Szandora LaVey dot com

According to European magical tradition, King Solomon is said to have evoked seventy-two demons, confined them in a bronze vessel sealed by magic symbols, and obliged them to work for him. These demons are catalogued in various magical grimoires, most notably in the Lemegeton, which gives descriptions of their powers, appearance and manner, as well as instructions for controlling them.

Based on the opinions of some who seek to find consistency of this association with the Shemhamphorasch, these demons may be sigils based on the reversing of the three lettered names of the angels. Using the reverse names and sigils, one would be able to call on the various demons for various favors which may result in destructive events.

It is from this that it is believed Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, obtained the word.

David Shankbone interviews Peter Gilmore on Church after Anton LaVey

David Shankbone: Does the Church of Satan have relationships with other churches?

Peter Gilmore: Not at all. We’re not ecumenical.

David Shankbone: It would seem there are pagans or humanist religions that follow your general philosophy.

Peter Gilmore: I wouldn’t say that. Most pagan religions are theistic on one level or another. They generally think their deities exist in some part. We don’t believe Satan exists as a deity. I think there are some pagans who may look at their Gods and Goddesses as archetypes only, and in that sense that would be closer to our position because you can look at the symbol of Satan as an archetype. But, we generally don’t feel we have any relation to any kind of religious organization.

David Shankbone: What is the membership numbers for the Church of Satan?

Peter Gilmore: We never give out numbers. The reason for that our founder came up with and I agree with him and keep to his policy: if people think there are too few of us, they tend to not want to take us seriously. If they think there are too many of us, they think we’re a threat. There was even a point back during the Satanic Panic in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s when there was governmental legislation proposed to ban Satanism because they thought there were all these metal heads out there sacrificing babies, doing drugs and making child pornography. Of course, now we know, it was mostly people who were borderline Christian evangelists pretending, but then accusing their own family members and getting them put in jail, or acting as therapists and most of those people have been sued and properly censured since then.

David Shankbone: Has the church thrived after LaVey’s passing?

Peter Gilmore: It has. Partially because we are taking advantage of technology with the Internet and global media; our website gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day and literature keeps getting translated into many different languages the world over. My own book, The Satanic Scriptures, the hardcover came out in April and the paperback is coming out this month. I’ve already got five different languages coming out and I’m negotiating for others. We are thriving, we have many members.

David Shankbone: What is your book about?

Peter Gilmore: It’s a collection of my essays I’ve written over the past twenty years talking about Satanic philosophy, how it’s applied. I talk about music since I am by training a composer; I went to NYU. I have a Bachelor’s and Master’s in music composition, mostly focusing on orchestral work. One conception in the book I wanted to dispel is the stereotype that Satanism is always associated with Metal and the cookie monster voice. That’s Satanism? No.

David Shankbone: It’s not all Gene Loves Jezebel sounding.

Peter Gilmore: No. Satanic music is specific to each person. So to me, Satanic music is the symphony, which to me is the highest art form. So Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich — to me that’s some of the most Satanic music ever written because the architecture is there, the expressivity is there; the reflection on the human condition is all present and it’s not idealistic. It’s mostly questioning or showing what a human is capable of doing. And I love architecture. Cathedrals are wonderful. I have no hatred of those because they are put to religious use. They have symbols on them, but I know those are just symbols. I love skyscrapers too.

Members who belong to the Church of Satan and other branches of Satanism sign letters and emails and conduct rituals with a Shemhamphorasch, although their version of it is different and contains 72 names of demons, not names of angels. This usage is designed as an inversion of the Shemhamphorasch used by Jews and Christians. It is taken to mean a kind of desecration in closing or closing in the name of possibly the backwards reading of the angels and likely refers to the demons of Goetia in their hierarchies and with their own special titles like Marquis or President. The demons, on the other hand are organized into nine orders and differ from traditional lists of the angelic Shemhamphorasch. The relationship is unclear. A misconception attributed to the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, is that “Shemhamphorasch” means “Hail Satan” in Enochian. It is actually just a reference to these beings as one in purpose for assistance of the Satanist.

The word “Shemhamphorasch” is spoken in Church of Satan rituals, often followed by “Hail Satan!”, as outlined in The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. The Totenkopf Grotto (a German branch of the Church of Satan) proposes an ancient Babylonian-Assyrian derivation for the word as “Šem-ham-fo-raš”, a phrase they say implies becoming one with the Powers of Darkness.

The Black House was a Victorian mansion that formerly stood at 6114 California St. in San Francisco, California, in the United States. Though the building is sometimes referred to as a mansion, photographs of the building taken just before its destruction show that it was a moderately sized single family home, considerably smaller than the two small apartment buildings on either side of the property.

The house was used by Anton LaVey as the headquarters of his Church of Satan from 1966 until his death in 1997. LaVey conducted Satanic seminars and rituals at the house; one of the most notorious such rituals was the Satanic baptism of his daughter Zeena Schreck in 1967, punctuated by LaVey speaking the words “Hail Satan!” over the nude body of a female acting as the ‘Satanic Altar’.

Public ceremonies were performed at the house until 1972. LaVey lost ownership of the house in 1991 as the result of a court settlement resulting from his separation from Diane Hegarty, but LaVey was allowed to reside at the Black House until his death.

Following LaVey’s death, members of the Church of Satan unsuccessfully attempted to raise funds to repurchase the house, and it was demolished on October 17, 2001. As of May 2006, there is a new development being built on the lot where the Black House once stood.