Jr. Was so drawn to Satanism, you got to understand Sammy Davis Jr. And in understanding Sammy Davis Jr., you might understand why a lot of people are drawn to the Church of Satan. See, more than even most performers, Sammy Davis Jr. Was driven and defined by a constant and desperate need for acceptance, which came mostly from the complications and humiliations that he had to deal with as a black American born in 1925. Hailing from Harlem, Sammy Davis Jr.'s parents were both vaudeville entertainers. But while his dad was black, his mother was Cuban, and strangely incredibly racist.
1:25:03 Speaker 04 Sammy's own mother would hurl racist remarks at Sammy from birth, telling him that he looked like a little monkey, and not in a cute way. No. And his mother never let him forget how dark his skin really was.
1:25:16 Speaker 06 She, she did it!
1:25:18 Speaker 04 That's, that's-
1:25:19 Speaker 05 It's a lot complicated.
1:25:20 Speaker 04 Complicated.
1:25:21 Speaker 05 It's complicated. And he was, he was one of those where he never went to school.
1:25:26 Speaker 04 No.
1:25:26 Speaker 05 He could barely read or write.
1:25:27 Speaker 04 Natural entertainer, started performing at the age of three.
1:25:30 Speaker 05 You'd say natural entertainer, but they also kind of forced it on him, but he also was natural.
1:25:35 Speaker 06 Man, fuck school!
1:25:36 Speaker 05 Exactly!
1:25:37 Speaker 06 Babe Ruth was good at school, you think Bruce Lee fucking did math?
1:25:42 Speaker 04 It's 2026, people need to go to school.
1:25:44 Speaker 05 Now, school's good now.
1:25:46 Speaker 06 I ain't going to no fucking schools.
1:25:48 Speaker 05 We know you're not anymore.
1:25:50 Speaker 04 You went to elementary school, junior high, and high school?
1:25:52 Speaker 06 I did graduate high school.
1:25:53 Speaker 05 And you went to a bunch of, like, way too many years of community college.
1:25:57 Speaker 06 I went there for a couple of years and did nothing.
1:26:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:26:00 Speaker 06 I wrote on the school paper, that was my only class.
1:26:03 Speaker 04 That's nice.
1:26:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:26:04 Speaker 04 Well, Sammy Davis Jr. Toured extensively throughout his childhood until he was drafted to fight in World War II in 1943. But after spending years absorbing cheers and applause from crowds, he was now dealing, in the army, with racial slurs and physical violence from white soldiers. Davis's nose was broken repeatedly, that's what gave him, you know, he's got that flat bridge on his nose, it came from soldiers breaking his nose over and over and over again.
1:26:33 Speaker 06 Motherfucker.
1:26:33 Speaker 04 But that wasn't even-
1:26:34 Speaker 05 He had a hard time. And they were me, man.
1:26:35 Speaker 06 He was also a small guy.
1:26:37 Speaker 04 He's just, he was five, four. He was a very small guy. That wasn't even close to the worst of it. Soldiers would cover his body in white paint. They'd write the N word on his chest. Once, they even soaked him in urine. The only time he wasn't abused, he said, was when he was performing for those same soldiers, which has got to fuck you up.
1:26:54 Speaker 06 Also, it's crazy that he just ran with white dudes. Like, like, it's bizarre.
1:27:00 Speaker 05 The complicated thing of Sammy Davis Jr.
1:27:03 Speaker 06 He should hate us.
1:27:05 Speaker 05 Sammy Davis Jr. Wanted to make it in show business. And he knew the complicated relationship he would have to string in order to make it. Make it, make it. Which means he would need to be entered into, which is at this point, a barred off white person's world. And he would need to be invited into it, which did happen. And there were a couple of guys. There was that one that put his whole family on. They put him on when they were younger and they put Sammy, and he was the first guy to ever touch a black man. It was this guy, it was, I forgot his name. It was this host where he took Sammy Davis Jr. And he kissed him on the cheek and it changed everything. It was a segregated show. But it took, you had to ingratiate himself with a bunch of people who hated him to do it.
1:27:50 Speaker 04 He made a lot of compromises and, you know, as we're about to get into, like, it gave him a really bad fucking reputation.
1:27:57 Speaker 05 It did.
1:27:57 Speaker 04 Now, after his discharge, Sammy Davis Jr. Returned to the stage and soon skyrocketed to stardom. But after the near fatal car crash in 1954 that gave him his trademark glass eye, Sammy started questioning the nature of God and spirituality because Sammy Davis Jr. Was a seeker of spiritual knowledge.
1:28:15 Speaker 05 And he automatically understood this idea of, oh, God gives me these challenges. These are just challenges and shit. Fuck you.
1:28:24 Speaker 05 Why, why?
1:28:25 Speaker 04 Now, he started with Scientology, but thankfully moved on to Judaism with all due speed. But reportedly, after he told his Jewish friend, the comedian Jerry Lewis, that he'd converted to Judaism, Lewis said, and I'd like you to take this one, Eddie.
1:28:38 Speaker 06 What, you don't have enough problems already?
1:28:40 Speaker 05 Which is an incredibly funny Jewish. He is, and apparently, he is, he learned Hebrew.
1:28:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:28:47 Speaker 05 Billy Crystal said he would call him for challenges of the soul.
1:28:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:28:52 Speaker 05 He would call him as his rabbi.
1:28:54 Speaker 06 No, he was really good to Billy Crystal notoriously.
1:28:56 Speaker 04 Yeah. But while Sammy's fame was still rising, he continually had to put up with bullshit from people who didn't accept him for who he was. When he joined Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the rest to form the Rat Pack in the 50s, Davis found himself the butt of many a racist joke. Sinatra routinely called Davis "smokey", and he said that Davis had to smile to be seen in the dark. Dean Martin was fond of picking up the diminutive Sammy Davis Jr. and saying that he would like to thank the NAACP for this wonderful trophy. He was a prop.
1:29:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, and he, he knew that he served a function within the Rat Pack. And it became, at first he thought he had power over it, but then the bigger the Rat Pack got, the more it became like aimed at him.
1:29:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:29:40 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, those old rows, those old Dean Martin rows were so racist. He was barely a part of them, though.
1:29:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, he didn't do any of that, really.
1:29:47 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:29:47 Speaker 04 Sammy Davis Jr. had also married a white woman, and his interracial marriage had caused quite the stir amongst the establishment. So when Sammy Davis Jr. entered the 1960s, he was seen as too forward-thinking for the whites, but because of his association with the Rat Pack, he was seen as too much of an Uncle Tom for black radicals.
1:30:05 Speaker 05 But he was a hardcore, like, guy before that.
1:30:08 Speaker 04 No, I mean, he joined Martin Luther King Jr. at the March Home Washington and in Selma. He was on the KKK's kill list. But the black power radicals of the 60s, they saw Sammy Davis Jr. as an assimilationist, and they were none too fond of him marrying a white woman either. So after divorcing his wife for unrelated reasons, Davis chased acceptance in the black community by growing his hair into a big Afro, buying a few designer dashikis, and dating a black woman named Alta Vise Gore, whom he eventually married. Now, it must be said at this point that Sammy Davis Jr. had an insatiable sexual appetite.
1:30:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:30:43 Speaker 04 And Alta Vise Gore was fully accepting when Davis told her that the only way it was gonna work is if they had an open marriage.
1:30:50 Speaker 06 Which is satanic.
1:30:52 Speaker 05 Damn ass must have bought jungles. You can't just let him have one lane.
1:30:56 Speaker 04 But despite his efforts, Sammy Davis Jr. Still spent the sixties as a pariah amongst his own people and a prop amongst the whites. Plus, because he wasn't a songwriter, he didn't have any money from royalties. All of his movies also flopped because his audience was aging and the kids in the sixties, they didn't give a shit about Sammy Davis Jr. So, in a desperate bid to be wanted by anybody, Sammy made an extremely ill-advised appearance at the 1972 Republican Convention where he hugged a visibly uncomfortable Richard Nixon onstage.
1:31:29 Speaker 05 Which, you know, that fucker should have been thanking his lucky stars that Sammy Davis Jr. Wanted to be standing next to him. And it's really sad because it did. It fucked up Sammy Davis Jr.'s whole life.
1:31:40 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. And the whole Rat Pack was there, I imagine.
1:31:43 Speaker 05 No.
1:31:43 Speaker 04 It was just Sammy Davis Jr. It was a real, it was, the picture is really like it's Sammy Davis Jr. He's hugging Richard Nixon. He's got his eyes closed and Nixon looks like he's like, get the fuck off of me.
1:31:54 Speaker 05 Yes.
1:31:55 Speaker 04 It looks, it's bad for everybody. And the backlash, of course, nearly ruined Sammy's career. But after he appeared on an episode of the controversial sitcom All in the Family, in which he ad-libbed A Shocking Kiss with Archie Bunker, the show's resident bigot, Sammy Davis Jr. Had a little bit of cultural cachet.
1:32:13 Speaker 05 And he wrote that whole thing?
1:32:14 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:32:15 Speaker 05 He did, to surprise all of them.
1:32:16 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm. Davis therefore got a meeting with NBC to discuss projects. And Davis pitched an idea about a guy who worked for Satan.
1:32:26 Speaker 05 Dude, he did your pretty face going to hell.
1:32:28 Speaker 04 Well, we're gonna get to that here in a second. We're gonna get to that here in a second. I have some questions about that. And coincidentally, NBC already had a comedy with a similar concept with a working title, Beat the Devil, written by the same guys who'd helmed Bewitched. So, you know, they already knew a little bit about witchiness, Satanism, so on and so forth. Their idea was folded into Sammy's idea of a satanic comedy. And thus, a show called Poor Devil, starring Sammy Davis Jr. As a damned soul named Sammy, was born and put into production.
1:32:58 Speaker 06 Yeah, he couldn't be in Bewitched because if he winked, he would have fell over.
1:33:04 Speaker 04 Poor Devil is, in essence, a satanic version of It's a Wonderful Life. Davis plays a damned soul working the coal furnace who wants a promotion in a business-like hell in which he's been working for over a thousand years. To earn his satanic wings, so to speak, he has to convince an accountant at a department store on Earth, played by Jack Klugman from The Odd Couple, to sell his soul to the devil, played by none other than Christopher Lee.
1:33:30 Speaker 05 Incredible, Cass.
1:33:31 Speaker 04 Hey, it sounds incredible. Also, Adam West is in it.
1:33:34 Speaker 05 I love Adam West.
1:33:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, but aside from a few entertaining moments, it is surprisingly bland. It has good ideas, but it's still written like a 1973 NBC TV movie. It's got terrible pacing, way too much filler, and a lot of bad jokes.
1:33:49 Speaker 06 I bet they made him cut all the cool shit.
1:33:51 Speaker 05 Of course!
1:33:52 Speaker 04 But the way Hell...
1:33:53 Speaker 05 No piss rivers?
1:33:56 Speaker 05 No piles of rapists playing basketball?
1:33:58 Speaker 04 Speaking of piss rivers, the way Hell is structured on the show is more of a business. It's fairly similar to how your show, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, is set up. So, do you know if fucking Dave Willis and Casper Kelly, do you know if they ever saw Poor Devil?
1:34:14 Speaker 05 I'm literally emailing him right now. I wanna know. I'm gonna ask both of them right now. I'm literally gonna ask him right now.
1:34:20 Speaker 06 I like how you were like mad when Marcus was describing the plot, but it's just like, this obviously came out way before.
1:34:26 Speaker 04 It's 73. 1973.
1:34:29 Speaker 05 What was it called again?
1:34:30 Speaker 04 Poor Devil.
1:34:31 Speaker 05 Poor Devil, right?
1:34:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it's, you know, and it's an hour, it's about an hour, 10 minutes long, and it's fully like, it is, like, Sammy's character, his, you know, damned soul character, he even has like a girlfriend who works reception, you know, there's offices. It's Pretty Face.
1:34:49 Speaker 06 It's a great idea.
1:34:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a great idea. It's almost like a show that should still be on television. It's almost like a show that could have continued for a bunch of years if the entire network continued to exist. But it can't now because they destroyed the network and they, they took the building down, they tore the building down, where we did it all. Some would say it ran its course. Ah, you fucker! It did.
1:35:10 Speaker 04 I loved it. I could have, I could have seen, I could have seen more. I could have seen much more.
1:35:14 Speaker 06 It's definitely, you know, your best work.
1:35:17 Speaker 05 Thank you.
1:35:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is.
1:35:18 Speaker 06 Glitteringness.
1:35:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:35:21 Speaker 04 You know, I actually have no problem agreeing with that.
1:35:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's my best work.
1:35:26 Speaker 04 Now while Poor Devil is not good, it does have far more satanic overtures than anyone watching at home may have realized. And that was all due to Sammy Davis Jr. The most entertaining part of the whole show, in fact, is Sammy Davis Jr. mugging while flashing the devil horn salute. He's got, even got one little fingernail painted red. The executive producer of the show was impressed by these little details that Sammy Davis Jr. put into the show, thinking that Sammy had merely done extra research for the role. But what nobody knew was that Sammy Davis Jr. had been dancing around the Church of Satan for years and had even participated in satanic rituals in the late 60s.
1:36:06 Speaker 05 Hollywood used to be so much more fun! Hollywood used to be better!
1:36:09 Speaker 04 Sammy Davis Jr. himself wrote, he wrote in 1968, back when the Church of Satan was still hip, that he got an impromptu invitation from a group of young actors who were all attending a Church of Satan ritual in the Hollywood Hills. At the ceremony, Davis saw a hooded priest insert a massive dildo into a naked woman lying atop an altar. And much to the approval of the famously horny Sammy Davis Jr., who also enjoyed his substances quite a bit, the whole thing ended in a drug-fueled orgy.
1:36:40 Speaker 07 Yeah, I like the way this is going here, Cat.
1:36:43 Speaker 05 That's my Sammy Davis Jr. I'm trying to get it.
1:36:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's, it's hard to do. I was, I was trying it on too, yeah. Yeah, Davis wrote, quote,
1:36:52 Speaker 07 "It was all fun and games, Dungeons and Dragons and debauchery."
1:36:55 Speaker 04 Okay, I can't understand what you're saying. I can't understand what you're saying at all.
1:36:58 Speaker 05 Alright, I'll try.
1:37:01 Speaker 07 "It was all fun and games, and Dungeons and Dragons and debauchery."
1:37:07 Speaker 04 Okay, I'll, I'll try, I'll try, I'll try. "It was all fun and games and Dungeons and Dragons and debauchery. And as long as the chick was happy and wasn't really gonna get anything sharper than a dildo stuck in her, I wasn't gonna walk away from it."
1:37:20 Speaker 05 That sounds like Sammy. That's a real low bar.
1:37:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is a low bar.
1:37:26 Speaker 05 Than a dildo.
1:37:27 Speaker 06 As long as we're not gonna murder her.
1:37:29 Speaker 05 I'm here.
1:37:30 Speaker 06 Anything else?
1:37:32 Speaker 05 Play ball.
1:37:32 Speaker 04 And as long as she's into it. That's just like, as long as she's happy. But besides the sex, the point here was that the Church of Satan had a policy of radical acceptance, for better or worse. And Sammy Davis Jr. was a man who had spent his entire life searching for a place where he could be accepted and wanted for who he actually was, rather than what people thought he should be.
1:37:54 Speaker 05 Well, you know, he went through Scientology first, even before Judaism.
1:37:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mentioned it.
1:37:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:37:58 Speaker 04 Were you listening?
1:37:59 Speaker 05 Yeah. No, we, I don't know if you'd say, but he went, he got hardcore slightly in Scientology very first. Then the Judaism hit and he liked Judaism and then he did that.
1:38:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:38:09 Speaker 05 And then he really was just like, oh, he was just truly like, I, I just love this guy. The old school Hollywood guy who was just like spiritually seeking.
1:38:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, and super mixed up and, and, and dropped into an incredibly hard situation, an incredibly hard time to be, you know, a black American. And the Church of Satan made him happy.
1:38:29 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:38:29 Speaker 04 And they, and they, and they, and they accepted him, you know? Now Sammy was, as I, as we said, a natural born seeker. So he learned what he could about Satanism and later put those details into Poor Devil. But when the TV movie finally aired in 1973, set in San Francisco, no less, there was someone down at La Vey's Black House watching Poor Devil with rapt interest. That viewer was Diane Higarty, co-founder of the Church of Satan. And when Jack Klugman's character is trying to find Sammy halfway through the show, Klugman reached for the phone and exclaimed,
1:39:05 Speaker 05 The Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how to reach him.
1:39:08 Speaker 04 And with that mention of the Church of Satan on a mainstream TV show, Diane Higarty later said that she nearly fell out of her chair. Two days later, Higarty got a letter from Michael Aquino. He had also seen Poor Devil and he gave a gushing review, calling the program, quote,
1:39:26 Speaker 05 A magnificent commercial.
1:39:28 Speaker 07 For the church.
1:39:30 Speaker 04 LaVey agreed and began formulating a plan to recruit Mr. Show Business into the Church of Satan. And that is where we will pick back up next week for our conclusion to our series on Anton LaVey.
1:39:43 Speaker 05 And that's also at a couple of these nerds, small little mistakes and little, like, let's just say the things that they left out that she put in would lead to a lot of devastation in a way. We would actually see this will turn into, you got the Church of Satan on one hand that will turn into some form of political organizations largely neutered, and then the Temple of Set that will spawn a bunch of evil fuckers. And we will get there.
1:40:08 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys. I always wanted to learn about Anton LaVey, but never cared to crack the book myself. There we go.
1:40:17 Speaker 07 That's why we do this.
1:40:19 Speaker 04 Yep. That's why we're here.
1:40:20 Speaker 05 Oh, go to Patreon.com slash podcast and you can listen to the show ad free. You can also see last stream on the left live every Tuesday, 5pm PST. It's on the Patreon. You can also go over to LP on the left and both of the social medias. I'm gonna say both.
1:40:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, both of them.
1:40:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'm gonna do more than this.
1:40:39 Speaker 04 No.
1:40:39 Speaker 05 We're doing TikTok and Instagram. That's it.
1:40:41 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:40:42 Speaker 05 If that.
1:40:42 Speaker 04 No, I'm not doing anything else. And don't forget to watch us on Netflix as well.
1:40:45 Speaker 06 Please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And check out LPN TV on YouTube. We have HGX2 is about to reach the finals and it's gonna be Henry versus Julie and you're gonna see all of your judges come back.
1:40:58 Speaker 05 Coming for your wife.
1:40:59 Speaker 06 It's gonna be a fucking blast. I know you will.
1:41:00 Speaker 05 No mercy at your wife.
1:41:02 Speaker 06 I dare you to try and fight her because she will whoop both of our asses.
1:41:05 Speaker 05 Intellectually is where I'm safe.
1:41:07 Speaker 04 Yeah. Physically, she could take any of the three of us.
1:41:11 Speaker 05 No, no, no, no. She's quite strong. I've seen her with the rocks.
1:41:14 Speaker 04 Very, very strong.
1:41:15 Speaker 06 Yeah, and if you watch the stream on YouTube, it premieres. Directly after that, and that's gonna be 7pm PST on YouTube. And the stream, of course, comes out every Thursday at 6pm.
1:41:28 Speaker 05 Great.
1:41:29 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah, and we're hitting the road. We got three JK ultras left. That's it, you fucking animals. All right, so June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan, GLC Live at 20 Monroe. And then the next night, Henry and I are going off to London, Ontario to do some side stories. Check that out.
1:41:45 Speaker 05 Sweet, sweet. Ontario murder capital of Canada.
1:41:49 Speaker 06 Great. Uh, July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kane's Ballroom. July 18th, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and that's gonna be at the Tower Theater. And, um, and then I'm hitting the road. I'm doing a lot of stand up. I got a show the very next night in Plano, Texas. I got a shit ton of shows in July. I'm gonna be in Bethlehem, Newark, New York City, uh, Plano. And then I'm gonna be, uh, all over the place. Go check it out. Just come see me live. Oh, here in LA, Henry and I are gonna do the Comedy Store.
1:42:18 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:42:19 Speaker 06 Wow. It's gonna be a blast. We're gonna do the Belly Room. They let us in.
1:42:22 Speaker 05 We're gonna go in there and we're just gonna impress the hell
1:42:26 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:42:26 Speaker 05 out of these standups.
1:42:27 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's gonna be for Ed Larson and Friends on July 26th. Go check that out. And then I'll be in Chicago after that. Go to anytunes.com for all tickets.
1:42:34 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
1:42:35 Speaker 06 Thanks. Hail Satan, y'all.
1:42:37 Speaker 04 Aw, hell game.
1:42:39 Speaker 06 Hail Tootsie.
1:42:40 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
1:42:42 Speaker 06 Why do they always go so young?
1:42:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, only 19.
1:42:46 Speaker 06 Oh, God, she had so much time to live.
1:42:49 Speaker 05 I can't believe it, but honestly, you did good and you treated her well and you sent her off in a nice way.
1:42:55 Speaker 06 I did, I did. It was a good baby girl. And, uh, when I get the ashes back, I'll, uh, shoot them out of a cannon on Instagram or something.
1:43:02 Speaker 04 Do they send those in the mail or is there a courier?
1:43:05 Speaker 06 Uh, they, sometimes they send them in the mail, but, uh, depends on where you go. I gotta go pick mine up.
1:43:09 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:43:09 Speaker 06 Yes, and I will, and I did not, dude, God, these at home people who come and like, they try, they charge like a motherfucker. I, I, I took her to the vet, 82 bucks.
1:43:20 Speaker 04 At home?
1:43:20 Speaker 06 At home, like euthanasia is like a thousand dollars. I was like, I was on hold. They're like, make your decision in the next 10 minutes. I was like, go fuck yourself.
1:43:27 Speaker 05 And the key is you need to have an awning that you can put a noose over.
1:43:31 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm gonna fucking smother her myself.
1:43:33 Speaker 04 I thought you meant at home cremation.
1:43:35 Speaker 06 No, no, no, that'd be fucked.
1:43:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it's.
1:43:38 Speaker 05 Whoa, just like a fucking ceramic, like, thing?
1:43:41 Speaker 07 They could just toss animals in?
1:43:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:43:43 Speaker 07 That's fun. Before it had one of those.
1:43:45 Speaker 04 It'd probably be a truck.
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