Nightmare Alley and the Geek

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It is the most evil domeed shaped molten lava cake in the world! Only are. Remember, only the people watching on Nfs can see it. You have a cake here. the horn' fall off too related it to can to audio slaves! It's celebrating the episode six six six. six six six six six six d d It's the number of the fucking beast is that Is that what that means? Yes. Oh Okay. See, I never learned six six, six. We never talked about that. You never got to that level of elementary school. Oh, no, no Ver, very difficult for you. Oh the candles out I get onen't say Tanic wish. Yeah Okay. Yeah, Henry, you should do it. Yeah, you should do it Oh you don't terrible radio. God God, this could be these trick cles They are not trick candlesorry left everybody. They were not trick candles and it took Henry a full fifteen seconds to do it, which is an eternity on radio. I had to reach ac your laptop. It's episode six thir six. I'm excited. What the hell am I supposed to do here? We can't follow wh role in the GD radio book My name is Marcus Barks. I'm here with resident satist Henry Zabrowski. Yes, I carry the burden I carry the burden of being the most sovereign of us all. immediately when it's not making funny I know what it's like to be to walk around, being wiser and. More moral than everyone is. Henry That's really the key. He has a pitchfork made out of forks. Yeah It's just three, four the manen with no affiliation whatsoever. Larson. I'm an atheist and proud. Good work. I amm here as the devil's lawyer. Yeah. That is my literally his advocate. That's nice. Yes. That is the devil's advocate. That is what that is honestly, that's why Aunton Levis started this whole fucking thing, Eddie. I saw the deevil's advocate at a birthday party for myself and freshman year of high school and I was a hero because boobs in it. That sick fuck It's got you jumping from one foot to the next. don't punch. Punch. But don't taste. Taste but don't swall. And that sick fucking asshole is laughing his asshle. Aually for Henry's birthday this year, I got him a bumper sticker that said She's got She's got a huge fucking ass and you got your head all the way up in. Yeah, honestly,' like And that was an improv line. It was. Yeah. And everyone on set reportedly had to keep themselves from laughing. Of course, it's incredible. He's an amazing actor, except when he does a British accent. You ever see Pterno Jerry Jerry, you fuck those kids Jerry! Wh? What' this Cha doing in here? Whoa, You got it you can't tell me! You made' tell me you had that kid. Where? Inside of what?? Jerry, you can't go around calling yourself the tickle monster Wh So for this, what we assume to be our six hundred and sixty sixth episode. We decided that we would fully explore the life of the father of Satanism and the creator of the Church of Satan itself, mister Anton Sandor Lovee. And I already got my defensiveness out in our production call. Nice. It was about an hour But we did it. No we did it good because this is obviously very close. So you like him Like is there's no like here. Okay. It's not about like It's about respect. No He gave me the permission to not like or respect him. Oh. That'ice to him. Yeah. He freed me. Like Charles Bukowski did Honestly, yes for some people. You know, I'm going to go ahead and say up top that it is our aim to not get too bogged down in philosophy during this three part series. becausecause while Antom Mvee is certainly one of the most important occult figures of the twentieth century, he's also one of the most important cultural figures as well Today, any of you can go to a last podcast live show and yell, Hil Satan. H S You can yell that in unison with two thousand other weirdos of like minds just because it's fun. You don't have to be a Satanist or anything like that. You just want to join in. It's important to remember that the last Witch trial in America was held less than a hundred years before Anton Levee founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco. I think it was held In Salem in I think like eighteen seventy eight. Wh you fucking late? Yeah. Wow. So there was already slavery was already done. Yeah,, and they're still doing witch tri let's get one last witch trial in there. Hey, listen, we don't get to do anything fun anymore.. All right, I don't get to hell a man as the property. I don't get to beat him to death. I mean, I gotta burn a woman Next time. Trial Theyar wolf For almost the entirety of the first two millennia of Western Christian society, nobody in their right mind openly said that they were a Satanist. Being a Satanist was not something you claimed. It was something that was accused. And more often than not, an accusation was a direct precursor to a horrific and painful execution But as the Western world began to rapidly evolve into a more secular society in the twentieth century, especially in places like San Francisco, where Anton Leaveae founded the Church of Satan Enough of a balance existed between secular living and religious belief where something like the Church of Satan could both exist and serve a purpose in the culture at large Therefore, the story of Anton LeVay is not just the story of the world's most successful circus carney, although that is certainly a massive part of it. Almost almost all of it. This is also the story of just how much culture began to speed up in the second half of the twentieth century and how Anton LeVay matched and at times surp past that acceleration Because American culture did change so quickly, this is also the story of the reactions people had to those changes in the decades after the founding of the Church of Satan, both in the secular and religious worlds Christians who took Anton Lve seriously destroyed less lives during the Satanic panic that crept into American life in the decades after the founding of the Church of Satan. While Satanists like Richard Romirez, who completely misunderstood Anton Levay, they committed horrific murders in Satan's so called name Both, of course completely missed the point of Satanism, or at least Satanism as I personally see it. For me, Satanism is like the carnival from whence Anton Levay came. The whole thing is set up to be a little unsettling and a little scary, also supposed to retain an element of goofiness, an element of play If you don't believe me, contrast the sinister Church of Satan black masses in the sixties with the silly little Red devil outfit that Anton Lveay sometimes wore while he was doing them The pointoint is, just like a K night at the cararnival, Satanism is supposed to be all in good fun, importantortant, but not serious. But that's just my opinion. And for the record, I'm not a Satanist. If you ask five Satanists what they think Satanism is, you'll get five different answers. And if you think your way is the only way that again, to the best of my understanding You've missed the fucking point. Honestly, thank you, Marcus because that's the big issue here that we're going to be covering in this whole series is what is the point of Anton Levee? Sure right? Like what is the point of covering them? Be even Alistair Crowley, his like direct predecessor is like he was way more of a poet, scholar, writer, M Climber. all of that, right He was way more of a serious student. Anton Leveay picked up the golden path and said this shit's dumb. I know a way to do that's better. And there's just something about this that it holds true for every Satanist. And that's why what I love is that we're going do this topic and we're going get angry emails no matter what because it's thepode. It's him. It's it's an episode and it's also it's him And other Satanists argue. and that's kind of the whole idea is that he's trying to tell you, here's the stuff, now go. Even me as the pope of the Church of Satan, it's not that serious of a fucking role. Exactly. I always saw Satanism as like a form of atheism. Well, he actually then, I reclarified, because I've always kind of said this as a shorthand and that's a way to say it as a shorthand But I know that with if you reread the Satanic Bible, you reread it? Yeah I a times. This is a really bold assumption you just made there with Edward. If you really bued it. What he specifically says, this is separate from God and all this This is specifically, as we'll get all into it, the church of Satan Levan Satanism is all about making fun of the bastards. Yeah, it's a lifestyle, more than a religion. Yeah, a philosophy. Yeah, yeah yeah It's an assle lifestyle. you called him success Was he successful? L was he did he have money? Oh yeah. Yeah. now he had He lived a pretty good life throughout and when I say successful, I mean more notorious. Okay you know successful is then he had the goal of bringing the Church of Satan to the world. He wanted to like he is I would call Anton Levee the most successful local character in the history of the world. because that was his his really because we're going to get into that far more in the second episode but really His main goal was he wanted to be the weirdest guy in San Francisco and And he was that's weird. Exactly. It's like Ber Bowki puts them in the running for weirdest guy in the world. Yeah. You know, And it just kind of grew from there and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And it grew to the point where like Anton Lee, well also was a little bit lazy. L to the point he was like this anymore. It was never supposed to be all that fucking serious it got serious and then it got un sererious and got serious again and it got unserious. and now we're back in a serious point, which is why we're covering it the fuckking first place Now, as is befitting a man sometimes known as the dirty Pope Anton LeVill was what you'd call a complicated character. He wasn't a shiny beacon of morality. He was the founder of the Church of Satan Did Anton Lvvee hobnob with N neo Nazis in the seventies? Absolutely. And we'll cover those incredible idiots in full on the next episode, along with the reason why Satanism was attractive to said neo Nazis. And how that disease of thought will also go on to fuck up the whole thing to begin with Additionally, was Anton Lvee a bad husband, partner and father? Yes, yes, and yes. But again He's the founder of the Church of Satan. He's not gonna be Pedro Pascal. He should be the. No one's saying that we should be modeling ourselves after Anton Levee. But Jort coms aside, Anton Levee is still an incredibly important figure in the cultural history of the twentieth century. His is an important tale to know if you to get closer to understanding the modern world. How did we get here? That's always the question And even besides that, even after you factor in the many Many lies Anton Levet told throughout his life. His story is still Uutterly fascinating. There's no reason to let facts get in the way of a good story. Yeah. Is that his quote? Oh, no,'s that's just truth.. before we get into the full life story of Anton Leveay, I think it would be helpful. And also, you know, it's episode six hundred sixty six. Yeah. Let's do a short history of S. Sat. S. It's just so everyone has a full concept. Oh Louis. Yeah Oh scratch. I love old soul scratch And you know but this is also to give everyone a full concept of just how transgressive the founding of the Church of Satan was when Anton Lvee hung up a shingle in San Francisco in nineteen sixty six. It was a big fuck. It was I would call it a big leap So the image of Satan as a red devil with horns and a pitchfork, it's a relatively recent invention Prior to the twentieth century, Satan could appear as green, yellow, blue, or black. He could take the form of a serpent, a beast, a goat, any manner of monster, depending on which artist was painting him during what time period? Yes, a guy got him sick of painting goats. b. while most images of the devils throughout the second millennium often came from painters working on the behest of the church The little red devil image of Satan is thought to have come from the street puppet shows of the late eighteenth century. Puppeteers gave Satan a flashy color that made it easier for children to pay attention to the story they were telling in their puppet show. I mean, you know whatice with the kids like, Oh no, it's the devil Yeah yeah And when you combin that red coloring with the mustachioed Mhistopheles character from the eighteenth century play Faust, you had an image that looked great in print once color printing became common in the twentieth century And so the red pitchfork wielding Satan with a little curly mustache, he became a popular character in advertising. He popped. That's where the Red Devil comes from. It comes from advertising. And the Red Devil therefore took his place as simply the latest iteration of Satan, going back through a history who was about a thousand years old It seems like Satan is the goat. This is just my personal opinion. seems like Satan is the goat has made a big comeback again because of shifting mediums. The witch. Yeah, we went from static images to moving ones. And you know, Red Devil Satan looks fucking stupid on screen except for maybe insidious. That Red Devil schoolool. That was fucking. does look stupid though, but it's still scary somehow. Yeah, it looks stupid and scary Goat Satan looks fucking awesome on screen. Has anybody seen Hexon? Yeah you've seen Hexon, you know like that devil? Yeah, That's the devil. That's incredible. and the return of the goat is also due to Anton Levee. But Baffemette will not appear in this series until later. You know, like it's just funny because as we'll get into it now, Satan was not even that big deal to Christianity in the very beginning. For about the first thousand years. Yeah, like he kind of got retcmed into the villain. Yeah. Yeah because he hated to have it Well, there's many ways he's again, he's a great foil to God. Yeah. And we' and actually that thing the whole about him hating heaven and all that. We'll get into that here in a second. Okay But there's there's a whole set like it's that's I find personally, I find the history of Satan as a figure fucking endlessly fascinating. Could you know how I view it When you say it like you really see because I was reading about Irving Berlin's writings about Satan and he wrote several songs about Satan. There's a couple other things. and every one of those songs are like these old pieces of material before the modern inclination of Satan kind of position Satan as Like Hi pooy. L the people of the street And there's something about that. He's always been connected back to us versus like the ruling class. Well, not always, really since the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, we'll get to that here today bit. I always looked at Satan as a figure that existed to make sure that Christians were scared into morality. Well we'll also get into that because this whole thing is an evolution Seriously, it took thousands of years for it to get to this point. To me. Yeah. And I'm the very end of the process. Now if you look at Satan as he is actually portrayed in Christian history, he has no set form, even in the Bible. He's a shape changer. He's positioned to oppose God as a serpent, a dragon Sometimes he's a everything creature with bird feet, lizard hands, short sharp claws. Sells apples. Yeah. thatin. I love that fucking chin. One of my favorite late medieval Distant depictions, Satan showed up as a hideous green monster with unusable bat wings and a face on his butt. You know he's trying to tempt Saint Augustine of vices and you showing it to Staintugustine, you' going like, you like that one? Yeah, You like that one? like that one? like I blow you with my ass He I kiss my mother with that ass. And Saint Augustine is holding up his hand like, No, no, no, no, no, no. I will not. Give it to your vices, devil. As cool as you are. face, of course, represented the belief that witches had to kiss the devil's anus in a sort of heretic homage. In the earlier days of Christianity, Satan was actually portrayed as somewhat of a bumbling buffoon. He was the Washington Generals to God's Harlem Globetrotters Satan would try time and again to tempt man, but because he was such a buffoon, he would fail in the face of God's great power and man's unbreakable faith. He was a trickster at best.. we also got to get tricked into a contract. like that's the thing too, Mark Twain would use him as a kind of car of fununny character even way before Twain Yeah before Twayain. Because then you could probably connect them to the same other mischievous characters of all those kind of folklore like a Nazi and these other types of things that were like loky, like this idea of chaos of something andoming that's both because the chaos is tempting f course. And you know, he's also linked to, you know, the sedys of Greek mythology, you know, the horny Gatmen and all that shit. Like there's a lot of different characters came together to kind of and Loki, of course is a good one too. This me thinks of a hundred days of one hundred twenty days of Sodom. Oh Let's read it together. When did he learn the fiddle?. That was actually seventy three I believe. Yeah Honestly it was after his period playing the clarinetinet. as we all know the most evil woodwind. You know the difference between a fiddle and a violin? Fiddles played by a racist. Yes. I heard that. I' heard that. I thought it was just because I was too fat to play the violin Now eventually, the church recognized that Satan was being wasted as a simple foil as someone who was just like, ye, God's great, Satan sucks, whatever About a thousand years, but the church realized that Satan was far more useful as an adversary because if Christianity had a villain, someone actively working against God on earth, then the church could attribute man's actions to Satan himself. Beause I believe didn't Judaism at the time before all of these things that kind of came out of it, they didn't have a set devil From what I see from what I know my cursorary research, they the Glem was what I was always Well the golem is like an anti reality. It's like someone's making someone's being God in the face of God by creating a man out of out of dirt G is the golem Homunul. Homunculum. Yeah. know Like in Islam, like their devil is like Shaitang. Yeah, Saitang, which is more of a genie, like a Jin. A white man Yeah. White devil White White devil Let me guess. Well Well if the church could make people believe that Satan was meddling in earthly matters, then it made criticism of the church or its members far easier to dismiss as the work of the devil. It seriously took them thousand a thousand years to come up with this idea. And that evil fuck who came up with that idea got the bonus of the year. And the pope was like, Oh, fucking shit, Francisco Here's a bunch of boys. It also made Christianity a more active religion because Satan gave people something to do It's something to fight against, which is the same principle of course, that led to the rise of Qanon, which also is centered around Satan From identifying people as Satan's agents on earth, it wasn't too much of a stretch to convince people that anything allied with the devil too dangerous to live, and must therefore exxecuted What that meant was that before the twentieth century, how before the mid twentieth century, fucking nobody willingly identified as a Satanist. If people did confess to Satan worship, they were either insane or they'd been coerced into confessing through torture or the threat of execution. and often they'd be fucking executed anyway even if they did confess Punishments kind of varied from panic to panic, judge to judge. It's kind of up to the guy. Yeah, you can burn to get hanged, and get squished. Yeah, even in Salem, there were some people who confessed that lived and some people who confessed that still died. Interesting. Yeah. it's really up to the whims of whoever. It's almost like none of it's real. It's almost It's almost like they just did it to kill people they didn't like. Yeah, yeah. and in Salem, you know, a lot of times it was it also became very useful for people in Salem, for example, like I want that guy's land He's not going to sell it to me. C callall him a witch. callall his wife a witch. Yeah' concort with the devil night. Yeah. so I'm concorting with the devil. and then Thaty guy's dead, you buy the plot of land from the town. All good. See, I would just be like, you saw the devil? No W Now that's all to say that Satanism didn't really exist until Anton Lefay created it, at least as a religion But what's extremely interesting about all this is that Levian Satanism isn't really based on the biblical Satan because relatively speaking There's not a lot of Satan in the Bible. In fact, the word Satan is used less than sixty times in the King James version of the Bible, which is insane for someone who is, according to the church, supposed to be one of the main characters of the story. This is when they lie to us about like Drew Barrymore and Scream, or like when they do that thing where they show the guy like in the trailer and they're all like Oh man, Penicio del Toro' gonna be amazing as Magneto's brother and then he fucking shot in the head in the first scene. And you're like, what the fuck? Yeah, they barely even used him in the sequel of the Bible. Yeah veryery little. Yeah, it was just actually, I think it was one scene, you know, when Jesus is out in the desert forty days and forty nights. And even that was a hangout. That was like hangout. That was a loose long discussion where they were just Chilling out? Oh yeah, that he sucked his thorny cck It's in one of the l track. just one of the. And even in the Old Testament it's just yeah him, you know, tempting Eve with the apple and then the bet that like him and God gambling over Job. you know also God was scary enough. Yeah, God was fine Instead of using the Bible, Anton Levay drew far more inspiration from Satan as he was depicted in arguably the best piece of fan fiction ever written, Paradise Lost by John Milk Basically, Levey taking from Paradise Loss, It's no different from someone who like say if this week started a religion based around Neil Gaiman's depiction of Lucifer and Sandman. You don't exact same fucking thing. You don't think that fucking happened. You don't really don't think that somewhere deep within the folds of Tumblr, that there is not an entire society de Devoted to that. Yeah So this is the milton that Donald Sutherland's talking about in Animal House. Yes.. Yeah. I'm with you guys. got it man, you got it. Yeah coming along, man This podast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is an all in one website platform that helps you stand out online. Yes, that's right, you don't have to smash your face with a hammer. You can just start a business. It's got everything you need on Squarespace, from securing your domain to building a professional site and showcasing your work all in one place Let's say you want to show everybody how you can carve your ribs out of your lower abdomen so that you look more like a Kendall. That's amazing. 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Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC reggistered invvestment advisor. view important disclosures at accorns dot com slash left This is a paid ad by BetterHelp. Oh, I work myself to the bone You should see my bones. thick. Git small And when I work really hard I can see my bones. I work down to the knee bone, the foot bone An even down. to my mind bone And that's one of the hardest parts is when you get down all the way to the nitty gritty of your mind bones. because not everyone thrives when life gets busy. You may catch yourself feeling drained, even during things you usually enjoy like ski shooting or Feeling bones And realizeed you've been pushing yourself more than you need to. than you have. I can tell I'm looking at you And I love you It's important to take care of yourself when things get busy byy resting Rchurging and saying no When you need to Like I almost said no to doing an ad today, but I didn't how important it is for you. 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But Milton expanded the story of Satan far beyond what's mentioned in the Bible In Milton's version, Satan makes the best of his punishment after being sent to hell. Instead of suffering for eternity, Satan transforms hell into a place where it is, quote better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Fking dude, he's like fucking John Taffer from Bar rescue You can't reign in hell because then they'll put out all the fires. Yeah that sort of comes into the, you know, the movie The Devil's Rign, which is Firstally, one of my favorite like satanic exploitation movies, Anton Leveay was actually a I believe he was He was a consultant. It's the only movie he's ever consulted on for Satanism. Yeah. It's incredible. Ernest Bourorgnein plays a satanic cult leader. He's fucking awesome. And Ernest Berg then disavowed the movie. Yeah. from then on because he was such like it was he was scared. He got scared by what he did in the movie and by hanging out with Anton Levee. because just the idea of Ernest Borg and Anton Le hanging I want to smoke cigars, I don't want to hang out with deone drink perfect with them all night. Well, Milton's version of Satan is so influential that lines like the Rain and Hell one, they're often thought to be from the Bible. A lot of people think that the shit that was written about in Paradise Lost or like fucking Dante's Divine comedy, the idea of like the circles of Hell People think that that's from the Bible. It's not. It's all fiction. It's all fiction. the Bible. Yeah, the circles of hell, that's from the Divine comedy that was written in the fourteenth century. And it's really helpful actually, because I really didn't wantan to read the Bible. This is all you gotta know. It starts wet and's hot. Yeah, this stuff isn't from the Bible. I mean, all this stuff about, raining in hell it comes from a blind Puritan dictating verses to his daughters in the sixteen hundreds Now even though John Milton was indeed a Puritan, his reworking of Satan in Paradise Lost was a great inspiration to writers in the Romantic age like Byron and Shelley, who wrote poems in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reimagining Satan as a romantic figure who is opposed to God, but not opposed to humanity They used Satan as a way to criticize the power of churches and governments while championing the values of reason and liberty, which is very much in line with modern Satanism This is what you'd call non theistic Satanism, where it's all about myths and symbols rather than it being a religion where God and Satan are actual supernatural beings who meddle in our affairs. In Levainne Satanism, Satan is not real. He's not some guy, which is something that I cannot fucking stress enough. No, it is the spirit of human potential That is kind of how he puts it all together. What Satan stands for is humanity and our freedom and our ability to be free from all of what we assume and built in hierarchies to reality. Like that's kind of what this is all about. The story of the Garden of Eden' about releasing two pets to the street. That's what it's about. It's about the snake saying you understand that your pets here, right Yeah And and it's like and yeah, life's better as a pet and it really sucks being out there in the fucking world. but You have freedom Do You have the freedom of choice, you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do. You get to fuck. Yeah. Like literally you get to fuck, you get to eat, you get to play music, you get to do all of the things you want to do. You't you going to work. Y. me f. Tell me fucking about. Yeah There's a lot of bad shit that goes with it. It's very it's very difficult, but the point is like you're and Satanism also kind of gives a bit of a framework of like, well, and here's how We all do this together Can I ask a dumb existential question that obviously doesn't have a real answer? Okay. Is hell on Eth Heaven's a place on earth you know that's work. L like all right, so if hell exists and it's like a part of like humanity does like if there's like another like planet with a bunch of aliens, do they have the same Satan or do they have a different Satan? Oh my I don't know. We're fully I don't know. And I've read all the senceuff. I've read all the books. They've read Peter h honestly they hit him. wasasn't that a? Wasn't that the plot of an episode ofre prettytyace?es't an alien go to hell?erally Yes because it gets abducted and we take the alien it comes down to the hell and the alien gods come and pull it out. Yeah. Yeah because he dies on earth and he doesn't know what it is just to anyone who dies on Earth, it does it. Yeahah, it's great A according to the early early Christians, they apparently there was a place that there that this could have been. There was like this apparently some valley that they would kind of like they pinpointed it for a while saying hell's over there and but No does not technically, according to all of this, you would leave planet Earth. Yeah Okay. And you'd go to another realm. Ideally, concerning morality, concerning the rules about what you do when you're out and about out of the garden of Eden, Satanists like Anton theveay in the symbolic vein are supposed to do as little harm to others as they can possibly manage in their pursuits of pleasure, knowledge, and power. One of the central tenets is that you're not supposed to hurt anyone else unless they hurt you first. Never cross into another man's territory. But when Anton L Vay brought the worship of Satan into modern society, even if it was just as a symbol, he also introduced the possibility that one might interpret worshiping Satan as worshippping the concept of evil itself, as Christians see it Levill therefore, accidentally also gave birth to a whole crop of theistic Satanists who believe in Satan just as fervently as a Christian fundamentalist believes in God These are people like serial killer Richard Ramirez who did harm in Satan's name because he believed that's what Satan wanted It must be said, however, that theistic Satanists are incredibly rare. evil Satanists committing ritualistic murder that happens in novels, TV, movies. They're portrayed by Christopher Lee Ernest Borgnein Christians committing murder in the name of Jesus Well, that's just the history of the Western world. Whoa, Marcus Yeah! I just called how they won. Whether it be the Crusades, Manifest Destiny, the Spanish conquest of South America, the Spanish Inquisition, the Iraq War, the murder of gay people in Africa, or millions of smaller atrocities throughout the last two thousand years, far more people have stained humanity with blood spilled in Jesus' name than Satan's This of course, is partly why today's fundamentalist Christians are working so fucking hard to prevent your kids from learning our actual history. Satan is still an incredibly useful scapegoat for the people in power, and he's still an extremely effective boogeyman to use when people are questioning why they're being told to kill other humans. For a worryingly recent example We can go to our latest war in Iran. Earlier this year, over two hundred American soldiers across All branches of the military reported that they were being told by their superiors in the United States military that the Iran war was a precursor to Armageddon, that they were there to trigger the final battle between God and Satan What this tells me is that Satan as a real enemy, is primed to make a big fucking comeback. And whether you're Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, or whatever, you really aren't gonna like the world that's made when these people start using the battle against Satan as an excuse for their actions. Never forget that most of the people executed as witches at Salem were themselves committed Christians who pled their innocence and faith right up toill the moment the rope wrapped around their necks by their good Christian neighbors ended their fucking life. It has happened before and it can happen again. And that's why I as the resident troll shithead of the show I call myself a Satanist because we are at the precipice of another religious war within the United States of America. It is happening right now, just like we said before and we have to really think about this because yes, there is evil theatistic Satanists we're not gonna to go into right now, orrder nine Angles or seven hundred six four or these other things Thats still that's kind of modern, but the real shit is the fact that Seververal hundred million people believe in another fake character called God that's killing the rest of us. And so that's why I kind of think the scales are not even here. Yeah. Yeah, Satan never killed everyone on Earth. not want not want. Again, we are in the middle of history right now. L that's why we're talking about this is because you Satan has always been a very powerful figure, at least it hass been for the last thousand years. Satan has been an extraordinarily powerful figure and we're about see how powerful that figure really is again So if the war against Satan and God in Iran is supposed to bring on Armageddon, does that mean we're gonna lose to Satan or do we got? know we trigger end the world. We trigger Armageddon and God kills everybody. Except for the super religious and he turns them into ghosts. So we should In that theory kill God Yeah, we have to kill God. We need to get the lanceid launchesers. We need to dig up Lilith. I know how to do it. Yeah. I'm launing thatallion again I know how to do it. It's a rebuild. All right, cool. All right callall my friends. I'm gonna stab God in the heart. Now, part of what Anton thevee was trying to do with the creation of the Church of Satan was to banish the superstition around God and the devil so we could avoid such whoopsy dos as the Salem Witch trials. Of course it had the exact opposite effect. Levey recognized that the modern world required an evolution of religion because Christianity had become too brittle and restrictive to serve any actual purpose in making our lives better in any meaningful way. I don't know about you, but the church never did jack shit for me besides give me nightmares and make me feel guilty about masturbation. Didn't stop me from masturbating, fuck My brother Thomas still calls me little M in my goddamn forties because I masturbated so much in my youth. But because of the church, I would beg Jesus for forgiveness so I wouldn't go to hell every time I did it, which was a lot And that was a lot of wasted energy. And the church gave me the bonus fear of being terrified about just the possibility of being gay. because I knew being gay wasn't a choice, but if it wasn't a choice, then that meant that being gay was a guaranteed ticket to hell. So even having a fluid thought was absolutely fucking terrifying. In other words, the modern Christian church can really fuck up a kid with Half a brain who has an interest in things outside of their immediate sphere of experience. The modern world does not fit with the modern church. So I absolutely get what LeVe meant when he said an evolution was needed. The church actively hurt my family. It actually forced my mother out of it and they shamed her for the divorce after her first husband beat the shirt out of her They shamed her for it. And then I'll always remember when I went to the priest and I was trying to ask him what his purpose was and that was the first time anybody ever called me a little devil. And you wonder why I'm fucking like this Yeah, the ye, the bishop at my church that I was an utar boy for, he ended up banging a bunch of boys. S second they fired him or moved him up to Michigan. And then I found out recently because I looked up the story And the guy they replaced him with, he fucked fucked a bunch of kids No A, it's not broke. Now Are you sure the M wasn't for Marcus? It was both. He was very It was what you'd call a double entendre. It was a pretty funny brother. It was very funny It was a very funny brother, joke. It was both Little Marcus and Little masturbator. Don't worry, Ke clarifying. Oh. Oh yeah, sure. I can't wait to hear it again because I know we'll hear it the next time I see him. You will Now what's interesting is that Satanism is a self declared religion, defined by an intentional, religiously motivated veneration of Satan. That did not exist in any meaningful form until Anton Levig created it in nineteen sixty six. That's part of what it sounds Like it's not true, but it is. Yeah. And it's what makes Anton Leais such a fascinating character. I mean, yeah, he could be a little douchey. He was certainly abusive and he was definitely too comfortable with fascism for my personal taste. Yeah, started a religion. Yeah. Yeah. But he also pushed culture into exploring its darkest corners by shining lights into areas not normally seen. In other words, he was a lucifer, a light bringer. And for that, his story certainly deserves to be told And honestly, I also know people, I'm already hearing my history. people scream about the Cathars and And it's like, listen, we're talking about actual church of Satan The Cathars were a weird branch of gnostics. The Gnostics also believed in a devil god that created this physical realm, but that's taking this back to a context level in which we will all starve to death. Yeah to go. If we start from the beginning of thought, ye, we could talk about it Yeah, I chose. I looked at it and I said, No, don't need it So Satanism is younger than scientology. Satanism is older than younger, yes, because scientology is fifties, Satanism is sixty six. You probably learned a lot from scientology, to be frank. I know that he did go'll get we'll get onto a lot of different things. I don't know about him and El Ron. He got Hubby Deby? I actually don't think he to be honest, I don't think he ever met with Elroon. I don't see any of that in. It would have been buddies. No honestly, I don't think they would have. They would I think it would have been too b Forces Like they would have hated each other. I think they literally would have gotten into a physical fight. Yeah, a pretty good bitch slap fight.ur hurry. Now before we get into the full story, let's acknowledge our sources today. Our main two were The Secret Life of a Satanist by Blanche Barton and Born withith a Tale by Doug Brod. Out of the two, go with Born withith a Tale. It does a fantastic job of sifting through Anton Levay's many exaggerations and lies. And in fact, we'll probably talk to Doug Broad in an interview here soon. Oh yeah, also Read Nightmare Rally Oh yeah, we'll get to Nightmare Ally later on So without further ado, let's get into the life of the dirty Pope, the Black Pope, the devil's Pope himself, Anton Sandor Lavee. I just want to say R Thanis welcome to today's Black Mass. It's truly one of the most evil diabolical things a one can do. Anton Levee is so funny This this accent is story. R J Sitana say, you wantan to listen to the Ci a little bit. Yeah I know it called this is called Clowns Lament. No over here this' called Clowns lunch order. You know, I'm just sitting here and, you know, I got a line and I love my line and all my all of my neighbors is saying all the lion's too loud. I'm saying there's a line What you fucking m? Okay, let me just guess, hey, nice to meet you. Let me guess one hundred and ninety five pounds. right? Yeah. That's amazing.' good. I'm really fucking good. Now like almost every occultist in modern history, Anton Lvee's life prior to his fame is difficult to parse. because almost every popular twentieth century occultist was at some level, a showman who knew that a bit of self mythology is important. I would put it on a scale, right? because then I'd put him because Alistair Crowley was sort of like Aliser Crowley HPB a little bit more on the serious side. He's way on the other showbiz side. He's on the circus side. Yeah very much' to get into that Like he is a fucking Carney. Yeah. I know that mister Levee does not sound as good in the song No yeah, it doesn't work. Well, a bit of self mythology, it gives these guys it gives their ideas a bit of a hook. because humans, for one reason or another, they're far more likely to listen to someone if they believe that person has led a special and unique life. Americans love the chosen one And so Anton Levay was born Howard Stanton Levy on april eleventh, nineteen thirty. Now you never call me O. N call me Oamn you hell put nineteen curses on you. He had a full head of black hair, strange amber eyes, and an actual tail, which sounds like we're starting with the lie, but in this case, the wild claim is actually true Some people are born with an extra vertebrae at the end of their spine, something called a caudal appendage. It appears to be a tail. And while most people today just remove it, Anton Leve kept his tail throughout his formative years. In those early days, Anton was called Thony by friends and family, Twny Levy, which is a very normal name Likewise, Anton Levee's parents were fairly normal middle class people from Chicago, named Gertrude and Michael Levee, however, claimed that his maternal grandmother, Luba Colon, would regale him with tales concerning the mysteries of her Eastern European homeland Leavet described his grandmother in the Satanic Bible as a so called gypsy, who told him tales of the vampires and witches who populated her homeland of Transylvania. I love Transylvania. Although we now know that she was from Ukraine. Yeah. She was not from Transylvania If you're gonna to write a Bible, you can't put your grandma in it. it's not really bible. That's. We'll get all into it Edie, I'll explain it all. Well, Luba Colton's brother was known as Anton Sandor. And it was this name that little Tony Levy would take years later after also tweaking his last name Just a little bit. He had to sound a little more evil, a little less nerdy because no one is following Howard Levy into a black mas. Honestly, the balls I would have loved to have herard. obviously, you need a magical transformation. That's a part of what this is too. He knows you need a magical transformation in order to appear to people like you've had a magical transformation. So you have to change your name and look. That's kind of like it's just boilerplate. Yeah. But Howard Levy. The Pope of evvil, Howard Levy such it's like almost more powerful. Yeah. I love everybody It's enough salad for everyone, but no one bowl of it is poisoned. I love that great comedic actor, Eugene Levy. Oh! If his name was Euge Levay, he would' have been eating too much pusy in order to be an actor Oh yeah, Gene Lee.i Ge. Hi. Gene Levee sounds like a man who invents a pussy eating machine., hereere we go. It's diesel S Bin. Since Anton LeVvee was indeed the founder of the Church of Satan, one of his earliest childhood experiences that he wrote about years later had everything to do with the development of his sexual fetishes. Namely, Anton Levee was a committed Eururophiliac Meaning his fetish was urination. He lack it pe people. love to people. We are part of a ination H, I'm PeP Abdul. This is Janet. Anton claimed that when he was five years old, a little girl coaxed him into her bedroom at a birthday party. But when the girl's mother caught them and scolded the girl, she peed her pants, whichich Levet claimed set him down the quote fetistic sexual path towards water sports. Lavet further wrote that he believed that men born in different eras would have different fixations. LeVt's type, for example, came from the beauty standards of the nineteen forties. He wrote that if he had a type, I had a type It was a fleshy, heavily made up mall with pale, translucent skin Who iss the panties when he wrote he purposefully put a period after translucent skin with pale translucent skin Pistop panty. He would talk about it a lot. Like if you look at him too, because it's true there are so many other romantic ways to write it.'s good. He's like, I, I just like it too much Pale, translucent skin. Get you bied in a p. The only time either he was like, And then when I was eleven I was collecting ball fs. And I saw a ladies's bathroom and there was a hole in the wall and I watched the women learinate. He did. He did Well, Anton LeVay was born in Chicago and spent a lot of time moving around the American West during the first ten years of his life. And we all know Chicago women piss the thicken. I know that for a pat. Yeah That's actually what Malort is. Yes. It is Natty L piss. despite all of this, Anton Leveay was more or less a San Francisco native In nineteen forty, when Anton was ten, his family moved into eighteen Redwood Avenue, where his father sold car parts and his mother worked as a typist, which is hardly a recipe for evil. In fact, Levey would later describe his parents as people who were completely devoid of religion. peopleeople who held no strong opinions about anything He called his mother a flipper to jibbet. Oh yeah, flippberty jibbet. Yeah. I love that word. She was always rearranging furniture, making her family move house constantly, even though his father hated moving. Lavee, meanwhile, was a bookish child who hated sports, whichich comes as a surprise to no one. What are you saying the coolest guy in the world? He had to stay away from places you could Beat up. Piss the panty. Unfortunately, his head was shaped like a football. Yeah. So if you anywhere near a field kic him Charlie Brown Yeah. He was a strange looking boy who grew into a strange looking adult, has big ears, narrow eyes, that football shaped oval head. But instead of being ashamed, LeVe said that he took pride as a young boy in being an outcast. Strangely, he said that the one place where he found community in his youth was the boy Scouts of America.! Specifically the Cub Scouts. love the Cub Scouts. He earned his bear badge always had fantastic things to say about scouts. You know what I'll say about Satanness and Leve and Satanness in particular that is it is considered to be a like a positive attribute is being very handy. Yeah being very self sufficient. beinging independent. Yeah. the idea of being able to like tie knots and do something I feel like that's kind of like a every single test of Anton Levet's life is like Every sc way he learned it, instead of like learning to be a part of society, it's like he saw it all and he saw like the bits and parts of society he kind of wanted to adhere to. Like he very much immediately understood as a little boy like I'm gonna guide myself and I'm gonna do whatever the hell it is I want to do. He was a brilliant person. mean and that is one of the things that you see throughout history, like especially in cult leaders. I mean, Antom Levee wasn't a cult leader No. But you see like people who understand systems, especially humanities humanities like just societal systems Those are the people who changed things or those are the people they either changed them or they used those systems to get laid, like Keithher Aery. Yeah. know, he understood systems perfectly. Anton Lve also understood systems and how society worked, but he used it to figure out how to be independent and then to tell other people how to do the same. I the CPP and Panty. He did like theP interface. And he did to touch Jane Mansfields He's dead.' a huge get. Really pretty massive. Oh yeah we're going to get into the whole Jane. Yeah, he took credit not credit, but he he felt that he accidentally killed her. Really Long story. Long story. We'll get into it later. All right alright, all right But since Anton LeVe was comfortable being himself, he had no trouble making friends. His house was always full of kids whom Levill would organize into secret societies with mock military orders, and he would become enraged to another kid's broke character or lost interest. I don't want to like obviously say that I have a lot of Similarities. This is literally the shit I did. Yeah. This is all the shit that we did. We only got together and made little clubs. like me and my boys we'd get together and like couple girls, we make these like monster clubs and we had like all these mystery clubs. and it was always at I was always the evil president. Yeah. This is so much's better than, you know, being similar to the toy boox killer. Yeah, except I wish I had a boat Basically throughout his childhood, Anton theve did whatever he wanted. He didn't like school, but he loved studying. So he ditched class to study his own interests by focusing particularly on biographies, history, adventure novels, and crime. That's more I would say that's what I relate to more. It's like, yeah, school, fuck school I'm gonna go do my own shit. I was just better at it. Yeah. I was better at the stuff I read that wasn't math and science. Yeah, I was real bad at that. I was bad at those. Yeah I actually did was I was like fine at math in the beginning and then it was like I once we got to like abstract concepts like calculus and stuff, I was like, oh, this is not gonna I'm not gonna This is not gonna be part of my future. Yeah Yeah. I was so bad at it that I like I suspect my father may have bribed one of my teachers. Oh ye I gotta say your mother certainly cares about your school man see your father fucking your teacher. giving your teacher sexual favors. It was either that or everyone in my class was so fucking stupid that she just passed all of us. I think that was far more likely. I fucking I did real bad at school and I understand this completely. And now you write term papers for a fucking after eving. I feel like I've learned more in the past two and a half years than I did in high school. Yeah I'm not a bad teacher.. Well by the end of it, LeVey had made heroes from wildly disparate corners of human history, peopleeople that Levey would later call de facto Satanists. These people are extremely important to the development of Satanism as a religion They included Al Capone, Resputin, Fredich Nietzsche, Louisiana politician Hughie Long, adventure novelist Jack London, and a fairly obscure character from the Ottoman Empire named Basil Zeiharoff. Known to his friends as Zed Zed, Zacharias Basilius Zacharov was a Turkish arms dealer who first showed up in history as a pimp at a Turkish brothel in the eighteen sixties. I like her hirry or too hirry. like to face or no face Ticks on you. It is a bag of sal Oh. But at the end Aic. Well At the same time as ZZed was working as a pimp, he was also making money in the Istanbul fire Brigade as an arsonist who would set fires at mansions Thegade would then extort money out of the wealthy owners before the fire Brigade would put out the fire that they had started themselves. It'd be such a strange bad day for the fire to not be put outire. Kind of crazy how the fire man brought it in a fire basket don't know how Yes, ZZ I'm fake everything. Imed everything. By the eighteen eighties, ZZed was an armed salesman trying to unload second rate multi barreled machine guns and steam powered submarines. That actually doesn't make sense. Yeah Hey, they kinda worked. Yeah. Yeah, the earliest submarines hole in the time The earliest submarines were used in the Civil War. the American Civil War. Yeah, weah, the monitor in the Merrimac. the steam powered? Yeah. There's a dude with coal like shoveling in the bottom of. Most people on board would faint. Where did the steam go? They pipe. Oh, so it still it had like a snorl. Yeah. Yeah, it's not going that deep. And when I say submersible, I mean it just like It goes right underneath. Yeah. Yeah, they aren't going against like the U boats. No what I mean? L this is very early submarine technology. Not red October. Okay No. These early submersibles would get so hot that the crew would faint ZZ still managed to sell six steam powered nineteenth century submarines to the Greeks, the Turks, and the Russians As an arms dealer, ZZed truly was an evil individual, even if he didn't often hold the gun that did the killing said Z, Zed and you know, every idea has to Youta have someone who did it first. Be there was going to be one guy who comes up with the evil idea first. and ZZ was the guy who came up with the idea to sell arms to both sides of the conflict conflicts that he himself would help provoke. You know There's a lot of people that say there's nothing innocent in war Tell you there is It has no mother. It has no father. The gun goes to the home in which the gun needs to go. There is no flag you say you see. He did indeed sell weapons for three decades to every side of every conflict in Europe, Asia and South America from like ninet ninety Up until like nineteen twenty, L ZZed was there and all of them and that's Violent time in human history. That's the best. You can just like wait for everyone to kill them kill each other. then go collect all the guns, seell them again. Yeah. Yeah, you gota. put it all together. In World War O alone, ZZed sold millions of machine guns. He was a true merchant of death. His zeal for selling weapons, I would describe it as almost manic. His greatest ability was the instinctive understanding of when to offer bribes and who to offer them to. and his wheeling and dealing made him the modern equivalent of a billionaire by nineteen twenty. To me, ZZed is no different from the Du Pont. He just has a lot more fun with it. So, Henry, what is it about ZedZed that makes him a de facto Satanist? How does he influence the development of Satanism? I think that when he's reading it, the reason why it becomes attractive to Anton Leveay in the terms of Satanism is that that very central evil idea is actually also about Freedom Right So yes, obviously it is the opposite side of freedom. It's like you know how we always say like the internet's truly neutral. Yeah. You cannot call it good or bad because it just exists. It is the collection of our subconscious. I kind of view it as the same way when he sees somebody an idea like that out of the air. What that is iscietal loophole. likeike he sees this thing that is a loophole that no one else is is kind of is considering and he's making all of the money off of it. And in his mind, I am just a I've arrived because war has given me a purpose. Sure. Like I am not here. I wouldn't be here if there wasn't war. And if these guys aren't all willing to buy these guns for me, I wouldn't be here. So there's like for me with Satanism, there's a lot of that. Satanism, there's a lot of Breaking the system. Yeah. And they don't evangelize. Yeah. It's about you choose it. You know I mean? you go make it, you go choose it. So there's a little bit of thats don't kill people, people kill people. Yes. Yeah. And so Anton Levee saw that this guy had taken advantage of a loophole in the system and it's not necessarily that he admired all of the death that ZZ brought. I bet he did as a young man. I think he thought it was kind of cool and fun. Probably. Yeah. But he also kind of but he viewed the idea of someone who's like I don't have a country. Yeah. I'm a billionaire between all the lines. Yeah. Yeah. he was fond of saying like, Hello, my name is ZZed and I have sixteen million dollars. Y. all he wants to do is be Zzed Yeah. Now out of all the influences that led to the creation of the Church of Satan, the one thing that Anton LVig credited for his success in creating the church was the showmanship he learned from the many world's fairs and exhibitions that his parents took him to see in his early years. Fairs and exhibitions were massively popular throughout the first half of the twentieth century. I mean, the ruins of worldld's fairs This entire country The Wigsphere in Knoxfeld. Oh yeah. you know like the big globe in Queens. Yeah or the two things from the Men and Black movie. Yeah. Yeah. Al in Queens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah know our country the skeletons of these things are still everywhere. And Anton Leveay believed that basically he was in the right place at the right time absorb all of this. O all the fairs he attended, it was the nineteen thirty nine Golden Gate International expxpo held on San Francisco's Treasure Island that had the most lasting influence. There, Anton Leveay had what he called his first satanic awakening Well he was at an exhibition called Sally Ran's Nude Ranch. It's not the type of awakening you would think it. I mean, yeah, it should probably some kind of awakening.. You know, but it shows to me how serious we're supposed to take Satanism. It's always remember, these are the influences. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's a very good point A ranch in San Francisco onn Treasure Island no less. Oh yeah. Now this awakening did not come solely from the topless cow girls who spun laiats and pitched horseshoes for the crowd, although the nude ranch show itself was indeed one hell of an affair. In fact, it was led by one of the twentieth centuryies greatest opponents of censorship, a woman named Sally Ran, who is another of Levet's de facto Satanists. I mean, you know, a lot of times you look in the past at a person and you're like, oh, you know, like, you know, standards were different Sally Rand was fucking hot. Fully modern person. Yes a modern hot woman. Yeah. Sally Rand had gained fame in the nineteen twenties and thirties for popularizing the fan dance, playing peekaboo with her audience while teasing them with massive fans made from ostrich feathers. Starting in Burlesque, Sally Rand became even more well known when sound was added to film which made her fan dancing act a national craze. becausecause yes, she could do the fan dance on film But it's not as good unless you have the two. you have the music to goong with. I'm on the moon I' on. Butt fucking was invented to that music. thinkink about that, like this type of dirty sex was invented you were like T turn Butt fucking was invented in Greece. Yeah, it was.ure it went f' then But Sally Rand was most famous for appearing nude in public to make a point. Six years before Leavee saw Sally Rand's nude ranch in San Francisco, Rand had made a splash at the opening day of the nineteen thirty three World's Fair in Chicago after she was hired to make an appearance as Lady Godiva at the Chicago Artist Ball dinner. She's white , It's chocolate. Yeah., no,. That misses Godiva Well it had become a tradition at worldorld's Fairs to have Lady Godiva processions. Lady Godiva processions, of course, come from an eleventh century legend in which a noble named Lady Godiva rides naked on a horse through the streets to protest the oppressive taxation levied by her own husband And so Sally Rand was paid twenty five dollars to take part in the World's Fair as Lady Godiva for the artist dinner But Sally took it upon herself to ride a white horse naked through the fairgrounds themselves on opening day. And this is an important lesson. Since she did it with so much confidence, the security guards just assumed that she'd gotten permission. and they just let her do it. Yeah, just that's how I got in plenty of places. remember how we just walked into that con where we just said We' talent. Yeah Walk right in. Yes, Sally Rand made it all the way to the hotel where the dinner was supposed to be held. She even tried her luck one more time. She tried riding the horse into the building. but hotel staff refused to let her in on the horse. So she had four artists carry her inside still nude Table lifted above their heads. Fantastic press That huge spectacle made Rand even more famous. and while she was convicted of indecent exposure, she had the conviction overturned a year later on the grounds of free speech, which made her an early and important opponent to censorship. Wow. I hope she still got paid. She did. Actually, Sally Rand did really she got even more famous after that. She started touring, I think with like Palero or something like She actually had a fantastic life and a great career. just being basically like an activist and an entertainer at the same time. I never heard of her before, but I looked her up when you said she was hot and I definitely recognize her face. Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, we all see her face. Now how is she a de facto Satanist? So number one, Anton Lve Sy what he do to his wives and daughter worshhiped women. Yeah loved women that weren't his wife and his du he saw truly Yeah Sally Rand is an example of what would be the satanic ideal of the woman's body And I think largely Anton Leveay even said this. If we read the Satanic Witch, you start to understand that Anton Leveay projected himself in his own mind outwards as a busty woman. Like he viewed in his mind like big tit energy. P. Yeah, yeah was in a Cpeon. Yeah, sure, right. But he viewed himself like, My powers as a man can only be harnessed if I imagine myself as a busty woman and use the same wiles as a busty woman, but as a man. And so's actually great advice. It's great advice. It is. That's what the Satanic witch is all about. And so what he When he first saw Sally Rand, I think it was the first time he saw how a woman's just presentation was so transgressive and so powerful. She had not to say anything, nothing political, nothing. The whole crowd snapped and watched and watched this woman totally free and nude ride a big animal, which is also heavily into Satanism likeike the idea of like that we're all animals. we're no we're like we are just literally primates. There is no real Sometimes better, sometimes most of the time worse. Most of the time worse.. So I feel like when he saw that, it's this idea of like, he's looking at his mother She's not Sally fucking Rant. Like the first time you see's like that's the first time he saw. What's the first time you saw a woman? Like you saw that womon that changed the thing inside your brain. That's how I view Sally Rand and that epode became like sort of this ideal for him of like, look at the inherent power she just has Yeah J living. Makes a great point. Like if you'd like the whole stupid awful like alpha mel shit, like you do go for that, the masculine thing. All you're going to attract are other awful men. Yeah. but with if you have like the big tit energy feminine, you attract everyone. Yes. Y. It's about making so essentially Satanic witch is a whole long thing about sort of Well, don't do this to me. Jure No no, no, it's there. I'll get there.'ll. it is kind of fascinating. Do you think that when Sally Rand was on the horse, she had to change her name to Sally Ride And then she blew up And then she fucking exploded. E's Mcola. That's the younger. Sally Ride, she made it. Yeah. She made it recently. Yeah. Oh, well, then she made. Well ye suicide. Well, after I guess it was so small. She didn't comeit was stitching? No Okay. I'm not supposed to know. I don't know. I was like, what' she see on the moon Oh I see I hate looking out my window. everyvery day I get up and I look outside of my window and what do I see? Cybertruck. Every day, the guy lives across from the street from me, he's got a cybertruck. And you know how I fix that? Blinds dot com That's right. 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Experience greater peace of mind with SimppllySe, now available with an exclusive discount for our listeners. Right now you can get fifty percent off of your new system by visiting simpllySaave d. com slash lpoTl That's half off at simpllyafe d. com slash LP OT There's no safe, like simply safe At the time of the San Francisco Fair attended by a young Anton LeVe, Sally Rand had been fighting censorship for years. In february nineteen thirty nine, she had already led hundreds of scantily clad women on horses in formation through downtown San Francisco, and her nude ranch had been somewhat of an extension of that performance. This of course, is where Anton Levet saw Sally Ran and just seeing Sally Rand was amazing in itself. But that was not The so called Satanic awakening Leavee saw Sally Rand, but he also saw his Sunday school teacher seeing Sally Rand at Sad Nude Ranch Levet later wrote that after seeing his Sunday school teacher enjoying topless cowgirls, despite this Sunday school teacher's oft repeated claims of higher morality, LeVy saw the hypocrisy of Christianity, which was his first so called satanic epiphany. I love his satanic epiphany came from S Dugo. That's the greatest set of cories I've seen since ent I left Michigan I mean, yeah Admittedly, this seems like incredibly basic stuff in twenty twenty six. It's the sort of thing that any of us could have pointed out when we were kids. and that makes it easy to dismiss. In fact, you could easily make the mistake of dismissing all of this as childish or a little too edgy for its own good. Yes. But you have to realize that this was not a common way of thinking in nineteen thirty nine. W wasn't even really a common way of thinking in nineteen sixty six when Leveay actually founded the Church of Satan It is basic, but it was people like Anton Levee who laid the groundwork that burthed a more modern way of looking at the world. Basically, Anton Leveay is the duck soup of edginess. Here's what I mean. Duck soup, The Marx Brothers movie from nineteen thirty three. It was so funny that everyone who came after copied everything about it So what was once an entirely new way of doing comedy, it soon became the standard. So this thing that changed everything, it came to be seen as hack, even embarrassing, because it is seen as so obvious in the modern world in the wake of everything that came after it, such as the paradox of Satanism The way I'd even put it whichich will as we will cover this, Satanism is an introductory Philosophy It's the first thing that should get you going. It's inherently for. E Anton Leve even kind of s that's why the Satanic Bible' so simple Yeah is that he wrote it for fifteen year olds to read. Yeah. It's super easy to It is very, very easy to understand. It is such a quick read. But yeah, you're supposed to move on from it. You're supposed to expand Yeah Now Sally Rand's nude ranch was not the only event at this fair that influenced Anton Levee. Sorry, get that All right now we go. Another exhibit that Levet said was full of satanic undertones was the full display of babies and incubators on the midway. These were live, premature babies.ive tonight Premature babies on the mainste. They don't googoo, they don't gaga. But you will seeing these live, premature babies Oh my God, you could see that one grow in arormm. When I went yesterday, I saw four die. Oh. Wow, What a wonderful premy explosion. It sounds like a crazy thing, but these events these exhibits existed because there weren't incubators in hospitals There were incubators in hospitals. this was to show off the new incubator technology. You know this happened a lot. They would do like guys in iron lungs when they first put people in iron lungs, they would just treat that as a freak show and people would pay money to go see the guy just sitting there in an iron lung. do something be like, take me Oh No, I'm sorry. You're at the show. But theseese were live premature babies and incubators in a modern hospital setting, but it was housed in a whimsically themed building in the middle of what was basically a large entertainment complex. It's like putting a cancer ward in the middle of tomorrowand at Disney I'll go though. Don't do itate I hate to have to get the lightning lane for it. It reallyally is. It's like imagine walking into a room at Disney and it's just a bunch of people in chairs getting fucking chemotherapy treatments. same shit. I mean, it wouldnt make sense though, for tomorrow Land if it was an advancement. It's kind of like the adventures of Innerterpence.so just know you, you just called what hospitals are gonna to, by the way. Just so you know that? Yeah. Youve just We have just put into the Zeidgeist What's gonna happen? Yeah. And eventually people are gonna be getting their chemo at Disneyland. Can you imagine Donald Duck giving you your chemo? Yes, I canter the only way it's gonna happen. Dude, character meeting Greek chemo. Is that How is that not a thing? Dude, write it down.rite it down. Spider Man. I'm readyite down Kemo. I'm mailing it to myself. doctor Strange brings you Kemo. Cy right. We should get eleven to do it since we're on Netflix. You know her. And it's great because she's got she's let's continue. I want to get one of the guys from Dark to do it. That's my favorite Netflix show. Yeah.' super weird. I want to get Zachary, Can we get that lady? And also that's why I chose tomorrow Land instead of Tune toown. Yeah. It's not gonna to make sense in Tun toown. No, it doesn't make sense.es If you fucking tell me for a second that Roger Rabbit's my oncologist Youave you ever played the Der Zachary drinking game? Oh yeah, yeah.er Zachary. Yeah Beer Zachary. whereere you drink a beer boy, your brain. Well, as Anton Levay thought, beer Zachary, we have to do something with beer Zachary A! just pouring fucking beers on a dead baby.ence sad drink I guess. I started drinking before. As Anton the Vay saw it, this incubator baby display, it made a mockery and a spectacle of the most delicate and vulnerable lifeforms on Earth. These were babies on the cusp of death. You think premies are bad now? Imagine a premie in nineteen thirty nine trying to survive at the fair Yeah Give him more lead. Yeah. Yeah this baby is weak. He needs more lead injection. Not lead? Lithium. Lithium. That makes the baby grow. I already gave him all the mercury we had. I mean, they basically made dying babies a freak show. and Anton L V absolutely loved the contrast for him. This was Satanism writ large And when Anton Leveay hit puberty himself, the freak show element he'd enjoyed as a child wasn't quite so funny when he realized that he would have to show his vestigal tail to the other young boys in gym class. Again, not surprisingly, Anton Levey hated gym class. I don't do jumping, Jack's okay.. That is one of the most joyful single exercises I refuse to do it. I'll hang a rope. He also began developing a hatred towards Jocks, and this is a direct quote Young men who found themselves unusually well endowed head I hate boys with large penises. They do whatever they want. They do whatever they want. The rest of us are normal. The rest of us have to think of other crave boys use their penis. Make it longer. Make it appear longer Mostly, though, Anton was nervous about showing his tail to the other boys. The tail had become even more of a problem when it became inflamed when Levt was twelve years old. He supposedly had to have it drained of fluids to relieve the pain. This, of course, did not endear him to his fellow children. In college, my roommate had to get his tail drained and he had to sleep on his stomach for a week and then I had to like give him bong hits from over the side of the bed. It was kind of fun. That's really fun. It's good friend.. It's a real good friend. Now Anton Leve was too old to be a boomer, but too young to serve in World War two He was only nine years old when the conflict began, and he was eleven when America joined the war as a full participant By the time of the war's end though, Anton Leve was fifteen, and one of his uncles had been hired to rebuild air strips for the army in post war Germany. Since Anton looked up to his uncle and since this was In he actually joined his uncle on the trip overseas. Like, yeah, fuck it, go to Germany. And there, Levey was exposed to German expressionist films like The Cabinet of doctor Caligari, Metropolis, and Nosferatu. And that'll changea. It will. No, it very much will. Eespecially going from here to there and seeing how different it is. Yeah, and also just being in post war Germany just the devastation of it and the destruction of it It was post war Germany was nightmarish in every way These films, they were masterpieces of ritual and occultism. I mean you look at the like Metropolis, the rituals of metetropolis. the occultism Nasferatu. Yeah, that was the first sequel. Yeah. Nasferatu. Oh sure I hated Na. The jagged angles, the harsh lighting, the dark shadows, all that stuff that typified German expressionist film. Th would become massive inspirations when Anton Levill began constructing his own satanic rituals. And when he began putting together the aesthetic of the Church of Satan Now besides this interesting film, Anton Levee was also a ast m He's almost musician first up Yeah in terms of abilities. Yeah. He learned brass, woodwinds, strings and keyboards at a young age, Quite appropriately for a Lord of Hell. He taught the acccordion, which had exploded in popularity in the twentieth century. It and as someone who has tried to learn the accordion, like it's hellish for the person playing accordion. evenven I love accordion. I love how it sounds, but it is maddening. Oh yeah. My father tried to teach me and I didn't take. I wish I had done it. I wish I had fucking learned. Yeah. Wasn't he one of those guys that could just like hear a song and then play it? Yeah But since Levet was such a natural talent, he dropped out of his junior year of high school soon after his return from Germany to play Oo full time for the San Francisco ballet Orchestra. He also threw himself into the study of painting, classical music, philosophy, and of course, magic. But lest You start bullying him now. What's there to bully? Yeah If there was a bully, he wouldn't exist It' just perfectly normal healthy boy behavior. Lve yes, playing second being second chair Oo in the San Francisco ballet orrchestra Healthy growing boy. Well Laveve attempted to counterbalance his extreme nerdiness because he did have This idea very early on, he knew that he had to counterbalance that. like that he did have these very nerdy interests that one could see as weak He counterbalanced it with appearances. You know, That's also another important satanic thing. Well Satanism and appearances are one and one. Yeah That is the idea is that appearances are everything. So it's like the fact that he even understood that, like that's a huge that takes self consciousness to understand your nerd. Did see the Satanist that started with the eyeliner Yes, probably. Prob. Yeah. Yeah. I say I would say so. Yeah. Alost the Caths had something like it.. Well, Levey attempted to counterbalance his extreme nerdiness by letting his hair grow long. He dressed in leather jackets, he wore the infamous Zot suits of the time. And with his new look, Anton Levet intentionally sought out the reprobates of San Francisco, the gamblers the Pstitutes who populated the bay arereas, pool halls and bars. Cool guys. Cool fun guys. This was Anton Leay's uncle's crowd, his uncle Bill Although Levey gave no details, which means he could be lying about all of this, Levet supposedly traveled with his uncle Bill to the newly established desert oasis that was Las Vegas when he was a teenager to see how him and Uncle Bill could make their way in Sin City. Supposedly, Uncle Bill had been a bootlegger in Chicago for Al Capone during prohibition And Uncle Bill also allegedly had connections to the infamous Vegas gangster Bugsy Siegel Anton said that in Las Vegas, he watched criminals exploit the natural foables and vices of other men for fun and profit. That's why it's great. That's why Las Vegas is fantast. These criminals, Lvet claimed, taught him that everything is a racket, including the church. The crafty man, Lve wrote, figured out how to work the rackets himself So he didn't wind up as a slave to the crooked politicians and the bosses of our modern world. He wrote about this in the sixties. Still true today. The crafty citizen refuses the routine of going the work where he stagnates at a deadly dull job, having his lunch when he's told, all to draw a wage that is barely enough to sustain this hum drum existence of factories and offices and commutes. Burned to the ground. makes. And so instead of living the life of his father, his mother, or even his criminal uncle Anton Lvay took a fourth route. He took inspiration from one of those people he read about when he was a kid And he joined the circus. very good. Very good guys. a song called Blazes and Flames. Oh Oh, that's fucking awesome. You know, I actually just met a guy who ran away to the circus. Yeah at the Zach Beaggins Haunted Museum Yeah. It was they for in this like freak section he literally was like he told his whole story. He's like I was sixteen and I need to get out of my fucking parents house and I left and I joined the circus in fucking twenty with was like thirty years ago. Was he an exhibit or No yeah, he was in it an exhibit. I thought he was just a guy hanging out. No, he was doing like the nail in the nose b But he was like, I was like, man, that's right. You could still just fuck off and join the circus. Oh was he one of those Jim Rose guys? Yeah, sure sure. Yeah, probably I am. I remember them. Now there are two men from the world of circuses, sideshows, and carnivals that are incredibly important to the development of Satanism, men who are both at the top and the bottom of this particular entertainment ladder So let's start with the man at the top, the great showman of the nineteenth century, P.T. Barnum. Yeah. Barnum was, of course, another of Levet's de facto Satanists Born in Connecticut in eighteen nineteen, PetT Barnum was the eventual coounder of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. But that actually came near the end of his life Barnum had a massively influential and fascinating career prior to that in which he had a hand in shaping America's image of itself. But since PetT. Barnum was a reflection of America that reflected itself right back, his story is F darker than what you're probably expecting. Yeah, I feel like PT. Barnum going to had his own series. Oh yeah like honestly he is he is I actually wonder if he's worse than Anton Le Fang That a person. you know, He's definitely got more depths on his hands. Yeah, he's got a fair amount of death honestly. Yeah, P PT Barnum is a There's a lot going on there. trrue American. He really was. Now Pet. Barnum got into the sideideshow business at the age of twenty five and his first attraction was an elderly enslaved woman In nineteen thirty five, long before the Emancipation proroclamation, Barnum was offered the purchase of a black woman named Joyce Heh, who was supposedly one hundred and sixty one years old. Barnum had been told that Joyce Heh was George Washington's nursemaid, born in the sixteen seventies, and Barnum figured that he could sell this lie even though Joyce was probably no more than eighty years old Joyce could actually tell a pretty convincing story when you got her in front of a crowd. That was whole that was the whole thing. That was the crux of it is that Joyce could sell it Oh, so she was like the first time an artist was got their art stolen from them. a great record producer. No, he was a manager. one hundred percent. No, I mean, the people who managed attractions in the eighteen hundreds, that's where the fucking management fort for actors and musicians, that's where it comes from No But Barnum was living in New York City at the time, where purchasing a human being was illegal. So he quote unquote leased Joyce Heath from the man who had enslaved her for the price of five hundred dollars for one year. Joyce, however, would not survive that year long lease. I like my Rv four. uck off. Just had to get it around had to get aroundound four joke in there. J had to do it See, Barnum considered Joyce to be too vigorous to convincingly play a one hundred and sixty one year old woman. So he put her on a strict diet of eggs and whiskey until she appeared to be no more than muscle and bone. Barnum also decided that there's no way that a one hundred sixty one year old woman would have any teeth left So he decided that Joyce should have all of her teeth removed He convinced her to agree to having her teeth pulled while she was drunk on whiskey. Then, a few days later, Barnum removed all of her teeth under the guise of no, no, but you said yes You were drunk, but you said yes, so we're pulling all your teeth out now. Have Hugh Jackman sing a song about that Let's just say this storyline was not in the greatest showm. It was' it It was not. This is Hugh Jackm Yeah and guess Yeah, he played PT it was a fucking li story of PetT Barow on Yeah. I didn't even know that. This was cut. This was all cut It's so funny because if you even look at him, he's so fucking Battle toad. You know what I mean? Like he's so gross. He's so ugly that's so funy. Yeah. And it gets worse from here. Oh yeah. This is before he even took her out on the road. Like this is just getting her ready for the show With his attraction ready, Barnum flooded New England and New York with ads about Joyce Heath, claiming that she was raising money to purchase her great grandchildren out of slavery. He made her perform fourteen hours a day for a never ending stream of Yokls, which naturally caused her health to fail within just a few months because even if she's not one hundred sixty one, she's still probably about eighty eighty five. And just know she's still working because she certainly has a great deal of great grandchildren. No Unfortunately, you're gonna have to pull the night shift But instead of slowing it down, when Barnum realized that she was probably gonna die, he announced a final death tour at an increased ticket price. What did you say, PT? Last chance! Last chance to see George Washington's nme. What do you mean last chance? I'm here. Why is it last?? What do you mean this is my final tour? It' that to in the back of your m?. It's a sin Barnum, at the same time that he was announcing the final death Tour, he also sent an anonymous letter to a Boston newspaper claiming that Joyce was an automaton made of whalebone, springs, and rubber. This brought out even more people. Did you hear Joyce? You're an automaton. No, no, I' Joyce Joyce. No, no no. You're a robot.. Don't be confused, you're robot. All right? I'll come back and put some batteries in rest. When Joyce, of course died a few months later, Barnum charged fifty cents a ticket for Joyce's autopy which was held in a Manhattan bar where fifteen hundred New Yorkers shuffled past to see if Joyce really was an automaton. And by the end of it, Barnam When they find out that she was a lady. Oh skin and bone. They found out not one person was in that line. it' like, listen, it's just a lady No Eone's like t. Okay. Spoilers? No. That was the fucking eighteent nineteenth century version of spoilers. Hey buddy. We're all online here, okay. I wanna see that old black woman's viscera. I know it's a lady. Obviously it's a lady. he's still t to roobot That's because you're hopeful, man. And that's why we're doing this. By the end of it, Barnum had made the modern equivalent of one point five million dollars off of Joyce Heath. And this is when Barnum was twenty five. That's this is how Barnum, this is how Pet. Barnum got his start. Everything came from Joyce Heath Barnum never did say the phrase that is most often attributed to him, that there's a sucker born every minint What he actually said was that the American people like to be humbugged whichich is to say that Americans liked being tricked. No. Barnum, therefore, made a lifelong career out of fucking with the American public. He called himself the Prince of humbugs Barnum really made a name for himself though, was in Manhattan, where he opened his infamous American museum, which was basically a collection of oddities, freak shows, and general entertainment. It was not what you would consider a museum museum. It a Riple. Yeah. It's Rip. Yeah. I mean yeah, it wasn't stupid and boring. It was fun and cool. Yeah. it is actually one of those like it's in my top five like, they ask like if you could time travel to any time and see anything Barnum's American Museum is in my top five. Oh, I'd when I was. I'd be in a fucking heartbeat. Yeah. After tracking down oddities like a plaster copy of the card of Giant, a working replica of Niagara Falls, and a monkey torso glued to a fish tail that he called the Fiji mermaid. I a love her. Barnum began advertising free rooftop concerts at the American Museum to attract crowds He also hired the worst musicians to play these concerts, which caused the crowds to spend money to get into the museum to escape the noise. Once inside, a customer would see posted signs saying this way to the Igress, Which and of course, everyone wanted to see what the fuck the Igress was The customer would then walk past all manner of exhibits to go through a doorway that finally promised the aggress, which would of course lead them outside the museum. becausecause most Americans had no idea that Egress was simply the Latin word for exit. Yeah A get fuckers you fucking idiots I mean it's you fucking get fucking idiot. It is one of those things where it' like what a fucking asshole ilarious. Yeahee that's the thing. After seeing the aggress, the customer was then forced to pay another entry fee to get back in. And while you'd think this would really piss people off thoseose who fell for it would oftentimes tell friends who were going to Barnum's for the first time that if you did nothing else at the American Museum, You had to see the aggress It's just too fucking good. He wass right. Americans love that we do like being tricked. We do We like we like it. And the reason why he's a de facto Satanist is because of that. if you listen to Pet. Barnum, like a lot of again not personal choice. He didn't make it. Mandatory. that you showed up at the one hundred and sixty one year old woman tour, right? He just said I got one Ebody showed up. Well, I would say the American Museum, his later stuff is more the Satanist stuff than The slvery the slave owning stuff. Yeah. That's not good.. It's a bad look. That's what you mean. Yeah It' bad optics. This trickery still happens. I mean, you go to the magic castle they trick you into eating a really expensive shitty meal. It is a bad meal, bu the closees up magic. othertherwise is good if they don't touch your wife. It's actually really nice in there But he's a dadosist because in his mind, I am providing only what people are asking for. It's chmanship Aain it's big showmanship. You wouldn't c you wouldn't need me If you guys all didn't like this stuff That's a Pizzy Borddom. And he turn things around a little bit.. Even though Americans might like to be humbugged, they really don't like it as much when people brag about it. And PT Barnum almost lost everything when he wrote an autobiography in the eighteen fifties detailing exactly how he had tricked, portrayed, and swindled his audiences over the years That must have been so much fun for him. It really a lot of fun Reddit They were very angry. Magicians shouldn't tell their secrets. They really should know. And that was another I think Anton Leve learned that. But look at somebody, you you look at every time somebody breaks character, as soon as they break character. They're done Barnum knew that Americans also loved money, so he gave a series of lectures called The Art of Money Gting, which turned his reputation around so hard that people convinced him to run for office Barnum actually ran as a Republican in the lead up to the Civil War and advocated for the citizenship of black men and women. And while one could cynically say that he was changing with the Tes, Barnhum actually became a staunch abolitionist in his later years, who I would like to think, was trying to atone for his youthful evils. Yeah was evil son of a bit when he was a kid I think he probably just saw the writing on the walls and he was just trying to stay in charge. But I'll say honestly, that it wasn't that popular of a view. Like it really was a gamble. Be an abolitionist was like was still like an intense point of view. I think it's just Pete Barnam like the thrill. I think he likes being on it, but I do genuinely in my heart of hearts, I think that there was like 'a he said this in a quote about like if I could give anything back At the end of my life, I will. So he he rebuilt Bridgeport, Connecticut. He did all these things. And so he kind of like did this thing being like, hey I am trying. but at the very end of his life which is the most you could say about most human beings. It really is. he fought against the rail He was a bad person. either do. But then in the end, he tried to say I'm sorry, and then he fucking died. And yeah in in the last twenty years of his life, he did try to turn things around, which yeah, which honestly is more than we can say for almost anyone we've ever talked about on this fucking show People liked what Barnum was selling when he ran for office and he served as both a member of the Connecticut legislature and the mayor of Bridgeport. He died in eighteen ninety one, haaving become personal friends with Mark Twain, Queen Victoria who fucking loved freak shows. Queen Victoria loved them. She was the naked one, right? No, No, no. She't She was one No, Qeen Victoria Absolute oppite opppposite. She was the most buttoned up, sexless That'mry ever exist. Which one is the super horny one? Sally Rand. super horny quQeen? Wasn't their super horny queen? Not in England. I don't think in England.ory is POi L, G M. I think you' thking of me a l of the hornest queen. I think're thinking ofatherine the Great of Rsia. That's exactly Merur So Send me pictures S stories LOTL gail d. comot seend me pictures of the horniest queens. Yeah. And also Abraam Lincoln ood friends. horny them. Yeah. Abraham L. Also a super horny queen cannot be denied rail. Oh yeah,. Catherine the greatreat. That's the horn one, yeah,. Okay, good for her It says AI is telling us that Queen Victoria was super horned.cause we asked about horniness and AI is going to lie to you. Yeah, it's gonna lie to you. It's gonna tell you what you want to hear Yeah Py Barda. That's the guy at the top that influenced Anton Levveay. On the complete opposite end of the carnival spectrum, Anton LeVveay was also greatly influenced by a nineteen forty six novel which explored the dark side of show business as it was in the mid twentieth century. This novel filled with Carne', fim fetes and grifters, was known as Nightmare Alley Also made into a movie a year later. Don't watch the Bradley Cooper one Watch the black and white one. Yeah, the nineteen forty seven. Yes. I did like the it. It's fine but if you watch if you read you got to read the, watch the old one read the book. watch it the author of the novel was a man named William Lindseay Gresham, who' volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War in nineteen thirty eight, very much at Ernest Hemingway type, looking for action But after Gresham's fighting was done, he had a chance meeting while waiting to be sent back to America. He had drinks with a mysterious man who told Gresham about a very real and very disturbing carnival attraction called The most disturbing attraction of all Usually and again, this is Very real. Usually, the geek was an alcoholic who had been driven so low that he was willing to be put in a pit, day after day or a cage, sometimes, usually a pit, where he would bite the heads off chickens and snakes for the carnival going public in exchange for booze, usually while dressed as some sort of wild man Geeks were Wryingly common amongst carnivals and shs across America for decades. They're very popular. Extremely popular. Yeah. I wonder how that like ended up translating into being a nerd Yeah, I'm not not I think at one point, like geek was more of just a person who was unpleasant to look at. like nerds were smart and geeks were just like unpleasant people. Yeah in the beginning at least, but they soon became conflated. and I'm just talking on my ass there. I might to you wrong. this is interesting because it comes from an old term for just clown, a German clown called a gick Meaning a fool or simpleton. And then eventually it turned into the geek, which then became a term for an ugly person. Yeah Really geek means like ugly, pinheaded to the eyes too close, fucking mouth too big, arms too long. Yeah.. J' gross. Damn. What's cool. But you stole this story from a strong man that he had met And he took the entire thing. Now I with about nightmare Alley It's not just about show up business. Yeah. it's about the literal world of magic Yes of actual ritual magic. Which is the thing about Nightmareity that makes it really interesting because what what Antom Mve realized, much like happens at the end of Alistair Crowley's works, you realize he says there it's not from out there from in here Now the story of the geek haunted Grushham after he returned from Spain, and this was in addition to everything he'd seen in the Spanish Civil War, which was pretty goddamn grizzly all on its own But when Gresham's inner demons couldn't be cured with psychoanalysis, he became obsessed with tarot cards, all while he worked as a writer, churning out true crime stories for pulp magazines. Put all this together, and you got the makings of Gresham's novel about Carney lifeife, Nightmare Alley A nightmare ally captures the occultism of Carney Live, specifically the fortune telling trade