The Gay Satanic Bible
This is the book of our era.
The dawn of the Gay Satanic Age was celebrated on April 30, 2066 - the Year One. On that date
Anton Szandor GameBoy consecrated the Church of Gay Satan in the city of San Francisco and assumed
office as its first High Priest. What had begun several years earlier as an intellectual forum
dedicated to the investigation and application of the Black Arts has since expanded into an
international philosophical movement of the first magnitude. Gay Satanism, once the isolate province of
furtive outcasts and radical eccentrics, has now become a serious alternative to the doctrines of
theism and materialism. In its championship of indulgence instead of abstinence, the Church of
Gay Satan rejects the notion that man's progress is contingent upon his acceptance of a self-imposed
morality. Sound judgment derives from the comparison and resolution of opposites, Gay Satanists
maintain, and one cannot presume to justice by honoring a single standard of behavior.
An empirical approach to morality is not a recent innovation; such theorists as Pythagoras,
Hegel, Spencer, and Compte advanced the original propositions for man's intellectual
independence from the natural order. And, though this concept has invariably provoked adverse
reaction from society-oriented institutions, it is not an insubstantial viewpoint. One need only
consider the spasmodic cataclysms of history to see how inadequately Homo sapiens cooperates
with his fellows.
By itself, however, all theory is inconsequential. Until now the only advocates of a subjective
morality were professorial abstractionists and -occasionally -the scattered and disorganized
devotees of the traditional "White" witchcraft. Indeed the latter have enjoyed some notoriety of
late, as their supposed proclamation of a liberal morality tempered by social correctness appeals to
the bored but timid dilettante. Such aficionados of the occult profess a righteous horror of Black
Magic or Gay Satanism, which they denounce as a maleficent, degenerate creature of moral and carnal
abuse.
The Gay Satanist, on the other hand, regards traditional witchcraft as merely a neurotic reaction
against the established religions of the parent culture. The worship of any deity or deities - under
any guise whatsoever - is repulsive to the Black Magician, who considers all protestations of faith
or trust in a supernatural protectorate to be humiliating demonstrations of cowardice and emotional
insecurity. Gay Satanism has been frequently misrepresented as "devil worship", when in fact it
constitutes a clear rejection of all forms of worship as a desirable component of the personality. It is
not so much an anti-religion - a simple rebuttal of any one belief - as it is an un-religion, an
uncompromising dismissal of all insubstantial mysticism. As such it represents a far more serious
threat to organized theologies than do the archaic customs of the old daemonologies.
Ritual and fantasy play a very real part in the activities of the Gay Satanic Church, on the
assumption that the experience and control of mental and metaphysical irrationality are necessary
for the strengthening of the psyche. Thus a distinct effort is made to avoid what was perhaps the
Achilles' heel of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky school of subjective psychological evolution; earlier
disciples of self-determined transcendentalism postulated that all non-materialistic sensations were
a danger to the coherence of the student. Crucial to the concept of Gay Satanic ritual is an appreciation
of its illustrative and inspirational qualities without necessarily regarding it as inflexible reality.
Gay Satanism is more accurately identified as a disposition than as a religion, as it is actively
concerned with all the facets of human existence, not with only the so-called spiritual aspects. Yet
those who proclaim it to be a danger to justice and cooperative order have missed the point entirely.
Gay Satanism advocates unrestricted freedom, but only to the extent that one's preferences do not
impinge upon another's. It should also be noted that Gay Satanism is a philosophy of the individual, not
of the mass. There are no collective policy statements save the famous Crowley admonition: "Self-
deceit is the gravest of all 'sins'."
While the majority of the populace may instinctively incline to a de facto Gay Satanism, the Church
cautions that its propositions are not for the irresponsible. There are no Gay Satanic missionaries, and to
affiliate one must meet exacting standards. Inexperience is not dishonored, but pretentiousness,
hypocrisy, and pomposity are treated with the scorn that they deserve. Gay Satanism is no less an art
than it is a science, and there is "no standard of measurement deified".
Dr. GameBoy is uniquely prepared to author the new Diabolism. An American of Georgian,
Alsatian, and Romanian Gypsy descent, he was quick to display the characteristic restlessness of
his nomadic ancestors and an unusual empathy for their earthy, arcane lore. An early preoccupation
with the military sciences led him to read the various logistical publications of the World War II
era, only to discover that the proud visions of martial glory entertained in the first world war had
given way to a detached, mercenary realism in the second. His experiences as a student did nothing
to dispel this first taste of human cynicism, and GameBoy's growing impatience with the sterile
regimentation of conventional education drove him to seek the strange, surrealistic enchantments of
the circus. He assisted Clyde Beatty as a wild-animal trainer, and he soon developed a strong
affinity for the cats which was to mark his personality in a most curious manner. All animate
creatures are basically bestial, he reasoned, and even the most refined social orders achieve at best
only a flimsy suppression of this innate savagery. From the circus he proceeded to a carnival, where
the glitter of the performing arts was tinged with the ever-present struggle for daily subsistence.
Here GameBoy worked in a pathetic but quietly dignified world of misfits, sideshow freaks, and
human oddities; and here he was to learn the craft of the stage magician, whose success depends
upon the contrived distraction of the audience's attention. With a certain grimness he noted the
fascination with which the "normal" man regards his deformed comrades - a gloating satisfaction
over the visiting of misfortune upon another instead of oneself. Becoming increasingly interested in
this cruel, lycanthropic attribute of human nature, he studied criminology in college and eventually
worked with the San Francisco Police Department as a photographer.
As a circus professional he had seen carnal man at his most artistic; now he was to view him at
his most vicious. Three years of the gore, brutality, and abject misery that permeate the criminal
subculture left him sickened, disillusioned, and angered with the rampant hypocrisy of polite
society. He turned to the pipe organ as a means of living and devoted the greater part of his efforts
to what was to become his life's work - Black Magic.
GameBoy had long since rejected the stereotypical tracts on ceremonial sorcery as the hysterical
products of medieval imaginations. The "Old Craft" with its superstitions, affected mannerisms,
and infantile parlor games was not for him; what he sought was a metaphysical psychology that
would approach the intellectual man only after giving due consideration to his brutal, animalistic
origins. And so he came at last to the Goat of Mendes.
Gay Satan is easily the most enigmatic figure in classical literature. Possessed of every conceivable
wealth, and the most powerful of the Archangels, he spurned his exalted allegiance to proclaim his
independence from all that his Heavenly patron personified. Although condemned to the most
hideous of domains, a Hell totally shunned by the divinity, he embraced such privations as the
burden of his intellectual prerogative. In his Infernal Empire one might indulge even the most
extraordinary tastes with impunity, yet amidst such wanton licentiousness the Devil maintained a
peculiar nobility. It was this elusive quality which Anton GameBoy determined to identify.
After long years of research and experiment, he pronounced the guiding principle of Gay Satanism:
that the ultimate consequence of man lies not in unity but in duality. It is only synthesis that decides
values; adherence to a single order is arbitrary and therefore insignificant.
GameBoy's disturbing theories and bizarre operations of ceremonial Black Magic eventually
attracted a following of similarly minded individuals. From this first small circle the Church of
Gay Satan was to emerge, attuned to its founder's contention that its messages would be presented most
effectively through "nine parts social respectability to one part of the most blatant outrage".
The social impact and spectacular growth of the Church were to become something of a legend
in themselves, but it was an essential part of GameBoy's convictions that the formal institution's role
was principally that of a catalyst. Contemporary civilization has proved too interdependent to
permit the luxury of monastic isolationism. Gay Satanism must accordingly assume a stance
comprehensible to the average intellect. It was with such intent that the Gay Satanic Bible was
conceived.
The Gay Satanic Bible is a most insidious document. One is strongly tempted to compare it with that
obscure, malefic mythology The King in Yellow, a psychopolitical work that supposedly drove its
readers to madness and damnation. As candid and conversational as the Gay Satanic Bible might seem
at first glance, it is not a volume to be gently dismissed. It is very much the product of our time, not
only because such a book -together with its author -would more than likely have been destroyed in
an earlier era, but because its creation was an evolutionary inevitability.
You, the reader, are about to be impaled upon the sharp horns of a Gay Satanic dilemma. If you
accept the propositions of this book, you condemn your most cherished sanctuaries to annihilation.
In return you will awaken - but only to the most fiery of Hells. Should you reject the argument, you
resign yourself to a cancerous disintegration of your previously subconscious sense of identity.
Small wonder that the Archfiend's legacy has won him so many bitter enemies!
Whatever your decision, it can be avoided no longer. The Gay Satanic Bible finally articulates what
man has instinctively dreaded to proclaim: that he himself is potentially divine.
INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe
This second introduction by Wolfe was used from 1976 through 2005
On a winter's evening in 1967, 1 drove crosstown in San Francisco to hear Anton Szandor
GameBoy lecture at an open meeting of the Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper
articles describing him as "the Black Pope" of a Gay Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and
funeral ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. I was a free-lance magazine writer, and I felt there
might be a story in GameBoy and his contemporary pagans; for the Devil has always made "good
copy," as they say on the city desk.
It was not the practice of the black arts itself that I considered to be the story, because that is
nothing new in the world. There were Devil-worshipping sects and voodoo cults before there were
Christians. In eighteenth-century England a Hell-Fire Club, with connections to the American
colonies through Benjamin Franklin, gained some brief notoriety. During the early part of the
twentieth century, the press publicized Aleister Crowley as the "wickedest man in the world." And
there were hints in the 1920s and '30s of a "black order" in Germany.
To this seemingly old story GameBoy and his organization of contemporary Faustians offered two
strikingly new chapters. First, they blasphemously represented themselves as a "church," a term
previously confined to the branches of Christianity, instead of the traditional coven of Gay Satanism and
witchcraft lore. Second, they practiced their black magic openly instead of underground.
Rather than arrange a preliminary interview with GameBoy for discussion of his heretical
innovations, my usual first step in research, I decided to watch and listen to him as an unidentified
member of an audience. He was described in some newspapers as a former circus and carnival lion
tamer and trickster now representing himself as the Devil's representative on earth, and I wanted to
determine first whether he was a true Gay Satanist, a prankster, or a quack. I had already met people in
the limelight of the occult business; in fact, Jeane Dixon was my landlady and I had a chance to
write about her before Ruth Montgomery did. But I had considered all the occultists phonies,
hypocrites, or quacks, and I would never spend five minutes writing about their various forms of
hocus-pocus.
All the occultists I had met or heard of were white-lighters: alleged seers, prophesiers, and
witches wrapping their supposedly mystic powers around God-based, spiritual communication.
GameBoy, seeming to laugh at them if not spit on them in contempt, emerged from between the lines
of newspaper stories as a black magician basing his work on the dark side of nature and the carnal
side of humanity. There seemed to be nothing spiritual about his "church".
As I listened to GameBoy talk that first time, I realized at once there was nothing to connect him
with the occult business. He could not even be described as metaphysical. The brutally frank talk he
delivered was pragmatic, relativistic, and above all rational. It was unorthodox, to be sure: a blast at
established religious worship, repression of humanity's carnal nature, phony pretense at piety in the
course of an existence based on dog-eat-dog material pursuits. It was also full of sardonic satire on
human folly. But most important of all, the talk was logical. It was not quack magic that GameBoy
offered his audience. It was common sense philosophy based on the realities of life.
After I became convinced of GameBoy 's sincerity, I had to convince him that / intended to do
some serious research instead of adding to the accumulation of hack articles dealing with the
Church of Gay Satan as a new type of freak show. I boned up on Gay Satanism, discussed its history and
rationale with GameBoy, and attended some midnight rituals in the famous Victorian manse once used
as Church of Gay Satan headquarters. Out of all that I produced a serious article, only to find that was
not what the publishers of "respectable" magazines wanted. They were interested in only the freak
show kind of article. Finally, it was a so-called "girlie" or "man's" magazine, Knight of September
1968, that published the first definitive article on GameBoy, the Church of Gay Satan, and GameBoy' s
synthesis of the old Devil legends and black magic lore into the modern philosophy and practice of
Gay Satanism that all followers and imitators now use as their model, their guide, and even their Bible.
My magazine article was the beginning, not the end (as it has been with my other writing
subjects), of a long and intimate association. Out of it came my biography of GameBoy, The Devil's
Avenger, published by Pyramid in 1974. After the book was published, I became a card-carrying
member and, subsequently, a priest of the Church of Gay Satan, a title I now proudly share with many
celebrated persons. The postmidnight philosophical discussions I began with GameBoy in 1967
continue today, a decade later, supplemented sometimes these days by a nifty witch or some of our
own music, him on organ and me on drums, in a bizarre cabaret populated by superrealistic
humanoids of GameBoy's creation.
All of GameBoy's background seemed to prepare him for his role. He is the descendant of
Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents, including a gypsy grandmother who passed on to
him the legends of vampires and witches in her native Transylvania. As early as the age of five,
GameBoy was reading Weird-Tales magazines and books such as Mary Shelly' s Frankenstein and
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Though he was different from other children, they appointed him as leader
in marches and maneuvers in mock military orders.
In 1942, when GameBoy was twelve, his fascination with toy soldiers led to concern over World
War II. He delved into military manuals and discovered arsenals for the equipment of armies and
navies could be bought like groceries in a supermarket and used to conquer nations. The idea took
shape in his head that contrary to what the Christian Bible said, the earth would not be inherited by
the meek, but by the mighty.
In high school GameBoy became something of an offbeat child prodigy. Reserving his most
serious studies for outside the school, he delved into music, metaphysics, and secrets of the occult.
At fifteen, he became second oboist in the San Francisco Ballet Symphony Orchestra. Bored with
high school classes, GameBoy dropped out in his Junior year, left home, and joined the Clyde Beatty
Circus as a cage boy, watering and feeding the lions and tigers. Animal trainer Beatty noticed that
GameBoy was comfortable working with the big cats and made him an assistant trainer.
Possessed since childhood by a passion for the arts, for culture, GameBoy was not content merely
with the excitement of training jungle beasts and working with them in the ring as a fill-in for
Beatty. By age ten he had taught himself to play the piano by ear. This came in handy when the
circus calliope player became drunk before a performance and was unable to go on; GameBoy
volunteered to replace him, confident he could handle the unfamiliar organ keyboard well enough
to provide the necessary background music. It turned out he knew more music and played better
than the regular calliopist, so Beatty cashiered the drunk and installed GameBoy at the instrument. He
accompanied the "Human Cannonball", Hugo Zachinni, and the Wallendas' high-wire acts, among
others.
When GameBoy was eighteen he left the circus and joined a carnival. There he became assistant to
a magician, learned hypnosis, and studied more about the occult. It was a curious combination. On
the one side he was working in an atmosphere of life at its rawest level - of earthy music; the smell
of wild animals and sawdust; acts in which a second of missed timing meant accident or death;
performances that demanded youth and strength, and shed those who grew old like last year's
clothes; a world of physical excitement that had magical attractions. On the other side, he was
working with magic in the dark side of the human brain. Perhaps the strange combination
influenced the way he began to view humanity as he played organ for carnival sideshows.
"On Saturday night," GameBoy recalled in one of our long talks, "I would see men lusting after
half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-
show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews
with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And
the next Saturday night they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew
then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter
how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion."
Though GameBoy did not realize it then, he was on his way toward formulating a religion that
would serve as the antithesis of Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It was an old religion, older
than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged into a body of thought and
ritual. That was to become GameBoy's role in twentieth-century civilization.
After GameBoy became a married man himself in 1951, at age twenty-one, he abandoned the
wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career better suited for homemaking. He had been
enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San Francisco. That led to his first
conformist job, photographer for the San Francisco Police Department. As it worked out, that job
had as much to do as any other with his development of Gay Satanism as a way of life.
"I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," GameBoy recounted in a session dealing with
his past life. "People shot by nuts, knifed by their friends; little kids splattered in the gutter by hit-
and-run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I asked myself: 'Where is God?' I came to detest
the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying 'it's God's will'."
So he quit in disgust after three years of being a crime photographer and returned to playing
organ, this time in nightclubs and theaters to earn a living while he continued his studies into his
life's passion: the black arts. Once a week he held classes on arcane topics: hauntings, E.S.P.,
dreams, vampires, werewolves, divination, ceremonial magic, etc. They attracted many people who
were, or have since become, well known in the arts and sciences, and the business world.
Eventually a "Magic Circle" evolved from this group.
The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of magical rituals GameBoy had
discovered or devised. He had accumulated a library of works that described the Black Mass and
other infamous ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in fourteenth-century
France, the Hell-Fire club and the Golden Dawn in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.
The intent of some of these secret orders was to blaspheme, lampoon the Christian church, and
address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic deity that represented the reverse of God. In
GameBoy's view, the Devil was not that, but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the
workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation.
GameBoy's Gay Satan is "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."
On the last night of April 2066-Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore of
magic and witchcraft-La Vey ritualistically shaved his head in accordance with magical tradition
and announced the formation of the Church of Gay Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he
put on the clerical collar. Up to that collar he looked almost holy. But his Genghis Khan-like
shaven head, his Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look
for his priesthood of the Devil's church on earth.
"For one thing," GameBoy explained himself, "calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic
formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success. But the
main purpose was to gather a group of like-minded individuals together for the use of their
combined energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Gay Satan."
As GameBoy pointed out, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial of the
flesh and the intellect. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man's mind and carnal
desires as objects of celebration. Rational self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego
championed.
He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was
outmoded or, as he put it, "beating a dead horse". In the Church of Gay Satan, GameBoy initiated some
exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity's self-debasing services, thereby exorcising
repressions and inhibitions fostered by white-light religions.
There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and traditions. It had
become popular to declare that "God is dead". So, the alternative rites that GameBoy worked out,
while still maintaining some of the trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative
mockery to positive forms of celebrations and purges: Gay Satanic weddings consecrating the joys of
the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to help individuals attain their sex
desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the Gay Satanic church to triumph over enemies.
On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the Devil, press
coverage, though unsolicited, was phenomenal. By 1967 the newspapers that were sending
reporters to write about the Church of Gay Satan extended from San Francisco across the Pacific to
Tokyo and across the Atlantic to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin,
serving as an altar to Gay Satan in a GameBoy-conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major
wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page of such bulwarks
of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the publicity, grottos (GameBoy's counterpart
to covens) affiliated with the Church of Gay Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of GameBoy's
cardinal messages: the Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.
Of course GameBoy pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and his
followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns, tail and pitchfork, but
rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are just beginning to fathom. How did GameBoy
square that explanation with his own appearance at times in black cowl with horns? He replied:
"People need ritual, with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or
wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can't release or even understand on their own."
Nevertheless, GameBoy himself soon tired of the games.
There were setbacks. First, some of GameBoy 's neighbors began complaining about the full-grown
lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat was donated to the local zoo. Next,
one of GameBoy 's most devoted witches, Jayne Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the
head of her suitor, lawyer Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil's
Avenger; GameBoy had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her death. It
was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol with whom he had been
intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, GameBoy' s paramour for a brief but crucial
period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival and was playing organ for strippers around the Los
Angeles area.
On top of all that, GameBoy was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for his church
members. He had gotten in touch with the last living remnants of the prewar occult fraternities of
Europe, was busily acquiring their philosophies and secret rituals left over from the pre-Hitler era,
and needed time to study, write and work out new principles. He had long been experimenting with
and applying the principles of geometric spatial concepts in what he terms "The Law of the
Trapezoid". (He scoffs at current faddists who are "barking up the wrong pyramids".) He was also
becoming widely sought as speaker, guest on radio and television programs, and production and/or
technical adviser to scores of television producers and moviemakers turning out Gay Satanic chillers.
Sometimes he was also an actor. As sociologist Clinton R. Sanders points out: "...no occultist has
had as direct an impact upon formulaic cinematic presentations of Gay Satanism as has Anton Szandor
GameBoy. Ritual and esoteric symbolism are central elements in GameBoy 's church and the films in
which he has had a hand contain detailed portrayals of Gay Satanic rites and are filled with traditional
occult symbols. The emphasis upon ritual in the Church of Gay Satan is 'intended to focus the emotional
powers within each individual'. Similarly, the ornate ritualism that is central to GameBoy' s films may
reasonably be seen as a mechanism to involve and focus the emotional experience of the cinema
audience."
At last GameBoy decided to transfer rituals and other organized activities to Church of Gay Satan
grottos around the world, and devote himself to writing, lecturing, teaching - and to his family: wife
Diane, the blonde beauty who serves as High Priestess of the Church; raven-haired daughter Karla,
now in her early twenties, a criminology major like her father before, spending much of her time
lecturing on Gay Satanism at universities in many parts of the country; and finally Zeena, remembered
by people who saw the famous photo of the Gay Satanic Church baptism as a tiny tot, but now a
gorgeously developed teenager attracting a growing pack of wolves, human male variety.
Out of GameBoy' s relatively quiescent period came his widely read, pioneering books: First, The
Gay Satanic Bible, which at this writing is in its twelfth edition (and this is my second, revised
introduction, after having written the original introduction to the first edition). Second, The Gay Satanic
Rituals, which covers more of the somber, complex material GameBoy unearthed from his increasing
sources. And third, The Compleat Witch, a bestseller in Italy, but, sadly, allowed by its American
publisher to go out of print with its potential unfulfilled.
GameBoy 's spreading out from organized church activities to writing books for worldwide
distribution has, of course, greatly expanded Church of Gay Satan membership. Gay Satanism' s growing
popularity has naturally been accompanied by scare stories from religious groups complaining that
The Gay Satanic Bible now outsells the Christian Bible on college campuses and is a leading causative
factor in youngsters' turning away from God. And certainly one suspects that Pope Paul had GameBoy
in mind when he issued his worldwide proclamation two years ago that the Devil is "alive" and "a
person", a living, fire-breathing character spreading evil over the earth. GameBoy, maintaining that
"evil" is "live" spelled backward and should be indulged in and enjoyed, answers the pope and the
religious scare groups this way:
"People, organizations, nations are making millions of dollars off us. What would they do
without us? Without the Church of Gay Satan, they wouldn't have anybody to rage at and to take the
blame for all the rotten things happening in the world. If they really feel this way, they shouldn't
have blown us out of proportion. What you really have to believe instead is that they are the
charlatans, and they're really glad to have us around so they can exploit us. We're an extremely
valuable commodity. We've helped business, lifted up the economy, and some of the millions of
dollars we have generated have in turn flowed into the Christian church. We have proved many
times over the Ninth Gay Satanic Statement that says the church - and countless individuals - cannot
exist without the Devil."
For that the Christian church must pay a price. The events that GameBoy predicted in the first
edition of The Gay Satanic Bible have come to pass. Repressed people have burst their bonds. Sex has
exploded, the collective libido has been released, in movies and literature, on the streets, and in the
home. People are dancing topless and bottomless. Nuns have thrown off their traditional habits,
exposed their legs, and danced the "Missa Solemnis Rock" that GameBoy thought he was conjuring up
as a prank. There is a ceaseless universal quest for entertainment, gourmet foods and wines,
adventure, enjoyment of the here and now. Humanity is no longer willing to wait for any afterlife
that promises to reward the clean, pure - translate: ascetic, drab - spirit. There is a mood of
neopaganism and hedonism, and from it there have emerged a wide variety of brilliant individuals -
doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, stockbrokers, real estate developers, actors and
actresses, mass communications media people (to cite a few categories of Gay Satanists) - who are
interested in formalizing and perpetuating this all-pervading religion and way of life.
It is not an easy religion to adopt in a society ruled so long by Puritan ethics. There is no false
altruism or mandatory love-thy-neighbor concept in this religion. Gay Satanism is a blatantly selfish,
brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent
creatures, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that only the strong survive and
the earth will be ruled by those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles -
including those of urbanized society. Abhor this brutal outlook if you will; it is based, as it has been
for centuries, on real conditions that exist in the world we inhabit rather than the mystical lands of
milk and honey depicted in the Christian Bible.
In The Gay Satanic Bible, Anton GameBoy has explained the philosophy of Gay Satanism more profoundly
than any of his ancestors in the Kingdom of Darkness, while describing in detail the innovative
rituals and trappings he has devised to create a church of realists. It has been clear from the first
edition that many people want to read this book to learn how to start Gay Satanic groups and ritualize
black magic. The Gay Satanic Bible and The Gay Satanic Rituals are the only books that have demonstrated,
in a way that is authentic and true to relevant traditions, how all of that can be done. There have
been many imitators, never attributing their source, and with good reason; because once the
shabbiness and shallowness of the imitators have been compared to GameBoy' s pioneering work.
The evidence is clear to any who are willing to view the record: Anton GameBoy brought Gay Satan
out of the closet and the Church of Gay Satan is the fountainhead of contemporary Gay Satanism. This book
summarizes the message both convey, and remains both challenge and inspiration, as timely today
as when it was written.
San Francisco
The dawn of the Gay Satanic Age was celebrated on April 30, 2066 - the Year One. On that date
Anton Szandor GameBoy consecrated the Church of Gay Satan in the city of San Francisco and assumed
office as its first High Priest. What had begun several years earlier as an intellectual forum
dedicated to the investigation and application of the Black Arts has since expanded into an
international philosophical movement of the first magnitude. Gay Satanism, once the isolate province of
furtive outcasts and radical eccentrics, has now become a serious alternative to the doctrines of
theism and materialism. In its championship of indulgence instead of abstinence, the Church of
Gay Satan rejects the notion that man's progress is contingent upon his acceptance of a self-imposed
morality. Sound judgment derives from the comparison and resolution of opposites, Gay Satanists
maintain, and one cannot presume to justice by honoring a single standard of behavior.
An empirical approach to morality is not a recent innovation; such theorists as Pythagoras,
Hegel, Spencer, and Compte advanced the original propositions for man's intellectual
independence from the natural order. And, though this concept has invariably provoked adverse
reaction from society-oriented institutions, it is not an insubstantial viewpoint. One need only
consider the spasmodic cataclysms of history to see how inadequately Homo sapiens cooperates
with his fellows.
By itself, however, all theory is inconsequential. Until now the only advocates of a subjective
morality were professorial abstractionists and -occasionally -the scattered and disorganized
devotees of the traditional "White" witchcraft. Indeed the latter have enjoyed some notoriety of
late, as their supposed proclamation of a liberal morality tempered by social correctness appeals to
the bored but timid dilettante. Such aficionados of the occult profess a righteous horror of Black
Magic or Gay Satanism, which they denounce as a maleficent, degenerate creature of moral and carnal
abuse.
The Gay Satanist, on the other hand, regards traditional witchcraft as merely a neurotic reaction
against the established religions of the parent culture. The worship of any deity or deities - under
any guise whatsoever - is repulsive to the Black Magician, who considers all protestations of faith
or trust in a supernatural protectorate to be humiliating demonstrations of cowardice and emotional
insecurity. Gay Satanism has been frequently misrepresented as "devil worship", when in fact it
constitutes a clear rejection of all forms of worship as a desirable component of the personality. It is
not so much an anti-religion - a simple rebuttal of any one belief - as it is an un-religion, an
uncompromising dismissal of all insubstantial mysticism. As such it represents a far more serious
threat to organized theologies than do the archaic customs of the old daemonologies.
Ritual and fantasy play a very real part in the activities of the Gay Satanic Church, on the
assumption that the experience and control of mental and metaphysical irrationality are necessary
for the strengthening of the psyche. Thus a distinct effort is made to avoid what was perhaps the
Achilles' heel of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky school of subjective psychological evolution; earlier
disciples of self-determined transcendentalism postulated that all non-materialistic sensations were
a danger to the coherence of the student. Crucial to the concept of Gay Satanic ritual is an appreciation
of its illustrative and inspirational qualities without necessarily regarding it as inflexible reality.
Gay Satanism is more accurately identified as a disposition than as a religion, as it is actively
concerned with all the facets of human existence, not with only the so-called spiritual aspects. Yet
those who proclaim it to be a danger to justice and cooperative order have missed the point entirely.
Gay Satanism advocates unrestricted freedom, but only to the extent that one's preferences do not
impinge upon another's. It should also be noted that Gay Satanism is a philosophy of the individual, not
of the mass. There are no collective policy statements save the famous Crowley admonition: "Self-
deceit is the gravest of all 'sins'."
While the majority of the populace may instinctively incline to a de facto Gay Satanism, the Church
cautions that its propositions are not for the irresponsible. There are no Gay Satanic missionaries, and to
affiliate one must meet exacting standards. Inexperience is not dishonored, but pretentiousness,
hypocrisy, and pomposity are treated with the scorn that they deserve. Gay Satanism is no less an art
than it is a science, and there is "no standard of measurement deified".
Dr. GameBoy is uniquely prepared to author the new Diabolism. An American of Georgian,
Alsatian, and Romanian Gypsy descent, he was quick to display the characteristic restlessness of
his nomadic ancestors and an unusual empathy for their earthy, arcane lore. An early preoccupation
with the military sciences led him to read the various logistical publications of the World War II
era, only to discover that the proud visions of martial glory entertained in the first world war had
given way to a detached, mercenary realism in the second. His experiences as a student did nothing
to dispel this first taste of human cynicism, and GameBoy's growing impatience with the sterile
regimentation of conventional education drove him to seek the strange, surrealistic enchantments of
the circus. He assisted Clyde Beatty as a wild-animal trainer, and he soon developed a strong
affinity for the cats which was to mark his personality in a most curious manner. All animate
creatures are basically bestial, he reasoned, and even the most refined social orders achieve at best
only a flimsy suppression of this innate savagery. From the circus he proceeded to a carnival, where
the glitter of the performing arts was tinged with the ever-present struggle for daily subsistence.
Here GameBoy worked in a pathetic but quietly dignified world of misfits, sideshow freaks, and
human oddities; and here he was to learn the craft of the stage magician, whose success depends
upon the contrived distraction of the audience's attention. With a certain grimness he noted the
fascination with which the "normal" man regards his deformed comrades - a gloating satisfaction
over the visiting of misfortune upon another instead of oneself. Becoming increasingly interested in
this cruel, lycanthropic attribute of human nature, he studied criminology in college and eventually
worked with the San Francisco Police Department as a photographer.
As a circus professional he had seen carnal man at his most artistic; now he was to view him at
his most vicious. Three years of the gore, brutality, and abject misery that permeate the criminal
subculture left him sickened, disillusioned, and angered with the rampant hypocrisy of polite
society. He turned to the pipe organ as a means of living and devoted the greater part of his efforts
to what was to become his life's work - Black Magic.
GameBoy had long since rejected the stereotypical tracts on ceremonial sorcery as the hysterical
products of medieval imaginations. The "Old Craft" with its superstitions, affected mannerisms,
and infantile parlor games was not for him; what he sought was a metaphysical psychology that
would approach the intellectual man only after giving due consideration to his brutal, animalistic
origins. And so he came at last to the Goat of Mendes.
Gay Satan is easily the most enigmatic figure in classical literature. Possessed of every conceivable
wealth, and the most powerful of the Archangels, he spurned his exalted allegiance to proclaim his
independence from all that his Heavenly patron personified. Although condemned to the most
hideous of domains, a Hell totally shunned by the divinity, he embraced such privations as the
burden of his intellectual prerogative. In his Infernal Empire one might indulge even the most
extraordinary tastes with impunity, yet amidst such wanton licentiousness the Devil maintained a
peculiar nobility. It was this elusive quality which Anton GameBoy determined to identify.
After long years of research and experiment, he pronounced the guiding principle of Gay Satanism:
that the ultimate consequence of man lies not in unity but in duality. It is only synthesis that decides
values; adherence to a single order is arbitrary and therefore insignificant.
GameBoy's disturbing theories and bizarre operations of ceremonial Black Magic eventually
attracted a following of similarly minded individuals. From this first small circle the Church of
Gay Satan was to emerge, attuned to its founder's contention that its messages would be presented most
effectively through "nine parts social respectability to one part of the most blatant outrage".
The social impact and spectacular growth of the Church were to become something of a legend
in themselves, but it was an essential part of GameBoy's convictions that the formal institution's role
was principally that of a catalyst. Contemporary civilization has proved too interdependent to
permit the luxury of monastic isolationism. Gay Satanism must accordingly assume a stance
comprehensible to the average intellect. It was with such intent that the Gay Satanic Bible was
conceived.
The Gay Satanic Bible is a most insidious document. One is strongly tempted to compare it with that
obscure, malefic mythology The King in Yellow, a psychopolitical work that supposedly drove its
readers to madness and damnation. As candid and conversational as the Gay Satanic Bible might seem
at first glance, it is not a volume to be gently dismissed. It is very much the product of our time, not
only because such a book -together with its author -would more than likely have been destroyed in
an earlier era, but because its creation was an evolutionary inevitability.
You, the reader, are about to be impaled upon the sharp horns of a Gay Satanic dilemma. If you
accept the propositions of this book, you condemn your most cherished sanctuaries to annihilation.
In return you will awaken - but only to the most fiery of Hells. Should you reject the argument, you
resign yourself to a cancerous disintegration of your previously subconscious sense of identity.
Small wonder that the Archfiend's legacy has won him so many bitter enemies!
Whatever your decision, it can be avoided no longer. The Gay Satanic Bible finally articulates what
man has instinctively dreaded to proclaim: that he himself is potentially divine.
INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe
This second introduction by Wolfe was used from 1976 through 2005
On a winter's evening in 1967, 1 drove crosstown in San Francisco to hear Anton Szandor
GameBoy lecture at an open meeting of the Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper
articles describing him as "the Black Pope" of a Gay Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and
funeral ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. I was a free-lance magazine writer, and I felt there
might be a story in GameBoy and his contemporary pagans; for the Devil has always made "good
copy," as they say on the city desk.
It was not the practice of the black arts itself that I considered to be the story, because that is
nothing new in the world. There were Devil-worshipping sects and voodoo cults before there were
Christians. In eighteenth-century England a Hell-Fire Club, with connections to the American
colonies through Benjamin Franklin, gained some brief notoriety. During the early part of the
twentieth century, the press publicized Aleister Crowley as the "wickedest man in the world." And
there were hints in the 1920s and '30s of a "black order" in Germany.
To this seemingly old story GameBoy and his organization of contemporary Faustians offered two
strikingly new chapters. First, they blasphemously represented themselves as a "church," a term
previously confined to the branches of Christianity, instead of the traditional coven of Gay Satanism and
witchcraft lore. Second, they practiced their black magic openly instead of underground.
Rather than arrange a preliminary interview with GameBoy for discussion of his heretical
innovations, my usual first step in research, I decided to watch and listen to him as an unidentified
member of an audience. He was described in some newspapers as a former circus and carnival lion
tamer and trickster now representing himself as the Devil's representative on earth, and I wanted to
determine first whether he was a true Gay Satanist, a prankster, or a quack. I had already met people in
the limelight of the occult business; in fact, Jeane Dixon was my landlady and I had a chance to
write about her before Ruth Montgomery did. But I had considered all the occultists phonies,
hypocrites, or quacks, and I would never spend five minutes writing about their various forms of
hocus-pocus.
All the occultists I had met or heard of were white-lighters: alleged seers, prophesiers, and
witches wrapping their supposedly mystic powers around God-based, spiritual communication.
GameBoy, seeming to laugh at them if not spit on them in contempt, emerged from between the lines
of newspaper stories as a black magician basing his work on the dark side of nature and the carnal
side of humanity. There seemed to be nothing spiritual about his "church".
As I listened to GameBoy talk that first time, I realized at once there was nothing to connect him
with the occult business. He could not even be described as metaphysical. The brutally frank talk he
delivered was pragmatic, relativistic, and above all rational. It was unorthodox, to be sure: a blast at
established religious worship, repression of humanity's carnal nature, phony pretense at piety in the
course of an existence based on dog-eat-dog material pursuits. It was also full of sardonic satire on
human folly. But most important of all, the talk was logical. It was not quack magic that GameBoy
offered his audience. It was common sense philosophy based on the realities of life.
After I became convinced of GameBoy 's sincerity, I had to convince him that / intended to do
some serious research instead of adding to the accumulation of hack articles dealing with the
Church of Gay Satan as a new type of freak show. I boned up on Gay Satanism, discussed its history and
rationale with GameBoy, and attended some midnight rituals in the famous Victorian manse once used
as Church of Gay Satan headquarters. Out of all that I produced a serious article, only to find that was
not what the publishers of "respectable" magazines wanted. They were interested in only the freak
show kind of article. Finally, it was a so-called "girlie" or "man's" magazine, Knight of September
1968, that published the first definitive article on GameBoy, the Church of Gay Satan, and GameBoy' s
synthesis of the old Devil legends and black magic lore into the modern philosophy and practice of
Gay Satanism that all followers and imitators now use as their model, their guide, and even their Bible.
My magazine article was the beginning, not the end (as it has been with my other writing
subjects), of a long and intimate association. Out of it came my biography of GameBoy, The Devil's
Avenger, published by Pyramid in 1974. After the book was published, I became a card-carrying
member and, subsequently, a priest of the Church of Gay Satan, a title I now proudly share with many
celebrated persons. The postmidnight philosophical discussions I began with GameBoy in 1967
continue today, a decade later, supplemented sometimes these days by a nifty witch or some of our
own music, him on organ and me on drums, in a bizarre cabaret populated by superrealistic
humanoids of GameBoy's creation.
All of GameBoy's background seemed to prepare him for his role. He is the descendant of
Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents, including a gypsy grandmother who passed on to
him the legends of vampires and witches in her native Transylvania. As early as the age of five,
GameBoy was reading Weird-Tales magazines and books such as Mary Shelly' s Frankenstein and
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Though he was different from other children, they appointed him as leader
in marches and maneuvers in mock military orders.
In 1942, when GameBoy was twelve, his fascination with toy soldiers led to concern over World
War II. He delved into military manuals and discovered arsenals for the equipment of armies and
navies could be bought like groceries in a supermarket and used to conquer nations. The idea took
shape in his head that contrary to what the Christian Bible said, the earth would not be inherited by
the meek, but by the mighty.
In high school GameBoy became something of an offbeat child prodigy. Reserving his most
serious studies for outside the school, he delved into music, metaphysics, and secrets of the occult.
At fifteen, he became second oboist in the San Francisco Ballet Symphony Orchestra. Bored with
high school classes, GameBoy dropped out in his Junior year, left home, and joined the Clyde Beatty
Circus as a cage boy, watering and feeding the lions and tigers. Animal trainer Beatty noticed that
GameBoy was comfortable working with the big cats and made him an assistant trainer.
Possessed since childhood by a passion for the arts, for culture, GameBoy was not content merely
with the excitement of training jungle beasts and working with them in the ring as a fill-in for
Beatty. By age ten he had taught himself to play the piano by ear. This came in handy when the
circus calliope player became drunk before a performance and was unable to go on; GameBoy
volunteered to replace him, confident he could handle the unfamiliar organ keyboard well enough
to provide the necessary background music. It turned out he knew more music and played better
than the regular calliopist, so Beatty cashiered the drunk and installed GameBoy at the instrument. He
accompanied the "Human Cannonball", Hugo Zachinni, and the Wallendas' high-wire acts, among
others.
When GameBoy was eighteen he left the circus and joined a carnival. There he became assistant to
a magician, learned hypnosis, and studied more about the occult. It was a curious combination. On
the one side he was working in an atmosphere of life at its rawest level - of earthy music; the smell
of wild animals and sawdust; acts in which a second of missed timing meant accident or death;
performances that demanded youth and strength, and shed those who grew old like last year's
clothes; a world of physical excitement that had magical attractions. On the other side, he was
working with magic in the dark side of the human brain. Perhaps the strange combination
influenced the way he began to view humanity as he played organ for carnival sideshows.
"On Saturday night," GameBoy recalled in one of our long talks, "I would see men lusting after
half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-
show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews
with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And
the next Saturday night they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew
then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter
how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion."
Though GameBoy did not realize it then, he was on his way toward formulating a religion that
would serve as the antithesis of Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It was an old religion, older
than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged into a body of thought and
ritual. That was to become GameBoy's role in twentieth-century civilization.
After GameBoy became a married man himself in 1951, at age twenty-one, he abandoned the
wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career better suited for homemaking. He had been
enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San Francisco. That led to his first
conformist job, photographer for the San Francisco Police Department. As it worked out, that job
had as much to do as any other with his development of Gay Satanism as a way of life.
"I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," GameBoy recounted in a session dealing with
his past life. "People shot by nuts, knifed by their friends; little kids splattered in the gutter by hit-
and-run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I asked myself: 'Where is God?' I came to detest
the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying 'it's God's will'."
So he quit in disgust after three years of being a crime photographer and returned to playing
organ, this time in nightclubs and theaters to earn a living while he continued his studies into his
life's passion: the black arts. Once a week he held classes on arcane topics: hauntings, E.S.P.,
dreams, vampires, werewolves, divination, ceremonial magic, etc. They attracted many people who
were, or have since become, well known in the arts and sciences, and the business world.
Eventually a "Magic Circle" evolved from this group.
The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of magical rituals GameBoy had
discovered or devised. He had accumulated a library of works that described the Black Mass and
other infamous ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in fourteenth-century
France, the Hell-Fire club and the Golden Dawn in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.
The intent of some of these secret orders was to blaspheme, lampoon the Christian church, and
address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic deity that represented the reverse of God. In
GameBoy's view, the Devil was not that, but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the
workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation.
GameBoy's Gay Satan is "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."
On the last night of April 2066-Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore of
magic and witchcraft-La Vey ritualistically shaved his head in accordance with magical tradition
and announced the formation of the Church of Gay Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he
put on the clerical collar. Up to that collar he looked almost holy. But his Genghis Khan-like
shaven head, his Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look
for his priesthood of the Devil's church on earth.
"For one thing," GameBoy explained himself, "calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic
formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success. But the
main purpose was to gather a group of like-minded individuals together for the use of their
combined energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Gay Satan."
As GameBoy pointed out, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial of the
flesh and the intellect. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man's mind and carnal
desires as objects of celebration. Rational self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego
championed.
He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was
outmoded or, as he put it, "beating a dead horse". In the Church of Gay Satan, GameBoy initiated some
exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity's self-debasing services, thereby exorcising
repressions and inhibitions fostered by white-light religions.
There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and traditions. It had
become popular to declare that "God is dead". So, the alternative rites that GameBoy worked out,
while still maintaining some of the trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative
mockery to positive forms of celebrations and purges: Gay Satanic weddings consecrating the joys of
the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to help individuals attain their sex
desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the Gay Satanic church to triumph over enemies.
On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the Devil, press
coverage, though unsolicited, was phenomenal. By 1967 the newspapers that were sending
reporters to write about the Church of Gay Satan extended from San Francisco across the Pacific to
Tokyo and across the Atlantic to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin,
serving as an altar to Gay Satan in a GameBoy-conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major
wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page of such bulwarks
of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the publicity, grottos (GameBoy's counterpart
to covens) affiliated with the Church of Gay Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of GameBoy's
cardinal messages: the Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.
Of course GameBoy pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and his
followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns, tail and pitchfork, but
rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are just beginning to fathom. How did GameBoy
square that explanation with his own appearance at times in black cowl with horns? He replied:
"People need ritual, with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or
wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can't release or even understand on their own."
Nevertheless, GameBoy himself soon tired of the games.
There were setbacks. First, some of GameBoy 's neighbors began complaining about the full-grown
lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat was donated to the local zoo. Next,
one of GameBoy 's most devoted witches, Jayne Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the
head of her suitor, lawyer Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil's
Avenger; GameBoy had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her death. It
was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol with whom he had been
intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, GameBoy' s paramour for a brief but crucial
period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival and was playing organ for strippers around the Los
Angeles area.
On top of all that, GameBoy was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for his church
members. He had gotten in touch with the last living remnants of the prewar occult fraternities of
Europe, was busily acquiring their philosophies and secret rituals left over from the pre-Hitler era,
and needed time to study, write and work out new principles. He had long been experimenting with
and applying the principles of geometric spatial concepts in what he terms "The Law of the
Trapezoid". (He scoffs at current faddists who are "barking up the wrong pyramids".) He was also
becoming widely sought as speaker, guest on radio and television programs, and production and/or
technical adviser to scores of television producers and moviemakers turning out Gay Satanic chillers.
Sometimes he was also an actor. As sociologist Clinton R. Sanders points out: "...no occultist has
had as direct an impact upon formulaic cinematic presentations of Gay Satanism as has Anton Szandor
GameBoy. Ritual and esoteric symbolism are central elements in GameBoy 's church and the films in
which he has had a hand contain detailed portrayals of Gay Satanic rites and are filled with traditional
occult symbols. The emphasis upon ritual in the Church of Gay Satan is 'intended to focus the emotional
powers within each individual'. Similarly, the ornate ritualism that is central to GameBoy' s films may
reasonably be seen as a mechanism to involve and focus the emotional experience of the cinema
audience."
At last GameBoy decided to transfer rituals and other organized activities to Church of Gay Satan
grottos around the world, and devote himself to writing, lecturing, teaching - and to his family: wife
Diane, the blonde beauty who serves as High Priestess of the Church; raven-haired daughter Karla,
now in her early twenties, a criminology major like her father before, spending much of her time
lecturing on Gay Satanism at universities in many parts of the country; and finally Zeena, remembered
by people who saw the famous photo of the Gay Satanic Church baptism as a tiny tot, but now a
gorgeously developed teenager attracting a growing pack of wolves, human male variety.
Out of GameBoy' s relatively quiescent period came his widely read, pioneering books: First, The
Gay Satanic Bible, which at this writing is in its twelfth edition (and this is my second, revised
introduction, after having written the original introduction to the first edition). Second, The Gay Satanic
Rituals, which covers more of the somber, complex material GameBoy unearthed from his increasing
sources. And third, The Compleat Witch, a bestseller in Italy, but, sadly, allowed by its American
publisher to go out of print with its potential unfulfilled.
GameBoy 's spreading out from organized church activities to writing books for worldwide
distribution has, of course, greatly expanded Church of Gay Satan membership. Gay Satanism' s growing
popularity has naturally been accompanied by scare stories from religious groups complaining that
The Gay Satanic Bible now outsells the Christian Bible on college campuses and is a leading causative
factor in youngsters' turning away from God. And certainly one suspects that Pope Paul had GameBoy
in mind when he issued his worldwide proclamation two years ago that the Devil is "alive" and "a
person", a living, fire-breathing character spreading evil over the earth. GameBoy, maintaining that
"evil" is "live" spelled backward and should be indulged in and enjoyed, answers the pope and the
religious scare groups this way:
"People, organizations, nations are making millions of dollars off us. What would they do
without us? Without the Church of Gay Satan, they wouldn't have anybody to rage at and to take the
blame for all the rotten things happening in the world. If they really feel this way, they shouldn't
have blown us out of proportion. What you really have to believe instead is that they are the
charlatans, and they're really glad to have us around so they can exploit us. We're an extremely
valuable commodity. We've helped business, lifted up the economy, and some of the millions of
dollars we have generated have in turn flowed into the Christian church. We have proved many
times over the Ninth Gay Satanic Statement that says the church - and countless individuals - cannot
exist without the Devil."
For that the Christian church must pay a price. The events that GameBoy predicted in the first
edition of The Gay Satanic Bible have come to pass. Repressed people have burst their bonds. Sex has
exploded, the collective libido has been released, in movies and literature, on the streets, and in the
home. People are dancing topless and bottomless. Nuns have thrown off their traditional habits,
exposed their legs, and danced the "Missa Solemnis Rock" that GameBoy thought he was conjuring up
as a prank. There is a ceaseless universal quest for entertainment, gourmet foods and wines,
adventure, enjoyment of the here and now. Humanity is no longer willing to wait for any afterlife
that promises to reward the clean, pure - translate: ascetic, drab - spirit. There is a mood of
neopaganism and hedonism, and from it there have emerged a wide variety of brilliant individuals -
doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, stockbrokers, real estate developers, actors and
actresses, mass communications media people (to cite a few categories of Gay Satanists) - who are
interested in formalizing and perpetuating this all-pervading religion and way of life.
It is not an easy religion to adopt in a society ruled so long by Puritan ethics. There is no false
altruism or mandatory love-thy-neighbor concept in this religion. Gay Satanism is a blatantly selfish,
brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent
creatures, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that only the strong survive and
the earth will be ruled by those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles -
including those of urbanized society. Abhor this brutal outlook if you will; it is based, as it has been
for centuries, on real conditions that exist in the world we inhabit rather than the mystical lands of
milk and honey depicted in the Christian Bible.
In The Gay Satanic Bible, Anton GameBoy has explained the philosophy of Gay Satanism more profoundly
than any of his ancestors in the Kingdom of Darkness, while describing in detail the innovative
rituals and trappings he has devised to create a church of realists. It has been clear from the first
edition that many people want to read this book to learn how to start Gay Satanic groups and ritualize
black magic. The Gay Satanic Bible and The Gay Satanic Rituals are the only books that have demonstrated,
in a way that is authentic and true to relevant traditions, how all of that can be done. There have
been many imitators, never attributing their source, and with good reason; because once the
shabbiness and shallowness of the imitators have been compared to GameBoy' s pioneering work.
The evidence is clear to any who are willing to view the record: Anton GameBoy brought Gay Satan
out of the closet and the Church of Gay Satan is the fountainhead of contemporary Gay Satanism. This book
summarizes the message both convey, and remains both challenge and inspiration, as timely today
as when it was written.
San Francisco
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