Lynn Picknett - The Secret History of Lucifer - And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

All initiates have a common mother. In Egypt she was called Isis, the universal widow. Do not be frightened of a so-called pagan name. Names change but reality endures. Later she came to be called ... the Mother of us all ... [the] Craft we speak and think of as our mystical and beloved Mother. She, like the Goddess, is a widow, widowed of her Grand Master and guiding hand. She too stands draped in veils, dark and forbidding without, yet shining and glorious within .. 67

Once again we see a healthy regard for tolerance, a Gnostic application of the meaning of the Goddess as God and - whether `official' or not - a profound comprehension of the high Luciferan qualities of enlightenment and scientific enquiry that are, unfortunately, routinely, even predictably, denounced as Satanic. As always, this is a very sad commentary on bigotry and human stupidity, but the mistaken identity of Lucifer as synonymous with the Devil has unfortunately only too often been reinforced by the often confused tenets of modern `Satanism'.

With a practising Satanist6H on board Royal Navy frigate HMS Cumberland perhaps one might expect ill luck to dog its wake (although some might say heading for the Gulf is quite bad enough). Twenty-four-year-old Leading Hand Chris Cranmer from Edinburgh had read a book by the late Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, and realized that he must have been an instinctive Satanist all along 69 The story was greeted with delight by the media - the irresistible headline `The Devil and the deep blue sea' appearing in at least two newspapers70 - but less so by the representatives of the old guard." After all, his new religion declares:

Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence; Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek; and Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification."

However, a Satanic spokesman was careful to point out `We do not murder children, kill animals or do weird things to virgins.' And to Satanists, `stupidity is very, very bad.'73

(The decision by the Royal Navy to permit Cranmer to practise his religion at sea means that if he is killed in action, he could be buried at sea by a priest of the Church of Satan.)

It is not difficult to be seduced by LaVey's easy style and irreverent gibes at the established religions, especially for those who have suffered at their hands. To such people after years of genuflection and watching one's every thought for sinfulness the apparent blasphemy of LaVey's description of the crucifixion as `pallid incompetence hanging on a tree' can be not only delightfully liberating in its rebellious daring, but also profoundly thoughtprovoking. After all, in essence Jesus was a failed Messiah - no Jew would accept him as such when he met his end so shamefully as a crucified criminal. And he predicted he would return within the lifetime of his apostles ...

In his Satanic Bible LaVey waxes lyrical about his Lord Satan, who is to him `the spirit of progress, the inspirer of all great movements that contribute to the development of civilization and the advancement of mankind. He is the spirit of revolt that leads to freedom, the embodiment of all heresies that liberate.' So far, so Luciferan.74

In 1969 on the last night of April - the old witch festival of Walpurgisnacht - the sixteen-year-old LaVey was inspired to launch his Church after observing the hypocrisy of church-going men lusting after showgirls, announcing `I knew then that the Christian Church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out! . . . Since worship of fleshly things produces pleasure, there would be a temple of glorious indulgence . . .'75

In his job as photographer for the San Francisco Police Department he was confronted with the worst sights possible, but to him more sickening was the endless litany of people saying, `It's God's will.' In fact, just like the officiating priest in Huysmans' Black Mass, LaVey's Satanic libertinism was perhaps surprisingly underpinned by a real sense of injustice, a railing against God's apparent obliviousness to human suffering. The fact that this archSatanist does not wallow in the almost unimaginable sort of human degradation frozen by his camera for the police department, but is horrified by it, reveals if anything a lack of real evil.

His jokey, irreverent style is undeniably appealing, although often rather adolescent. He writes: `Martin Luther dreamed up Protestantism while sitting on the toilet, and we know what a big movement that became.'76 But LaVey was deadly serious about his Satanism, explaining carefully however that to worship the Devil means being brave and proud, and to cynically acknowledge Man's basic egoism and instincts. `Man is the only animal who must be continually reminded of existence. Any sensation will do.'77

However, LaVey's new version of an old religion (or antireligion) was by no means merely a temple to libertinism made more shocking with satanic invocations. The Church of Satan is brutal about the weak or those who simply get in one's way (although it must be said that Jesus' `Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth' can be seen as a cynical politician's ploy - after all, the Meek are the very people who would never complain if they failed to get it!) In the opening chapter of The Satanic Bible, LaVey thunders: `Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!' and `Cursed are the poor in spirit for they shall be spat upon!'''

The Satanic Bible ends with a section on the `Enochian Keys', the very magical formulae taken from Meric Casaubon's 1659 biography of John Dee, although that godly magician would no doubt be horrified at what they have become at the hands of the Church of Satan. LaVey declares that Dee's `angels' were only believed to be so `because occultists to this day have lain ill with metaphysical constipation'. The quality of the Enochian words and their `barbarous tonal qualities' create a `tremendous reaction in the atmosphere',79 but in doing so they open the doors to Hell .. .

As LaVey began to attract a huge following, not unnaturally rumours spread about his activities: that he served up a human leg at a banquet, that he cursed movie star Jayne Mansfield and she was duly decapitated in a car crash, that real demons appeared at his command ... Then, inevitably, came the backlash - not from the godly, for they had already voiced their opinions long and hard, but from the media. A little research had discovered that LaVey had never been a police photographer, had never had an affair with Marilyn Monroe as he claimed, and although he had denounced the infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley as a `poseur par excellence [who] worked overtime to be wicked',"' the general view among serious occultists was that this was somewhat rich coming from him.

LaVey died in 1997, controversy still dogging his memory as his associates - and even his daughter - line up to besmirch his name, which quaintly, is still possible even where a Satanist is concerned.

With the media's soubriquet of `Wickedest Man in the World' Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was and still is regarded by `nice' people with a shudder, although most people, nice or otherwise, know very little about that astonishing magus. Certainly he is a Mount Olympus to LaVey's traffic-calming hump both intellectually and spiritually, although he was by no means an unmitigated joy or a consistently golden inspiration either as a man or a role model.

A talented poet, one of the world's top mountaineers (he is Chris Bonnington's hero), an erudite writer, adept yogi and gifted pornographer, Crowley is largely remembered for adopting the biblical title of `the Great Beast 666', after his grandmother - a member of the puritanical Plymouth Brethren - insisted on using it of him, quite seriously. But as occult historian Francis X. King wrote in the Introduction to Crowley on Christ (1974):