Anton LaVey in San Francisco, 1989. Photograph by Carl Abrahamsson.

Never Underestimate Anton LaVey

How modernity’s premiere Satanist changed our culture

Mitch Horowitz
18 min readAug 7, 2023

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Amid the occult’s late-1960s entry to bestseller lists, how-to guides, and even toy aisles, it could be fairly asked: were the “dark arts,” or their most popular variants, growing grandmotherly?

Not if Anton LaVey had anything to say about it. “There is always a risk to underestimate LaVey,”…

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Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China