An excerpt from les americains by Roger Peyrefitte
I’ve only recently been made aware of the published journals of Jacques Vallee; these have proved an invaluable source of information and impressions gained from firsthand encounters with an amazing array of occultists, scientists, paranormal researchers, and seekers of all kinds who Vallee sought out during the Sixties and well beyond. The journals are well-indexed and include multiple references to Vallee’s time spent with Anton LaVey, among many others.
While reading through the sections on LaVey, I found a reference by Vallee to a book by a French novelist, which includes a chapter describing an evening spent at the Black House on California St. I was unable to locate an English translation, so I bought one of the original paperbacks from a book dealer in France, and did my best to translate it using online sources. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. Please remember that Peyrefitte’s work is fiction; he didn’t present himself as a journalist and did not appear to be taking notes, so the dialogue herein should not be taken as literal statements by the people depicted, as in such a piece, they are in the roles of characters, not real individuals.
…les americains… by Roger Peyrefitte, Flammarion Publishers, 1968
Pages 335—350, translated from French by Google Translate
QUATRIÉME PARTIE
I had returned to Beverly Hills after Christmas break. I had made love to Sunny eleven times (I had to make up for my campus chastity—relative chastity thanks to the wet dreams we had discussed with the surfers), and there had been no question of smoking marijuana or taking LSD: she was back to her old self despite Carl's predictions.
I had met the pretty black girl and we had exchanged a smile. I had learned that [Mario] Savio was getting married; that Bertrand Russell had sent her a telegram of sympathy; that a California Gallup poll had collected four percent of the votes in favor of the Free Speech Movement; that in the schools, colleges and campuses of our state, a mere five percent of the pupils or students knew the name Savio, but all knew Mickey Mouse; that black writers, black singers, black musicians would come to warm the ashes of the revolt; that a white sculptor, [Benjamino] Bufano, was offering a marble bear that would be sold to pay the fines of the defenders of freedom; that the FBI was warning against the action, in the universities, of "so-called students." The figures proved him right: of the eight hundred and fourteen people arrested {Page 335} at Sprout Hall, there were only five hundred and ninety students—among the others, forty-five militant communists and thirty-eight ex-convicts.
I had listened to the latest scandals from New York, reported by Jim, the least of which was an orgy of masked men in a villa in New Jersey where they satisfied themselves on the corpse of a young man.
I was surprised to receive a long yellow envelope, postmarked San Francisco, and in Sunny's handwriting. We had parted ways in Los Angeles a week before and she had not breathed a word to me about this trip. The paper was also yellow, like that of any self-respecting American woman - I had just seen in a newspaper that Jacqueline Kennedy also wrote on yellow paper. My astonishment was even greater when I read this message, written by the beloved hand:
"You are requested to attend, this Friday, at nine o'clock, the mass of the Church of Satan, at the home of the Reverend Anton Szandor La Vey, California Street, such and such number, San Francisco."
A superb seal stamped the invitation: it represented a goat's head whose two horns, two ears and beard were inscribed in a pentacle. I was truly flabbergasted. What secrets, both exciting and frightening, had this adorable girl whom I had loved for over a year hidden from me?
I was looking for what could be Satanic about her, besides having bewitched me. Fortunately I was somewhat detached from my Episcopal Church, which did not require me to make the sign of the cross to drive out the devil. I had no desire to drive out Sunny, even though another yellow sheet, on which was printed the manifesto of the Satanic Church, bore on the back the full image of Satan with his goat's head and woman's breasts. Since this paper was also yellow, I no longer knew whether the Church of Satan was inspired by Sunny or Sunny by the Church of Satan. This Church, "the first founded in the United States under this invocation,” taught me that its doctrine was {page 336} indulgence instead of abstinence, truth instead of lies, wisdom instead of hypocrisy. Even without the prospect of being with Sunny again, a ceremony under such auspices would have had something to tempt less curious people than me. It would obviously beat a night at Sprout Hall with the Free Speech Movement.
Jim begged me to come along. The invitation required a response; a telephone number was written at the bottom of the first sheet for this purpose. I first called Sunny in Hollywood. I was told that she was in San Francisco, but I was not told where. I called the number given; it was that of the Church of Satan. I had Mrs. Szandor La Vey on the line.
When I asked if I could bring Jim along, she declared in a charming voice that, since the Reverend was not there, she couldn’t ask for his immediate approval, but that she advised me, for this first visit, to come alone. This is certainly, she added, what Sunny wanted.
Jim was disappointed. I promised him a detailed report if Hell returned me to him. We had only two days to wait. Sunny maintained a respectful silence.
To get his revenge for being kept out of the way, Jim used the time to make spiteful speeches. He reminded me of how little trust a woman deserved. Could we have hidden such a secret from each other for a year? Do the duties of friendship not exist in love? Such a revelation, he said, was equivalent to that of cuckolding: Sunny was cheating on me with Satan. Let us hope that she was not cheating on me with her High Priest. It is true that he was married? But what were the morals of a Church that preached pleasure? {Page 337}
I naturally chose a yellow taxi to take me to California Street. What's more, the driver was black. Jim had purposely borrowed my car that evening, for a date, perhaps imaginary.
California Street is one of the most interminable streets in San Francisco and the Church of Satan is almost at its end. The driver stopped me in front of a detached one-story house with a triangular roof, painted black. A hearse was parked outside; it reminded me of the one in Los Angeles, but there were no cheerful inscriptions on the bumper. The street was deserted. The neighboring houses seemed unaware of the one I was about to enter. On the raised ground floor, a large bay window with angled sides was hidden by yellow curtains, which let the light filter through. A Chopin waltz was being played on the piano. Quite moved, I went up a narrow stone staircase. There was no bell, just a knocker. I knocked on it. A young man, dressed as a clergyman, opened the door for me: the deacon of the Church of Satan. I followed him along a corridor where more or less Satanic paintings were hung, separated by psychedelic posters. Hippie culture had penetrated Satan's home.
In a large living room, about fifteen people were seated, listening to the High Priest who was playing the piano. He was a handsome man of about forty, dressed as a clergyman like the deacon, tall and pale with a black beard, large head {Page 338} completely shaven. Without stopping, he nodded to me and a friendly young woman in pink pajamas, her long blond hair falling to her buttocks - the wife of the High Priest - came forward kindly to show me a place on a sofa. It was near Sunny. I hadn't noticed her right away. She had an ironic and triumphant look. She wore insignia that I didn't recognize on her: around her neck, a large red enamel medal on which was drawn in white the number 666 - the number of the devil, and, on the middle finger of her left hand, an identical ring. She was not the only one to wear these ornaments: I saw them on the High Priestess as on most of the men and women who were there — even on a girl of thirteen or fourteen, sitting next to the High Priestess and who looked like the High Priest. On the other side, a little girl, who looked like the High Priestess, was cradling a big teddy bear but wore no insignia. I looked again at Mr. Szandor La Vey, who was a real virtuoso; he played without sheet music and with as much instinct as memory. He had a curious way of letting his fingers fall from quite high up. On one of them gleamed an enormous ring.
I then looked more attentively at the rest of the audience.
A girl of sixteen or seventeen, quite pretty, was listening with an air of ecstasy. Other people seemed to be meditating, their heads bowed. A dark-haired man, with a dark complexion and long sideburns, looked up: I recognized Kenneth Anger. No doubt Sunny had told him that I was one of her former listeners from Berkeley because he smiled at me, and I greeted him. I guessed then how this meeting had come about, as promised by Sunny last summer. She had done things well. Images other than those of Kenneth's films came back to me: those of the films of the Hollywood underground and I amused myself by thinking that he was, himself, one of the masters of "underground" cinema, that is to say {Page 339} the avant-garde. Would we hear a Crowley record?
The decor also deserved some attention. Before us, on a brick fireplace with a wide shelf dominated by a drawing of a goat‘s head, were placed candlesticks decorated with purple candles, a stuffed owl and a bronze statue, representing the devil, its wings outstretched. Under the piano, a wolf dog, also stuffed, showed its fangs and flaming eyes. Behind us, an immense library. The grand piano, a harmonium, the period furniture, the thick carpets, some old canvases gave the impression of a certain luxury.
Two hammer blows had sounded since my arrival and the deacon had gone to open the door. First came a distinguished man whom the High Priest greeted with a joyful: "Hello, John!" without ceasing to play; then, a lovely girl of seventeen or eighteen - red cloche hat, blue mini dress, bare legs, pointy white shoes. Her elegance had that last note of anti-conformism, since women in San Francisco never wear white shoes. "Hello, Rosalyn!" said the High Priest. Since there were no more empty seats, we made room for her on the sofa. I had Sunny's thighs on my left and on my right those of this girl who wore the same insignia. She turned her head toward the piano, which was on our left, allowing me to look at her out of the corner of my eye. Her gaze never met mine. She was all about the music and already caught up in the mystery that this music was preparing us for.
Finally, the High Priest left the piano and I approached him with Sunny. He had a caressing voice, a penetrating gaze. When I congratulated him on his talent as a pianist, Sunny said that he played the oboe just as well. "I had many jobs," he said, "even that of a lion tamer. I had a lion here for a long time {Page 340} who attended our ceremonies, but his roars disturbed the neighbors and I had to give him to the zoo.”
Kenneth Anger joined us. Sunny introduced us.
“Jack is not yet one of us,” she said, “but he will be since he is my fiancé.”
I smiled at the title she gave me here in the Church of Satan, reminding me of a session of another kind in Huntington Beach. We had never talked about marriage, because that would have changed our relationship. However, I did not reject the prospect of uniting myself with such an attractive girl. This initiation today added an unexpected bond to all those we already had.
But perhaps we could wait, for a real engagement.
This colloquium over, the High Priest introduced me to the audience, indicating the status of each one: an industrialist, a director of I.B.M., an ethnologist, a professor from the University of California Davis campus, a writer and his wife, a painter, a director of a beauty institute, a friend of the actress Jayne Mansfield. The famous actress, who had recently died near New Orleans, decapitated in a car accident, had been a member of the Satanic Church: Mrs. Sandor La Vey opened a large album to show me her photograph, kneeling before the High Priest.
“Let us envy her,” said the latter, “she is with our Prince.”
"I have interesting news for the living," he added. “Today is a day of victory - our victory - ‘V Day.’ This morning, the governor informed me that I finally have the authority to celebrate legal marriages according to the rite of the Church of Satan. Now we are on the same footing as other faiths.”
The faithful applauded. {Page 341}
“What joy!” cried the writer, embracing his wife. “Our marriage is going to be legalized.”
[Elsewhere in the book, Kenneth Anger informs the narrator that this was John Raymond, attending that evening with his wife, Judith Case. PN]
“It was not without difficulty,” continued the High Priest. “The major obstacle came from the Catholic archbishop. I had asked the governor, according to the right of every citizen, to let me know who had turned us down. When he had confessed it to me, I wrote a message to the archbishop and you see the result. I mentioned this character that Bishop Pike had praised for his ecumenism. He ultimately demonstrated it with the Church of Satan.”
Kenneth Anger took me aside to tell me that this incredible success proved the high moral character of the head of this Church. If there had been the slightest stain on his criminal record this permission would not have been granted to him. The filmmaker added that the High Priest had not limited himself to writing to the archbishop: he had made a Satanic conjuration whose effect is irresistible. Anger’s conversation about Crowley attested to his own faith in magic.
"The Catholic clergy of California is unworthy of being Californian," said the ethnologist. "They went before our legislature to oppose the abortion law. The attitude of Floyd Begin, the bishop of Oakland, is a scandal."
I smiled, because the Catholic chaplain had praised the efforts of the Jesuits in favor of contraceptive methods, but one could not yet ask them to bless abortion.
“This law,” I said, “was introduced by Senator Bellenson, who is from Beverly Hills and a friend of my family.”
“Our Church,” the High Priest told me, “is not a counter-Church. There have been, in the past, similar cults that were anti-Christian and that, consequently, paid indirect homage to Christianity. For us, Christianity and other religions don’t exist. {Page 342} So we don't have to attack them and we only ask them to leave us in peace. Satan, the dark lord, Prince of this world and the next, is above all gods.”
The little girl threw her bear into the air and caught it. “It's a bird,” she said. “It's a fairy. It's a brown angel.”
Kenneth took her in his arms and asked her if she was happy with the bear that he had given her. “What a nice witch you'll make!” he said to her.
“I can't wait to be one, like my sister,” she said. “I wasn't afraid, at my baptism, even when they put my finger on the flame of a candle.”
“We baptize with the four elements,” says the High Priest: “Fire, air, earth and water. And we consecrate the whole body to pleasure.”
“It’s a joyous baptism,” Sunny tells me in a low voice. “We are completely naked and the high priest, with the point of a sword, touches your head, breasts, navel, sex, buttocks and big toe, saying: ‘I consecrate you to the pleasure of Satan, from head to toe.’”
The eldest daughter brought glasses, Coca-Cola, and two bottles on a tray — a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine. The High Priestess poured us red wine, and the High Priest white wine. He raised his glass:
“To Satan,” he said.
We repeated: “To Satan.”
The young witches drank only Coca-Cola, and so did the little one. She made us laugh when she whispered: “To Satan.”
Her mother said she was going to put her to bed, and had her say goodnight to the congregation. With this graceful child held in her arms for a moment in our midst, and clutching the teddy bear, she offered the ideal spectacle of maternal love, as well as representing the Satanic Church. She apologized for having to keep us waiting a little while she bathed her daughter before putting her to bed.
Kenneth told me that the eldest daughter was that of the High Priest and his first wife: the current High Priestess, who was not yet thirty, hoped to give him a little sorcerer to continue the Magisterium.
Taking Sunny's left hand, I asked her why she put her ring on her middle finger and not on her ring finger.
"That's the phallic finger," said Kenneth. He showed me his own ring, which was more extraordinary: the sign of Satan was combined with a phallus.
"That phallus," he said, "is the initial of Crowley's first name, Aleister, and that of Szandor La Vey - Anton.” The two terminal loops and the bar of the A traced in the English style formed the virile member. "I wear this mark and others elsewhere," said Kenneth, rolling up the left sleeve of his yellow silk shirt.
On his forearm he had tattooed in red, in a red circle - ("the color of the sun," he said) - the sign of Satan and the capital A. Below was a second red tattoo that he asked me to look at carefully.
"It's a rose," I said.
“A heraldist would specify that it is depicted as a bud and moving with two leaves,” said Kenneth. “Yet it is still a phallus and the symbol of Crowley.”
Above these two tattoos was a heart that reminded me of one worn by one of the girls of Devonshire Meadows.
“I created this heart,” he said, “because I am in love with a boy.”
“Why didn’t you bring him tonight?” asked Sunny.
“Because I am less indiscreet than you {Page 344} or maybe I have less ability to persuade him. Besides, my dear Bob is a Church by himself. Nevertheless, I have just dedicated him, for his twentieth birthday, to an existing Church. I chose Crowley's because I am still closely linked with all the Crowleyans in the world. Finally, I am only a follower of the Satanic Church while I am a Priest of the Crowleyan Church. It goes without saying that they worship the same god: here, he is called Satan; there, Lucifer.”
I asked him if there were Crowleyans in San Francisco.
"There is Bob and me," he replied, "but the headquarters of our American Church is in California - in Pasadena, near Los Angeles."
Sunny and I were both surprised. We had associated Pasadena with the seat of the California Institute of Technology, the Palomar Observatory, the springtime "Tournament of Roses" and the Rose Bowl, the largest stadium in the United States. Kenneth had kept secrets from Sunny as she had from me.
"The place is called the Abbey of Thelema," he continued; "but you can only get in by showing your credentials. Crowley's English Church is also important; the world center is in Switzerland. What a beautiful motto of Crowley, borrowed from Rabelais: Do as you will! The Crowleyans are grateful to me because it was I who discovered, under a plaster coating, the erotic frescoes painted by Crowley in the Temple of Love that he had founded in Sicily, from where he was expelled under fascism. I told all this and the secret of the V of victory to a French writer friend of mine.”
"Do as you will!" I repeated. “Does that mean that the orgies one imagines actually take place at the Abbey of Thelema?”
"What must happen, happens," said Kenneth. “In places like this, the word orgy has no meaning. Every Church has its foundation. One devotes one's body all the more to pleasure when one knows how to respect it. But there are ceremonies where the word enjoyment takes on its true meaning.“
“And also the word orgy,” said Sunny.
The High Priest came to ask her if she wanted to act as the altar that evening.
“Propose it to Rosalyn instead,” she said. “Jack might be surprised.”
“She was our altar last week,” said the High Priest.
“I am delighted to do it again,” said the young girl.
I looked curiously at the High Priest's hand where his enormous ring shone. Kenneth asked him to show it to me: it was an amethyst with eleven facets on which was engraved an arabesque -- no longer the sign, but the signature of Satan.
The glasses and bottles had been removed and grains of incense were lit in bowls, a mixture of sandalwood and ginger called Abramabu. The deacon, dressed in a black hooded robe, brought similar garments for us to wear. They reminded me of academic robes. Then the deacon lit seven candles in the candlesticks that he placed on the piano, and an eighth, red, on a ledge of the mantelpiece. He covered the shelf with a cloth and placed a cushion at the end.
He turned off the lights and sat down at the harmonium.
We stood up. A majestic music began to play: “The Hymn of Satan,” Sunny told me.
The floating incense, this lighting with red and purple reflections, this music, the proud attitude of the assistants, all created the ideal atmosphere for the mass of the Satanic Church which celebrated its victory today.
The High Priest arrived. In other circumstances, I would have smiled at his bizarre headgear: two small white ram's horns, planted in his hood. His noble face managed to counterbalance them, as much as his black cape lined with red.
The High Priestess followed in a black dress, her long blond hair loose, a sword in her hand. Next to her, Rosalyn, without a hat or shoes, her hair disheveled; naked under her open mini-dress that she had pulled up and that, with the hand where her ring was, she held on her shoulder: it thus covered her back, her chest and her sex, but revealed her buttocks.
Five men in black robes walked behind her; the last one a hood on his head and was holding a large truncated candle. The hymn finished; the deacon went to join them, a missal in his hand. They had stopped in front of the fireplace. The High Priest turned to Rosalyn and lifted her in his arms up onto the altar.
She lay down towards us, her bust resting on the cushion.
“Are you comfortable?” the officiant asked her.
“Yes,” she said gravely and without looking at us.
He parted the sides of the dress, covered her body for a moment with the sides of the cape and then showed her completely naked. Her pose was as charming as her person: her slender legs, her round thighs, the little brown triangle, her flat stomach, her navel, her perfect breasts on which fell strands of her hair, made her a living statue of Voluptuousness. I felt Sunny trembling next to me.
The deacon handed the High Priest a bell. He scanned the audience with a domineering look, then, lowering his eyes as if out of respect for the Prince he was about to evoke, he gave a resounding toll toward the altar and, before the echo had faded, another toll no less resounding, toward the other cardinal points. He began again a second time. The room seemed like an enormous bell whose vibrations mingled with the perfume of the incense, the lights, the reflections of the sword and that naked girl. {Page 347}
Then, facing the altar, the High Priest cried: “Hail, Satan!”
The word hail — "Hail!" — was a pun on "Hell." The congregation repeated: “Hail, Satan!”
Amid the deep voices could be heard the lighter voices of the High Priestess and the young girls. Rosalyn, motionless on the altar, her gaze remaining fixed, said these two words with her rosy mouth, and with extraordinary conviction.
Now the High Priest read from the book that the deacon held open. The hooded acolyte provided light with the candle. The words he pronounced were incomprehensible and harmonious. Kenneth whispered to me that it was the language of the Ethers, the "Enochian” language, discovered during the Renaissance by Queen Elizabeth's magician, John Dee - the man who had caused the storm that destroyed the invincible Armada.
Crowley, he added, had also used this language.
The reading was quite long. The names of the all the Princes of these places paraded there: Ariel, Asmodeus, Astaroth, Chamos, Dagon, Mammon, Belphegor, Belial, Baphomet, Leviathan, Lucifer... From time to time, the High Priest stopped and, looking at the altar, shouted again the invocation that was taken up by everyone:
“Hail, Satan!”
Finally, he rang the bell four times, as he had at the beginning, and, the skirts of the mini-dress having been folded down, he placed the young girl on the ground. The procession re-formed for the exit. We removed our robes.
“Are you happy with your first Satanic Mass?” Sunny asked me.
“I never dreamed of anything else,” I said.
“I love Satan,” she said, “because he’s helped me enjoy myself, and you.” {Page 348}
"I didn't need him for that," I said laughing. "And the Luciferian mass?" I asked Kenneth.
"All these masses are similar," he said, "but there is a special one of Crowley's to celebrate the puberty of boys. I will describe it, another time.”
"Why not right now?" said Sunny.
"Because it is not a mass for young girls."
"Do you still differentiate between girls and boys?" she asked.
"Only for sacred things," he said.
The High Priestess reappeared, in her pink pajamas, and invited us to have a cup of coffee.
The dining room where she led us was decorated with a skeleton with big bones and a caricatured jaw, standing in a glass coffin.
“It's one of my gifts,” said Kenneth, “like the teddy bear. I managed to remove it, one night, from a disused hospital, with the help of a Satanist doctor. I wanted to offer Anton a skeleton for his dining room, like the Egyptians had in their banquet halls. I would have liked the skeleton of a young man or a girl but I had no choice. This unfortunate man died of a disease that deforms the bones and the contraction of his jaws gives him a comical appearance. Is it ironic that his suffering left this skeleton with a comic expression?”
The table on which the High Priestess placed the cups made a worthy accompaniment to the skeleton: it was the tombstone of a sailor and a cross was engraved on it.
“We do not break crosses,” the High Priest told me. “But we are not afraid of death since it is Satan's other kingdom. This is why we multiply such images around us. {Page 349} Maybe you noticed a hearse in front of my door: it's my car.”
Humor not being excluded from the Satanic Church, everyone burst out laughing.
“Anton made quite a scene,” someone says, “when he got out of his hearse in front of a store with his wife and two daughters.”
“That night,” declared the High Priest, “I turned on the red light on the roof of the car, but the police told me I can’t do that because we do not actually transport the dead.”
The eldest daughter announced that the coffee would be ready in a few moments.
“Come see the kitchen,” Sunny told me.
The walls were covered with French posters from the Belle Epoque.
“Do you know,” said Kenneth, who had accompanied us, “that Anton is of French origin like you? The French can do anything in California.”
As we walked back to the dining room, we met Rosalyn coming out of the bathroom.
“Oh! darling,” Sunny said, kissing her, “you looked so beautiful on the altar. I have something to tell you.
"You have stories a girl can't hear," she added to us. "We have ours."
She pushed Rosalyn into the bathroom and locked herself in with her.
I could only smile with Kenneth, but with a less detached air than he did.
{Page 350}
END OF CHAPTER
