Anton Lavey
1930-1997
Anton LaVey, in full Anton Szandor LaVey, original name Howard Stanton Levey, (born April 11, 1930, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died October 29, 1997, San Francisco, California), American author and counterculture figure who founded the Church of Satan. Many details of LaVey’s early life are disputed or unknown. Soon after he was born, his family moved to the San Francisco Bay area. According to some accounts, he left high school to join a circus. He subsequently worked as a psychic and as a nightclub organist, among other occupations. Meanwhile, he developed an interest in the occult and gained local celebrity in San Francisco as a dark, mysterious figure who rejected traditional Christian morality. Having changed his name to Anton Szandor LaVey, in 1966 he founded the Church of Satan, calling himself its high priest, on Walpurgis Night (April 30), a traditional night of revelry in northern Europe and Scandinavia. Three years later he published The Satanic Bible, in which he set down the teachings and rituals of his church. LaVey presented Satanism not as the practice of evil or as the worship of an actual Antichrist but as a kind of ethical egoism. According to LaVey, traditional…
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