The Devil's Notebook

Introduction

Although his books have sold over a million copies, the publishing industry has chosen to ignore Anton LaVey. The book trade publication. Publisher's Weekly, has never reviewed a publication by or about Anton LaVey. Aside from the occasional hysteria-inciting pieces that attempt to "expose" or ''debunk" the founder of the Church of

Satan, the print and electronic media have chosen to enforce a blackout on the true nature of his writings. Most of the so- called "alternative" press has taken the lead of the mainstream press not to confront the work or life of Anton LaVey to wish him into non-existence. Why? In a word, fear. The mainstream fears Christian opprobrium and ridicule. The politically

correct individual fears the rapacity of his own id. Occult niks are threatened by LaVey's refusal to indulge their penchant for obscurantist mu mbo-jumbo. In our increasingly regimented egalitarian society, someone of Anton LaVey’s flamboyance

must be shunned, cut down to size. Unlike today's blue-leaned homiletic politicians, Anton LaVey does not allow Joe Citizen to feel comfortable in his workaday drabness. To the contrary. Whenever Joe citizen confronts the spectre of this contemporaryMing the Merciless, he is reminded of forbidden pleasures that he was too cowardly to grab, of a life he was too circumspect to live. In his rationalizations, Joe Citizen pins a Good guy Badge on his lapel and projects righteous derision on the object of his discomfort. "That Anton LaVey, what a phony!" Perhaps it is time the Devil is given his due -- thanks to LaVey the public has rediscovered "incredibly strange" films and music, such as Freaks, Nightmare Alley, the theremin and evocative tunes from the 1930s and 1940s, LaVey contributed several of the more celebrated photos in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, LaVey coined the term "psychic vampire," among others, LaVey's automata have inspired research and development in the fields of robotics and teledildonics. Perhaps most importantly, no other man has so well illuminated the shadow purpose of Western life in the latter half of the twentieth century. As LaVey has stressed over and over again, Satanism is not about heavy metal music or the sacrifice of children or animals to a horned deity. These are antics for the weak and confused. Anton LaVey's brand of Satanism involves a far more difficult and bracing task -- the realpolitik application of principles that favors accomplishment over consumerism and individual power over herd mentality. LaVey's Satanism eschews all pandering to fads. It is less a movement than a call to recognition. I have one suggestion. Read LaVey for what he says, and not for what others say he Is. May the scales fall from your eyes.

Adam Parfrey October 1992