How Satan Became a Hollywood Movie Star
And Why Avon Books Created and Published The Satanic Bible
Prologue
The other day, I was in an used bookstore and came across a well-worn paperback with a black cover and purple pentagram: The Satanic Bible. I picked it up and leafed through it.
The Satanic Bible is a perfectly lousy book, not because of it’s dark content but because it is so badly written. In the late 1960s, Avon Books came up with the title. The publishing house wanted to cash-in on the commercial success of Rosemary’s Baby, a novel by Ira Levin, about a Manhattan housewife who gets impregnated by Satan. The financial success of the novel provoked a blockbuster motion picture.
I smiled as I remembered the history of The Satanic Bible. It’s author, Anton Lavey, claimed to have been the guy in the red leather suit who, in the movie of Rosemary’s Baby, impregnated Rosemary played by a very young Mia Farrow.
Anton Lavey certainly looked the part of a malevolent supernatural critter, but he did not play the part in the movie. It was a lie. Most of the book is plagerized from other occult sources.
The takeaway-truth is that this year, The Satanic Bible celebrates its 50th anniversary. It is now onto it’s fifteenth printing and has never been…
