Endnotes

Preface

1. As a participant in Mapplethorpe’s life and in the aftermath of the scandal, I have little doubt that his many famous photographs of himself as Satan, particularly with a bullwhip tailing out of his anus, were the last straw for his apocalyptic abusers who fantasized that they were wrestling the Devil, his pomps, and his works. This fundamentalist perception grew also among the Manhattan Art Reich. On June 5, 1995, the cover of The New Yorker dubbed him “Prince of Dark Rooms” for a piece by grotesque writer Peter Conrad. On June 25, 1995, in the New York Times review “Fallen Angel,” Grace Glueck wrote in the way typical of Puritans made lubricious by homosexuality, sadomasochism, and Satan. She demonized him as a black magician with a cape, and featured a 1985 self-portrait of Mapplethorpe with horns on his head. Printing the same irresistible portrait, the July 1995 Vanity Fair characterized Mapplethorpe in the sleazy Patricia Morrisroe reportage “The Demon Romantics” using code like “Dionysian” and clucking over his mantra to his sex partners and some of his models: “Do it for Satan.”

Introductory Interview

1. This interview is so often referenced, quoted, and reprinted, that specific notice is here posted that the entire question-and-answer interview is, with all rights reserved, © 1971, 2004 Jack Fritscher. Beware that no part of this interview, either questions or answers, may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.

2. George Wallace, segregationist governor of Alabama, ran for president of the United States on a third-party ticket in 1968, causing the defection of southern Democrats from the Democratic Party, which thus made possible the election of Republican Richard Nixon (who was, years later, forced to resign the presidency for his political crimes). The Green Party’s Ralph Nader repeated this political ritual in 2000, taking votes from Democrat Al Gore, and thus making possible the presidency of George W. Bush—who has, incidentally, said that witchcraft is not a religion.

3. Buxom blonde movie star Mansfield, alleged lover of President F. John Kennedy, was decapitated in a car crash while driving out of New Orleans on the foggy night of June 29, 1967.

4. Roman Polanski won the Academy Award 2003 as best director for his film The Pianist (2002). He has directed more than twenty-two films including Repulsion (1965), Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Macbeth (1971), Chinatown (1974), and the satanic-themed The Ninth Gate (2000). Five times nominated as best director, he was prevented by law from attending the March 23, 2003, Oscar telecast in Hollywood as he remained a fugitive from America because of his conviction for statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in 1979.

5. Montague Summers, 1880–1948, was the author of The Vampire—His Kith and Kin: The Philosophy of Vampirism (1928), and Witchcraft and Black Magic (1946).

6. In the thirteenth century, writer and bishop Saint Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great, ca. 1200–1280) was the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), the premiere theologian of the Catholic Church. Even during his life Albertus was rumored to have been an alchemist who found the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which according to legend he gave to Thomas Aquinas.

7. See Jack Fritscher, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera (New York: Hastings House, 1994).

8. Blanche Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey (Los Angeles: Feral House, 1992); Blanche Barton, The Church of Satan: A History of the World’s Most Notorious Religion (New York: Hells Kitchen Productions, 1990); Blanche Barton, The Cloven Hoof, P.O. Box 210666, Chula Vista, Calif. Available online at http://www.ChurchofSatan.com.

cHAPTER ONE: The Medium as Medium

1. Rossell Hope Robbins in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: Crown, 1969), 338.

2. Edward Lucie-Smith, Joan of Arc (London: Penguin, 2000), 213, 260, 261.

3. Robbins, 340, quoting George Burr in Johnson’s Encyclopedia.

4. See John Fritscher, “The Sensibility and Conscious Style of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation,” Bucknell Review, no. 17, December 1969, 80–90.

5. Two other founders of the GAA were Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell and the antipatriarchist Arthur Evans. In 1978 when I was editor in chief of International Drummer magazine, I published Arthur Evan’s San Francisco debut article as the “Red Queen.” His new book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture (1978), following my own witchcraft book by six years, had made him a radical faerie of interest to me—precisely because he was the polar opposite of the masculine-identified readers whom the cultural force of Drummer represented. (See “Are You Butch Enough?” Drummer, no. 25, December 1978.) The GAA inspired the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD), founded in 1985.

6. Dr. Leo Louis Martello, Gay, December 31, 1969, 4.

7. Martello, Gay, April 27, 1970, 4.

8. Martello, Gay, January 19, 1970, 4.

9. Jack Fritscher, “Chasing Danny Boy,” in Chasing Danny Boy: Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros, ed. Mark Hemry (San Francisco: Palm Drive, 2000), 79–98.

10. Martello, Gay, April 27, 1970.

11. Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New York: Meridian, 1961), 215, 216.

12. See Arkon Daraul, Secret Societies: A History (New York: MJF Books/Fine Creative Media/Carol, 1989), 168.

13. Thom Gunn, interview with the author, Western Michigan University, 1970.

14. Marc Ambinder, “‘You Helped This Happen’: Falwell’s Controversial Comments Draw Fire,” ABC News, September 14, 2001. Available online at http://www.ABCnews.com.

15. In many ways, Anger was the pop-culture recruiter for the “Gay Magic Mafia” that circled the “Crowley Connection” to art and music in the 1960s and 1970s. Without Crowley via Anger, the U.S. Senate would never have disbanded the National Endowment for the Arts. Satanism connects the dots in this way. As Crowley influenced Anger, Anger influenced Andy Warhol. Without Warhol, New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe would never have bothered posing himself in the signature self-portraits as an urban Satanist, replete with horns and a tail made from a leather whip, that he used to illustrate A Season in Hell by poet Arthur Rimbaud (1986). The splendid Mapplethorpe—“The Prince of Darkrooms”—was demonized on the floor of the U.S. Senate, as had earlier pop-culture icons Charlie Chaplin, Ingrid Bergman (for not living up to the pure woman she played in the movie Saint Joan of Arc), and Elizabeth Taylor. Mapplethorpe’s perfect, pure, and formal photographs of flowers, faces, and fetishes were deemed Satanic. In the mother of all fundamentalist hissy-fits, Republican senator Jesse Helms, equating art and pornography, single-handedly used the cause célèbre that was Mapplethorpe to destroy federal funding for any but the most censored of artists supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

16. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, The New York Musicals of Comden and Green: On the Town, Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing (New York; Applause Books, 1997), 189.

CHAPTER TWO: The Selling of the Age of Aquarius

1. See Peter Bart, “A Black Eye for Old Blue Eyes: A Book Review of George Jacobs’ My Life with Frank Sinatra,” Variety, June 16–22, 2003, 4.

2. Eden Ahbez, “Nature Boy,” Crestview Music/Edwin H. Morris and Company, 1947.

3. See John Fritscher, “Some Attitudes and a Posture: Religious Metaphor and Ritual in Tennessee Williams’ Query of the American God,” Modern Drama 13 (1970), 201–15.

4. In the more recent television series The Sopranos, the astrological theme song performed by the techno-group Alabama 3 (A3) at the opening of each episode, “Woke Up This Morning: Chosen One Mix,” warns the predestined Italian American Mafia characters about both the moon and malocchio (the evil eye). Paraphrased, the lyric warns that to “shine” they must “burn,” because astrologically their birth was “under a bad sign” with their eyes reflecting “a blue moon.”

5. Aureus display advertisement, In Touch for Men, November 1986, 17.

6. Anton LaVey, album cover “Notes for The Satanic Mass,” The Satanic Mass Ceremony (Murgenstrumm Records, 1968).

7. Everett Henderson, “What Makes Mick Mighty? Can He Be All Sexes to All People?” Gay, December 15, 1969, 6.

8. See John Fritscher, “Malory’s Morte d’Arthur: Sex and Magic in King Arthur’s Camelot; the Search for King Arthur, the Grail, Magic, Women, Family, Courtly Love, and Grace,” Master of Arts Thesis, Loyola University, 1967. Available online at http://www.jackfritscher.com.

9. As witchcraft, magic, and sorcery continue to refold themselves, presenting everything old as new again, The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman, was yet another version of The Turn of the Screw. Witchcraft, sorcery, and magic continue to recombine themselves. The musical Dance of the Vampires (2003)—based on the Roman Polanski film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)—flopped on Broadway, but continued as a hit in Europe, where Vampires had opened in Vienna in 1997.

10. John Nevin, “Orgasmic Theater of the Supernatural,” National Close-Up Magazine, April 27, 1970.

11. Sam Steward, interview with the author, June 1972.

12. The young filmmakers who shot the box office phenomenon The Blair Witch Project (1999) named their production company “Haxan.” The Blair Witch Project spawned sequels (Blair Witch 2), a parody (in Mad magazine), and lesbian porn (The Erotic Witch Project).

13. In 1986, Larry Harvey, on a beach in San Francisco burnt a large effigy that, by the way of alternative-culture momentum, has escalated into the epic Burning Man festival occurring annually on Labor Day in Nevada. Harvey denies any connection of Burning Man to witchcraft or Wicca. However, many practitioners scoff at his denial the way Anton LaVey scoffed at white witches who claim they never use black magic. Whatever conceptual-artist Harvey originally intended, the fact is that Burning Man has been co-opted by all kinds of “trad” and “rad” party-goers, artists, gay and straight fornicators, witches, new-age hipsters, Wiccans, nudists, and eco-worshiping pagans. Burning Man is to American fundamentalism what the French resistance was to Nazis. Burning Man is a modern primitive resurrection of sacred dance, music, tattooing, piercing, shamanism, witchcraft, drugs, sex, and iconoclastic Satanism—as typified at the hamburger tent called “McSatan’s.” Rising up once a year—more often than Brigadoon, Burning Man is quite simply the rebellious Luciferian decade of the 1960s revived. And not in vain. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Burning Man is the only party happening on a numb planet.

14. Edward Lucie-Smith, Eroticism in Western Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 227, 239.

15. Herbert Brean, “Hidden Sell Technique Is Almost Here,” Life, March 31, 1958, 102–14.

16. Frederic de Arechaga, interview with the author, September 20, 1969.

17. Joseph R. Rosenberger, The Demon Lovers (Atlanta: Pendulum, 1969), 205.

18. Tennessee Williams, “Preface, The Slapstick Comedy,” Esquire, August 1965, 95.

19. Catherine Yronwode, advertising brochure, Lucky Mojo Company. Available online at http://Luckymojo.com.

CHAPTER THREE: Sex and Witchcraft

1. See Joe Hyams, “A Revealing Look into the Mysterious Mind of Charles ‘Satan’ Manson,” National Enquirer, February 15, 1970.

2. Anton LaVey, National Insider, February 22, 1970.

3. Frederic de Arechaga, interview with the author, September 20, 1969.

4. Adrian Kirch, interview with the author, February 8, 1970.

5. Gerald Gardner, The Book of Shadows, quoted from pages purportedly hand-copied by Gardner, and shown to the author in a private office at the East End Public Bath and Wash House across the street from the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, London, May 17, 1969. Within cult, no codified and copyrighted true Book of Shadows exists because copies of this ever-adapting document are typically hand-written by covens and witches; on the internet, the very mutable (and some say tampered-with) content of The Book of Shadows is reflected in the thousands of files posted. Commercially, Robin B. May and Gerald Brosseau have created a book titled Gardner’s Book of Shadows (New York: Allisone Press, 2000).

6. Tom Burke, “Princess Leda’s Castle in the Air,” Esquire, March 1970, 107.

7. Edward Lucie-Smith, Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 95.

8. Brothers of Blasphemy, internet party invitation, collection of the author, November 7, 2003.

9. Sons of Satan personal ad, Drummer, April 1989, 92.

10. William Carney, The Real Thing (New York: Putnam, 1968), 49, 50, 119, 122.

11. Ibid., 43.

12. Ibid., 47.

13. Jack Fritscher, Some Dance to Remember (Stamford, Conn.: Knights Press, 1990), 276–78.

14. In June 1993, Esquire revisited Lois’s Ali cover, and brought it out of the closet, by shooting the very reluctant gay icon “Marky Mark” Wahlberg stripped to the waist, bound to a stake with ropes, groping his crotch and screaming. Peggy Sirota shot the photo of Wahlberg as a kind of postmodern Saint Sebastian, to illustrate the feature article “The Penitent Marky Mark and the Fabulous New Straight Camp.”

15. Edward Lucie-Smith, Eroticism in Western Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 265.

16. Fritscher, Some Dance, 253.

17. Ibid., 161.

18. Ibid., 173.

19. Marco Vassi, The Metasex Manifesto (New York: Bantam Books, Penthouse Press, Ltd, 1976), 89–94.

20. Fritscher, Some Dance, 239.

21. Mark Thompson, introduction to Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice (Boston: Alyson, 1991), xiii.

22. Carney, The Real Thing, 47.

23. Anton LaVey, private conversation with the author, August 3, 1971.

24. Heribert Jone and Urban Adelman, Moral Theology, additional translation and editing by Jack Fritscher (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1961).

25. Michelle Carr and Elvia Lahman, Velvet Hammer e-zine, souvenir program of the Velvet Hammer Burlesque Company, “Interview with Anton LaVey,” September 11, 1997. Available online at http://www.velvethammerburlesque.com.

26. Anton LaVey, private conversation with the author, August 3, 1971.

27. Anton LaVey, informational brochure for the Church of Satan, 1969.

28. Alex Sanders, Alex Sanders Lectures (New York: Magickal Childe, 1984), 29.

29. June Johns, Mensa Bulletin, October–November, 1969.

30. Ibid.

31. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (New York: Signet Classic, 1959), 355–57.

32. Kim Klein, The Washington Post: Potomac, May 10, 1970.

33. Gershon Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 575.

34. Steve Dunleavy, “The Incredible Story of Satan and His Fanatic Followers,” National Enquirer, January 11, 1970.

35. Anton LaVey, National Insider, January 4, 1970.

36. Daniel St. Albin Greene, “There May Be a Witch Next Door,” National Observer, October 13, 1969, 24.

37. LeJeunesse, interview with the author, May 15, 1970.

CHAPTER FOUR: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth

1. Free-thinking feminist Annie Besant, 1847–1933, met Madame Blavatsky in 1887 and converted from Christianity to Blavatsky’s theosophy. When Blavatsky died in 1891, the Theosophical Society split in two, with Besant as head of one branch.