His whole development seemed to prepare Anton Szandor LaVey - from his followers also called "The black pope" - for just this role in the later life. He was a descendant of Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents. One of his grandmothers was a Gipsy who told him stories about vampires and witches from her homeland Transylvania. Already at the age of five years he read "Weird Times" (Uncanny stories - American magazine) and books like Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", or Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Although he differed from other children, these appointed him the leader with parades and manoeuvres in fictive military connections. In 1942 when LaVey was 12 years old, his predilection for tin soldiers made him think to himself about the 2nd world war. He became engrossed in military manuals and discovered that the arsenals with which armies and navies are equipped to conquer nations are to be acquired so simply as food at the supermarket. In him grew the thought that - against the statement of the Bible - not the weak, but the powerful figures control the world.

In the High School LaVey was a sort of strange child prodigy. However, his more intensive studies took place beyond the lessons. He became engrossed in music, metaphysics and the secrets of the occultism. With 15 he became of the second Oboist of the San Francisco Clenching Symphony Orchestra. He broke off the High School soon bored, left his home and joined to "Clyde Beatty Circus" as a keeper where he was responsible for the feeding of the lions and tigers.

When the trainer Beatty noted, how cleverly LaVey was in dealing with the great cats, he made him his assistant. From childhood LaVey had a predilection for art and culture, so that him the charm to train jungle inhabitant and to work with them as a deputy Beatty' did not give satisfaction. Already at the age of 10 years he had taught himself the piano plays after hearing what turned out advantageous, as the Calliope the player who accompanied the presentations musically before the image was got drunk, and could not appear.

LaVey offered voluntarily as a substitute, on it trusting that he could well handle with the unusual keyboard enough to generate the desired accompanying music. It turned out that he understood more of music, and better could play, than the real Calliope player, so that Beatty dismissed the drunkenly without further ado and used LaVey in the instrument., Among the rest, he accompanied in such a way Hugo Zachinni, "the living cannon ball" and the high rope file of the Wallendas.

With 18 LaVey left the circus, and joined to a fair. There he became an assistant of a magician, learnt hypnosis and dealt even more intensely with the Okkultimus. It was a strange combination - on the one hand he worked in a very rough atmosphere - worldly music, the smell after wild animals and saw filings. The presentations by which low inattentiveness meant accident or death, appearances which assumed youthful strength and with their older than old iron were pushed away. A world full nervous tickle and attractions. On the other hand, he occupied with the magic, the dark side of the human mind. Maybe it was just this strange mixture which started to influence his opinion about the humanity, while he on the fair images organ played..." Of Saturday evening", remembers LaVey", I saw regularly men who stared lascivious at the half-naked dance girls on the fair, and if I accompanied the events of the evangelists in a tent at the other end of the fairground on the organ of Sunday morning, I saw again the same men. Here they sat with her women and children on the benches and asked God for forgiveness, and freeing from her carnal desires. And then in the next Saturday evening they were again on the fairground and stared at the girls. To me it became clear that the Christian church succeeds only by their false holiness, and that the gender desire of the person asserts itself over and over again."

After LaVey 1951, at the age of 21 years, had married, he left the fair to begin a career which was suited more for the creation of own household. He had booked in the city college of San Francisco a course as a criminologist what led to his first, socially approved activity - namely photographer at the police of San Francisco. "I saw the bloodiest, most terrible side of the human nature", tells LaVey. "The people who shot from lunatics, from her friends stabbed; the small children who were left by fleeing drivers blood-flooded in the street edge. I asked myself "Where is God? "and began, the devout position of the people who only said with acts of violence always: "It is a God's will" to despise." Although he did not know it at that time yet, was LaVey on the way to formulate a religion which should serve as an antithesis for the Christianity and his Jewish inheritance. It was an old religion, older than the Christianity, or the Judaism. Nevertheless, their thoughts and rituals had been never brought in firm forms by thought or rituals. This should be LaVey's an assignment in the twentieth century of the civilisation.

At the last April night of 1966 - the Walpurgis night, to the most important party in the tradition of magic and witch's being, shaven LaVey to itself ritually his hair, in kind of old sharp judge, and announced the setting up of the Church of Satan. He recognised that a church was used which rediscovered mind and desires of the person as an occasion for the celebration." Because the admiration of the meat prepares delight, "he said, "a marvellous temple of the sensory joys should originate" First the Mitgliederschaft of the "Church of Satan" limited itself to only about 100 members, only late she reached to bigger popularity. Thus were, or are prominent members among other things Roman Polanski (Rosemary's baby; here LaVey played the devil), Sammy Davis Jr., later also King slide moon and Marylin Manson. By the work LaVey's subsidiary Zeena, the "cos" also reached to Amsterdam and from there in Switzerland and remaining Europe. She counted about 10,000 members to her brilliant time.