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Wed, Aug 28, 2019
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Most everyone has heard of Anton Szandor LaVey’s Church of Satan, founded in 1966 in San Francisco. LaVey’s real name, however, was Howard Stanton Levey. The purported author of the Satanic Bible (LaVey plagiarized large parts of it for AVON Books), died in 1997. On his deathbed in a Catholic hospital he had a vision of something that terrified him. His daughter reported that he saw something and said, “Oh my, oh my, what have I done? There’s something very wrong.” His daughter said that her father then begged God not to send him to hell.
Howard Levey was an atheist and did not believe in a literal Satan. As he told one reporter before his death, “Look, I’m an atheist. Satan is symbolically representative for us, and when you see the kind of liberating freedom that people are feeling when they say something like ‘Hail, Satan,’ well, it seems like it’s needed. Hating yourself for being human seems pointless.”
A lot of adolescent bravado surfaces when it comes to Satanism. Think of kids in black clothing listening to heavy metal as they suck on five pointed Pentagrams, or light bonfires in cornfields before going out to the local cemetery and toppling tombstones with crosses on them.
A 2018 article in Philly Voice asked, ‘Who Are the Philly Satanists? What Do They Do?” As was pointed out, they don’t eat babies and they don’t want churches to be burned down. “We are Satanists. Full stop. Most of us are also atheists,” as one member stated. A look at the Facebook page, Satanic Philadelphia, reveals posts like, “Pride is the most fabulous sin,” and “We don’t apologize for our nature.” Satanic Philadelphia sponsored a so-called Black Mass on October 12, 2018, traditional Columbus Day, which also happens to be my birthday (and the birthday of Aleister Crowley, ‘the Great Beast,’ a poet and founder of his own school of mysticism, Magick).
Philadelphia Magazine reported on the Black Mass. “New Jersey resident Joan Bell has been camped out in front of 12th and Spring Garden since 6 p.m. on Thursday. She has a three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary. And she has her rosaries. She’s there to prayerfully protest the appearance of the Satanic Temple at PhilaMOCA on Friday night.”
The magazine reported that “the blasphemy-based Salem, Massachusetts religious organization” was actually performing the black mass ritual two times. That’s because when the 8 p.m. Satanic Temple black mass sold out in a heartbeat, another black mass was added at 10:30 p.m. The later black mass sold out as well.
Who are these devoted Satanic followers anyway?
The Philly Voice writer described his visit to the organization.
“It’s a sweltering afternoon in late May. A group of mostly 30-somethings are relaxing in the air conditioning at a South Philly bar discussing movies and politics. To the untrained eye, this might look like a normal meet-up, but these 11 strangers aren’t getting together to bond over foreign films or to try speed dating. They’re Satanists.”
The reporter describes the Satanists in a bar in Germantown. “A chocolate cake covered in black icing topped with a blood red pentagram sits on the table before them. It’s the group’s first anniversary. They open the meeting with an invocation calling to Satan for power and wisdom. It ends with members intoning, “FIAT, IN NOMINE SATANAS.”
The Philadelphia group is part of a Salem-based organization known as The Satanic Temple. Satanic Temple “franchises” are popping up all over the country. If a 2014 Pew Research Center survey is to be believed then 1.5 percent of Americans now identify with Paganism, Wicca and Satanism.
The Satanic Temple was founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry in 2012. The temple became famous when they initiated a Missouri Supreme Court lawsuit to reduce undue burdens in abortion procedures. The group also went to great lengths to place a satanic monument on the Arkansas capitol grounds to offset a 10 Commandments monument.
In the 1970s a common figure in Philadelphia’s Suburban Station was a cloaked figure mingling among regional rail passengers while passing out leaflets and magazines. The magazine, called The Process, was published by The Process Church of the Final judgment. The Process Church, some say, had influenced Charles Manson and the Manson ‘Family.’ Process Church co-founder, Robert De Grimston Moore, was once referred to by Manson as his body double. “Moore and I are one and the same,” Manson is on record as saying.
The Process Church was founded by two British ex-Scientologists, Mary Ann MacLean and Moore after their expulsion from the Church of Scientology as “suppressive persons” in 1962. The organization grew rapidly and Process magazine became popular with Hollywood celebrities. It published stories on death, sex, fear and love. MacLean called herself The Oracle and Moore was known as the teacher although the one in control was MacLean. Process Church members had photo ID’s and in some cities there were Process coffee houses.
Process magazine featured stories on Marianne Faithful, Timothy Leary and William Burroughs. A Process band was formed in Toronto and recorded a number of songs. The Process philosophy was that Jesus and Satan were one. Members were encouraged to participate in sex couplings, orgies and go outside their comfort zones. Group sex was a rite of passage. After the Manson murders in Los Angeles, the Church of the Process changed its sinister black cloak and robes to a gray modern leisure suit. That was later changed to a blue modern leisure suit. The Process cross, which once had the look of a Nazi swastika was changed to resemble a soft version of the German Iron Cross. The standard Process cross was a cross with a curled up serpent inside.
In 1974 came a schism when Moore, who was seeing another woman, was kicked out of the Church by the jilted MacLean. The name of the Church was changed to the Foundation Church of the Millennium. In 1979 the name was changed again to the Foundation Church and all references to Satan were dropped. MacLean wanted a purely Christian Church. MacLean changed the name again but this time all religious pretensions were dropped. The new name, Best Friends Animal Society, accompanied a move to a new place, Kanab, Utah. On November 14, 2005, in a satanic twist worthy of director Roman Polanski, a rumor started that MacLean’s death was caused when a group of feral dogs tore her apart.
In Philadelphia’s Suburban Station, the man in the cloak handing out copies of Process went about his task with calm determination. The caped Process caped man could also be seen throughout the city conducting lively debates with evangelical Jesus groups.
Suburban Station in the late 1970s was a teeming metropolis. Within its walls you could find every facet of city life: proselytizing Jews for Jesus, processing Hare Krishna devotees, grim Nation of Islam evangelizers as well as expressionless but always formally dressed Jehovah’s Witnesses standing next to portable magazine racks. An iconic sight for years was an elderly Anglo-Catholic nun in full traditional habit who sat in a folding chair. At her side was a basket for donations. Day after day, year after year, the nun would sit in silence and accept whatever money was offered her. By the early 1990s she had disappeared. I was always sorry that I never approached her and asked me to tell me her story.
Suburban Station was also an early hangout for male prostitutes from the Fishtown and South Philadelphia neighborhoods. In 1975, it was where the murderers of 30-year old newspaper heir John S. Knight, who lived in the Dorchester in Rittenhouse Square, hung out and made their drug deals.
Sometime in the late 1970s the Process man approached a young man named Makin, a Midwestern transplant to Philadelphia. When I spoke to Makin at that time as a reporter for Philadelphia’s The Drummer newspaper, he could list no address. The phrase I used in my Drummer article was that Makin lived “hand to mouth,” meaning that he was homeless.
At times Makin could be spotted carrying a free copy of Anton Szandor LaVey’s Bible, given to him (so he told me) by the Process man himself. I’d see Makin reading La Vey’s book in Suburban Station. Makin explained his choice of reading material by calling himself a “spiritual investigator.” There were times when he carried both La Vey’s book and the Gideon Bible. It was as if he was deciding which path to follow.
It soon became obvious to me that Makin was one of the station’s notorious rent boys who hung round the indoor ice skating rink and the Alexander Calder sculpture in the Penn Center courtyard. The rent boy ragamuffins used the Calder sculpture as a leaning post and in the warmer months as a changing post where they would hang their ‘perspired’ T-shirts up to dry.
Suburban Station in 1976 had a commercial sunken ice skating rink surrounded by floor to ceiling windows through which regional rail passengers waiting for departing trains could watch the skaters. Suburban Station provided Makin with new life, albeit under the radar but sometimes in the direct lens of the police. His life as a rent boy meant that he was well dressed: he often wore pinstriped sneakers and Swedish boathouse trousers with big pockets and wide belt loops.
The city Morals Squad was alive and well in the late 1970s. There were cool looking long haired undercover agents in London Fog coats who canvassed the station with watchful eyes, while other undercover agents wore faded blue jeans while pretending to “look available.”
Homelessness takes its toll, however, and soon Makin was taking more drugs than he could handle. He began standing in the middle of Suburban Station wobbling and zoning out as hundreds of commuters whirled past him.
He eventually became so careless he didn’t mind falling asleep outside the skating rink in the warm weather. At 8 a.m. on my way to work, I would sometimes find him flat on his belly on one of the station’s outdoor concrete benches, pigeons fluttering about him in a wild fashion. And there beside him on the bench would be the nearly shredded and coverless Anton Szandor LaVey Bible.
Howard Levey was an atheist and did not believe in a literal Satan. As he told one reporter before his death, “Look, I’m an atheist. Satan is symbolically representative for us, and when you see the kind of liberating freedom that people are feeling when they say something like ‘Hail, Satan,’ well, it seems like it’s needed. Hating yourself for being human seems pointless.”
A lot of adolescent bravado surfaces when it comes to Satanism. Think of kids in black clothing listening to heavy metal as they suck on five pointed Pentagrams, or light bonfires in cornfields before going out to the local cemetery and toppling tombstones with crosses on them.
A 2018 article in Philly Voice asked, ‘Who Are the Philly Satanists? What Do They Do?” As was pointed out, they don’t eat babies and they don’t want churches to be burned down. “We are Satanists. Full stop. Most of us are also atheists,” as one member stated. A look at the Facebook page, Satanic Philadelphia, reveals posts like, “Pride is the most fabulous sin,” and “We don’t apologize for our nature.” Satanic Philadelphia sponsored a so-called Black Mass on October 12, 2018, traditional Columbus Day, which also happens to be my birthday (and the birthday of Aleister Crowley, ‘the Great Beast,’ a poet and founder of his own school of mysticism, Magick).
Philadelphia Magazine reported on the Black Mass. “New Jersey resident Joan Bell has been camped out in front of 12th and Spring Garden since 6 p.m. on Thursday. She has a three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary. And she has her rosaries. She’s there to prayerfully protest the appearance of the Satanic Temple at PhilaMOCA on Friday night.”
The magazine reported that “the blasphemy-based Salem, Massachusetts religious organization” was actually performing the black mass ritual two times. That’s because when the 8 p.m. Satanic Temple black mass sold out in a heartbeat, another black mass was added at 10:30 p.m. The later black mass sold out as well.
Who are these devoted Satanic followers anyway?
The Philly Voice writer described his visit to the organization.
“It’s a sweltering afternoon in late May. A group of mostly 30-somethings are relaxing in the air conditioning at a South Philly bar discussing movies and politics. To the untrained eye, this might look like a normal meet-up, but these 11 strangers aren’t getting together to bond over foreign films or to try speed dating. They’re Satanists.”
The reporter describes the Satanists in a bar in Germantown. “A chocolate cake covered in black icing topped with a blood red pentagram sits on the table before them. It’s the group’s first anniversary. They open the meeting with an invocation calling to Satan for power and wisdom. It ends with members intoning, “FIAT, IN NOMINE SATANAS.”
The Philadelphia group is part of a Salem-based organization known as The Satanic Temple. Satanic Temple “franchises” are popping up all over the country. If a 2014 Pew Research Center survey is to be believed then 1.5 percent of Americans now identify with Paganism, Wicca and Satanism.
The Satanic Temple was founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry in 2012. The temple became famous when they initiated a Missouri Supreme Court lawsuit to reduce undue burdens in abortion procedures. The group also went to great lengths to place a satanic monument on the Arkansas capitol grounds to offset a 10 Commandments monument.
In the 1970s a common figure in Philadelphia’s Suburban Station was a cloaked figure mingling among regional rail passengers while passing out leaflets and magazines. The magazine, called The Process, was published by The Process Church of the Final judgment. The Process Church, some say, had influenced Charles Manson and the Manson ‘Family.’ Process Church co-founder, Robert De Grimston Moore, was once referred to by Manson as his body double. “Moore and I are one and the same,” Manson is on record as saying.
The Process Church was founded by two British ex-Scientologists, Mary Ann MacLean and Moore after their expulsion from the Church of Scientology as “suppressive persons” in 1962. The organization grew rapidly and Process magazine became popular with Hollywood celebrities. It published stories on death, sex, fear and love. MacLean called herself The Oracle and Moore was known as the teacher although the one in control was MacLean. Process Church members had photo ID’s and in some cities there were Process coffee houses.
Process magazine featured stories on Marianne Faithful, Timothy Leary and William Burroughs. A Process band was formed in Toronto and recorded a number of songs. The Process philosophy was that Jesus and Satan were one. Members were encouraged to participate in sex couplings, orgies and go outside their comfort zones. Group sex was a rite of passage. After the Manson murders in Los Angeles, the Church of the Process changed its sinister black cloak and robes to a gray modern leisure suit. That was later changed to a blue modern leisure suit. The Process cross, which once had the look of a Nazi swastika was changed to resemble a soft version of the German Iron Cross. The standard Process cross was a cross with a curled up serpent inside.
In 1974 came a schism when Moore, who was seeing another woman, was kicked out of the Church by the jilted MacLean. The name of the Church was changed to the Foundation Church of the Millennium. In 1979 the name was changed again to the Foundation Church and all references to Satan were dropped. MacLean wanted a purely Christian Church. MacLean changed the name again but this time all religious pretensions were dropped. The new name, Best Friends Animal Society, accompanied a move to a new place, Kanab, Utah. On November 14, 2005, in a satanic twist worthy of director Roman Polanski, a rumor started that MacLean’s death was caused when a group of feral dogs tore her apart.
In Philadelphia’s Suburban Station, the man in the cloak handing out copies of Process went about his task with calm determination. The caped Process caped man could also be seen throughout the city conducting lively debates with evangelical Jesus groups.
Suburban Station in the late 1970s was a teeming metropolis. Within its walls you could find every facet of city life: proselytizing Jews for Jesus, processing Hare Krishna devotees, grim Nation of Islam evangelizers as well as expressionless but always formally dressed Jehovah’s Witnesses standing next to portable magazine racks. An iconic sight for years was an elderly Anglo-Catholic nun in full traditional habit who sat in a folding chair. At her side was a basket for donations. Day after day, year after year, the nun would sit in silence and accept whatever money was offered her. By the early 1990s she had disappeared. I was always sorry that I never approached her and asked me to tell me her story.
Suburban Station was also an early hangout for male prostitutes from the Fishtown and South Philadelphia neighborhoods. In 1975, it was where the murderers of 30-year old newspaper heir John S. Knight, who lived in the Dorchester in Rittenhouse Square, hung out and made their drug deals.
Sometime in the late 1970s the Process man approached a young man named Makin, a Midwestern transplant to Philadelphia. When I spoke to Makin at that time as a reporter for Philadelphia’s The Drummer newspaper, he could list no address. The phrase I used in my Drummer article was that Makin lived “hand to mouth,” meaning that he was homeless.
At times Makin could be spotted carrying a free copy of Anton Szandor LaVey’s Bible, given to him (so he told me) by the Process man himself. I’d see Makin reading La Vey’s book in Suburban Station. Makin explained his choice of reading material by calling himself a “spiritual investigator.” There were times when he carried both La Vey’s book and the Gideon Bible. It was as if he was deciding which path to follow.
It soon became obvious to me that Makin was one of the station’s notorious rent boys who hung round the indoor ice skating rink and the Alexander Calder sculpture in the Penn Center courtyard. The rent boy ragamuffins used the Calder sculpture as a leaning post and in the warmer months as a changing post where they would hang their ‘perspired’ T-shirts up to dry.
Suburban Station in 1976 had a commercial sunken ice skating rink surrounded by floor to ceiling windows through which regional rail passengers waiting for departing trains could watch the skaters. Suburban Station provided Makin with new life, albeit under the radar but sometimes in the direct lens of the police. His life as a rent boy meant that he was well dressed: he often wore pinstriped sneakers and Swedish boathouse trousers with big pockets and wide belt loops.
The city Morals Squad was alive and well in the late 1970s. There were cool looking long haired undercover agents in London Fog coats who canvassed the station with watchful eyes, while other undercover agents wore faded blue jeans while pretending to “look available.”
Homelessness takes its toll, however, and soon Makin was taking more drugs than he could handle. He began standing in the middle of Suburban Station wobbling and zoning out as hundreds of commuters whirled past him.
He eventually became so careless he didn’t mind falling asleep outside the skating rink in the warm weather. At 8 a.m. on my way to work, I would sometimes find him flat on his belly on one of the station’s outdoor concrete benches, pigeons fluttering about him in a wild fashion. And there beside him on the bench would be the nearly shredded and coverless Anton Szandor LaVey Bible.
