The whole place took Anton three years to prepare. It looks like everybody's dream of a fun haunted house when you could retire to a world of the occult. Running merrily through these mystic chambers are a honey-blonde four-year-old charmer and a stunningly dark-haired beauty of fifteen; both girls are presided over by Anton's charming, blonde, mod, go-go wife. The LaVey family seems to provide wholesome living proof that the family that prays together, stays together--even if they are praying to Satan.

All available wall space is covered with bookshelves. Anton has done his homework well: his magic library includes everything from the Egyptian Book of Toth to the works of Victorian black magician Aleister Crowley, with way-stops for Albertus Magnus, the Clavicle of Solomon and several thousand other grimoires.

"Most of these works are of only scholarly interest," says Anton. "It's up to the true magician to contemporize these concepts to a workable standard. Rarely more than once in about 250 years does a true sorcerer write down his important secrets."

This means that LaVey has had to put together his spells and enchantments by trial and error over at least a decade. He was helped by such means as apprenticing himself to a carnival fortune-teller. "I had a lifelong interest in the occult and was always trying to study it." Now in his early thirties, the shaven-headed Anton was born in Chicago of Hungarian Gypsy stock.

In teaching others the proper approach to magic, he says he prefers to impart the proper philosophy and environment and let apprentice sorcerers discover for themselves the fine points of witchcraft.

LaVey notes the booming recent interest in all forms of mysticism. He believes it is part of a "New Dark Age" in which some of the important secrets of the forgotten past will be resurrected. Witchcraft is enjoying a great comeback in Europe, and, as is diabolism, nudity is a vital factor in the rituals of the modern witch.

Naturally, Anton doesn't object to the nude ingredient in the revival of witchcraft. He tends to think that anyone who claims to be practicing only unselfish white magic is being a bit of a hypocrite: "It wasn't the really successful witches and warlocks who got burned at the stake. The true enchantresses like Marie Antoinette and Lucretiaa Borgia were sleeping in royal bedrooms."

For years, before organizing the Church of Satan, LaVey hosted a group called the Magic Circle, which introduced many of San Francisco's brightest talents to occult lore. Among those who attended were novelist Steven Schneck, film-maker Kenneth Anger, ceramicists Dion and Loralee Vigne as well as the celebrated Newark whip-and-leather courtesan, Monique Van Cleef.

The relationship between neurotic fears of demonic possession and off-beat sexual desires is an area that Anton has often encountered as a shamanistic therapist. His approach is to recommend the acting out of repressed eroticism whenever possible. "This will either exorcise the fetishism or at least allow the person to ritualistically come to terms with all parts of his existence and then go forth and live constructively.

His experiences have shown him that many persons who go about being constantly obnoxious and creating turmoil everywhere are really masochists. "These people go through life waiting for somebody to destroy them and every time this wish isn't fulfilled they simply get more frustrated, unlike the healthy masochist who is honest enough to get it out of his system."

LaVey avoids the celebrated San Francisco hippie phenomenon. "LSD can expand your consciousness to the point where it's a doormat for sensation," he says. "The magician's approach is to narrow his awareness into a concentrated beam that will enable him to attain his desires from each moment of living."

His version of Satanism is both aesthetically pleasing and sophisticated fun. And it has appealed not to the lunatic fringe of angry malcontents but to quietly successful people who like the idea that magic might give them an extra edge in the struggle to the top.

"Children are natural magicians," says Anton. "There's no atmosphere of dread to true diabolism. A little child might look at a picture of the Devil and laugh because he's a funny man."

In his private sorcery practice he's often called upon to be a sort of incantation consultant. Reently, one woman who was fairly knowledgeable about magic came to Anton with a problem: the aura shapes of the demons Belphegor and Ashmodeus were appearing in her room. It was a "mistaken spell," and LaVey was able to tell her how to achieve the desired results without any unwelcome demonic visitors.

As his Devilish work becomes better known, Anton has been flying around the country for lectures and television appearances. He's been written up in Life magazine, His TV news spots with Togar, during the fight to keep the lion home, flushed out Satanic converts from all over the world. Apparently thousands of students of black magic have been around all this time, just waiting for a focal point of Satanism to emerge. Mail just floods to LaVey now, sometimes addressed with nothing more than "Satanic Church, San Francisco."

"Lucifer really means the light-bringer, a fallen force of freedom," says Anton. "The Devil is always the eternal opponent to an unfairly stratified order; that's why he was so hated by the establishments that wrote the history books."

LaVey claims that the really powerful magicians cast their magic spells within the framework of a working society: "I believe in government and certain parliamentary procedures and police protection." On the other hand, he's convinced that entire nations and political movements have been governed by magic. Rasputin, the mad monk of czarist Russia, and Hitler's well known faith in astrology are two of his examples.

"The Satanic Church is a place you can't wait to get into, and you have to prove you're worthy before you're allowed to enter," says Anton. "It's exactly the opposite of the guilt-ridden dogmas."

Of his wild-animal trainer experiences, he says, "It's a great help in understanding people--the wild beasts have far greater natural force, but people are more vicious."