San Francisco Examiner

Back To Main LaVey Page

  Friday, Nov. 7, 1997 · Page A 21     Anton LaVey, Church of Satan founder

     Larry D. Hatfield
     of the Examiner staff

A secret "Satanic funeral" for Anton Szandor LaVey has been held in Colma and the remains of the
self-promoting and self-proclaimed founder and high priest of the International Church of Satan have
been cremated.

          Mr. LaVey died at St. Mary's Hospital last Wednesday of pulmonary edema. He was 67. Perhaps
          symbolic of his perverse penchant for tweaking non-believers and the media, his death certificate
          listed the date of his death as Halloween morning, two days later, said family spokesman Lee
          Houskeeper. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

          The death and Satanic services at Woodlawn Memorial Chapel were kept secret because of security
          concerns, said Church of Satan High Priestess Karla LaVey, Mr. LaVey's daughter.

          She and Mr. LaVey's longtime companion, High Priestess Blanche Barton, were to discuss his
          illness, death and the future of the church at a press conference Friday. A life-size replica of the
          departed satanist furnished by the San Francisco Wax Museum was to attend.

Sharp, if morbid, sense of humor

          Mr. LaVey, a man with a sharp, if morbid, sense of humor, burst on the San Francisco media scene
          in the mid-1960s, taking The City's already colorful counterculture scene a step closer to the edge.

          He founded the Church of Satan in 1966, keeping a Nubian lion named Togare, as well as a stuffed
          werewolf, in the black Richmond District Victorian that served both as his devil-worshipping church
          and his home.

          He ordained himself, he said, because he couldn't find anybody else to do it. He got the call, he said.
          "The whole concept of Satan's tempting man is wrong," Mr. LaVey said. "On the contrary, he
          motivates man. We just think it's time the Devil was given his due. . . . The devil is the guy who's kept
          all the churches in business."

          Leading up to his duties as Satan's front man, Mr. LaVey expansively told reporters, he had
          prepared by being a lion trainer for the Clyde Beatty Circus, a professional organist, oboeist, crime
          photographer, artist, hypnotist and psychic investigator.

Reared in San Francisco

          Mr. LaVey was born in Chicago and reared in San Francisco in what he described as a decidedly
          non-mystical family.

          His father was ordinary, a San Francisco auto parts and real estate salesman, although he said his
          grandmother came from Transylvania and told him tales of demons and vampires; her brother had a
          trained bear act that traveled the Danube with a gypsy troupe.

          He played oboe in the San Francisco Ballet orchestra, organ in a Sunset District bar, quit Tamalpais
          High School in Mill Valley at age 16, studied criminology at San Francisco City College and
          apprenticed himself to a numerologist.

          Mr. LaVey claimed affairs with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield (whom he said died under a
          curse worked upon her by a consort) and said Sammy Davis Jr. was one of his followers.

          Mr. LaVey gained wider notoriety in 1967 when he performed what he said was the very first
          Satanic wedding. Two years later, Avon Books published Mr. LaVey's "Satanic Bible."

"The Black Pope'

          Called "The Black Pope" by followers, his ministry seemed to consist mostly of entertaining the press.
          He wrote four other books, made hundreds of personal and television appearances, consulted on
          films involving devils and even played an urban Beelzebub in the dark "Rosemary's Baby."

          Among other things, Mr. LaVey made himself available, for fees of $2 to $100, to spend the night in
          a graveyard watching for ghosts, to keep night watches on haunted houses, or to advise clients on
          matters from the emotional to the spectral.

          Mr. LaVey's last book, "Satan Speaks," is scheduled for release in the spring of 1998, preceded by
          his last interview in Seconds magazine.

          "He was a defiant, bold man, who acted on his convictions with great personal courage," said
          daughter Karla. "Some called him the world's most dangerous man; that was because he was not
          afraid of the consequences of being considered evil."

          She said she and Barton would continue the Church of Satan.

          Besides Karla LaVey and Barton, Mr. LaVey is survived by a 4-year-old son, Xerxes.

Back To Top