Anton LaVey and the Right of Might
“Might is right, and that is all there is to it... One man cannot wrong another man. He can only wrong himself.”
—Wolf Larsen, The Sea Wolf
(Jack London, 1904), Chapter 8
In 1896, a New Zealand radical writer, publisher, and labor activist named Arthur Desmond landed in America. As Julian Stuart later recalled:
Desmond was “wanted” for sedition, treasonable utterances, and various things of like caliber, and when we were at Lambing Flat we got a mulga wire that the warrants were to be executed, so Desmond slipped out of the tent and faded over the horizon—he did not even wait for breakfast. Soon after I got a letter from New York, saying he was taking another name—just for luck.1
Desmond took up a series of aliases, and, under one of these aliases, published a sixteen-page booklet under the title Might is Right: The Logic of To-Day. This booklet expounded his harsh worldview of homo homini lupus (in other words, “never give a sucker an even break.”) The author continued to write and revise his work, gathering some of his earlier socialist writing. He also borrowed a great deal from contemporary sources, often merely changing a few words from even the most famous poets of the day. In 1897 a greatly enlarged edition was released, and over the next few decades the book would be reprinted on three continents, with the final edition coming off the presses of the bohemian Dil Pickle Press in 1927. It was not until the publication of Might is Right: The Authoritative Edition (Underworld Amusements, 2017) that the full extent of Desmond’s appropriation of existing work by other authors was revealed.
Nearly a century later, a San Francisco occultist and former carnival performer transformed an informal occult discussion group he had founded into an internationally-known religion. The Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. The occult in all its forms was culturally prominent in the psychedelic 1960s, and LaVey did something nobody else could pull off: combining dark occultism with philosophical pessimism and theatrical flair. In 1967 and 1968, while working on his first book, he recorded a “Satanic Mass” for an LP by the same name. The album as released the following year on Murgenstrum Records. The B-side of that album featured “The Book of Satan,” a spoken-word performance of a diabolical litany read over bombastic classical organ music.2 The text of “The Book of Satan” would become the opening salvo in his infamous and long-selling first book The Satanic Bible, published by Avon in December 1969. The first edition of The Satanic Bible contained, among others, a dedication to: “Ragnar Redbeard, whose might is right.”
In 2009, LaVey’s former “left-hand man” turned lifelong detractor, Michael Aquino, described his dismay upon learning that LaVey had used someone else’s words for his own ends. He wrote: “The Book of Satan is represented as a diatribe by Anton on behalf of the Devil. Not until XXII/1987 was it discovered that he was not its true author at all. It was in fact authored by a New Zealander by the name of Arthur Desmond, who wrote it under the pen name of ‘Ragnar Redbeard’ in 1896.”3 The critic goes on to quote the English anarchist Sidney E. Parker’s essay about Might is Right from the New York gay anarchist journal The Storm, Winter 1982/83 (incidentally, this essay was later used as the introduction to the Loompanics Unlimited edition of Might is Right in 1984). Aquino notes that LaVey remained unrepentant after this alleged “plagiarism” was exposed by his Temple of Set. That very same Sidney E. Parker had pointed out LaVey’s source more than a decade earlier in Parker’s British egoist journal Minus One (No. 35, 1975):
THE DEVIL A PLAGIARIST WOULD BE...
Looking through The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey recently I came across a chapter called “The Book of Satan”. In a prefatory note LaVey calls it “a small, slim diatribe”. Well it is small, it is slim, and it is a diatribe, but it is not the work of LaVey. On the contrary, it has been copied virtually word for word from The Survival of the Fittest (later Might Is Right) by Ragnar Redbeard. LaVey has added a few phrases and excised a few others, but to all intents and purposes he has plagiarized his text from Redbeard. Perhaps old Ragnar would have been flattered at this backhanded compliment.4
While still using the terminology of legal or moral theft, Parker at least gives a nod to the themes of ownership and property that are integral to the egoistic philosophy in Redbeard’s book—themes that would become increasingly recognized as central to Redbeard’s message in the years to follow.
As Magistra Peggy Nadramia, High Priestess of the Church of Satan, notes in her essay “Addendum to ‘So It Was Written: The History of The Satanic Bible’”, “LaVey did not request the deletion of the dedication; it was removed by the publisher in later printings without his input.” This indicates that LaVey did not attempt to obscure his influences, such as Ragnar Redbeard, but rather that the omission was a decision made independently by the publisher.5
When someone is found guilty of plagiarism, they are sometimes stripped of titles or awards, fired from jobs, dispossessed of academic credentials, and generally cast out from “good” society. But is any of this opprobrium fitting for Satan’s emissary on Earth? Do we scold the founder of “the world’s most dangerous religion” for textual impropriety? Do we no longer trust the man representing “the father of lies”? Silly, isn’t it.
“The Book of Satan” comprises around 1,500 words over six pages. Without downplaying its importance, it is a small section of the entire 272-page Satanic Bible.
The charge of plagiarism against Anton LaVey has been levelled in three forms which I will answer. Did Anton LaVey commit an illegal act of plagiarism? Did Anton LaVey commit a literary act of plagiarism? Did LaVey commit an unkind act of plagiarism? His critics would have LaVey as a criminal, an artless copyist, or a scoundrel.
Legalistic Argument
The legalistic argument that Anton LaVey is a plagiarist is founded on the fact that he used selections from a turn-of-the-twentieth-century book (Might is Right) for the first section of The Satanic Bible.14
To plagiarize is said to be an act of idea theft, and theft implies something owned being taken away in a manner society deems punishable. For something to be taken illegally, it must first be owned legally. Was Might is Right “owned” by its author or the author’s representatives in the year 1969?
Under United States law as of 2025, any work first published before 1926 is without question in the public domain. Might is Right, published in 1896, clearly falls into the public domain today. One may ask, was “Might is Right” already in the public domain when The Satanic Bible was published in 1969?
The first U.S. copyright law was signed into law by President George Washington in 1790. In 1891, the International Copyright Act extended protection to foreign authors—just in time to allow Desmond (whose legal citizenship at the time is inconclusive) to register a work in the United States. Until that point, U.S. copyright law only covered works by American citizens. The Copyright Act of 1909 increased the maximum protection to fifty-six years (a twenty-eight-year term plus a possible twenty-eight-year renewal).
The Library of Congress record for 1897 shows the following application for (not necessarily granting of) copyright registration:
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER, an application of synthetic Darwinism to sociology, religion, politics, morality, homo-culture, and war. By Arthur Uing, LL.D., of Chicago, Illinois. Entered in the name of Arthur Uing, under No. 14250, February 27, 1897; two copies deposited March 24, 1897.
Because of the date of this submission, this was certainly a truncated version of Might is Right, perhaps akin to the eight-page booklet published as “Third Edition” under the imprint of “The Auditorium Press.” Because of the under-documented publishing history of the book (including the author’s penchant for fabricating facts, and the scarcity of extant early editions), it is hard to determine the exact form this first copyrighted work took.
A few years later, the Library of Congress records another application:
MIGHT IS RIGHT; or, THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST … 5th ed. By Ragnar Redbeard, pseud. Entered in the name of Arthur Uing of Chicago, Illinois, under A 63576, June 29, 1903; two copies received August 3, 1903.6
In this 1903 record, “Ragnar Redbeard” is listed as the author, but the copyright owner is listed as Arthur Uing (Desmond’s likely alias). There was no law requiring the use of one’s legal name for copyright, but without the pseudonym being formally linked to a real identity, legal protection was not assured.
The 1910 W. J. Robbins Co. printing of Might is Right retained the original 1897 copyright notice. The last edition published during the author’s lifetime, the 1927 Dil Pickle Press edition, included no copyright statement whatsoever. Because a clear copyright notice was required by law until 1976, this omission suggests that the copyright had already lapsed without renewal—or the author did not wish to hold the burden any further.
Even if we generously assume Redbeard renewed his 1897 copyright in 1924 (after the initial 28-year term), at most it could have extended protection to 1952. At that time, there was no further extension beyond the author’s life (the life-plus-50 term was only introduced in the 1976 Act). Arthur Desmond, and all his pseudonyms with him, died in 1929.
It is irrefutable that Might is Right had lapsed into the public domain well before The Satanic Bible was released in 1969. Nobody legally “owned” it at that point. Therefore, LaVey’s taking of passages from it—whether with modifications or even word-for-word—cannot be considered an act of legal plagiarism. LaVey himself was quite confident of this fact, openly stating in at least one interview that Might is Right was such an inflammatory book that “who better to write an introduction? It was only natural that I excerpted a few pages of it for The Satanic Bible”7 In other words, he knew he was free to use the text.
Linguistic Argument
If you are writing in a known language with the intent to communicate to any significant number of readers, you will inevitably use words and structures received from those who have gone before. Knowingly or not, you will use phrases, idioms, and references from the literature you have been exposed to. By necessity, you will communicate ideas with “shop-worn goods.” The question is not “did you take other people’s words,” but rather “did you sufficiently make them your own.” Consider the art of collage: an artist takes existing pieces and makes something new from them. The hand of the artist is open and unequivocal; he has neither hidden nor cited his sources. Some may deny the artistic merit of any particular collage, but they cannot deny that collage is an accepted and widely practiced art form.
Over the centuries, countless men and women have written in English with varying degrees of skill, complexity, and originality, from “none” to “genius”—and most fall in the middle. This raises the question of how a writer can transform borrowed material into something distinctly their own, a process Anton LaVey exemplified in his use of Ragnar Redbeard’s work.
Far from merely replicating Redbeard’s text, LaVey engaged in a deliberate process of selection and refinement to align it with his own philosophical vision. This perspective is echoed by Magus Peter H. Gilmore in his essay “Ragnar Redbeard Revealed,” where he argues that LaVey’s adaptation of Redbeard’s prose was neither mindless repetition nor concealment, but a deliberate act of redaction. Gilmore observes that LaVey “focused the excerpts he took from Desmond’s work to project its quintessence: the rejection of forced egalitarianism via submission and instead championing a prideful self-determinism.” He notes that LaVey “rejected elements of the work which contradict that premise by accepting collectivist thinking,” such as Redbeard’s racism, sexism, and antisemitism, which were wholly incompatible with LaVey’s vision.8 LaVey’s redaction, in Gilmore’s view, exemplifies a form of scriptural refinement typical in the founding of new religions—cutting away the chaff while preserving the ideological grain.
Dr. Eugene V. Gallagher, Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College, explicitly addresses the literary dimension of the plagiarism question. In his 2013 essay “Sources, Sects, and Scripture: The Book of Satan in The Satanic Bible,” he observes:
Without a doubt, LaVey took much of the material for “The Book of Satan” in The Satanic Bible from Redbeard’s Might is Right. But his appropriation of that source was not without intention. LaVey edited his source material with some care in order to make it fit more seamlessly with his message. He did not hesitate to omit large sections of his source or comments in it with which he did not agree; nor did he hesitate to change significant words and passages in order to align Redbeard’s message with his own. In addition, LaVey felt free both to change the sequence of his source material in order to maximize the effects he wanted to achieve and to insert material that was wholly his own into the flow of his source. The result is something more complex than mere plagiarism... and it is something more purposeful than the rote repetition that Aquino implies.9
I cite Dr. Gallagher not as a final authority on the subject, but as one authoritative perspective. He writes from a religious studies background and gives every appearance of scholarly objectivity. His use of “redaction criticism” (analyzing how texts are edited) is an uncontroversial method for examining scriptural works—and LaVey’s book can be seen as a form of scripture, albeit an atheistic one. Dr. Gallagher is, until now, the only person to have written at length about Anton LaVey’s use of material from Might is Right. His work systematically details what LaVey did and how he made the material his own, thereby creating a new work from existing material that was no longer “owned” by anyone.
In Dr. Gallagher’s view, LaVey produced his own creation by writing with his sources rather than simply reproducing them. “His editorial activity clearly displays his primary motivations and emphases in proclaiming his new religion of Satanism. In addition, his editorial work bears marked resemblances to other writers, such as the authors of Matthew and Luke, who, as Ehrman put it, ‘created a literary work by modifying or editing their sources of information.’”6
LaVey’s work was no mere compression or distillation. He made a new work by cutting up and manipulating something else. That new work was his own, even though it used borrowed phrases to get there.
Moralistic Argument
“Thou shalt not steal.” Thus it was said of old time. But I say unto you, “Let nothing be stolen from you.”—Ragnar Redbeard10
One of LaVey’s critics (drawing on Aquino’s exposé) made the moral argument that Anton LaVey was a “hypocrite” for supposedly breaking one of his own Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth: “Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.” (Rule #6, 1967). This is the moralistic argument: LaVey should feel shame because he “took something.”
I’ve tried to present the objections to LaVey’s Book of Satan in their clearest and most direct forms, stripped of their often confused contexts and emotional framing. Setting aside the legal and literary angles, the accusation of hypocrisy must amount to a claim that LaVey did some personal wrong to someone else. Was LaVey’s act of appropriating and reworking Desmond’s text an unkindness? Or was it, in fact, the most appropriate act to take with that text.
Ironically, while LaVey committed no plagiarism in the legal sense, Desmond actually was a plagiarist. He fled his home and settled in a strange land to escape charges of plagiarism. See Might is Right: The Authoritative Edition for chapter and verse citations of his plagiarism. Shall the pot call the kettle black? His magnum opus hinges on the simple maxim: “they can take who have the power, they can keep who can.” In a philosophical sense, LaVey’s reinterpretation of Might is Right honors the author and the intent of the text far more than any cautious attribution ever could. Though LaVey preferred to offer credit in the 1969 dedication, there is no doubt that far more people have read and been inspired by LaVey’s reinterpretation than have ever touched the original source material. LaVey keeps the words for himself because he can.
Desmond himself was no stranger to provocative appropriation. He was even involved in one of the oddest cases of “literary” crime on record, being arrested for “maliciously injuring a notice” when he scrawled the words “GONE BUNG” across a government notice posted outside the Savings Bank of New South Wales.11 (In New Zealand and Australian slang, “gone bung” means “out of order” or “falling apart.”) It is a peculiar crime indeed to put words on paper in order to injure other words on that paper. In this case, however, it wasn’t even the bank’s own sign. After this graffiti flourish, Desmond reportedly announced to the crowd, “Look out for your cash, gentlemen; the bank has gone bung.” However tame this crime may read today, in its time the “GONE BUNG” crisis was international news in up to a thousand newspapers.
The philosophy that “might is right” was hardly Desmond’s invention. In The Enchiridion, written sometime around the year 125, Epictetus wrote: “The law of God is most powerful and most just, which is this: ‘Let the stronger always be superior to the weaker.’” As Max Stirner wrote in The Ego and His Own, published in 1845: “My freedom becomes complete only when it is my—might; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man.”9 Forty-five years later in America, individualist anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker (who published Stirner’s work into English) articulated the same idea: “So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure.”12
The philosophical position that “he who has might stands above the law” was first elaborated in Germany by Stirner’s treatise, and later in the Anglosphere by Desmond’s Might is Right. While there are points of departure between Desmond (the man who lived and fought alongside the Māori) and Stirner (the man who drank and debated with Engels), there is a good deal of overlap between their ideas.
Stirner, contra Proudhon, asks: “Is the concept ‘theft’ at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept ‘property’? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be stolen; the water that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property.” And he answers his own question: “What then is my property? Nothing but what is in my power! To what property am I entitled? To every property to which I empower myself.”13
In Might is Right, Desmond wrote:
Get you property by whatever method comes easiest to you. Reverting to terms economic, “buy power in the cheapest market, and sell it in the dearest.” Gratify your life-hopes as the lions and eagles do, i.e. along the lines of least resistance—even as do growing plants in a dark cellar. Do they not endeavor to reach sunshine by the most direct route?
Scorn all insolent dictation as to right and wrong. Decide right and wrong for yourself. Get property, honestly if you can; but remember “business is business.”
Redbeard could not be more explicit in asserting the imperative of might:
No man has (or ever had) any inherent right to the use of the earth, nor to personal independence, nor to property, nor to wives, nor to liberty of speech, nor to freedom of thought—ot anything, except he can (by himself or in conjunction with his allies) assert his “rights” by Power.
Of course, this is not to say that LaVey endorsed all aspects of Redbeard’s treatise. But if one were to truly pay homage to it, then giving all the power of those words to a dead man (instead of taking them for oneself) would completely betray Redbeard’s guidance. To take what you want and make it your own is the essence of Might is Right. As Redbeard admonishes:
Although the average man has taken no part in manufacturing moral codes and statute laws, yet how he obeys them with dog-like submissiveness! He is trained to obedience, like oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall habituated from childhood to be governed by others. It is moral principles that manufacture beggars. It is golden rules that glorify meekness. It is statute laws that make spaniels of men.
LaVey’s other writings throughout his life echo these same themes.
Not a Thief but an Einzige
Charges of plagiarism against Anton LaVey prove to be less about literary ethics and more about ideological discomfort. Legally, LaVey committed no transgression—Might is Right was clearly in the public domain, making any claim of “theft” untenable. Linguistically, what LaVey performed is a considered act of adaptation rather than mere copying: he selected, edited, and integrated Ragnar Redbeard’s words into The Satanic Bible with intent. What he did is de facto practice in religious works. Dr. Gallagher, a scholar of new religious movements, observed that LaVey’s use of Redbeard’s text was “something more purposeful than the rote repetition” critics often assume. Morally and philosophically, LaVey’s use of the text aligns with his Satanic worldview. Satanism stands outside conventional morality. Consider it by its own terms, not another’s. The charge of “plagiarism” simply does not stick in any legal, linguistic or moral way.
Why, then, do the allegations persist from shrill corners? The answer lies not in any principled stand for literary integrity, but in the ideological discomfort of many detractors. Notably, a significant subset of LaVey’s critics are individuals who wish to identify as Satanists while rejecting both LaVey’s personal legacy and the harsh, unapologetic individualism of Might is Right. These critics often envision a more progressive, left-liberal form of Satanism—one gelded of Social Darwinism, one instead aligned with modern egalitarian values. In doing so, they project their liberal moral standards (rooted in essentially Christian sensibilities of altruism and “fairness”) onto a worldview which transcend traditional left/right morality. It is telling that some of LaVey’s critics end up quizzically accusing the most famous Satanist in history of not following the Golden Rule. In their eagerness to rebuke the Black Pope, they betray a “slave morality” reflex—invoking the very Golden Rule and orthodox ethical norms that LaVey’s Satanism pointedly rejects. Much of the “plagiarism” outcry is a moralistic critique in disguise, a way for these uneasy Satanists to distance themselves from LaVey’s brash philosophy without admitting that it is the content of Might is Right—the dark mirror it holds up—that truly troubles them.
Let us not cower, but appreciate the coherence and boldness of LaVey’s approach. Far from being a deceitful shortcut, LaVey’s incorporation of Redbeard’s work was consistent with the message of Might is Right and amounted to a meaningful reanimation of that text. Might is Right extols strength, self-interest, and the rejection of meek submission; what greater homage to its spirit than to take its powerful words and make them one’s own? LaVey did exactly that, even giving Redbeard a nod in the 1969 dedication. By seizing Redbeard’s fiery prose and repurposing it as “The Book of Satan,” LaVey demonstrated the very principle the text champions: might is right. Such an act goes beyond mere imitation—it is transformation. He stripped away the dated prejudices which, yes, can be found in Might is Right, and focused the text’s core message to serve a new era, flinging into the outer darkness the elements that no longer fit, as Might is Right itself admonishes. The result was a work that both preserves and amplifies Redbeard’s central theme while integrating it into a broader Satanic philosophy of individualism and self-determination.
Ultimately, the stammering charge of plagiarism says far more about the critics than about LaVey. Their complaints do not withstand legal or scholarly scrutiny, and their moralistic outrage rings hollow. It is worth restating that the first edition of The Satanic Bible included a dedication to Ragnar Redbeard, explicitly acknowledging his influence and the role of Might is Right in shaping LaVey’s thought. LaVey read from and quoted the work during his public events at the infamous Black House on California Street. Furthermore, the lack of formal citations in the body of the book is meaningless in the context of a work intended to emulate, even satirically, a religious text. Religious books, by their nature, do not typically include citations but freely build upon a body of inspirational writings central to that worldview. LaVey’s approach was wholly consistent with this tradition, further undermining the plagiarism accusation.
What motivates these critics is an unease with the uncomfortable ideas at the heart of Satanism and Might is Right. With no small measure of duplicity, they presume to dictate what is and is not permissible “within Satanism”—even as they deny that right to the very man who created it. They attempt to enforce their ethical rules on a proudly unorthodox milieu, insisting that the Devil play by the laws of the virtuous. Accusing the Black Pope of plagiarism is a paradoxical exercise: Anton LaVey’s only “crime” was that he practiced exactly what he preached. In appropriating Redbeard’s words, he challenged prevailing norms and reasserted the primacy of personal vision over herd morality. Such an act cannot be neatly labeled as plagiarism in any ordinary sense—it was a deliberate, philosophically consistent exercise of intellectual might. The uncomfortable truth for his critics is that LaVey’s Satanic Bible endures, its power undiminished by these accusations, while their protests serve mainly to highlight their own weakness. In the final analysis, defending LaVey against charges of plagiarism is simply recognizing that might—in ideas as in other arenas—ultimately makes right, and that his legacy stands firm on that very principle.
And now, dear reader, I complete this little tale. I do not write to persuade the envious or convert the scolding—most are not driven by principle but by the petty reflexes of volunteer hall monitors in dollar store devil horns. They masquerade as radicals while wagging fingers in defense of a tattered moral consensus they barely understand. But for my part, having weighed their accusations, sifted the facts, and found nothing of substance beneath the noise, I raise my pen one final time and scrawl across their flimsy bill of complaint, in the very words of Redbeard himself: GONE BUNG.
About the Author:
Kevin I. Slaughter is a publisher, archivist, and Magister in the Church of Satan, known for his decades-long promotion of radical thought through independent publishing, historical research, and media. He founded Underworld Amusements, co-edits Der Geist and Stand Alone journals, and has published extensively on figures like Benjamin DeCasseres, Arthur Desmond, and others. His lectures and short films on Satanism have reached wide audiences, and his 2023 book The Radical Book Shop of Chicago highlights his dedication to preserving the legacy of rebel intellectuals.
1 Julian Stuart, The Worker (Brisbane), 14 April 1926.
2 Peggy Nadramia, “The Satanic Mass—A Shot Heard Round the World,” Church of Satan, https://churchofsatan.com/the-satanic-mass/
3 Michael A. Aquino, The Church of Satan (4th ed., 2009).
4 Sidney E. Parker, “The Devil a Plagiarist Would Be…,” Minus One, no. 35, 1975.
5 Peggy Nadramia, “Addendum to ‘So It Was Written: The History of The Satanic Bible’,” Church of Satan,
6 Darrell W. Conder, I Beheld Desmond as Lightning Fall—to Chicago! (Port Townsend, WA: 2007)
7 Anton LaVey, “The Doctor Is In…” (MF Magazine no. 3, 1998), reprinted on ChurchofSatan.com.
8 Peter H. Gilmore, “Ragnar Redbeard Revealed,” Church of Satan,
9 Eugene V. Gallagher, “Sources, Sects, and Scripture: The Book of Satan in The Satanic Bible,” in The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity, eds. Per Faxneld & Jesper Aa. Petersen (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 209–224.
10 Ragnar Redbeard, Sayings of Redbeard,London, 1896.
11 Chris Cunneen, “Desmond, Arthur (1859?–1929),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2006 (online edition).
12 Benjamin R. Tucker, Liberty (New York), November 15, 1890.
13 Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (New York: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1907).
14 While plagiarism itself is not a legal offense, the term is often used colloquially to refer to copyright infringement—i.e., the unauthorized use of protected material without attribution or permission.
Kevin I. Slaughter
Magister of the Church of Satan
