The Magus in the Age of Satan

Although certainly, some may have thought themselves Magi, none were regarded as such by other magicians of the Aeon of Horus. No one had come forth within the Western Esoteric Tradition. No one had come forth in the Easter Esoteric Traditions. The only one who did come forth and was arguably Recognized by the World for a time was one who had come “from no expected house”: Anton Szandor LaVey (1930 CE – 1997 CE).

Anton Szandor LaVey began life as the more prosaic Howard Stanton Levey. The tale of Howard Stanton Levey and his transformation into Anton Szandor LaVey, Magus of the Age of Satan, has been well documented elsewhere. For those interested, the heavily documented Church of Satan by Dr. Michael A. Aquino is excellent. It makes a good contrast to the more personal account of LaVey provided in Burton Wolfe’s The Black Pope. This piece will focus on LaVey’s contributions to the notion of the Magus.

LaVey was not a trained scholar nor a close student of any field. He was an autodidact in several fields and a talented amateur visual and musical artist. What he excelled in intellectually was getting a sense of the undercurrents in human behavior. This was aided by his being perfectly comfortable accepting humanity as it was rather than as some ideology would prefer it to be.

This capacity gave him a rather dismal view of much of what passed for “occult wisdom,” with perhaps his best critique being summed up in the introduction to The Satanic Rituals:

Many magical curricula are padded beyond belief with pseudo-esoteric data, the purpose of which is:

(a) to make it tougher to learn since no one places any credence in what comes too easy (though they constantly seek shortcuts, giveaways, and miracles);

(b) to provide many things that can go wrong so that if a ritual doesn’t work, it can be said that the student was delinquent in his studies;

(c) to discourage all but the most idle, bored, talentless, and barren (translation=introspective, mystical, spiritual) persons. Contrary to popular assumption, esoteric doctrines do not discourage non-achievers but actually encourage them to dwell in loftier ivory towers.

Those with the greatest degree of natural magical ability are often far too busy with other activities to learn the “finer” points of the Sephiroth, Tarot, I Ching, etc.

 This is not intended to suggest that there is no value in arcane wisdom. But, just because one memorizes every name in a telephone directory, it does not mean he is intimately acquainted with each person listed.

A young LaVey gravitated towards the figure of Satan and the notion that He should have a Church of his own. This had been the one ingredient wholly lacking in the Golden Dawn’s integration of the magical ideas of the Early Modern Period and only shallowly touched upon by Aleister Crowley. For LaVey, the Prince of Darkness, its Witches and Warlocks, its profane rites, and Blasphemous proclamations would become the center of gravity of his synthesis.

LaVey had seen that the world had changed. The end of the 19th Century was the end of the Modern Period. The past superstitions were irrelevant to the human animal. Man’s religions were lies for the sake of individual psychological coping or mass social control. What those social forces had hated and repressed as the domain of Satan, humanity’s animal and carnal desires, as well as his higher capacities for reason and artistic expression unbound by “decency,” were not the Enemies of humanity’s fulfillment but the very road to it. Rather than cast out Satan, why not valorize this shunned emblem of all we were and ever could be?

LaVey’s ground-level acceptance of humans as they were rather than as anyone would wish them to be would coalesce into what has been Recognized as his Word: Indulgence. This would be the central principle behind his ideas and Teachings, the Word of the Age of Satan, and the first significant innovation in the Occult world since Crowley. It also came as a part of a seismic shifting of social values that propelled LaVey towards international celebrity and, for a short time, serious regard.

Related to the notion of Magus, LaVey took a fairly pragmatic approach. He did not care about Aeons or significant contributions to the realm of philosophy. He described the Magus V° of his Church of Satan in his February 15, 1970, National Insider column “Letters to the Devil” in the following manner:

“All Satanic Masters [IV°] are automatically encouraged to work towards the position of Magus, but encouragement by this stage of the game is hardly necessary, as without the inventiveness and innovation potential which is required for the Magus, they would never have become Satanic Master in the First Place.

…

My position as Magus is predicated upon my bringing of Satanism to the light of day in an acceptable form for the first time in history.”

In November 1970, he would, under the pseudonym “John M. Kincaid” for the Church of Satan membership newsletter Cloven Hoof expand upon this:

The Title of Magus V° is conferred upon members of the IV° who have discovered and brought forth a new magical principle and utilized it in a manner that profoundly affects the activities of the world. The position held by Anton LaVey as High Priest is monarchical in nature, papal in degree, and absolute in power. His exalted position is the result of doing what no other man has done in the span of a millennium: bringing Satanism into the world as an organized, legitimate, aboveground persuasion – and with it restoring the dignity of man’s own godhead. 

LaVey would never Recognize another Magus within the Age of Satan and the Church of Satan. He did not do so from 1966 to 1975 CE period of his most active public Work. He did not do so after 1975 CE until his death in 1997 CE, when he mentored a cadre of fringe artists and entrepreneurs. LaVey alone would be the one Magus of the Age of Satan.

His Teachings and his example, positive and negative, did prepare one other for the Task of Magus: Michael A. Aquino. It would be this man, with the ren of Ra-En-Set, who would clarify the doctrine of Aeons and create a system that allowed for but did not demand the capacity of other Magi to come into being. And he would do it with his Utterance of Xeper, the Eternal Word of the Aeon of Set.