Satanism is perhaps one of the most hyped elements of the occult world, and most of the books on the subject are thinly-disguised propaganda written in favor of either Satanists or a religion or sect that considers itself in opposition to them. With a title like this, I initially expected this book to be another one of these poorly researched, biased, and vindictive rants. I was pleasantly surprised. This doesn’t mean this book isn’t propaganda; the author is a member of the Church of Satan, but he says so up front, and the book itself is a treat for those who want to know about the history of modern Satanism.
The scope of Lucifer Rising is extensive. Baddeley starts us with the Old Testament and moves forward rapidly through Satan’s place in literature, Aleister Crowley and the nineteenth-century occult revival, National Socialism, the hippie movement, and the Manson murders. Not all of these necessarily reflect the writings or practices of actual Satanists, but Baddeley shows how the attitudes toward Satan and life in general have inspired, or at least paralleled, those of today’s Satanists. When we come to the Church of Satan, the book slows down, dwelling on Anton LaVey’s rise to notoriety, the founding of the Church of Satan, and the schisms and debates that followed. Baddeley also recognizes the role that mass media plays in driving both contemporary Satanism and its images in the outside world, dwelling on cinema, art, the Satanic panic driven by fundamentalist Christians in the 1980s, and the various genres of Satanic music, ranging from classical to black metal.
The meat of the book, in my opinion, is in the interviews. Most of the chapters are followed by interviews. At the start of the book, we have none, then a number of comments from Anton LaVey or Kenneth Anger, and by the end, each chapter is followed by a number of exchanges with Satanic icons as Boyd Rice, King Diamond, Paul Douglas Valentine, Glen Benton of Deicide, Glenn Danzig, and both Count Grishnachk and Euronymous of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem (before the Count killed his fellow band member). These often clarify points from Baddeley’s text, or - even better - contradict it. This is what anthropologists would call a “multivocal” text, and it’s fascinating to hear the different takes people have on Satanism, music, the Church of Satan, and the place of Satanists in (or out of) society. You may have legions of black metal rockers advocating their on-the-edge lyrics, but you’ve also got Anton LaVey disparaging rock music and confessing his love for cornball music from the Thirties and Forties. This creates a number of fascinating contrasts that bring the modern Satanic scene to life.
The author’s Satanic bias is, for the most part, a bonus rather than a drawback - the interviews make it clear he’s able to generate an incredible rapport with many different groups of people. If it becomes a problem, it is in the author’s pro-Satanic and anti-Christian rhetoric and a great amount of art that conventional audiences would consider blasphemous. This is likely to turn off many who are merely casually interested, giving the book a “preaching to the choir” quality that may obscure its more important objectives. I’d suggest for dissenting readers to gloss over these statements and read the book where it will not provoke unwanted discussion.
More specifically Baddeley takes the perspective of a member of the Church of Satan. For most of the book, it isn’t a drawback, but it leads to some curious omissions when discussing that organization. When it comes to discussing Lawrence Wright’s 1991 Rolling Stone expose of Anton LaVey’s past, Baddeley merely states that many Church of Satan members disagreed with it, without giving details. In his own description of LaVey’s early life, however, the author steps back from some claims LaVey made, noting only that LaVey claimed them to be true. On another front, the presence of the Temple of Set - one of the most persistent offshoots or continuations (depending upon whom you ask) of the Church - is apparent only through an interview with an interview with the Temple’s UK head and another with two late-night TV personalities who once knew ToS members Nikolas and Zeena Schreck.
If the book has one underlying tension, it is the question of the Satanic attitude toward women. Much of the book’s art consists of pictures that some might consider borderline (or over that line) pornography, and we have several pictures of prominently-labelled male Satanic figures with their anonymous (or first name only given) nude (or scantily-clad) female “friends.” Some might get the impression that, just as some conservatives might see women’s place as barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, many Satanists want their women submissive and passive, lying on altars or strapped to crosses. In turn, the interviews contain few statements by women who are involved in the Satanic community. Does this reflect the attitude of Satanists in general or the authors, editors, and publishers of the book in particular? We’re not likely to find the answers here.
As for the relevance to the Necronomicon - Lovecraft and his circle are mentioned at several points in the book. In one of his interviews, LaVey states that Lovecraft friend August Derleth once attended one of the pre-Church of Satan lectures given at his San Francisco home. (Can anyone verify this?) While a drawing of Lovecraft prominently sports sigils from the Simon Necronomicon, the book itself is dismissive of that work as anything other than a distraction for fundamentalist anti-cult extremists. Oddly enough, none of the Lovecraft mentions appear in the index - were they added after the fact?
Despite my qualms, this is truly a landmark and far-reaching study of the modern Satanic movement, and I recommend it for anyone hoping to understand the dark underbelly of contemporary occultism.
08596528072003 © Daniel Harms. All rights reserved.