The Sorcery of Anton LaVey

We’re currently seeing a renewed interest in the magical ideas of Anton LaVey from a number of corners in the occult world. On my current reading I think the distinction needs to be drawn between LaVey’s earlier magical thinking and the social criticism that seems to dominate his writing from 1975 onwards. Quite frankly I have literally zero interest in LaVey as social critic or his celebration of misanthropy as a desirable attribute - not my thing. I do, however, feel he had a lot to offer in terms of effective sorcery. We get a sense of his attitude in an extract from a lecture in the early days of the COS:

“ a competent sorcerer … can create what he would want done to or for others within the workings of his own devices, without having to rely on an intermediary. In other words, this is the difference between mysticism and magic. A competent sorcerer doesn’t have to sit back and hope that something is going to happen, or feel that it would be nice if something happened. A competent sorcerer sets up a situation and knows that it is going to happen. This is the power of positive thinking intensified and accelerated 100 times, and using ritual. A competent sorcerer must be an adept and in order to be an adept one must be inventive to some degree.”

Blanche Barton. “WE ARE SATANISTS: The History and Future of the Church of Satan.”

Because I’m more interested in techniques that make peoples lives better, I’d argue that LaVey’s formation of the COS is a distant second to his magical ideas. Indeed, I could mount a strong argument that the COS was more of a conceptual tool that allowed LaVey to develop himself and his ideas along the lines of his preferred aesthetics. An idea not dissimilar to Grant Morrison’s thinking about hypersigils. Let’s look at some of LaVey’s usable magical ideas:

RITUAL MAGIC: LaVey referred to ritual as an “intellectual decompression chamber”. The implication being that it is the subconscious and not the conscious mind that is most magically effective. The basics of effective ritual magic are detailed in LaVey’s “The Satanic Bible”(TSB) and are aimed at producing a singular emotive charge towards ones personal desire. It’s obvious that the ritual framework and commentary he provides is extracted from a long period of experimentation pre-dating the COS, including input from members other than LaVey himself. Michael Aquino describes the ritual instructions early members of the COS were provided with prior to TSB being published:

1. Furnish a room with certain necessary implements and designs. These include an altar, a bell for the symbolic banishing of outside influences, a sword for focusing the attention and will, a goblet or chalice for a drink in communion with the Powers of Darkness, black candles for illumination, a white candle for destruction or curse workings, and the Sigil of Baphomet above the altar to provide a visual focus for the celebrant’s invocation of Satan. 2. Dress in attire suitable to the ritual atmosphere. As is the case with the ritual chamber, such preparation is as much to disassociate the celebrant from the reminders of mundane existence as to impress a diabolical audience. 3. Shut out the outside world by sealing the ritual chamber. Cover external light sources. Overpower external sounds with the ringing of the bell and controlled music. 4. Invoke Satan and such other Infernal entities as are appropriate to the specific working. Acknowledge your alliance with them ceremonially by drinking from the chalice. 5. State your desire or convey it by nonverbal means. 6. Ennoble it by the utterance of an appropriate ceremonial passage. 7. Renew your devotion to Satan. 8. Ceremonially end the working. Depurify the chamber by allowing natural phenomena once more to enter its atmosphere.

Without knowing anything else you could use this framework and something will happen. As to why? We all have opinions but those are less important than results.

RESULTS MATTER: This is the premise that has been most explicitly taken up and developed by chaos magic. Like Peter Carroll, LaVey is scathing of magicians who profess secret knowledge yet can’t demonstrate proficiency in their own life. There’s two ways to view this. One is as metric to keep yourself honest, the other is as a way to validate the authenticity of another’s magical advice. I don’t take financial counsel from a destitute accountant or diet advice from a fat personal trainer, if you say you can do something you need to show me. In reality most people who are efficient at magic won’t need to tell you, it’ll be obvious.

TOTAL ENVIRONMENTS: In many ways LaVey’s concept of a total environment is prescient of current research into epigenetics as well as systems thinking. Importantly he intuited that environments that capture a period in time when you felt the most sexually attractive have the potential to keep you physically young. The phenomena of deliberate environments influencing ageing has been demonstrated by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer in her “Counter Clockwise” study. Google it.

Ironically, the notion that you are a co-creative aspect of your environment contradicts LaVey’s expressed social Darwinism. No one would ever accuse him of being a consistent philosopher. Importantly, your environment is always feeding you information which in turn influences how your organism expresses itself. The take home is this: manipulate your living environment as much as possible to be suggestive of the person you’d like to become, it will alter you physically, emotionally and magically.

THE ROLE OF THE SORCERER: It’s said that on Walpurgisnact 1966 LaVey ceremonially shaved his head and proclaimed himself Black Pope of the Church of Satan. LaVey created an entire mythology around himself and the COS - mostly false - that enabled him to play this role in extremis. For a period of time it appears LaVey certainly did tap a current of power, allowing him to generate wealth, fame and all its material trappings.

The idea of adopting a magically effective persona is not unique to LaVey, everyone from Crowley to Carroll to Grant Morrison have argued for its importance. LaVey was fortunate and ballsy enough to live in a time and place where adopting a Satanic aesthetic actually carried emotive significance, the same isn’t true anymore.

In our time authenticity is a great and mighty magical power. You can be a bigger, grander, 10x version of yourself, you can ritualise it but you need to walk the walk to extract lasting power from it. If you’re not in a position to do this publicly, fine. Witches and sorcerers have worked in secret since time immemorial and that role certainly contains immense power. If you go full on LaVey-mode be aware that there is risk and reward in this role. The rewards are a reinforcement of your magical persona from outside sources, the risk is that if you aren’t true to the role the whole thing will collapse. It’s one thing to proclaim yourself the Lord Diabolos, High Priest of Hades but if I google you and it turns out you’re just Bill for HR, imposter syndrome will sap your magical power.

NEVER DISAVOW MAGICK THAT HAS WORKED FOR YOU: LaVey stressed in his earlier writings that if you have gained anything through magic you should never disavow, doubt or criticise it lest you lose what you have acquired. Michael Aquino has suggested that if this is true, LaVey may be a cautionary tale. To distinguish the COS from the more overtly transcendental ideas in the Temple of Set, LaVey’s later public writings treated Satan and ritual magic in increasingly figurative terms. LaVey’s health, financial position and relationships declined in tandem. Point being, if you’re magic works, own it, celebrate it and never doubt it!