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The UK head of the Church of
Satan, the Irreverend Gavin Baddeley, recently spoke in
Brighton. But is this a new spin on an old devil, or just
another case of filling satanic purses? Chris Dean takes a
lighter look at the dark side, and investigates the growing
trend for hedonistic sensations seekers who think Beast is
Best
Sussex has a long history of
involvement with the Dark Side. Aleister Crowley, the most
famous occultist ever, self-styled 'Great Beast' who was
dubbed by tabloids 'The Wickedest Man in the World', went to
school in St. Leonards and spent the last years of his life in
a boarding house in Hastings. Of course, Crowley at his
wickedest would hardly raise an eyebrow in Brighton nowadays.
The charges levelled against him included not only sorcery but
(gasp!) bisexuality, bigamy and (close your eyes for this next
bit if you want) drug taking! His 'wickedest man' title has
since been usurped by Saddam Hussein and Gary Glitter, not to
mention miscellaneous blokes in Portsmouth who look a bit like
paedophiles. The local press had a field day with the fact
that his funeral at Brighton crematorium in 1947 involved
so-called 'pagan rituals', and an outraged local counsellor
vowed not to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
Crowley's legacy can still be strongly felt in the area and
the mention of his name in certain Hastings pubs will incite a
stream of local anecdotes. Hastings has something of a
reputation as a Satanist hotspot among occult circles, a fact
probably not unrelated to the Crowley connection.
Satanism was larging it again
in the local press in 1986 when it was revealed that a
gentleman by the name of Derry Manwaring Knight had swindled
various local toffs and a vicar out of about £200,000. He
alleged that he needed the money to free himself from the evil
clutches of a band of devil worshippers, for whom he was a
sort of archbishop to the South of England.
Apparently there was a power
struggle within the group and he had to buy various
ludicrously expensive items of Satanist regalia,. you know,
horns, funny coloured contact lenses, forked tongue, stick on
pointy tail etc, in order to wrest control of the group and so
destroy it from within. No one ever saw any of these occult
items, but what they did see was Mr.Knight's brand new Lotus
sports car. Mr Knight claims to have been dedicated to Lucifer
at birth by his grandma and was, he says, 'a master of the
occult'. This, needless to say, didn't stop him getting sent
down for seven years. Interestingly enough, the group that he
was so lucratively trying to escape from were named
alternatively as 'The Sons of Lucifer' and various misspelt
versions of the 'Ordo Templi Orientis', a German based occult
group, still active now which was taken over and re-organised
by Crowley.
It was also in the 80s that
Brighton was for a while home to one Genesis P. Orridge,
creative force behind pop group Psychic T.V. which charted
with a song about the late Rolling Stone Brian Jones called
Godstar. P. Orridge founded the occult organisation Thee
Temple ov Psychic Youth. Thee Temple worked with a sort of
modernised version of Crowley's 'sex magick' and encouraged
members to create sigils abstract symbols fashioned to
represent the aspirant's desires and empower them with an act
of gnosis, usually involving sex or masturbation and cutting
yourself. These sigils, drawn on paper and liberally splashed
with various combinations of body fluids, were then sent off
to Thee Temple's headquarters where they were locked in a
vault. Genesis disbanded the organisation in the 90's, had a
sex change and now lives with her wife and children in a
trailer park in America.
Even given this shady
sub-history, however, it was difficult for the most culturally
hardened of Brightonians not to be slightly shocked by the
lurid posters that appeared around the North Laines in July
declaring in no uncertain terms: SATAN WANTS YOU. If the crowd
that attended the talk by the Irreverend Gavin Baddeley at the
Sallis Benney theatre were expecting black cloaks, sacrificed
goats and deflowered virgins, then they were disappointed. I
know I was. Goddammit - and He surely will - there wasn't even
a candle in sight. Instead the intimate, o.k., small, crowd
were treated to a diatribe on the failings of nearly two
thousand years of Christianity, several film clips, a
question-and-answer session and a point by point lecture on
why Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson were not Satanists. Some
people just give Satanism a bad name.
The Church of Satan, listed in
the San Francisco telephone directory under Churches:Satanist,
was founded in 1966 by the late ex lion tamer, Anton La Vey.
Its theology is founded on a sort of pseudo Nietzchean
individualism, with much rumblings about the masses or the
herd, and stresses non-conformity and self indulgence. 'If a
man smites you on one cheek,' wrote La Vey, 'smash him on the
other'. The COS. has had its fair share of celebrity converts
including Sammy Davis Jr. and the Rolling Stones, who had a
brief flirtation through the medium of avant-garde film maker,
Kenneth Anger whose films include Invocation To My Demon
Brother which was screened on the night.. More recently, and
perhaps not too surprisingly androgynous dark rockster Marilyn
Manson was ordained as a priest of the C.O.S. Gavin Baddeley
was not at liberty to reveal the name of any other celebrities
he knew to be currently involved but, he said: "You'd be
surprised". I was intrigued, and found myself thinking
about the Saatchi designed 'New Labour, New Danger' posters of
a few years ago in a different light.
Clearly, a distinction exists
between this pop Satanism and, for example, the Satanism of
ritual abuse, or the bedsit Satanism beloved of heavy metal
listening, role playing adolescents throughout the Western
world. At best, the practises of the C.O.S. appear more in
keeping with the activities of a group of performance artists
than with the demonic debauchery of Dennis Wheatley novels.
Given that the Irreverend Gavin Baddeley does not worship
Satan although he says he will if you pay him enough, one
might be justified in regarding the COS. as a sort of
spiritual punk, an iconoclastic and controversy courting
movement engaging in a Hammer horror type parody of the
Christian tradition.
But there is a glaring paradox
here that recalls the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian
where a street full of people are chanting 'We are all
individuals' in unison. Some might say that any organisation,
particularly a church, founded on the principles of
individuality and non-conformity is inherently paradoxical. A
club for people who don't like clubs. According to Gavin
Baddeley, though, it fulfils a basic human 'need for
religiosity', while offering a method of freeing oneself from
the constraints of traditional religion. Despite the fact that
the COS. arose as a reaction to the decadent hippy culture of
the 60's, and La Vey even went so far as to put a curse upon
it, I would argue that it is a product of that very culture
and a part of the relatively recent religious trend known as
the 'New Age'. An emphasis on the self and personal experience
as authentic sources of spirituality are defining hallmarks of
the New Age.
If we accept this, is it then
possible to conclude that there's a place for the COS. in the
Brighton listings, presumably just before 'shamanic healing'
and 'soul retrieval' workshops? Sell your soul workshops,
perhaps? No one I spoke to who attended the talk seemed to
think so. It appears that, with the exception of a bloke
calling himself 'Bug' who wants a Satanist funeral, a church
dedicated to Satanism is a bit too much even for
ultra-liberal, multi-faith Brighton. Deconsecrated churches
dedicated to drinking as much as you can whilst listening to
music that's a bit too loud, however, are welcome.
Bruce, from goth shop Arkham in
Trafalgar street, went to the talk with a friend and says they
were a bit confused by it all. Like me, they were disappointed
that Gavin Baddeley chose to focus so exclusively on the
negative aspects of Christianity and virtually ignoring any
positive benefits or accomplishments of the COS. which seemed,
said Bruce, 'not the point, really'. From the start, the COS.
was firmly , perhaps inevitably established as the opposition
party and much of the talk came across as a form of Satanist
spin-doctoring. Possibly the fact that Gavin Baddeley himself
works as a freelance journalist contributed to this media -
friendly approach, but I think there's something more to it
than that. Lucifer himself could be seen as the original
master of spin: 'of course God didn't mean that you can't
actually eat the apple….' and Crowley's manipulation of the
media was positively Mandelsonesque. Satan usually appears in
popular mythology involved in some sort of smooth talking
seduction with the aim of securing the signature (read vote)
and soul of some hapless country wench or intellectual Faust
figure.
Maybe the price we have to pay
for our consumer centred, obscenely affluent society is the
much hyped predominance of style over substance. Not only must
Satan be a salesperson, but so must politicians and Popes. La
Vey can perhaps be credited with identifying this trend that
he calls the dawning of the Age of Satan, and drawing on his
showman background to create a religion that caters to it. The
COS., bizarrely, seems to me like an incredibly apt expression
of the zeitgeist. They are Satanists that do not worship
Satan, except as a way of parodying Christian ritual. They
hold children and animals sacred as being the purest
expression of life force. In a similar way to which punk was
not really about music and Blairism is not really about
policies, Satanism is not a religion, it's a philosophy, a
lifestyle.
Any organisation calling itself
the Church of Satan is bound to provoke extreme reactions
(watch editor's letters bags once this article is published).
But then I think that's the point. 'The ideal Satanist,' said
Anton La Vey, 'would be a Jewish Nazi'.
Gavin Baddeley's new book
'LUCIFER RISING : Sin, devil worship & rock 'n' roll' is
available from Plexus publishing, priced £12.99.
copyright New Insight 2000
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