"Anton Szandor LaVey - The Satanic Bible" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaVey Anton Szandor)

self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego championed.

He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian
services was outmoded or, as he put it, "beating a dead horse". In the Church of
Satan, LaVey initiated some exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity's
self-debasing services, thereby exorcising repressions and inhibitations
fostered by white-light religions.

There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and
traditions. It had become popular to declare that "God is dead". So, the
alternative rites that LaVey worked out, while still maintaining some of the
trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative mockery to
positive forms of celebrations and purges: Satanic weddings consecrating the
joys of the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to
help individuals attain their sex desires, destruction rituals to enable members
of the Satanic church to triumph over enemies.

On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the
Devil, press coverage, though unsolicited, was phenominal. By 1967 the
newspapers that were sending reporters to write about the Church of Satan
extended from San Fransisco across the Pacific to Tokyo and across the Atlantic
to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin, serving as an
altar to Satan in a LaVey-conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major
wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page
of such bulwarks of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the
publicity, grottos (LaVey's counterpart to covens) affiliated with the Church of
Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of LaVey's cardinal messages: the
Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.

Of course LaVey pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and
his followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns,
tail and pitchfork, but rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are
just beginning to fathom. How did LaVey square that explanation with his own
appearance at times in black cowl with horns? He replied: "People need ritual,
with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or
wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can't release or even understand
on their own." Nevertheless, LaVey himself soon tired of the games.

There were setbacks. First, some of LaVey's neighbors began complaining about
the full-growm lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat
was donated to the local zoo. Next, one of LaVey's most devoted witches, Jayne
Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the head of her suitor, lawyer
Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil's Avenger;
LaVey had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her
death. It was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol
with whom he had been intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, LaVey's
paramour for a brief but crucial period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival
and was playing organ for strippers around the Los Angeles area.

On top of all that, LaVey was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for