Clark Ashton Smith & The Church of Satan
Posted by:
Absquatch (IP Logged)
Date: 10 March, 2012 09:19AM
H.P. Lovecraft's inadvertent, and often embarrassing, influence on practicing occultists is well known. Clark Ashton Smith's influence on such persons, though minor in comparison, is almost as interesting. For instance, in an earlier thread, I quoted from an eldritch tome by Kenneth Grant which describes certain earth-bound occultists as collaborating with CAS from "the other side".
As an update to that thread, I have uncovered some interesting examples of references to CAS from Anton LaVey and his Circus...uh, I mean his Church of Satan. You'll find these references below.
1. "It is bad enough to hear of the 'great teachings' of Aleister Crowley—
who hypocritically called himself by the Christian devil’s number, yet
steadfastly denied any Satanic connections, who wrote and had
published millions of words of Kabbalistic mulligatawny, the
distilled wisdom of which could have been contained in a single
volume of once-popular E. Haldeman Julius’ Little Blue Books (which
sold for a nickel). Strange, how seldom one hears plaudits for
Crowley’s poetry, worthy of inclusion with the likes of James
Thompson, Baudelaire, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard".
Anton LaVey. "On Occultism of the Past", The Cloven Hoof [Church of Satan newsletter], 1971
2. "The evening was not a total loss, though, because Fritz Leiber was there. He's moved to San Francisco, so we will be getting together with him after we get back from L.A. Anton was acquainted with him several years ago, around the time he [Anton] was seeing quite a lot of Clark Ashton Smith. Mr. Leiber seemed quite happy to rekindle the friendship, so we're looking forward to seeing him again".
Letter from Diane Hegarty (Anton LaVey's companion) to Michael Aquino,
March 21, 1973, quoted in Michael Aquino, The Church of Satan
3. "The Ceremony of the Avoosal", by Anton LaVey.
This is a ceremonial ritual devised by LaVey. The opening lines are as follows:
"The ritual chamber is embellished with an immense spiderweb stretched across one wall, with a huge spider in its center. A man's body is impaled on the spider's mandibles. otherwise the usual devices are present.
The Avoosal is the Satanic name for the Spider-King who traditionally lurks within the caverns of the earth wherein are kept the treasures man seeks."
Michael Aquino comments in a footnote: "Anton LaVey borrowed the curious term "Avoosal" from one of Clark Ashton Smith's stories, "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan". [...] For this ritual, Anton changed [Ashton Smith's] demon to a more conventional [if enlarged] spider, and gave it the name of the victim in Smith's story." (Aquino, ibid.)
4. "I began to include sentiments from the book into my
vocabulary. I’d pass around the book to prove the reality of my
words. Among my many writer friends, hacks like Robert
Barbour Johnson, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Anthony
Boucher, etc., none had ever seen the likes of Might is Right".
Anton LaVey, Introduction to Ragnar Redbeard, Might Makes Right, 1996 edition