NIKOLAS SCHRECK INTERVIEWED ON THE CHURCH OF SATAN & ANTON LAVEY IN 2008 FRENCH BOOK GOROU DE ROCK
''Q: When, and how, did you join the Church of Satan in the first place?
Nikolas Schreck: I never joined the Church of Satan.
I’ve explained this many times before, but maybe news travels slow to France. I’ve never been an atheist, nor a materialist, nor a Social Darwinist, nor an exponent of the kind of secular humanist rationality LaVeyan Satanism expounded. My understanding and practice of magic was then and remains now theistic and supernatural, while La Vey’s, such as it was, was strictly symbolic, anthropocentric, and psychological. That important theological difference, by the way, is why the seven year curse Zeena placed upon LaVey’s business masquerading as a religion, his fake legend, his house, his followers and ultimately his life, succeeded in its goals of gradually destroying all of these targets, whereas his own feeble magical efforts directed against us consistently backfired.
If you take the time to view the many interviews I gave during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, you’ll see that I was very careful to make it clear that I represented the Werewolf Order, not the Church of Satan. As for the relatively brief period of my secular friendship with Anton La Vey, it was centered primarily on our mutual interest in organ music, vintage cinema, strippers, and military history, not on Satanism, which he almost never discussed during these social occasions.
Lucifer Dining: Kenneth Anger and Nikolas Schreck at Hollywood landmark Nickodell's.
Kenneth Anger, who was then living in Hollywood, had sent clippings of some of Radio Werewolf’s activities to La Vey in San Francisco, so he was aware of my work before I met him.
When I moved to San Francisco, Research Publications were planning a book of interviews with La Vey, who I must remind you was an almost completely forgotten figure at that time. It was through the circle of artsy-fartsy performance artists and parasites Research tended to pad their books of interviews with their friends with that I was introduced to LaVey, who Research was hoping to turn into the next rediscovered darling of their little art world.
I was then working on a book I ultimately decided not to publish, entitled The Demonic Revolution. This was an overview of the contemporary magical and pagan subculture. During the research phase of this book, I had already interviewed Kenneth Grant of the Typhonian OTO, Edred Thorsson of the Rune Gild, Michael Bertiaux of Zos Kia Cultus, the leaders of several Astaru organizations, and most of the other major magical/occult figures active in that period and earlier.
La Vey visited my apartment in San Francisco in February 1988, and I began a series of interviews with him for my book. So he was just one of the subjects interviewed, who later, with Zeena’s assistance, included Robert De Grimston of the Process, and Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. In the process of conducting these interviews, my then-girlfriend and I befriended La Vey. One night he presented us both with honorary membership cards. This was no big deal, since he passed out these honorary membership cards to anyone with a media presence who even showed a slight interest in him at that time. Later, he made Genesis P. Orridge, Marilyn Manson, and countless others honorary members too. He probably gave an honorary Church of Satan membership card to his postman for all I know.
As I researched his life for my book, and tried, in all naivete and sincerity, to get him to verify the many gaps concerning some of the claims he made about himself, I discovered that almost all of his supposed adventures and achievements were invented, and that many of his writings were plagiarized. When I met Zeena a few months after meeting LaVey, she began to confirm to me her own gradually dawning realizations as to her father’s true character, which she herself was only slowly waking up to, after being lied to since birth.
Zeena and Nikolas's last meeting with LaVey, January, 1990.
Furthermore, since you brought this topic up, let me clear up another groundless misconception that’s been circulated by La Vey lackies. Not only did I never join the Church of Satan, I also never had any desire to be a ”priest” in the organization I never joined. That’s a fantasy people who never knew me have concocted long after I had washed my hands of La Vey and his cohorts, and it says more about their own limited ambitions than it does about me. Here are the facts they must have forgotten: I only knew La Vey from February 1988 to April 1990. By then, La Vey had done away with the Church of Satan degree system, as long ago as 1975, when his number one fan Michael Aquino abandoned him and took the degree system with him to form the Temple of Set. So there was no such title as ”priest” to be had when I knew La Vey. He only returned to the idea of calling his most gullible sycophants ”priests” after Zeena and I had severed relations with him altogether.''
Quoted with permission from www.nikolasschreck.eu
