LEGEND: Claimed that "Anton Szandor LaVey" was
his genuine birth name.
REALITY: Born "Howard Stanton Levey".
SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook
County, Illinois. Confirmed by relatives.
LEGEND: Claimed his parents were Joseph and
Augusta LaVey.
REALITY: Parents were Michael and Gertrude Levey.
SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook
County, Illinois.
Confirmed by ASL's daughter Zeena and daughter
Karla according to her entry on ASL's death certificate.
LEGEND: Claimed he was introduced to the Dark
Side by his Transylvanian Gypsy  grandmother,
who regaled him as a child with supernatural folklore and tales of vampires
and werewolves.
REALITY: ASL's grandmother was not Transylvanian
nor of Gypsy stock. She was a Ukrainian named Cecile Luba Primokov-Coulton
("Coulton" was Anglicized from "Koltonoff"). Despite his frequent claims,
ASL had no Gypsy ancestry.
SOURCES: Relatives, including ASL's parents.
LEGEND: In 1945 the 15-year-old ASL was brought
to the ruins of postwar Germany by his uncle, a U.S. Coast Guard officer.
There the teenaged ASL was shown top-secret films inspired by Satanic cult
lodges and their rituals. ASL claimed that the "German" rituals in
his 1972 book The Satanic Rituals were actual
transcripts of the filmed rituals he saw as a youth.
 REALITY:
Young Howard spent the entirety of 1945 in suburban northern California,
and never visited Germany at any time in his life. The uncle who he claimed
brought him to Germany was incarcerated at McNeill Island Penitentiary
for involvement with Al Capone-related criminal activity during 1945, and
was never in the armed forces. Allied martial law forbade U.S. citizens
from visiting postwar Germany. The "German" rituals in the Satanic Rituals
are written in extremely poor, Anglicized German. They are clearly uncredited
adaptations of the short story The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap
Long and H.G. Wells' famous novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.
SOURCES: ASL relatives, former wife Diane
LaVey, The Hounds of Tindalos, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Satanic Rituals,
Church of Satan member Rosalind Herkommer (who translated ASL's rituals
into German).
LEGEND: The 15-year-old ASL played second oboe
with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, making him the youngest musician
ever to play with that prestigious institution.
REALITY: There was no "San Francisco Ballet
Orchestra" in 1945. The San Francisco Ballet was accompanied by a local
orchestra, whose records show that none of its three oboists was named
"Levey" or "LaVey".
SOURCES: San Francisco Performing Arts
Library & Museum, San Francisco, California.
LEGEND: In 1947 ASL ran away from home and
joined the Clyde Beatty Circus. The Circus employed the 17-year-old as
a lion tamer. He then replaced the Circus calliope player, accompanying
such famous Beatty acts as the Concellos, Harold Alanza, and the Cristianis.
REALITY: The voluminous Beatty archives
show no record of a "Levey" or "LaVey" as lion tamer or musician. The Concellos,
Alanza, and Cristianis were never Beatty performers; they worked exclusively
for the Ringling Brothers Circus.
SOURCES: Beatty 1947 Route Books, Circus
World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin (Wright, "SD", page 67); ASL relatives.
LEGEND: In 1948 the 18-year-old ASL was engaged
to play organ at the Mayan burlesque theater in Los Angeles. There he met
a young stripper named Marilyn Monroe,  with
whom he had a passionate love affair in the period before her rise to film
stardom. According to ASL, Monroe had resorted to stripping to pay her
rent. As proof of his
relationship with Monroe, ASL later showed
visitors a copy of Monroe's famous nude calendar inscribed "Dear Tony,
How many times have you seen this! Love, Marilyn".
REALITY: ASL never knew Monroe. Monroe
intimate Robert Slatzer and Harry Lipton, Monroe's agent in 1948, have
exposed and discredited this tale. Lipton paid Monroe's expenses, including
her rent. Paul Valentine, director of the Mayan Theater, has stated that
the Mayan was never a burlesque theater, and that neither Monroe nor ASL
ever worked for the Mayan in any capacity. Diane LaVey, ASL's former wife,
has admitted that she forged the "Monroe" inscription on the
calendar. ASL's former publicist Edward Webber
claims ASL admitted he never knew Monroe.
SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Paul Valentine (Wright,
"SD", page #68), Harry Lipton (Aquino-Lipton conversation 12/1/82), Robert
Slatzer (letter to Aquino 11/27/82), Edward Webber (interview by Aquino
6/2/91).
LEGEND: ASL was exposed to the savagery of
human nature during his stint as a San Francisco Police photographer in
the early 1950s.
REALITY: San Francisco Police Department
past employment records include no "Howard Levey" nor "Anton LaVey". Frank
Moser, who was a SFPD photographer in the early 1950s, said that ASL never
worked for the Department.
SOURCES: SFPD records, Frank Moser (Wright,
"SD", page 68).
LEGEND: ASL studied criminology at San Francisco
City College during the Korean War.
REALITY: SFCC has no record of ASL's enrollment
at any time.
SOURCES: SFCC records (Wright, "SD",
page 68).
LEGEND: ASL purchased the house at 6114 California
Street (which would later become  the
headquarters of the Church of Satan - the infamous "Black House") because
he discovered on first inspection that it was the former brothel of Barbary
Coast madam Mammy Pleasant. The house was honeycombed with trapdoors and
secret passageways,
built by Pleasant to elude police raids.
REALITY: 6114 was ASL's parents' home.
It was never a brothel, nor did Mammy Pleasant ever live or work there.
ASL's parents first allowed ASL and his first wife Carole to live in the
house, then transferred ownership of it to ASL and his second wife Diane
in 1971. Such secret passages and hidden rooms that exist were constructed
by ASL.
SOURCES: Relatives, San Francisco property
records (Michael & Gertrude Levey, Joint Tenancy Grant Deed, July 9,
1971).
 LEGEND:
In the 1950s ASL traveled to Nice, France, where he recorded an album of
organ music under the pseudonym of "Georges Montalba".
REALITY: ASL's first and only trip to
France was in the mid-1970s, when his Dutch disciple Maarten Lamers, Amsterdam
sex club owner, financed his voyage. The "ASL=Montalba" story appeared
in 1989, when a gullible Church of Satan member found a Montalba album
and suggested that it was similar to ASL's own music. ASL, never pleased
by competition, responded with the preposterous "pseudonym" claim - which
is still ardently supported by his posthumous followers.
SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.
LEGEND: ASL was the official city organist
for San Francisco until 1966, playing for gala events such as government
banquets and political meetings.
REALITY: San Francisco has never had an
"official city organist". According to ASL's first wife Carole, his only
income of $29.91/week was generated by his regular engagement at the "Lost
Weekend" nightclub, where he was the house Wurlitzer organist.
SOURCE: Julie Burford, Civic Auditorium,
San Francisco, California (Wright, "SD", page 68). Carole LaVey's divorce
proceeding records (Wright, "SD", page 68).
LEGEND: On the night of April 30, 1966 (the
German Satanic festival of Walpurgisnacht),  ASL
in a "blinding flash" declared himself the High Priest of Satan, proclaimed
that the Age of Satan had begun, and founded the Church of Satan as a religious
institution.
REALITY: In 1966 ASL supplemented his
income by presenting weekend lectures on exotic and occult topics, and
by conducting "Witches' Workshops". He charged $2 a head, filling his living
room with the curious and establishing a local reputation as an eccentric.
Professional publicist Edward Webber suggested to ASL that he "would never
make any money by lecturing on Friday nights for donations ...it would
be better to form some sort of church and get a charter from
the State of California ... I told Anton at the
time that the press was going to flip out over all this and that we would
get a lot of notoriety". In the summer of 1966, long after the fictional
founding-
date invented later, a newspaper article about
ASL's lectures offhandedly referred to him as "priest of the Devil's church".
This mixture of Webber's idea and the newspaper's characterization
resulted in the creation of the Church of Satan
as a business and publicity vehicle. Jack Webb, a San Francisco Police
investigator who knew ASL from the "Lost Weekend" nightclub, also suggested
that he should form a church of some kind to exploit his recondite knowledge.
SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino
6/2/91), Jack Webb, Diane LaVey.
LEGEND: ASL's trademark shaved head was the
result of a ceremonial head-shaving on April 30, 1966, to formalize his
role as High Priest of Satan. This ritual was performed in the tradition
of the Yezidi devil-worshipping tribes of Iraq, who were said to have carried
out a similar ceremony.
REALITY: ASL shaved his head in the summer
of 1966 due to a light- hearted dare from his wife. The "LaVey look" had
nothing to do with the Church of Satan founding nor any mystical meaning
attached to it later. Nor do Yezidi qawwals (religious teachers) shave
their heads.
SOURCES: Diane LaVey; Ethel S. Drower,
Peacock Angel, 1941; C.J. Edmonds, A Pilgrimage to Lalish, Royal Asiatic
Society, 1967.
 LEGEND:
In 1966 ASL personally designed the Baphomet emblem of the Church of Satan.
He owns the right to this design, claiming it cannot be reproduced without
obtaining licensing rights from the Church of Satan.
REALITY: The Baphomet emblem used by the
Church of Satan was neither original to it nor created by ASL, hence cannot
be trademarked. The original Baphomet dates at least as far back as the
medieval Knights Templar. The artwork for the current emblem's goat/pentagram
first appears in a 1931 book by Oswald Wirth. The complete emblem with
the added circles and "LVYThN" Hebrew letters appears on the cover of a
book by Maurice Bessy two years before the creation of the Church of Satan.
Early photos of Church activities often show ASL or his disciples using
the Bessy book as a photo-prop because of its prominent cover-Baphomet,
and he included that book in his Compleat Witch bibliography.  The
Baphomet, including this rendition of it, is clearly in the public domain.
SOURCES: Oswald Wirth, La fran-maconnerie
rendue intelligible a ces adeptes - II, "Le compagnon", Paris: Derry-Livres,
1931, page #60; Maurice Bessy, A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural,
London: Spring Books, 1964 [the original edition of this work - Histoire
en 1000 images de la magie - was published in 1961 by Editions du Pont
Royal]; Thomas H. Hilton, Sex and the Occult, Vol. I, Los Angeles: Centurion
Press, 1974;Church of Satan members, The Black Flame (a 1980s Church of
Satan magazine).
LEGEND: One of ASL's most widely-accepted falsehoods
is his claim that he served as technical advisor for the 1968 Roman Polanski
film Rosemary's Baby. ASL also claimed to have played the curiously- uncredited
part of the Devil in that film.
REALITY: ASL had no involvement with Rosemary's
Baby. Polanski's close friend Gene Gutowski (original producer of the film)
stated that there was no technical advisor, nor did ASL ever even meet
Polanski. Producer William Castle, who details all aspects of the film's
production in his autobiography, never mentions ASL. He does describe Polanski's
diligence in basing the film exactly on the Ira Levin novel from which
it was adapted, eliminating any need for technical advice. The father of
the actress who played Mia Farrow's body-double in the Devil scene recalled
that a young, very slender professional dancer played the part, dressed
in a small rubber suit. In 1971 this suit was acquired by Studio One Productions
in Louisville, Kentucky, for use in a low-budget horror film Asylum of
Satan. Michael Aquino, technical advisor for that film, examined the suit
and concluded that the 200-pound, 6-foot ASL could not possibly have worn
it. [The suit was worn by a girl in the Asylum film.] Not a single member
of the cast or crew of Rosemary's Baby has ever mentioned ASL's involvement.
In 1968 a San Francisco theater did ask ASL to make an appearance at the
film's local opening as a promotional event. This appears to have been
ASL's only connection with the film that engendered the 1960s' popular
interest in Satanism.
SOURCES: Gene Gutowski; William Castle,
Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants off America, New York: Pharos
Books, 1992; Diane LaVey, Michael A. Aquino (COS, page #17).
LEGEND: Jayne Mansfield, Hollywood sex symbol
and actress, was a card- carrying Satanist and had an affair with ASL.
REALITY: Publicity agent Tony Kent, an
associate of Ed Webber, arranged the meeting between Mansfield and ASL
as a publicity stunt. ASL was smitten with the actress. Mansfield, who
made no secret of her many affairs, denied knowing ASL intimately, and
no associate of hers has ever
confirmed any supposed romance with ASL. In a
1967 interview she said, "He had fallen in love with me and wanted to join
my life with his. It was a laugh." According to ASL's publicist Edward
Webber, Mansfield would ridicule her Satanic suitor by calling from her
Los Angeles home and seductively teasing him while her friends listened
in on the conversation. ASL's public claims that he had an affair with
Mansfield began only after Mansfield's death in an automobile accident,
which he also claimed was the result of a curse he had placed on her lover
Sam Brody.
SOURCES: Edward Webber (interview by Aquino
6/2/91); interview with Mansfield quoted in Jayne Mansfield by May Mann,
Pocket Books, 1974.
 LEGEND:
ASL wrote the Satanic Bible, his principal work, to fulfill his congregation's
need for a scriptural guide.
REALITY: The Satanic Bible was conceived
as a commercial vehicle by paperback publisher Avon Books. Avon approached
ASL for some kind of Satanic work to cash in on the Satanism & witchcraft
fad of the late 1960s. Pressed for material to meet Avon's deadline, ASL
resorted to
plagiarism, assembling extracts from an obscure
1896 tract - Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard into a "Book of Satan" for
the SB, and claiming its authorship by himself. [Ironically these MiR passages
are the ones most frequently quoted by ASL disciples.] Another third of
the SB consists of John Dee's "Enochian Keys", taken directly but again
without attribution from Aleister Crowley's Equinox. The SB's "Nine Satanic
Statements", one of the Church of Satan's central
doctrines, is a paraphrase, again unacknowledged,
of passages from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The last words in the SB -
"Yankee Rose" - have been puzzled over for years by readers. "YR" is actually
the name of an old popular tune in ASL's nightclub repertoire.
SOURCES: ASL, The Satanic Bible; Ragnar
Redbeard, Might is Right, Port Townsend: Loompanics (reprint), 1896; Ayn
Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Galt's speech, ca. pages #936-993); "Yankee Rose"
by Sidney Holden & Abe Frankl (Irving Berlin Music, 1926).
LEGEND: ASL claimed that at the height of the
Church of Satan's popularity there were hundreds of thousands of formal
members.
REALITY: Diane LaVey (who administered
the Church as High Priestess 1966-1984), Michael A. Aquino (senior Magister
of the Church and Editor of its Cloven Hoof newsletter 1971-1975), and
Zeena LaVey (High Priestess of the Church 1985-1990) have all affirmed
that the figures claimed by ASL were grossly exaggerated. The membership
of the Church of Satan never exceeded 300 individuals, several of whom
were nonmember subscribers to the newsletter or ASL friends receiving complimentary
mailings.
SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Michael A. Aquino,
Zeena LaVey.
LEGEND: ASL claimed to be a multimillionaire,
owning three homes innorthern California, a convent in Italy, a chateau
in France, a fleet of luxury automobiles, a 185-foot yacht, three salvage
ships, and other property.
REALITY: During Diane [LaVey] Hegarty's
1988-91 lawsuit against ASL, and ASL's subsequent 1991 filing for bankruptcy,
ASL stipulated under oath that he owned nothing more than 50% of the house
his parents had given jointly to him and Diane, along with the personal
items he kept therein. ASL's final years were subsidized by California
state aid. Assessors declared the house to be in such poor repair as to
be nearly worthless on the real estate market. Family members have attested
to the fact that by the mid-1970s the LaVeys lived in near- poverty, frequently
having to rely upon ASL's father's generosity. According to other LaVey
relatives, ASL continued to rely on handouts
from friends and relatives until the end of his
life.
SOURCES: Hegarty v. LaVey (San Francisco
Superior Court Case #891863), Anton LaVey Bankruptcy, Chapter 7 (U.S. Bankruptcy
Court, Northern California, Case #91-34251), Zeena LaVey, other relatives.
LEGEND: ASL was a close friend of Sammy Davis,
Jr. and inducted him into the Church of  Satan.
REALITY: Sammy Davis, Jr. was invited
to accept an honorary membership in the Church of Satan by Michael Aquino.
After Davis sent Aquino his acceptance on March 17, 1973, he was presented
with the honorary membership on April 13, 1973 by Aquino and Karla LaVey
alone. ASL did not meet Davis until August 1973.
SOURCES: Davis letter to Aquino 3/17/73;
Church of Satan Priesthood Bulletin 4/30/73; Aquino, COS, Chapter 23; Sammy
Davis, Hollywood in a Suitcase (pre-publication text, printed in Daily
News, New York, 9/11/80), Karla LaVey.
LEGEND: ASL presented himself as a loving family
man.
REALITY: ASL violently beat his wife Diane
throughout their marriage. In 1984 a police report was made describing
Diane being strangled into unconsciousness by ASL, who was in such a murderous
rage that his daughter Karla had to pull him off Diane and drag her outside
the house to save her life. ASL routinely physically beat and abused those
of his female disciples with  whom
he had sex, forcing them into prostitution as part of his "Satanic counseling"
and collecting their earnings. In 1986 ASL was a passive witness to the
sexual molestation of his own grandson by a longtime friend who was later
convicted of sex crimes with minors. In 1990 ASL informed a mentally-ill
stalker of his daughter Zeena of her whereabouts and the time & location
of a public appearance she was scheduled to make, deliberately endangering
her life.
SOURCES: San Francisco Police records of
ASL attack on Diane LaVey,
Zeena LaVey, Diane LaVey, Stanton LaVey.
LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship
with Togare, his pet lion.
REALITY: While ASL was always careful
to portray himself to the public as an animal lover, in private he was
cruel to and neglectful of his pets. When he was given Togare as a cub
in 1964, he was ill- equipped to deal with such an exotic, wild animal
despite his pretensions as a circus lion-tamer. As Togare became larger
and more unruly, ASL frequently used an electric cattle prod to hurt and
frighten him into submission. Many animal-rights proponents, including
Togare's final owner Tippi Hedren, agree that it is detrimental to a wild
animal's development to be raised in a domestic environment. ASL was arrested
due to Togare's unruly behavior, and ASL was ordered to donate him to the
San Francisco Zoo. After complying, ASL made only two visits to Togare.
Due to the trauma of his early life, Togare needed special care at the
Zoo and at every animal-care facility in which he subsequently lived.
SOURCES: Jack Castor (Lion Keeper, San
Francisco Zoo), Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey, Tippi Hedren (The Cats of Shamballa,
McGraw-Hill, 1985).
LEGEND: ASL had a deeply affectionate relationship
with his other pets.
REALITY: In the late 1960s ASL acquired
a Doberman Pinscher (Loki) as an accent to his "sinister" image. ASL never
took the time to housebreak or train Loki, and relegated him to the overgrown
and unkempt backyard of the house, regardless of weather. If Loki ever
tried to slip into the house for shelter, ASL routinely used Togare's cattle-prod
on him to terrify him back outside. In his old age Loki developed such
severe arthritis that he could not climb the stairs to the back door to
eat, and began wasting away from malnutrition. ASL then gave him to one
of his prostitute "students", who at least saw that Loki had a warm, inside
home until he died a few months later.
During her young childhood ASL's daughter Zeena
once awoke late at night to hear slamming sounds and the shrieking of her
German Shepherd puppy. Running downstairs, she saw ASL savagely beating
the cowering, cornered dog with a wooden plank. When Zeena begged ASL to
stop and asked him what the dog had done to deserve
such treatment, ASL screamed, "She won't listen to me! I'm going to force
her to obey me!" ASL continued beating the dog until her face was covered
with her blood, then dropped the plank and left the dog quivering in the
hallway, so injured and frightened that she wouldn't let even Zeena come
near her. This incident left the dog traumatized for a long time afterwards.
SOURCES: Diane LaVey, Zeena LaVey.
LEGEND: On ASL's original death certificate
the date of his demise was recorded as October 31, 1997 (Halloween).
REALITY: An official investigation by
the City of San Francisco determined that ASL's actual date of death was
October 29, 1997 and that the "Halloween" date had been illegally written
on the document.
SOURCES: Death Certificate #380278667,
San Francisco Department of Public Health; Dr. Giles Miller (attending
physician at ASL's death), Physician's Amendment to Death Certificate,
11/26/97.
RESEARCH REFERENCES: Wright, Lawrence, "Sympathy
for the Devil", Rolling Stone #612, September 5, 1991, Saints and Sinners.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Aquino, Michael A., The Church of Satan.
San Francisco: Temple of Set, 1983. We extend our thanks to ASL's relatives
and associates who contributed their memories.
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