History
| LaVeyan Satanism |
|---|
| Associated organizations |
| Church of Satan First Satanic Church |
| Prominent figures |
| Anton LaVey · Peter H. Gilmore Diane Hegarty · Karla LaVey |
| Concepts |
| Left-Hand Path Pentagonal Revisionism Suitheism · Might is Right Lex talionis |
| Publications |
| The Satanic Bible · The Satanic Rituals The Satanic Witch · The Devil's Notebook Satan Speaks! · The Black Flame The Church of Satan The Secret Life of a Satanist The Satanic Scriptures |
There are multiple stories of the birth of The Satanic Bible. In the introduction to the 2005–present edition, High Priest Peter H. Gilmore describes LaVey as having compiled The Satanic Bible on his own from monographs he had written about the Church of Satan and its rituals. Gilmore lists a number of people who influenced LaVey's writings: Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, H. L. Mencken, the members of the carnival with whom LaVey had supposedly worked in his youth, P. T. Barnum, Mark Twain, John Milton, and Lord Byron.
LaVey's estranged daughter Zeena Schreck, in an exposé about both her father's religion and past, attributes the birth of The Satanic Bible to a suggestion by Peter Mayer, a publisher for Avon. According to Schreck, Mayer proposed that LaVey author a Satanic bible to draw from the popularity of 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby, which had caused a recent rise in public interest in both Satanism and the occult. Schreck states that, aided by Diane Hegarty, LaVey compiled a number of writings he had already been distributing: an introduction to Satanism, a number of short essays, a guide to ritual magic, and articles he had previously published in The Cloven Hoof, a Church of Satan newsletter.
Either to meet length requirements set by the publisher or out of agreement with the ideas, LaVey and Hegarty plagiarized writings by other authors. These included a social Darwinist book published in 1890 entitled Might is Right, as well as Dee's Enochian keys from Aleister Crowley's The Equinox, modified to replace references to Christianity with those to Satan. Some accuse LaVey of paraphrasing the Nine Satanic Statements from Rand's Atlas Shrugged without acknowledgement, though others maintain that LaVey simply was drawing inspiration from the novel. LaVey later affirmed the connection with Rand's ideas by stating that LaVeyan Satanism was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added".
Read more about this topic: The Satanic Bible
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)