The Satanic Bible (1969): History, Contents and Influence

The Satanic Bible is the founding text of the Church of Satan, written by Anton Szandor LaVey and published as a mass-market paperback by Avon Books in December 1969. It presents an atheistic Satanism in which Satan is a symbol of pride, carnality and self-interest rather than a being to be worshipped, and it combines a polemical philosophy of individualism with a short manual of ritual "psychodrama". It remains by far the most widely read book in the history of Satanism.

The Making of The Satanic Bible (1969)§

By the late 1960s Anton LaVey (1930–1997) had turned a circle of lectures on the occult in his San Francisco house into the Church of Satan, announced on Walpurgisnacht, 30 April 1966. Satanic weddings, a funeral with naval honours and constant press attention made him a celebrity, and Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby (1968) had created a public appetite for anything Satanic. According to the accounts of LaVey and his associates, the Avon editor Peter Mayer approached him with the idea of a "Satanic Bible" that the publisher could market to that audience.

LaVey assembled the book quickly from material already in use: mimeographed essays and ritual notes circulated to members, his lectures, and texts by other authors that he adapted. The first edition carried an introduction by the journalist Burton H. Wolfe, later LaVey's biographer; editions from 2005 carry an introduction by Peter H. Gilmore, the Church's later High Priest. The book appeared with a black cover bearing the goat-headed pentagram that the Church used as its emblem, a design derived from a nineteenth-century occult image of the goat of Mendes. The background to the Church itself is explained in LaVeyan Satanism and the Church of Satan.

Structure: Four Books and Four Elements§

After a preface and a prologue, the book opens with the Nine Satanic Statements, short assertions that sum up LaVey's position: that Satan represents indulgence rather than abstinence, vital existence rather than spiritual illusion, and undefiled wisdom rather than hypocritical self-deceit; that the human being is simply another animal; and that the so-called sins of Christianity are acts that lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification. The statements were later supplemented by the Church's "Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth" (1967, published more widely later) and "Nine Satanic Sins" (1987), which are not part of the original book.

The main text is divided into four books, each named after one of the four "Crown Princes of Hell" and associated with one of the classical elements and the cardinal directions:

• The Book of Satan (fire): "The Infernal Diatribe".
• The Book of Lucifer (air): "The Enlightenment".
• The Book of Belial (earth): "The Mastery of the Earth".
• The Book of Leviathan (water): "The Raging Sea".

The arrangement borrows the elemental and directional schemes of Western ceremonial magic, familiar from the Golden Dawn tradition, while giving each section a distinct function: polemic, philosophy, magical theory and invocation.

The Book of Satan and the Book of Lucifer§

The Book of Satan is a short, aggressive prose poem attacking the Golden Rule, meekness and the moral authority of priests and lawgivers. It defends the strong individual's right to repay hatred with hatred and to pursue his own interest. Much of this section closely follows passages of Might Is Right, an anonymous Social Darwinist tract published in 1896 under the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard, which LaVey reworked without acknowledgment in the first edition.

The Book of Lucifer is the philosophical heart of the work: a series of short essays arguing that God is a projection of the human ego, that Satanism is a religion of the flesh which channels rather than represses human desires, and that indulgence differs from compulsion. LaVey discusses love and hate, sex, "psychic vampires" who drain others emotionally, the Satanist's attitude to death, and religious holidays, ranking the Satanist's own birthday as the most important feast of the year. One essay addresses the accusation of human sacrifice and states that the Satanist does not harm animals or children; LaVey reinterpreted the "sacrifice" of a hated enemy as purely symbolic, performed through ritual curses in which the target is never physically touched.

The Book of Belial and the Book of Leviathan§

The Book of Belial sets out LaVey's theory of magic. He distinguishes "lesser magic", the everyday manipulation of others through appearance, charm and psychology, from "greater magic", ritual performed in a dedicated chamber to focus emotion and will. Ritual is described as an "intellectual decompression chamber" in which the participant suspends scepticism and lets emotion act. The section lists the customary furnishings of a Satanic ritual, such as black robes, an altar, the symbol of Baphomet, candles, a bell, a chalice and a gong, and divides rituals by purpose into those of lust, compassion and destruction. Throughout, LaVey insists that the effect is psychological and that the trappings matter only because they move the emotions.

The Book of Leviathan contains the invocations used in Church of Satan ritual, including an invocation to Satan and nineteen "Enochian Keys". These are LaVey's version of the angelic calls recorded by John Dee and Edward Kelley in the 1580s, which had reached him through the Golden Dawn tradition and Aleister Crowley's publications; LaVey altered the English renderings so that the calls praise rather than reject the powers of darkness. Their history is told in Enochian Magic and John Dee. The juxtaposition of Elizabethan angelic magic with modern atheistic polemic is characteristic of the whole book.

Borrowings, Influences and Originality§

Scholars agree that The Satanic Bible is a bricolage. Beyond Might Is Right and the Enochian Keys, its ideas echo Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christian morality, the egoism of Max Stirner, the individualism of Ayn Rand, whose influence LaVey openly acknowledged, and the showmanship of the carnival world in which he had worked. Its image of Satan as proud rebel inherits the nineteenth-century literary tradition described in Romantic Satanism, and its ritual style owes much to the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn and to LaVey's reading of popular occult literature.

Critics within and outside the Satanic milieu have pointed to the unacknowledged borrowings as evidence of opportunism. Historians of religion such as James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen take a different approach: they ask why the book works as scripture. They argue that LaVey's achievement was synthesis and framing, turning scattered ideas into a coherent "religion" with a name, a symbol and a ritual practice, and that the book's authority rests on its role as the text that created modern Satanism as a self-conscious identity.

Influence and Reception§

The Satanic Bible has been reprinted continuously since 1969 and translated into many languages; it is widely reported to have sold more than a million copies. In an internet survey of self-identified Satanists published in 2001, Lewis found it was the most frequently cited influence by a wide margin, including among people who had never joined the Church of Satan. LaVey's later books, The Satanic Witch (1971) and The Satanic Rituals (1972), along with Gilmore's The Satanic Scriptures (2007), extended its teaching.

The book also became a symbol in the hands of its opponents. During the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, police seminars and evangelical campaigners cited possession of the book as a warning sign of youthful involvement in crime, and some schools and libraries removed it. Investigations found no link between the Church of Satan and the alleged ritual crimes. Today the book is read by Satanists of many kinds, including members of The Satanic Temple who reject parts of its social philosophy, and by scholars as a key document of religious creativity in the 1960s. A broader overview of the forms of Satanism it helped to inspire is given in What Is Satanism?.

Frequently asked questions§

Who wrote The Satanic Bible?§

Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, compiled and wrote it in 1969. Parts of the first section adapt Ragnar Redbeard's Might Is Right (1896), and the Enochian Keys are his reworking of John Dee's sixteenth-century angelic calls.

Does The Satanic Bible teach devil worship?§

No. LaVey presents Satan as a symbol of human nature, pride and rebellion, not as a being to be worshipped. The book describes ritual as a psychological tool rather than an appeal to supernatural powers.

What are the four books of The Satanic Bible?§

The Book of Satan (the Infernal Diatribe), the Book of Lucifer (the Enlightenment), the Book of Belial (the Mastery of the Earth) and the Book of Leviathan (the Raging Sea), associated respectively with fire, air, earth and water.

Is The Satanic Bible still important to Satanists?§

Yes. It remains the foundational text of the Church of Satan and the most widely read Satanist book. Other groups, such as The Satanic Temple, do not treat it as authoritative but acknowledge its historical role.

Sources and further reading§

• The Satanic Bible — Anton Szandor LaVey, 1969
• The Satanic Rituals — Anton Szandor LaVey, 1972
• The Satanic Witch — Anton Szandor LaVey, 1971
• Might Is Right — Ragnar Redbeard, 1896
• The Secret Life of a Satanist — Blanche Barton, 1990
• The Devil's Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey — Burton H. Wolfe, 1974
• The Satanic Scriptures — Peter H. Gilmore, 2007
• Satanism Today: An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore, and Popular Culture — James R. Lewis, 2001
• Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology — Jesper Aagaard Petersen (ed.), 2009
• The Invention of Satanism — Asbjørn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen, 2016