The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.780 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.240 Today I'm speaking with Zina Schreck, whose original name was LaVey, and who is the daughter of Anton LaVey,

00:01:19.100 who was the most famous Satanist of the last half of the 20th century.

00:01:25.820 And so she grew up with the man who established the modern Church of Satan.

00:01:31.140 A very intelligent man, very charismatic, very creative, very Machiavellian, psychopathic, manipulative,

00:01:40.480 a carny barker, an admirer of P.T. Barnum, a man for whom there was a sucker born every minute,

00:01:48.500 a man who deeply believed that the world was an act and that life was a carnival,

00:01:54.220 and that if you had the wool pulled over your eyes to his benefit, then so much the worse for you,

00:02:00.460 and I suppose as well you deserve it for being so foolish and gullible.

00:02:06.040 That's the eternal self-justification of the carny barker psychopath.

00:02:12.540 And Zina grew up in that household as, by all appearances, a dutiful woman, young woman,

00:02:22.840 committed to the well-being of her father, to the degree where in the 1980s,

00:02:27.780 when a panic about satanic practice arose in the general population, quite a widespread panic,

00:02:34.580 she felt compelled to defend him and took on the mantle of high priestess of the satanic church

00:02:42.060 for five years before coming to the realization that she had been immersed in a pack of lies,

00:02:51.760 in a web of lies, before understanding as a consequence of the promptings of her conscience

00:02:57.600 that she was participating in something that was not what it claimed to be and in a life that wasn't what she thought it was

00:03:06.460 and was also called by promptings, you might say, of a genuinely religious nature to forswear the church to leave her father

00:03:17.000 and to set out, what would you say, into the desert of her own doubt.

00:03:24.980 And so that's what we talk about.

00:03:27.380 The crazy 1970s, the hangover from the hedonistic bliss of the summer of love hippies,

00:03:33.920 the dark side of let it all hang out and tune in, turn on and drop out,

00:03:39.320 right, the catastrophic underbelly of immature hedonism, right.

00:03:45.100 And, well, who better to guide us through that absolute bloody catastrophic mess

00:03:50.840 than the daughter of the prime Satanists from the 1960s and the 1970s.

00:03:55.940 Join us.

00:03:58.200 Zina, thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me and everyone today.

00:04:02.740 I guess I'm curious, you've had a very strange life, and I want to describe that.

00:04:12.820 I guess I'm curious to first, for myself, before we delve into any of the details,

00:04:18.940 what do you think we could accomplish with this conversation?

00:04:22.960 What's the utility of the conversation as far as you're concerned?

00:04:26.440 Well, that's a good question.

00:04:29.280 Well, it's also a big question.

00:04:30.860 I suppose, in the bigger picture, since I don't normally break apart bits of my past to discuss,

00:04:44.880 it only comes up anecdotally in relation to where I am today.

00:04:49.140 I always prefer to live in the present.

00:04:53.220 That's in accordance with my Buddhist practices.

00:04:57.060 But if I were to think of an overall accomplishment of what we get across today,

00:05:03.300 I think it might be to reassure those who might be watching,

00:05:11.120 who live in difficult situations or difficult families or really dysfunctional conditions in life,

00:05:22.080 that they should not give up hope and that there is a way out and to always remember that everything is impermanent.

00:05:34.400 If we practice patience and diligence in trying to find our own course that is in alignment with who we truly are,

00:05:47.560 I think that the only thing I really have to offer because everybody has adversity in their life,

00:05:59.940 but in my case, maybe the only thing I have to offer is that people who are raised with certain conditioning

00:06:09.320 or certain belief systems that they've learned through childhood that they really never had an opportunity to question,

00:06:22.080 or even if they did question it, they always felt they had to defend it on behalf of their parents,

00:06:28.760 whatever that may be, whether it's religion or politics or corporations or, you know, profession or anything,

00:06:37.460 that if there are people who felt that because of their early life conditioning that they're just stuck

00:06:46.060 and that's their destiny and that's their fate and they really can't do anything about it and there's no way out,

00:06:51.620 that I would at least hope that my life's experiences and my life's story can provide an example amongst many others in this world and in history

00:07:05.240 of the fact that if you have strength of character, if you have a greater vision,

00:07:14.820 if you have, you know, a willingness to change, that it is possible to break the conditionings that were placed upon you against your wishes.

00:07:31.240 Well, so there's a couple of themes in there that are, I think, personally and sociologically relevant.

00:07:38.260 I mean, we all, what would you say, are the beneficiaries and victims of the actions of the past

00:07:47.120 and I suppose that's true most proximally with regard to who it is that you have in your family of birth and your parents

00:07:55.920 and they have their individual idiosyncrasies and talents and then they are also exemplars of the much broader culture.

00:08:07.000 Now, your father was a very famous man, an extraordinarily controversial person.

00:08:13.160 You know, I was reading the satanic rituals this morning and back, you know, I'm old enough,

00:08:19.380 so I kind of caught the tail end of the hedonistic 60s.

00:08:22.440 You know, I'm really a kid of the 70s and the 70s was where the 60s went to die.

00:08:29.080 So, and...

00:08:29.760 I always say that the 70s are the hangover of the 60s.

00:08:33.140 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:08:35.440 The, yeah, the drunken hangover.

00:08:37.040 Because there was a really ugly hangover.

00:08:39.040 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:08:40.260 That's for sure.

00:08:41.220 It really was.

00:08:42.480 And, you know, when I was 18 or 19, I spent a fair bit of time investigating Alistair Crowley

00:08:49.360 and also your father's works and familiarizing myself with the dark side of the 1960s, you know,

00:08:55.920 looking at how that had affected the music, for example, of the Rolling Stones

00:08:59.600 and the vicious underbelly of the, what would you say, carefree hedonism,

00:09:06.060 let it all hang out, tune in, turn on, drop out ethos of the 1960s.

00:09:11.440 It's like, that's all fine, boys and girls, but, you know, there's a pretty dark shadow

00:09:16.080 that comes along with that.

00:09:17.420 And it's like the shadow of the Marquis de Sade for the French Enlightenment.

00:09:21.300 And these aren't the sorts of things that people like to delve into,

00:09:25.400 except carelessly and foolishly, that's for sure, and pridefully.

00:09:30.220 And, you know, it was quite a trip down memory lane in some ways to take a look at this book today

00:09:36.660 because I haven't thought about those things in relationship to the early 60s

00:09:40.780 or the early 70s and the late 60s for quite a long time.

00:09:43.960 So you were right in the middle of this.

00:09:46.620 And so maybe you could start by telling people who your father was

00:09:51.540 and then also when you were born so we can place you exactly in time.

00:09:55.820 And then I think we'll probably go through your life autobiographically

00:09:59.880 and let you tell your story.

00:10:02.200 So why don't you tell everybody who your father was to begin with?

00:10:06.300 Okay.

00:10:07.280 Yeah, so first of all, you know, I was born in 1963

00:10:10.900 and my father was Anton LaVey.

00:10:15.020 So he was the founder of the Church of Satan,

00:10:18.080 which coincided with being the founder of modern day Satanism

00:10:23.480 as a cohesion kind of organizational, openly public organization for Satanists.

00:10:33.600 Not that Satanism didn't exist before, but it was always, you know, in secret

00:10:39.080 or was practiced very differently from the way my father practiced it.

00:10:44.400 Let me back up and clarify something.

00:10:50.100 When you were discussing about the hedonism of the 60s

00:10:53.520 and the dark side and the Rolling Stones kind of Altamont-type things

00:10:59.400 that were happening then,

00:11:01.920 the interesting thing to understand about my father and his organization

00:11:07.480 was that they were a generation older than the hippie generation.

00:11:14.620 And as such, they were like mostly comprised of,

00:11:20.500 the members were mostly people who were young in the post-war generation of the 50s.

00:11:27.200 So, in a strange way, you could consider that the Church of Satan

00:11:34.620 always considered itself the counterculture to the counterculture

00:11:38.320 because we were—my father was really very anti-hippie.

00:11:46.160 And so this is where it gets complicated

00:11:48.640 because it doesn't fit into the stereotypical idea one has of Satanism

00:11:57.940 in the occult milieu.

00:12:03.580 So it's a little bit complicated

00:12:05.200 because my father was anti-occultist, actually.

00:12:08.740 And he was really much more of a performer and a showman

00:12:14.360 and very Machiavellian, of course,

00:12:18.960 in the formation of the Church in the way that he did it.

00:12:25.460 So the hedonism that was promoted within the Church of Satan

00:12:32.000 was something different than what was going on in the 60s.

00:12:38.000 So the hedonism within the Church of Satan was more like—

00:12:41.360 I mean, it was more like for, I don't know if you recall,

00:12:46.440 but in the 60s there was this phrase,

00:12:48.100 don't trust anybody over 30, right?

00:12:50.400 Because the 60s was a youth culture generation

00:12:53.260 and anyone over 30 was considered part of the establishment,

00:12:56.140 don't trust them.

00:12:57.120 Yet, in the Church of Satan,

00:12:58.540 that pretty much summed up a large percentage of the membership.

00:13:04.660 And they were part, you know,

00:13:08.360 they were very much a part of the establishment,

00:13:11.800 but in the sense that, you know, they were professionals.

00:13:16.160 And that's—they would go to Church of Satan events

00:13:19.500 to sort of live it up,

00:13:22.080 whether it was to meet people that they'd have liaisons with

00:13:26.980 or affairs or whatever, you know, whatever.

00:13:29.120 It was really not—it's hard to describe,

00:13:36.720 but it was really not what people imagine

00:13:39.860 and what people think.

00:13:41.060 I mean, yes, there was a lot of psychopaths

00:13:45.700 and a lot of deviant people in the Church of Satan.

00:13:48.940 I'm not going to say there wasn't.

00:13:50.660 But it—but the way that that transpired

00:13:55.140 was very different than the let it all hang out

00:13:58.260 kind of attitude of the hippies.

00:14:00.720 So my point is both are problematic.

00:14:05.760 Both are not—so my father's attitude was more like—

00:14:12.000 he was more like P.T. Barnum,

00:14:14.900 who was an inspiration to him.

00:14:16.220 It's like a sucker is born every minute,

00:14:17.760 and it's perfectly logical and valid

00:14:21.180 to take advantage of people

00:14:22.460 that want to be taken advantage of.

00:14:24.760 As long as everybody's enjoying themselves

00:14:27.340 and nobody complains, then, you know, then—

00:14:32.980 but the fact is, interestingly, he was anti-drug.

00:14:37.260 He was very anti-drug.

00:14:38.600 He was a very law-and-order kind of person.

00:14:42.280 I mean, we had friends in the police department.

00:14:44.320 And I have to say something

00:14:48.020 that I've never said publicly before either,

00:14:50.380 is in my teenage years,

00:14:51.860 I dated a policeman who was a friend of my father's,

00:14:55.740 who was just part of the patrol

00:14:58.660 that was always coming in and out of our house

00:15:02.700 because we needed protection from vandalism

00:15:05.660 and from attacks on the house and threats.

00:15:10.640 And so he fell into a different category

00:15:17.560 than most occultists.

00:15:19.180 And as I say, he didn't even consider himself an occultist.

00:15:22.120 He considered himself more of a—

00:15:25.820 more of like a—

00:15:29.740 doing some sort of—

00:15:31.220 like a social experiment in a way

00:15:33.880 of providing that if you created a doctrine

00:15:39.940 and a religion that was based on people's base impulses

00:15:47.100 and base desires that maybe you could take away

00:15:51.480 the stigma of people exercising those base desires.

00:15:57.220 But the problem with that is

00:15:58.500 it was entirely mixed with a lot of neuroses

00:16:01.080 from his own side.

00:16:02.840 I mean, it was very, you could say,

00:16:06.140 postmodern in his way of approaching Satanism

00:16:12.980 and the symbolism of Satan.

00:16:15.240 It really doesn't hold up to scrutiny

00:16:19.080 and academic study and things like that.

00:16:21.920 So, and certainly it doesn't hold up.

00:16:24.020 It certainly doesn't hold up in terms of

00:16:26.140 what constitutes a real religion.

00:16:28.260 It's not a real religion.

00:16:29.660 It's just more like,

00:16:31.580 more like, you know, a private club, basically.

00:16:37.940 However, this—

00:16:38.940 but however, I would say that I was raised

00:16:41.980 with the understanding that it was a religion,

00:16:44.460 and I took that very seriously.

00:16:46.780 And then, much later in life, during the 80s,

00:16:50.260 when there was this satanic panic,

00:16:51.840 and then I felt that it was my religion

00:16:54.000 that was being under attack.

00:16:55.560 But more importantly,

00:16:57.080 it was because I had empathy and compassion for my father,

00:17:00.020 and I was very afraid that he was going to be framed

00:17:02.780 for something that was not, you know,

00:17:05.900 that he was not responsible for.

00:17:07.440 And yet, he was utterly incapable of defending himself,

00:17:13.480 utterly unwilling to defend himself.

00:17:17.820 That, you know, what I did for that organization

00:17:20.980 was really for my father.

00:17:24.180 It wasn't, it wasn't like—

00:17:26.440 And then subsequently, what grew out of that

00:17:29.220 was a sense of responsibility.

00:17:31.660 Like, I felt like, okay, somebody needs to just show up

00:17:38.000 and show that these people are real people,

00:17:40.940 that they're not ethereal things

00:17:43.680 that you can just hurl accusations at.

00:17:46.920 And because I knew from experience

00:17:51.760 that the media likes to grab onto boogeymen

00:17:56.300 and make something that is going to inflame

00:18:00.300 and get people very riled up.

00:18:03.560 And you can sell a lot of advertising that way,

00:18:06.600 and you can also create a lot of new jobs that way,

00:18:08.720 and it's good for the economy,

00:18:10.220 all kinds of things like that.

00:18:11.960 So, I knew that that was happening.

00:18:16.520 But more importantly,

00:18:19.400 I thought that they were imagining that,

00:18:25.220 well, this isn't going to hurt anybody

00:18:27.360 because there isn't really anything

00:18:29.360 such as Satanism anyway,

00:18:31.160 so we can kind of use this.

00:18:33.120 But in fact, there were people

00:18:35.400 who considered themselves that.

00:18:38.240 And I thought, well, we need to—

00:18:40.740 I need to at least be a placeholder

00:18:42.320 to say, this is, you know, a real person

00:18:46.000 whose life you're affecting.

00:18:47.520 And because I felt like I had to protect my father.

00:18:52.320 So, what I did was out of necessity

00:18:54.880 and out of love for my father

00:18:57.300 and fear, because I had a son,

00:19:01.440 fear that my son would be taken away from me

00:19:03.980 by Child Protective Services.

00:19:05.760 So, fear, a mother's fear,

00:19:09.060 love for a father.

00:19:12.040 And then yet, at the same time,

00:19:15.660 as all that was going on,

00:19:17.520 because I'm jumping forward to the 80s now

00:19:19.340 with the satanic panic period,

00:19:21.000 as all that was going on,

00:19:22.960 my parents were—

00:19:24.880 they weren't ever legally married

00:19:28.020 in the first place,

00:19:28.720 but they lived as man and wife.

00:19:30.220 So, you could say that they lived

00:19:31.360 as common-law marriage.

00:19:33.280 And so, they were breaking up.

00:19:35.220 And so, there was this immense tension

00:19:37.640 between my two parents

00:19:39.940 and me feeling as though

00:19:43.080 I was being pulled

00:19:44.020 between the both of them.

00:19:45.700 Two narcissistic parents,

00:19:47.480 both saying, you know,

00:19:49.220 either blaming me

00:19:50.260 for being like the other parent

00:19:51.560 or trying to draw and quarter me,

00:19:55.700 saying, you know,

00:19:57.040 you have to support me.

00:19:58.140 No, you have to support me.

00:19:59.520 And so, there was a lot happening

00:20:03.380 in my life at that time

00:20:05.440 in combination with what was happening

00:20:09.500 in the country

00:20:10.940 with this national hysteria.

00:20:13.720 Going online without ExpressVPN

00:20:17.560 is like not paying attention

00:20:18.980 to the safety demonstration

00:20:20.060 on a flight.

00:20:21.180 Most of the time,

00:20:21.920 you'll probably be fine,

00:20:23.240 but what if one day

00:20:24.380 that weird yellow mask

00:20:25.600 drops down from overhead

00:20:26.620 and you have no idea what to do?

00:20:28.920 In our hyper-connected world,

00:20:30.400 your digital privacy

00:20:31.340 isn't just a luxury.

00:20:32.700 It's a fundamental right.

00:20:34.040 Every time you connect

00:20:34.820 to an unsecured network

00:20:36.000 in a cafe, hotel, or airport,

00:20:38.300 you're essentially broadcasting

00:20:39.480 your personal information

00:20:40.580 to anyone with a technical know-how

00:20:42.440 to intercept it.

00:20:43.260 And let's be clear,

00:20:44.220 it doesn't take a genius hacker

00:20:45.620 to do this.

00:20:46.560 With some off-the-shelf hardware,

00:20:48.140 even a tech-savvy teenager

00:20:49.540 could potentially access

00:20:50.680 your passwords, bank logins,

00:20:52.480 and credit card details.

00:20:53.940 Now, you might think,

00:20:55.180 what's the big deal?

00:20:56.060 Who'd want my data anyway?

00:20:57.600 Well, on the dark web,

00:20:58.760 your personal information

00:20:59.900 could fetch up to $1,000.

00:21:02.020 That's right,

00:21:02.780 there's a whole underground economy

00:21:04.300 built on stolen identities.

00:21:06.280 Enter ExpressVPN.

00:21:08.040 It's like a digital fortress,

00:21:09.500 creating an encrypted tunnel

00:21:10.700 between your device

00:21:11.720 and the internet.

00:21:12.300 Their encryption is so robust

00:21:14.320 that it would take a hacker

00:21:15.340 with a supercomputer

00:21:16.180 over a billion years

00:21:17.600 to crack it.

00:21:18.380 But don't let its power fool you,

00:21:20.100 ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.

00:21:22.520 With just one click,

00:21:23.520 you're protected

00:21:23.980 across all your devices.

00:21:25.560 Phones, laptops, tablets,

00:21:27.160 you name it.

00:21:27.740 That's why I use ExpressVPN

00:21:29.120 whenever I'm traveling

00:21:30.240 or working from a coffee shop.

00:21:31.860 It gives me peace of mind

00:21:32.920 knowing that my research,

00:21:34.260 communications,

00:21:35.040 and personal data

00:21:36.000 are shielded from prying eyes.

00:21:37.600 Secure your online data today

00:21:39.400 by visiting expressvpn.com

00:21:41.480 slash jordan.

00:21:42.400 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S

00:21:44.640 vpn.com slash jordan

00:21:46.380 and you can get an extra

00:21:47.400 three months free.

00:21:48.980 Expressvpn.com slash jordan.

00:21:50.880 Okay, so I want to delve

00:21:56.460 into some of the characterizations

00:21:59.300 that you touched on

00:22:00.300 in relationship to your father

00:22:01.660 because he's emblematic

00:22:04.340 of a whole wealth of,

00:22:06.800 what would you say,

00:22:07.980 like a symbolic cluster.

00:22:10.180 You know, you said that,

00:22:11.540 well, you described him

00:22:12.340 as narcissistic,

00:22:13.340 you described him

00:22:14.000 as Machiavellian,

00:22:15.300 but you described him

00:22:16.560 as a showman.

00:22:17.500 You said that, you know,

00:22:18.540 one of his heroes

00:22:19.360 was P.T. Barnum.

00:22:20.420 You described the,

00:22:22.340 what's the phrase,

00:22:23.220 there's a sucker born

00:22:24.020 every minute.

00:22:24.700 Then you said something

00:22:25.480 very interesting about that

00:22:26.740 and this is something

00:22:27.840 that everybody who's listening

00:22:29.000 and watching should understand.

00:22:30.900 I mean, one of the things

00:22:32.320 that characterizes

00:22:33.320 a Machiavellian orientation

00:22:35.180 towards life

00:22:36.280 is a proclamation

00:22:37.700 which has an iota

00:22:39.300 of truth in it,

00:22:40.580 which is,

00:22:41.440 if you're stupid enough

00:22:42.700 to let me take advantage of you,

00:22:44.360 if you invite me in

00:22:45.940 to take advantage of you,

00:22:47.940 you deserve everything

00:22:50.220 you have coming to you.

00:22:51.820 Right.

00:22:52.220 Well, and you know,

00:22:52.860 it's a very strange thing.

00:22:54.640 So, let me reflect on that

00:22:57.640 in a strange manner.

00:23:00.200 So, in the story

00:23:01.700 of Cain and Abel,

00:23:03.680 Cain is very bitter

00:23:05.420 and resentful

00:23:06.200 because what he's offering

00:23:08.380 to God

00:23:08.880 is not being accepted.

00:23:10.160 His sacrifices

00:23:10.940 are being rejected.

00:23:13.020 And he essentially

00:23:15.980 makes a case to God

00:23:17.240 that his misery

00:23:18.320 and unhappiness

00:23:19.140 is a consequence

00:23:19.920 of his failure.

00:23:21.680 And God says back to him,

00:23:23.560 no, that's not true.

00:23:25.280 You're missing

00:23:25.740 an intervening variable

00:23:27.000 here, buddy.

00:23:29.300 You did sacrifice

00:23:31.360 inappropriately.

00:23:32.360 You're not bringing

00:23:33.060 your best to the table.

00:23:34.520 And because of that,

00:23:35.400 you are failing.

00:23:36.480 But that's not why

00:23:37.280 you're miserable.

00:23:38.200 You're miserable

00:23:38.940 because something

00:23:39.920 tempted you

00:23:40.840 when you were failing.

00:23:41.780 It's sin that crouched

00:23:43.140 at your door.

00:23:44.080 And you invited it in

00:23:45.880 and you let it

00:23:47.420 have its way with you.

00:23:48.880 And that's why

00:23:49.700 you're bitter and miserable.

00:23:51.160 And that's a very different

00:23:52.360 causal sequence.

00:23:53.500 Now, the reason

00:23:54.700 I'm bringing that up

00:23:55.560 is because

00:23:56.060 the constant

00:23:57.520 refrain

00:23:59.020 of the

00:23:59.780 showman

00:24:00.620 carnival barker

00:24:02.400 is,

00:24:02.980 and you see this

00:24:03.640 parodied, for example,

00:24:05.300 or explored

00:24:06.120 in Tom Waits' work

00:24:07.360 and you see it

00:24:08.400 touched on

00:24:09.020 in the work of people

00:24:09.840 like Robert Crumb,

00:24:10.760 is that

00:24:11.180 if you're

00:24:12.580 the kind of

00:24:13.320 damn fool

00:24:13.980 who invites

00:24:14.620 the predator

00:24:15.160 into your house

00:24:16.040 and then he eats you,

00:24:17.200 it's like,

00:24:17.700 well,

00:24:18.340 you kind of

00:24:19.720 set yourself up

00:24:20.640 for it

00:24:21.060 and you had it coming.

00:24:22.180 Now,

00:24:22.740 the problem

00:24:23.640 with that

00:24:24.180 is that

00:24:24.680 the Machiavellian,

00:24:26.360 who you could think

00:24:27.100 about as a force

00:24:28.000 of divine vengeance

00:24:29.300 in that regard,

00:24:30.700 ensuring that

00:24:31.400 those who are foolish

00:24:32.340 get their just desserts,

00:24:34.000 also uses that

00:24:35.360 as a justification

00:24:37.260 for their own

00:24:38.120 predatory

00:24:38.580 and parasitical

00:24:39.400 activities, right?

00:24:40.280 Well, of course

00:24:40.800 I can take advantage

00:24:41.780 of you

00:24:42.120 because,

00:24:42.720 well,

00:24:42.880 first of all,

00:24:43.600 you're probably

00:24:44.160 a thief anyways

00:24:45.060 and you just hide it

00:24:46.140 with a facade

00:24:47.000 of moral virtue.

00:24:48.660 That's what the

00:24:49.080 martyrs always claim.

00:24:49.200 Yes, there's a lot

00:24:49.760 of justification.

00:24:50.760 Yes, yes.

00:24:51.380 And then the next thing

00:24:52.300 is, well,

00:24:53.300 if I accept this story

00:24:54.820 that you're a fool

00:24:55.660 and so I'm entitled

00:24:57.320 to deliver you

00:24:59.440 what you deserve,

00:25:00.260 then that justifies

00:25:01.120 virtually anything

00:25:02.240 on my behalf.

00:25:03.620 And so,

00:25:04.300 now,

00:25:04.880 it's a very complex

00:25:06.360 characterization

00:25:07.000 of your father.

00:25:08.000 But now,

00:25:08.460 you also,

00:25:09.980 interestingly enough,

00:25:11.000 in the 80s,

00:25:11.680 so you would have

00:25:12.140 been in your 20s

00:25:13.020 at that point,

00:25:14.160 despite the fact

00:25:15.340 that your father

00:25:16.160 had this very complex

00:25:17.880 character

00:25:18.780 and was toying

00:25:20.840 with the edges

00:25:21.920 of propriety,

00:25:23.680 let's say,

00:25:24.320 at minimum,

00:25:25.160 you also felt compelled

00:25:26.700 to rise to his defense

00:25:28.320 and you did that

00:25:29.360 very publicly.

00:25:30.220 And so,

00:25:30.600 I'm very curious,

00:25:31.840 like,

00:25:32.000 how would you,

00:25:33.260 you obviously

00:25:34.400 loved your father

00:25:35.320 and that in itself?

00:25:37.500 I did.

00:25:37.520 No,

00:25:37.800 that's a,

00:25:38.300 I want to clarify that

00:25:39.620 because a lot of people

00:25:40.540 hold me up

00:25:41.160 as some kind of

00:25:41.840 poster child

00:25:42.660 for adolescent rebellion

00:25:44.620 against parents.

00:25:45.720 And in fact,

00:25:46.640 I was a really

00:25:47.660 dutiful daughter.

00:25:48.900 I really went to bat

00:25:50.980 for both of my parents

00:25:52.140 and all of my upbringing,

00:25:53.420 even though

00:25:53.920 they never came

00:25:55.680 to school

00:25:56.520 to defend me

00:25:57.440 when I was being bullied

00:25:58.540 and picked on.

00:25:59.820 I just had to learn

00:26:00.560 how to fight myself.

00:26:02.200 But,

00:26:02.480 yeah,

00:26:03.260 I always felt,

00:26:06.600 until I was an adult

00:26:08.800 and parted ways

00:26:09.640 with my father,

00:26:10.400 I mean,

00:26:10.600 I always felt

00:26:11.320 that we were buddies,

00:26:12.360 that we were really close.

00:26:14.060 And,

00:26:14.400 yeah,

00:26:15.020 I mean,

00:26:15.260 obviously,

00:26:15.680 I looked up to him

00:26:16.640 as the,

00:26:17.440 you know,

00:26:18.420 Jehovah God

00:26:19.300 kind of archetype,

00:26:20.380 except in Satan form.

00:26:22.180 And,

00:26:22.700 which is interesting

00:26:24.420 because I think

00:26:25.040 that's a lot of

00:26:25.940 how his followers

00:26:26.800 do look up to him

00:26:27.880 as like a kind of

00:26:29.180 satanic Jehovah.

00:26:30.980 So,

00:26:31.580 and they treat him

00:26:32.500 in the same way.

00:26:34.460 And,

00:26:35.000 so,

00:26:36.360 so,

00:26:36.880 it is not

00:26:37.820 really that

00:26:38.920 I was such

00:26:39.460 a rebellious kid.

00:26:40.560 I was a very

00:26:41.580 obedient,

00:26:43.100 dutiful daughter.

00:26:44.840 And I,

00:26:45.860 you know,

00:26:46.260 there was only,

00:26:47.120 even though I was

00:26:48.020 left to my own,

00:26:50.260 left on my own

00:26:51.240 quite a lot

00:26:52.180 growing up,

00:26:53.040 my,

00:26:54.040 I mean,

00:26:55.140 my mother,

00:26:55.800 and we'll both of them

00:26:56.540 made it clear

00:26:57.060 that there are only

00:26:58.760 certain rules,

00:26:59.920 which is don't

00:27:00.680 do anything

00:27:01.460 that is going

00:27:02.500 to drag us

00:27:04.660 into a negative

00:27:05.920 light,

00:27:06.600 which I,

00:27:07.360 in hindsight,

00:27:08.140 I think is really

00:27:08.740 funny because

00:27:09.260 as if they didn't

00:27:10.160 do enough

00:27:10.580 themselves to do

00:27:11.440 that.

00:27:11.700 But I couldn't

00:27:12.680 do,

00:27:13.080 for example,

00:27:13.560 I didn't have

00:27:14.140 the luxury

00:27:14.540 of having a

00:27:15.080 drug problem.

00:27:15.840 That just

00:27:16.260 couldn't happen

00:27:16.880 because that

00:27:18.580 would reflect

00:27:19.040 badly on my

00:27:20.520 parents.

00:27:21.260 So,

00:27:21.880 that,

00:27:22.180 that was

00:27:22.900 something that,

00:27:24.260 you know,

00:27:24.660 although they

00:27:25.420 were pretty

00:27:27.640 logically

00:27:30.160 open-minded

00:27:31.060 about if

00:27:32.260 you want

00:27:32.740 to experiment,

00:27:33.840 you know,

00:27:34.120 let us

00:27:34.460 know,

00:27:34.920 and that

00:27:35.180 kind of

00:27:36.460 pseudo-liberal

00:27:37.660 attitude.

00:27:38.820 However,

00:27:39.900 by their

00:27:41.880 behavior and

00:27:42.660 by their,

00:27:44.200 by things that

00:27:44.740 my father would

00:27:45.280 say about

00:27:45.800 really being

00:27:46.980 very anti-drug,

00:27:48.120 it didn't

00:27:48.620 take a

00:27:49.480 genius to

00:27:50.560 know that he

00:27:51.080 would not

00:27:51.500 have been

00:27:52.220 happy if I

00:27:53.100 had gone

00:27:53.380 down that

00:27:53.980 route.

00:27:54.280 So,

00:27:55.320 I was

00:27:55.720 constantly,

00:27:56.720 you know,

00:27:58.020 keeping myself

00:27:58.680 in check and

00:27:59.260 being sure

00:27:59.780 that I lived

00:28:01.500 up to

00:28:02.720 what his,

00:28:03.960 what his

00:28:05.740 standards were,

00:28:07.280 which was

00:28:08.260 really

00:28:08.680 idiosyncratic,

00:28:10.000 obviously.

00:28:11.320 So,

00:28:11.520 so,

00:28:11.800 so what I'm

00:28:12.260 trying to say

00:28:12.660 about rebellion,

00:28:13.680 what I'm

00:28:13.980 trying to

00:28:14.280 explain about

00:28:14.880 rebellion is I

00:28:15.600 was not a

00:28:16.080 rebellious child.

00:28:17.300 In fact,

00:28:17.720 I always felt

00:28:18.380 like it was

00:28:18.940 us,

00:28:19.800 our little

00:28:20.280 clan,

00:28:21.160 against the

00:28:21.680 world.

00:28:22.920 And,

00:28:23.520 and I,

00:28:23.960 and I was

00:28:24.440 very rebellious

00:28:25.340 against other

00:28:26.040 authority figures,

00:28:26.840 like in school

00:28:27.700 or out in,

00:28:28.860 out in the

00:28:29.300 world.

00:28:30.220 And I was

00:28:31.040 really a scrappy

00:28:32.040 kind of warrior

00:28:33.100 in that way.

00:28:34.420 But I always

00:28:35.480 felt like there

00:28:36.160 was the core

00:28:37.120 family that

00:28:38.360 was solid

00:28:39.000 and tight.

00:28:40.300 And,

00:28:40.900 and I,

00:28:42.600 and I

00:28:42.920 continued to

00:28:43.520 feel that way

00:28:44.120 until the

00:28:45.160 split with my

00:28:45.800 father.

00:28:46.100 And even,

00:28:47.280 and I would

00:28:47.680 even characterize

00:28:48.480 when I severed

00:28:50.240 ties with my

00:28:50.980 father,

00:28:51.300 not as a

00:28:52.420 act of

00:28:53.100 rebellion,

00:28:53.800 but just as

00:28:54.500 simply severance,

00:28:55.440 as putting an

00:28:56.020 end.

00:28:56.760 That was the

00:28:57.180 end,

00:28:57.880 forever.

00:28:59.220 So that

00:28:59.640 wasn't,

00:29:00.120 you know,

00:29:00.420 because rebellion

00:29:01.600 implies a

00:29:02.720 kind of

00:29:03.380 relationship.

00:29:05.260 It implies

00:29:05.980 that,

00:29:06.380 that,

00:29:07.040 you know,

00:29:07.460 a child will

00:29:08.140 test the

00:29:08.560 limits this

00:29:09.060 way,

00:29:09.460 and then the

00:29:10.000 parent will

00:29:10.420 push back

00:29:10.940 that way,

00:29:11.440 and there will

00:29:11.820 be a give

00:29:12.240 and take

00:29:12.580 and a give

00:29:12.840 and take.

00:29:13.240 I never

00:29:13.800 had any of

00:29:14.400 that,

00:29:14.840 never did

00:29:15.360 any of

00:29:15.720 that.

00:29:16.520 I reached

00:29:17.880 my limit,

00:29:18.720 and then there

00:29:19.500 was a tipping

00:29:19.980 point,

00:29:20.640 and then I

00:29:21.160 was done,

00:29:21.720 and it was

00:29:22.000 a clean

00:29:22.300 severance,

00:29:22.920 and I

00:29:23.260 never went

00:29:23.680 back.

00:29:24.220 And I

00:29:24.400 never,

00:29:24.700 it was not

00:29:25.240 even rebellion,

00:29:26.120 it was just,

00:29:26.620 I'm done,

00:29:28.000 you've pushed

00:29:28.640 me too far,

00:29:29.580 and I can't

00:29:30.420 even,

00:29:31.040 yeah.

00:29:32.040 Okay,

00:29:32.480 so let me ask

00:29:33.320 you two

00:29:33.600 questions about

00:29:34.380 that,

00:29:34.700 because there's

00:29:35.000 another paradox

00:29:35.820 about your

00:29:36.380 father.

00:29:36.900 I mean,

00:29:37.620 in the

00:29:38.080 satanic

00:29:38.520 rituals,

00:29:39.080 for example,

00:29:39.760 it certainly

00:29:40.320 appears that

00:29:41.160 he's perfectly

00:29:42.380 willing to

00:29:43.080 harness,

00:29:43.940 let's say,

00:29:44.540 sexual activity

00:29:46.840 for the

00:29:47.540 purposes of

00:29:48.140 the church,

00:29:48.680 and there

00:29:49.300 is an

00:29:49.560 overlap with

00:29:50.340 a kind of

00:29:51.040 sexual hedonism

00:29:52.100 there,

00:29:52.560 but you also

00:29:53.320 characterize him

00:29:54.120 as someone

00:29:54.640 who essentially

00:29:55.720 had a law

00:29:56.420 and order

00:29:56.820 orientation,

00:29:58.320 and it was

00:30:00.140 very strict

00:30:00.700 with regards,

00:30:02.760 for example,

00:30:03.400 to your own

00:30:03.820 behavior,

00:30:04.720 at least on

00:30:05.720 the drug

00:30:06.100 side,

00:30:06.580 and so those

00:30:07.540 are very

00:30:07.920 difficult things

00:30:08.600 to bring

00:30:08.940 together,

00:30:09.440 right?

00:30:09.640 So you have

00:30:10.020 this Machiavellian

00:30:11.320 person,

00:30:12.160 he's narcissistic,

00:30:13.220 he's a real

00:30:13.660 showman,

00:30:15.180 he's drawing

00:30:15.980 all sorts of

00:30:16.520 attention to

00:30:17.020 your family,

00:30:18.000 and he's a

00:30:19.400 celebrator of

00:30:20.720 what's

00:30:21.760 unacceptable,

00:30:23.980 and yet,

00:30:24.820 there's an

00:30:25.360 element of

00:30:26.080 him too

00:30:26.480 that's

00:30:27.720 aligned more

00:30:28.840 with the

00:30:29.380 law and

00:30:29.740 order types,

00:30:30.580 and so,

00:30:31.280 and then you

00:30:31.980 also brought

00:30:33.000 into that

00:30:33.460 your sense,

00:30:34.660 yep,

00:30:35.620 go ahead.

00:30:37.340 No,

00:30:37.940 finish your

00:30:38.340 thought.

00:30:38.720 Well,

00:30:39.040 you also

00:30:40.100 brought into

00:30:40.720 there something

00:30:41.320 else that's

00:30:41.880 interesting,

00:30:42.460 which was,

00:30:42.860 you know,

00:30:43.160 you were a

00:30:43.580 dutiful person

00:30:44.340 and your

00:30:44.800 initial presumption,

00:30:46.500 which I think

00:30:46.900 is the default

00:30:48.260 presumption of

00:30:49.040 a daughter,

00:30:49.980 is that your

00:30:51.040 primary loyalty

00:30:51.880 was to your

00:30:52.660 family and

00:30:53.420 that you felt

00:30:54.400 that your

00:30:54.800 family was an

00:30:55.460 embattled unit.

00:30:56.380 Now,

00:30:56.840 you know,

00:30:57.120 that is a

00:30:57.780 trick that

00:30:58.540 Machiavellians

00:30:59.740 use with people

00:31:00.960 who are close

00:31:01.520 to them,

00:31:01.860 right?

00:31:02.080 They tend to

00:31:02.720 sever their

00:31:03.280 ties to other

00:31:04.140 people and

00:31:05.040 keep them

00:31:05.460 intensely focused

00:31:06.380 on what's

00:31:07.100 proximal.

00:31:07.900 I'm very aware

00:31:08.440 of that.

00:31:08.760 Yeah,

00:31:09.060 and to

00:31:09.300 prize loyalty

00:31:10.220 above all

00:31:10.780 else.

00:31:11.260 And so,

00:31:11.900 it's very...

00:31:12.580 And they use

00:31:12.600 the word

00:31:12.940 we.

00:31:14.360 They use

00:31:15.020 the word

00:31:15.320 we,

00:31:15.840 so that

00:31:16.420 you're

00:31:16.660 dragged

00:31:16.940 into the

00:31:17.480 we.

00:31:18.720 Yeah,

00:31:19.020 well,

00:31:19.180 and I

00:31:19.400 can't see

00:31:19.840 in some

00:31:20.340 ways how

00:31:20.700 you could

00:31:21.000 have escaped

00:31:21.520 that as

00:31:22.000 a child,

00:31:22.640 right?

00:31:22.900 I mean,

00:31:23.080 especially if

00:31:23.720 you're

00:31:23.900 relatively

00:31:24.300 dutiful in

00:31:25.080 your personality,

00:31:26.360 because you're

00:31:27.560 going to

00:31:28.160 assume,

00:31:28.660 especially if

00:31:29.160 your father's

00:31:29.760 also charismatic,

00:31:31.380 your primary

00:31:32.580 allegiance is

00:31:33.480 going to be

00:31:34.020 to him.

00:31:34.480 And so,

00:31:35.420 you think,

00:31:36.340 you believe

00:31:36.860 that that

00:31:37.340 was what

00:31:37.920 motivated your

00:31:40.200 participation as

00:31:41.300 a high priestess,

00:31:42.200 say,

00:31:42.460 let's say,

00:31:42.840 in the 1980s,

00:31:43.800 is that you

00:31:44.300 were still

00:31:44.940 on the side

00:31:46.300 of your family,

00:31:47.120 you still

00:31:47.480 believed that

00:31:48.040 your father...

00:31:48.960 Okay,

00:31:49.240 so how did

00:31:49.760 the evidence

00:31:50.440 mount for you

00:31:51.600 that the

00:31:52.980 orientation that

00:31:54.000 you had in

00:31:54.600 relationship to

00:31:55.360 your father

00:31:55.840 was of the

00:31:57.440 sort that would

00:31:57.980 eventually have

00:31:58.640 to be severed?

00:31:59.440 Like,

00:31:59.680 how the hell

00:32:00.320 did you come

00:32:00.880 about that

00:32:01.440 revolution?

00:32:02.740 That was a

00:32:03.300 gradual process.

00:32:04.700 Like most

00:32:05.700 things in life,

00:32:06.720 things don't

00:32:07.300 just...

00:32:07.980 Really,

00:32:08.540 things don't

00:32:09.100 just happen

00:32:09.700 out of the

00:32:10.240 blue.

00:32:10.640 Things don't

00:32:11.140 just happen

00:32:11.820 suddenly.

00:32:13.060 There's lead

00:32:13.620 up.

00:32:14.380 There's...

00:32:15.180 And I've

00:32:15.800 always been

00:32:16.400 a really

00:32:17.880 patient person

00:32:18.700 and I give

00:32:19.200 people a lot

00:32:20.020 of chances

00:32:20.540 and a lot

00:32:21.140 of benefit

00:32:21.560 of the doubt

00:32:22.180 and I've

00:32:22.700 always...

00:32:23.500 Sometimes

00:32:24.880 stupidly so,

00:32:26.140 but I've

00:32:26.440 always tried

00:32:26.960 to see

00:32:27.520 actually the

00:32:28.460 good in

00:32:29.140 people,

00:32:30.040 even

00:32:30.360 reprehensible,

00:32:31.560 you know,

00:32:32.200 people who are

00:32:32.880 really reprehensible

00:32:33.620 and I've

00:32:36.260 known a lot

00:32:37.100 of people

00:32:40.100 who by

00:32:41.020 any normal

00:32:41.900 standards of

00:32:43.760 society would

00:32:44.340 think,

00:32:44.620 you would think

00:32:45.080 that these

00:32:45.620 people are

00:32:46.180 beyond the

00:32:46.920 pale,

00:32:47.280 they're totally

00:32:47.900 psychopathic and

00:32:49.200 horrible,

00:32:50.060 people, and

00:32:51.420 that's a matter

00:32:54.120 of psychological

00:32:56.120 analysis.

00:32:56.780 That's not

00:32:57.300 for me to

00:32:57.780 say what

00:32:58.760 their diagnoses

00:32:59.460 are.

00:32:59.820 I'm just

00:33:00.100 saying that

00:33:00.600 by normal

00:33:01.500 standards they

00:33:02.860 would be seen

00:33:03.300 that way.

00:33:04.220 And yet,

00:33:05.260 because I've

00:33:06.100 known such

00:33:06.600 people in

00:33:08.120 perfectly

00:33:08.520 normal...

00:33:09.860 I wouldn't

00:33:10.360 say perfectly

00:33:11.080 because nothing

00:33:12.480 about my life

00:33:13.320 has been

00:33:13.620 perfectly normal,

00:33:15.020 but I mean,

00:33:15.580 I've known them

00:33:16.480 as in the same

00:33:17.280 way that I'm

00:33:17.660 talking to you

00:33:18.280 now, just

00:33:18.800 talking normally,

00:33:20.420 and so I

00:33:21.540 could always

00:33:22.080 see...

00:33:24.380 Yeah, I mean,

00:33:25.560 I saw the

00:33:26.000 problems in

00:33:27.160 such people,

00:33:28.740 including my

00:33:29.240 father, but in

00:33:31.900 the case of him

00:33:32.680 in particular,

00:33:34.180 so that was a

00:33:34.880 gradual process,

00:33:35.760 but what began

00:33:37.120 to happen is,

00:33:38.180 as I was

00:33:38.720 defending him

00:33:39.360 publicly, and I

00:33:41.240 would like to

00:33:41.620 have a little

00:33:41.960 powwow with

00:33:42.620 him and, you

00:33:45.040 know, say,

00:33:45.440 okay, these are

00:33:45.860 the interviews I

00:33:46.480 have lined up

00:33:47.000 for next week,

00:33:48.120 and then, you

00:33:48.920 know, what

00:33:49.240 would you want

00:33:49.820 me to...

00:33:50.500 Because I

00:33:50.920 would always

00:33:51.280 say to him,

00:33:51.760 what's the

00:33:52.140 party line?

00:33:52.780 What do you

00:33:53.060 want me to

00:33:53.540 say?

00:33:53.960 I was a

00:33:54.700 mouthpiece for

00:33:55.880 him, but at

00:33:57.600 the same time,

00:33:59.240 because he

00:34:00.000 would just say

00:34:01.040 like, he was

00:34:02.320 so out of

00:34:02.740 touch with

00:34:03.080 reality, he

00:34:03.680 would just

00:34:03.900 say crazy

00:34:04.380 things like,

00:34:05.160 you know, talk

00:34:05.640 about celebrities,

00:34:06.580 and that's all

00:34:06.960 he cared about

00:34:07.560 was that people

00:34:08.120 saw him in

00:34:09.300 an entertaining

00:34:10.160 and exciting

00:34:11.080 and kind of

00:34:11.600 cocktail party

00:34:12.460 conversation kind

00:34:13.520 of way.

00:34:14.440 He really had

00:34:15.520 no interest

00:34:16.620 or concern

00:34:17.460 about, you

00:34:20.880 know, the

00:34:21.760 phenomena that

00:34:23.460 were happening

00:34:26.400 in the country

00:34:27.560 at that time

00:34:28.320 with innocent

00:34:29.680 people being

00:34:30.680 accused of

00:34:32.460 horrible things.

00:34:33.420 That didn't

00:34:34.460 interest him

00:34:35.000 at all.

00:34:35.580 So what

00:34:36.180 happened with

00:34:36.700 me is, you

00:34:38.940 know, I would

00:34:40.160 begin kind

00:34:41.240 of having

00:34:42.260 to, either

00:34:46.020 I would

00:34:46.720 have to, you

00:34:48.720 know, push

00:34:49.120 him a little

00:34:49.460 more, like

00:34:50.160 say, well, I'm

00:34:50.940 not really sure

00:34:51.580 that they're

00:34:52.500 going to want

00:34:52.840 to talk about

00:34:53.580 Jane Mansfield

00:34:54.620 and Marilyn

00:34:55.280 Monroe and

00:34:56.140 things like,

00:34:57.260 and I would

00:34:57.720 say, you

00:34:58.100 know, but,

00:34:58.580 but, you

00:34:59.300 know, people

00:35:00.600 are being

00:35:00.920 accused of

00:35:01.600 being members

00:35:02.820 that aren't

00:35:03.240 even members

00:35:03.860 of the Church

00:35:04.400 of Satan

00:35:04.660 things, things

00:35:05.120 like this.

00:35:05.520 And so, anyway,

00:35:06.440 what I had

00:35:07.040 to do, because

00:35:08.700 there was a

00:35:09.100 lot of

00:35:09.320 cognitive

00:35:09.700 dissonance

00:35:11.180 happening, what

00:35:12.760 I had to do

00:35:13.500 is be his

00:35:14.420 mouthpiece and

00:35:15.700 yet filter it

00:35:17.760 through my

00:35:18.160 personality,

00:35:19.440 through my

00:35:20.080 conscience, and

00:35:22.620 I had to live

00:35:23.400 with it.

00:35:23.860 So, you

00:35:24.900 know, I would

00:35:25.240 phrase things in

00:35:26.000 such a way that

00:35:26.540 according to my

00:35:27.380 personality, what

00:35:28.780 I could live

00:35:29.580 with up to

00:35:30.860 the degree that

00:35:32.000 I was still

00:35:32.920 promoting his

00:35:34.680 vision.

00:35:36.100 And it was

00:35:36.540 never about

00:35:37.200 me.

00:35:37.960 It was always,

00:35:38.500 and I always

00:35:38.980 held, you

00:35:39.860 know, held

00:35:40.300 him up as

00:35:41.120 the, you

00:35:42.640 know, this

00:35:43.000 is, I'm

00:35:43.580 here on

00:35:44.000 behalf of.

00:35:46.760 And so,

00:35:48.080 gradually what

00:35:48.860 happened is some

00:35:49.580 people would

00:35:50.160 start coming

00:35:50.640 forth to me and

00:35:51.520 telling me about

00:35:52.600 things about his

00:35:53.980 life that I

00:35:54.660 didn't know

00:35:55.040 about.

00:35:56.340 People in the

00:35:57.300 public would

00:35:57.880 just say, oh,

00:35:58.800 do you know

00:35:59.180 that, it would

00:36:00.820 be horribly

00:36:01.500 embarrassing, but

00:36:02.440 they would say,

00:36:02.900 well, do you

00:36:03.200 know where this

00:36:03.620 part of the

00:36:04.100 satanic Bible came

00:36:05.140 from, or

00:36:05.500 do you know

00:36:05.780 where that

00:36:06.120 really came

00:36:06.620 from?

00:36:07.340 And of

00:36:07.800 course, because

00:36:08.280 I lived in a

00:36:09.220 vacuum and a

00:36:09.860 bubble in my

00:36:10.700 family, so I

00:36:11.460 just accepted.

00:36:12.540 And this is the

00:36:13.240 best way for

00:36:14.120 Machiavellians who

00:36:15.540 are narcissistic,

00:36:16.440 is to get

00:36:17.400 people to be

00:36:19.260 very credible

00:36:20.580 defenders of

00:36:22.380 them, is if

00:36:24.980 you can convince

00:36:28.480 an innocent

00:36:29.040 person that all

00:36:31.340 of your facade

00:36:32.060 of your facade

00:36:32.280 is true, and

00:36:34.440 you send them

00:36:35.240 forth, they

00:36:36.820 will be very

00:36:37.460 credulous, and

00:36:38.420 they will be

00:36:38.860 very credible, and

00:36:39.840 they will seem

00:36:40.520 very convincing,

00:36:41.620 and of course,

00:36:42.800 that's the

00:36:43.600 problem of what

00:36:44.180 I have to live

00:36:44.780 with today, is

00:36:46.200 I still get so

00:36:47.760 many Satanists

00:36:48.920 that come to my

00:36:50.100 website or come

00:36:50.920 to my social media

00:36:52.580 pages, and

00:36:53.400 clueless, and

00:36:54.940 say, how can I

00:36:55.600 join, you know,

00:36:56.280 how can I, so

00:36:57.180 where do I sign

00:36:57.960 up, and it's

00:36:59.460 like, you didn't

00:37:00.300 get the memo

00:37:00.940 30 years ago, or

00:37:02.540 over 30 years

00:37:03.440 ago, so the

00:37:06.360 disillusionment

00:37:08.400 happened gradually,

00:37:11.040 it wasn't like

00:37:11.620 overnight, and

00:37:12.320 then of course,

00:37:13.040 like all things

00:37:14.720 that happen

00:37:15.180 gradually, then

00:37:15.940 there's the

00:37:16.320 tipping point,

00:37:17.000 then everybody

00:37:17.420 freaks out, and

00:37:18.060 they say, oh,

00:37:18.720 she just blew up

00:37:19.580 over this one

00:37:20.240 little thing, but

00:37:20.920 it wasn't just

00:37:21.600 one little thing,

00:37:22.660 it was an

00:37:23.260 accumulation of

00:37:25.060 too many things,

00:37:26.600 and then the

00:37:27.200 final straw,

00:37:27.960 was when he

00:37:28.420 threatened my

00:37:28.980 own life, when

00:37:30.300 after I had

00:37:31.000 been doing

00:37:31.380 this for five

00:37:32.460 years, on

00:37:33.780 behalf of him,

00:37:34.760 all of these

00:37:35.240 public appearances,

00:37:36.680 I had been

00:37:37.120 taking the

00:37:38.840 threats, and I

00:37:40.120 had been

00:37:40.640 endangering my

00:37:41.580 own life, showing

00:37:42.440 up in studios

00:37:43.200 where there

00:37:43.640 would be huge

00:37:44.800 hordes of, you

00:37:46.520 know, Christian

00:37:46.960 evangelists that

00:37:47.860 really want to

00:37:48.640 take a baseball

00:37:49.620 bat to my head

00:37:50.480 and, you know,

00:37:51.360 kill me, and

00:37:54.560 I have lots of

00:37:55.760 anecdotal stories

00:37:56.900 about that, too,

00:37:57.960 how that's a

00:37:59.040 reality, and

00:38:01.940 then, so what

00:38:04.560 had happened

00:38:05.120 was, the

00:38:06.520 tipping point

00:38:07.100 was that my

00:38:08.000 husband at that

00:38:08.620 time and I, we

00:38:09.980 were preparing a

00:38:11.100 25-year anniversary

00:38:12.200 of the Church of

00:38:12.940 Satan, and it

00:38:15.500 was going to be a

00:38:15.960 public performance,

00:38:17.700 and the venue,

00:38:20.220 but also the

00:38:20.840 police and the

00:38:21.620 sheriff's department

00:38:22.340 in Los Angeles

00:38:23.040 had been getting a

00:38:23.720 lot of threats

00:38:25.460 and a lot of

00:38:26.700 warnings that if

00:38:27.320 it was going to

00:38:27.700 go on, you

00:38:28.860 know, something

00:38:29.240 really terrible

00:38:29.840 would happen,

00:38:31.440 and interestingly

00:38:33.580 enough, actually,

00:38:35.100 because I knew

00:38:35.620 Richard Ramirez at

00:38:36.580 the time, too,

00:38:38.100 because my husband

00:38:38.940 at the time and

00:38:40.380 I were considering

00:38:41.920 writing a book

00:38:42.840 about him, that's a

00:38:44.340 whole other

00:38:44.760 subject,

00:38:45.300 starting a

00:38:50.320 business can be

00:38:50.960 tough, but

00:38:51.640 thanks to

00:38:52.080 Shopify, running

00:38:52.940 your online

00:38:53.460 storefront is

00:38:54.260 easier than

00:38:54.880 ever.

00:38:55.660 Shopify is the

00:38:56.520 global commerce

00:38:57.260 platform that

00:38:57.880 helps you sell at

00:38:58.580 every stage of

00:38:59.300 your business,

00:38:59.920 from the launch

00:39:00.740 your online shop

00:39:01.460 stage, all the

00:39:02.180 way to the did

00:39:02.740 we just hit a

00:39:03.480 million orders

00:39:04.060 stage, Shopify

00:39:05.140 is here to help

00:39:06.040 you grow.

00:39:07.080 Our marketing

00:39:07.480 team uses Shopify

00:39:08.380 every day to

00:39:09.200 sell our

00:39:09.520 merchandise, and

00:39:10.300 we love how

00:39:10.980 easy it is to

00:39:11.600 add more items,

00:39:12.740 ship products, and

00:39:13.540 track conversions.

00:39:14.280 With Shopify,

00:39:15.780 customize your

00:39:16.360 online store to

00:39:17.140 your style with

00:39:18.140 flexible templates

00:39:18.960 and powerful tools

00:39:20.000 alongside an

00:39:20.980 endless list of

00:39:21.860 integrations and

00:39:22.620 third-party apps

00:39:23.380 like on-demand

00:39:24.160 printing, accounting,

00:39:25.400 and chatbots.

00:39:26.520 Shopify helps you

00:39:27.300 turn browsers into

00:39:28.360 buyers with the

00:39:29.020 internet's best

00:39:29.700 converting checkout,

00:39:30.820 up to 36% better

00:39:32.200 compared to other

00:39:32.940 leading e-commerce

00:39:33.720 platforms.

00:39:34.860 No matter how big

00:39:35.640 you want to grow,

00:39:36.520 Shopify gives you

00:39:37.260 everything you need

00:39:38.000 to take control and

00:39:39.040 take your business

00:39:39.740 to the next level.

00:39:41.300 Sign up for a

00:39:41.940 $1 per month trial

00:39:42.980 period at

00:39:43.600 shopify.com

00:39:44.640 slash jbp,

00:39:45.880 all lowercase.

00:39:47.180 Go to

00:39:47.600 shopify.com

00:39:48.480 slash jbp now

00:39:49.640 to grow your

00:39:50.280 business no matter

00:39:51.360 what stage you're

00:39:52.040 in.

00:39:52.560 That's

00:39:52.920 shopify.com

00:39:53.900 slash jbp.

00:39:55.000 Richard Ramirez was

00:39:59.540 a serial killer,

00:40:00.760 a serial murderer

00:40:01.800 in Los Angeles

00:40:03.100 in the 80s

00:40:04.160 who self-identified

00:40:06.100 as a Satanist

00:40:07.060 and he was a

00:40:09.060 follower of my

00:40:09.760 father's.

00:40:10.880 And he's somebody

00:40:12.280 that, you know,

00:40:13.540 the present-day

00:40:14.180 Church of Satan

00:40:14.920 wants to pretend

00:40:16.480 there was no

00:40:18.800 connection to.

00:40:19.580 But here's the

00:40:21.220 thing, as I

00:40:22.000 was beginning

00:40:23.120 to represent

00:40:24.260 the Church of

00:40:25.480 Satan on a

00:40:26.080 broader

00:40:26.420 level, on a

00:40:29.360 broader, in a

00:40:30.260 broader spectrum,

00:40:31.380 and there were

00:40:32.520 some things that

00:40:33.120 began developing

00:40:33.900 in me.

00:40:34.920 And those were

00:40:36.440 realizations, and

00:40:37.780 realizations that if

00:40:38.960 you are a real

00:40:39.740 religion, you can't

00:40:41.400 pick and choose

00:40:42.080 who is drawn to

00:40:44.380 that religion.

00:40:45.520 I mean, there are

00:40:46.320 Christian murderers

00:40:47.220 two, but each

00:40:49.280 Christian denomination

00:40:50.340 can't just close

00:40:51.820 shop and say,

00:40:52.740 well, you can't

00:40:53.340 join.

00:40:54.040 Because if you are

00:40:55.480 a true religion,

00:40:56.740 you can't have

00:40:58.840 that kind of

00:40:59.480 selectivity.

00:41:01.360 Religion is

00:41:02.140 something bigger.

00:41:03.660 Religion isn't a

00:41:04.520 private club,

00:41:05.380 right?

00:41:06.580 So then that

00:41:07.600 brought to mind

00:41:08.500 philosophical

00:41:09.920 questions, like

00:41:11.260 philosophical

00:41:11.920 questions like,

00:41:13.620 well, what is

00:41:14.080 the meaning of it?

00:41:14.700 What purpose does

00:41:15.600 a religion serve,

00:41:16.700 actually?

00:41:17.220 then, to the

00:41:17.780 community?

00:41:18.380 And if we are

00:41:19.120 supposed to be

00:41:19.780 this kind of

00:41:21.340 anti-religion or

00:41:22.660 a counter-religion,

00:41:25.080 what purpose does

00:41:26.140 that serve, and

00:41:27.080 to who?

00:41:28.900 And so it's

00:41:31.180 just a religion

00:41:32.140 of Anton Lovet's

00:41:33.700 personal friends?

00:41:35.140 Well, then that's

00:41:35.800 not a religion,

00:41:36.560 right?

00:41:37.240 But he had

00:41:38.940 different tiers.

00:41:40.060 He had, like,

00:41:41.120 his inner circle,

00:41:42.360 and then he had

00:41:43.200 his circle of

00:41:44.940 friends who, in

00:41:45.860 fact, were

00:41:46.520 outside of the

00:41:47.400 Church of

00:41:47.800 Satan, people

00:41:48.980 that he liked

00:41:49.680 to feel like he

00:41:50.780 could have a

00:41:51.420 kind of, yeah,

00:41:54.720 Machiavellian and

00:41:55.900 also Rasputin, you

00:41:57.660 know, the Russian

00:41:58.580 monk Rasputin.

00:42:00.540 He was also very

00:42:01.540 influenced by him.

00:42:02.920 So these were kind

00:42:04.180 of role models for

00:42:05.040 him that he felt

00:42:06.280 that he, through

00:42:07.700 knowing people in

00:42:08.780 influential circles,

00:42:10.740 whether it was in

00:42:11.340 the entertainment

00:42:11.960 field or other

00:42:12.800 fields, that, you

00:42:14.680 know, that he

00:42:15.100 could have some

00:42:15.660 sort of influence

00:42:16.480 over them in

00:42:17.500 some way, in

00:42:18.340 their decision-making,

00:42:21.220 things like that.

00:42:22.480 But then he had

00:42:23.720 the laity, the

00:42:25.440 laity of the

00:42:26.220 Church of Satan,

00:42:27.600 which, of course,

00:42:28.700 because he was so

00:42:30.000 in his youth, he

00:42:30.940 was very influenced

00:42:31.940 by the carnival,

00:42:34.100 carnies, carny

00:42:35.020 life, you know.

00:42:36.420 So the laity is what

00:42:37.780 we always referred to

00:42:38.740 as the rubes.

00:42:39.560 Those were the

00:42:40.140 paying customers.

00:42:42.140 The laity were,

00:42:43.960 to quote my

00:42:44.580 father, he would

00:42:45.380 say, they're the

00:42:45.940 stuffing in the

00:42:46.500 mattress.

00:42:48.200 You know, they're

00:42:49.000 what pay the

00:42:49.880 bills.

00:42:51.640 Right, right.

00:42:52.260 So that carnival,

00:42:53.180 that carnival

00:42:54.020 association is

00:42:55.280 extremely interesting.

00:42:56.420 So there's a,

00:42:58.280 I'm a real, what

00:42:59.620 would you call,

00:43:00.600 aficionado of the

00:43:02.180 early Disney

00:43:03.800 classic animated

00:43:04.800 movies, and I've

00:43:05.780 spent a lot of

00:43:06.580 time, for example,

00:43:08.480 lecturing about it,

00:43:09.400 walking through

00:43:09.960 the story of

00:43:10.720 Pinocchio.

00:43:11.380 And there's a

00:43:12.320 mystery, there's a

00:43:13.220 lot of mysteries in

00:43:14.140 that animated movie,

00:43:15.680 which is about the

00:43:16.960 attempts of

00:43:17.980 someone striving

00:43:19.860 forward to free

00:43:20.820 themselves from the

00:43:21.880 invisible strings that

00:43:23.040 control them, right,

00:43:24.020 because Pinocchio is a

00:43:24.940 marionette and he's

00:43:25.740 trying to become a

00:43:26.400 real person.

00:43:27.400 Well, the first

00:43:28.620 temptation that he

00:43:30.060 encounters, this took

00:43:32.160 me a long time to

00:43:32.980 figure out, the first

00:43:34.180 temptation he

00:43:34.900 encounters is to

00:43:35.960 become an actor.

00:43:37.140 He gets picked up by

00:43:38.160 the coachman, this

00:43:39.700 Italian character,

00:43:41.420 who's a traveling

00:43:42.920 carny, and he's put

00:43:44.860 on the stage as a

00:43:46.560 puppet, right, and

00:43:48.280 the Italian

00:43:50.880 carnival director

00:43:53.100 claims that he's going

00:43:54.780 to make him a star,

00:43:55.740 but imprisons him,

00:43:57.460 essentially.

00:43:57.980 And it took me a long

00:43:59.100 time to understand.

00:44:00.140 I thought, well, this is

00:44:00.920 so strange because this

00:44:01.980 is a Hollywood movie,

00:44:03.160 and yet actor is put

00:44:05.220 in an extraordinarily

00:44:06.100 negative light.

00:44:07.420 And I thought, actor,

00:44:08.360 actor.

00:44:08.760 And then it seems

00:44:10.000 obvious in retrospect,

00:44:11.300 but it wasn't to begin

00:44:12.200 with, that, well, it's a

00:44:14.200 parody of accomplishment,

00:44:15.660 right, to be an actor

00:44:16.620 is to have all of the,

00:44:19.800 what would you call, the

00:44:21.120 trappings of the real

00:44:22.220 thing, but not to do any

00:44:23.460 of the work.

00:44:24.100 Exactly.

00:44:24.620 It's a persona.

00:44:26.040 And there's not, well,

00:44:26.880 and you said, you know,

00:44:27.780 you're tilting continually

00:44:29.820 towards the description of

00:44:31.120 your father, essentially,

00:44:32.520 as a carnival barker.

00:44:33.700 And you said, for example,

00:44:35.220 that when you were trying

00:44:36.160 to work through some of

00:44:37.580 the deeper philosophical

00:44:38.640 implications of the

00:44:39.780 accusations that were

00:44:40.820 coming your family's way,

00:44:42.360 his insistence constantly

00:44:43.820 was to play up his

00:44:44.960 association with high-level

00:44:46.300 celebrities, right, and

00:44:47.340 to become, so, I mean,

00:44:50.120 so, so the, the actor

00:44:52.980 issue is, it's a

00:44:55.520 continuation of the great

00:44:56.720 game idea.

00:44:57.540 So you say, well, there's

00:44:58.360 a sucker born every minute.

00:44:59.700 It's perfectly reasonable.

00:45:01.340 And even right to prey on

00:45:03.180 the gullible because they

00:45:04.180 deserve it.

00:45:04.880 But then there's a deeper

00:45:06.060 justification underneath

00:45:07.160 that, which is something

00:45:08.320 like, well, everything is a

00:45:10.000 great show anyways, right?

00:45:11.940 There's nothing real.

00:45:13.000 That's kind of the

00:45:13.700 postmodern element.

00:45:14.520 There's nothing real.

00:45:15.940 Everyone who's successful

00:45:18.140 isn't successful because

00:45:19.780 they've actually contributed

00:45:20.940 something real.

00:45:21.720 They're successful because

00:45:22.760 their act worked.

00:45:24.700 And so I might as well have

00:45:26.320 an act.

00:45:26.940 And your father was

00:45:27.920 obviously, I mean, with the

00:45:29.480 carnival surround, that

00:45:31.780 really becomes tangible

00:45:33.200 because a carnival is all

00:45:35.240 about taking a break from

00:45:37.160 the duties and

00:45:37.820 responsibilities of life and

00:45:39.300 celebrating the

00:45:40.120 orgiastic and the odd and

00:45:41.740 the lustful and the base.

00:45:43.600 And there's an attraction of

00:45:47.120 that carnival barker who's

00:45:48.560 often represented in

00:45:49.900 literary, in literary

00:45:52.400 symbology as a, what would you

00:45:54.400 say, an invitation to the

00:45:55.880 satanic realm, right?

00:45:57.100 That's why you see in

00:45:58.100 Stephen King, for example,

00:45:59.580 and Ray Bradbury, it's

00:46:02.180 very, very, or in movies

00:46:04.540 that use that trope, let's

00:46:07.180 say, of the serial killer is

00:46:08.920 often terrible things are

00:46:10.720 going on behind the scenes

00:46:11.960 in a carnival, right?

00:46:12.960 It's a place of dark magic.

00:46:15.860 And so your father

00:46:16.700 obviously was part of that

00:46:19.000 world.

00:46:19.780 And is it safe to say that

00:46:22.020 he believed that it was all

00:46:23.840 a great show and that he

00:46:25.280 was, he was staging a

00:46:27.360 theater?

00:46:27.840 Okay.

00:46:28.160 Yeah.

00:46:29.520 Here's the thing, is I

00:46:30.680 believe that in the

00:46:31.440 beginning, he really

00:46:32.300 believed, he really

00:46:33.680 believed that he would,

00:46:35.340 I think that he really

00:46:37.120 believed that so-called

00:46:39.080 normal society, straight

00:46:40.480 society, you know,

00:46:41.460 normal, regular,

00:46:45.380 middle-class society,

00:46:47.040 that they were corrupt

00:46:49.020 in their way.

00:46:50.060 So I'm sure he had some

00:46:51.140 early life experiences.

00:46:52.560 I'm sure he had early life

00:46:53.540 experiences that

00:46:54.680 disillusioned him and

00:46:56.640 caused him to take a dim

00:47:00.020 view of society and the

00:47:02.740 double standards and the

00:47:03.980 corruption and things like

00:47:05.040 this.

00:47:05.300 But here's the thing, a lot

00:47:06.860 of people get that too.

00:47:08.560 But not everybody thinks,

00:47:10.340 well, then I'm going to

00:47:11.000 take revenge and I'm going

00:47:12.640 to do, and I'm going to,

00:47:14.100 I'm going to flip the script

00:47:15.360 and I'm going to flip the

00:47:16.860 script and I'm going to do

00:47:18.320 it, I'm going to do one

00:47:20.240 up on that.

00:47:21.820 And so, but I think in the

00:47:23.200 beginning, I think in the

00:47:24.520 beginning, with the help

00:47:28.720 of my mother, I must say,

00:47:31.300 because my mother, don't

00:47:33.500 forget, was 50% of the

00:47:35.480 development of the Church of

00:47:36.600 Satan as well.

00:47:38.140 And she had her own

00:47:39.500 personality and she had her

00:47:40.940 own, you know, makeup from

00:47:46.320 her past and her family and

00:47:48.280 things like that.

00:47:49.480 So, and she very often was

00:47:54.120 like a balance to him, but

00:47:57.760 sometimes she was also

00:47:59.240 someone who was pushing him

00:48:00.960 from behind the scenes to go

00:48:02.400 further, go further and

00:48:03.320 setting, yet she was his PR

00:48:05.420 agent, she was the

00:48:06.440 administrator of the whole, she

00:48:07.640 built up the Church of Satan

00:48:09.000 in the administrative sense.

00:48:12.360 So, if my father had not

00:48:13.920 had my mother, who was

00:48:16.240 young and naive and really

00:48:17.520 looked up to him when she

00:48:19.380 first met him and admired

00:48:21.220 his talent, his creative

00:48:23.420 abilities, and he was a

00:48:26.660 raconteur, you know, he

00:48:28.040 could talk for hours and

00:48:29.420 hours.

00:48:30.460 And so, she didn't mind

00:48:33.300 taking the behind the

00:48:35.560 scenes position of

00:48:38.100 you know, doing all the

00:48:41.060 work of creating and

00:48:42.740 building up.

00:48:43.280 Okay, so she did the

00:48:44.360 work, because that's

00:48:45.240 curious, because a man

00:48:47.220 like your father, given

00:48:48.840 his temperament, highly

00:48:50.440 entrepreneurial, highly

00:48:51.580 open, highly creative, but

00:48:53.380 also with that

00:48:55.040 Machiavellian and

00:48:55.940 narcissistic tilt, it

00:48:57.100 isn't obvious at all that

00:48:58.180 he'd be willing to do

00:48:59.060 something like the

00:49:00.180 administrative work that

00:49:01.460 would be necessary to

00:49:02.460 build anything

00:49:03.060 approximating an

00:49:03.860 organization.

00:49:04.820 So, your mom did, okay,

00:49:05.820 but you also

00:49:06.480 characterized your mom

00:49:07.460 very briefly, also as

00:49:09.320 narcissistic.

00:49:10.260 Now, you said she was

00:49:11.360 also young.

00:49:11.880 How much of an age gap

00:49:13.120 was there?

00:49:14.900 Eleven, eleven years.

00:49:16.580 Okay.

00:49:17.120 No, no, I'm sorry, twelve

00:49:18.120 years, twelve years.

00:49:19.060 Okay, and how old was she

00:49:20.280 when he met her?

00:49:22.560 Seventeen.

00:49:23.340 Okay, okay, okay, so

00:49:24.480 that explains something

00:49:25.440 right there, right?

00:49:26.680 So, he's just about thirty

00:49:27.960 at that point, and she's

00:49:29.100 seventeen.

00:49:29.940 Well, he turned thirty

00:49:30.880 right when they met, he

00:49:32.080 turned thirty right when

00:49:32.940 they met, and then a

00:49:33.780 couple months later, she

00:49:34.980 turned eighteen.

00:49:37.540 Right, right, and she

00:49:38.620 was drawn to him because

00:49:39.660 he was magnetic, and she,

00:49:41.660 but now you also

00:49:42.660 characterized-

00:49:43.180 He was at the time.

00:49:44.520 Well, she doesn't sound

00:49:45.620 like you exactly, right?

00:49:47.680 Because you said you were

00:49:48.720 dutiful, and you were,

00:49:50.120 you know, you were actually

00:49:51.300 striving to be, to aim up,

00:49:54.320 and you were trapped in a

00:49:56.840 situation where up looked

00:49:58.360 like what your father was

00:49:59.640 doing from within your

00:50:00.620 family, but you

00:50:01.780 characterized your mother as

00:50:02.980 narcissistic.

00:50:03.880 So, tell me more about

00:50:05.420 her role and her

00:50:06.500 personality.

00:50:07.880 Yes, but she was

00:50:08.600 narcissistic in a

00:50:09.560 different way.

00:50:10.400 She was not, and before

00:50:12.360 I understood more about

00:50:13.520 narcissism and really did

00:50:15.660 some deep studying about

00:50:17.100 all of the different

00:50:18.480 kinds of narcissists and

00:50:19.900 different traits that

00:50:21.140 different ones have, I

00:50:23.160 used to think, in just my

00:50:25.760 own definition, is I used

00:50:27.080 to think of her as a

00:50:30.980 narcissist by proxy, because

00:50:34.140 her narcissistic feed was

00:50:36.020 in being a martyr to the

00:50:38.560 great narcissistic genius, my

00:50:40.420 father.

00:50:41.420 She was the martyr, so she

00:50:42.960 had no time for me.

00:50:44.760 She, I mean, she was an

00:50:46.680 absentee mother in my life.

00:50:49.200 She passed off her mother

00:50:51.000 duties onto other people, so

00:50:53.180 my grandparents or people in

00:50:55.060 the neighborhood, other

00:50:56.700 church members, my sister.

00:51:01.020 She had absolutely no time

00:51:02.760 for me.

00:51:04.220 And because I was the only

00:51:06.160 child of the both of them,

00:51:08.060 and I was the last child, so

00:51:10.080 my sister was born when my

00:51:12.840 father was very young.

00:51:14.020 He was only 21 years old when

00:51:15.800 my sister was born.

00:51:17.100 So she, in her formative years,

00:51:19.120 she knew a very different

00:51:20.500 person than the one I was

00:51:23.000 raised with.

00:51:24.120 And she actually had probably

00:51:27.120 a more fun early childhood

00:51:29.540 because it was more a normal

00:51:30.920 kid's childhood, you know.

00:51:32.860 I mean, yeah, they had, she

00:51:34.900 always describes it as they

00:51:36.180 had kind of an Addams family

00:51:37.840 existence, kind of Addams

00:51:40.260 family home.

00:51:40.940 They were quirky, and they had

00:51:42.900 unusual pets like tarantulas

00:51:44.780 and snakes and things like

00:51:45.880 that.

00:51:46.140 But that's not as malignant

00:51:48.860 as inviting psychopaths,

00:51:51.720 opening your door to the

00:51:53.240 public and letting, you know,

00:51:55.020 any walk of life come through

00:51:56.620 when you've got two young

00:51:57.660 daughters.

00:51:58.740 It's like the irresponsibility

00:52:00.760 factor increased in the

00:52:03.900 ensuing years.

00:52:05.180 And as my sister was a

00:52:06.820 teenager, I was still a small

00:52:08.300 child.

00:52:09.060 So my sister being considerably

00:52:11.020 older than me, and as a

00:52:13.800 teenager, she could pretty much

00:52:15.580 handle herself.

00:52:16.740 She didn't have to be, although

00:52:20.960 the strange thing is, my

00:52:22.200 mother used to say that I was

00:52:24.060 allowed to participate in the

00:52:25.920 rituals because I was

00:52:27.700 precocious, whatever that

00:52:30.200 means.

00:52:31.280 But I think that was more of a

00:52:32.740 justification in my mother's

00:52:34.060 mind that if she said that I

00:52:38.600 was more resilient and more

00:52:39.940 precocious and more mature in

00:52:43.060 in my, you know, in my

00:52:46.200 dealings with people, because I

00:52:47.600 actually was, as a child, I was

00:52:49.900 kind of, I don't know, yes,

00:52:52.220 crappy is the only way I can

00:52:53.700 describe it.

00:52:54.580 Because, like, I would talk

00:52:55.720 back at some of the members when

00:52:58.520 they would say I was just being

00:53:00.160 shy or something.

00:53:01.020 I was an introverted child, and I

00:53:03.280 still am an introverted person, I

00:53:04.940 think.

00:53:05.240 My basic baseline is, leans

00:53:09.340 towards contemplative activities

00:53:12.700 and pastimes, and I tend to be

00:53:16.700 more thoughtful and think things

00:53:19.140 out, so I'm more introverted in

00:53:20.560 the stereotypical ways.

00:53:22.900 So as a child, you know, sometimes

00:53:24.700 members would say, oh, she's just

00:53:26.540 shy, she's, you know, she doesn't

00:53:29.760 have the confidence to talk.

00:53:30.900 And I would actually confront

00:53:32.760 them and say, I'm not shy, I have

00:53:35.640 nothing to say to you.

00:53:37.320 Which was true.

00:53:38.280 Right, that's a very different

00:53:39.400 thing.

00:53:39.700 Which was true, because I'd see

00:53:40.360 all these people, I'd see all

00:53:42.120 these adults acting like

00:53:43.720 blithering idiots, you know, just

00:53:46.760 drunk and falling all over the

00:53:48.980 place.

00:53:49.520 And not really, I mean, I'm not

00:53:50.960 saying they were participating in

00:53:53.140 orgies and things like that, but

00:53:54.260 they were just gross, you know.

00:53:56.020 They were just, a lot of them

00:53:57.940 were just the ones that would

00:53:58.880 come to the parties, and that

00:54:00.680 would party after the rituals

00:54:01.900 and stuff.

00:54:02.460 It was just gross.

00:54:04.860 And so, no, I didn't have

00:54:07.020 anything to say to people like

00:54:09.040 that.

00:54:10.280 But, to be fair, then there

00:54:13.020 were also other members of the

00:54:14.640 Church of Satan, too, who were

00:54:15.860 not like that, who, you know,

00:54:18.760 whether they were creative types

00:54:20.180 or they lived a different

00:54:22.000 lifestyle from that kind of

00:54:23.880 sneaking around behind your

00:54:26.560 spouse's back, kind of, you

00:54:28.580 know, swinger club mentality.

00:54:30.080 There were other people that

00:54:31.040 didn't fall into that category.

00:54:33.120 But they did not tend to stay

00:54:35.140 long, I have to say.

00:54:36.420 They moved on, actually.

00:54:38.700 So, I want to dig into this

00:54:40.380 characterization of your mother

00:54:42.060 as martyr, because that was a

00:54:43.660 very, very interesting thing.

00:54:44.820 Well, because I'm, and you

00:54:46.580 characterized that as a

00:54:47.780 different form of narcissism.

00:54:49.360 So, there's a bunch of reasons

00:54:50.700 I want to delve into that.

00:54:52.920 So, see, one of the primary

00:54:57.400 forms that female narcissism

00:54:59.540 takes is something like the

00:55:01.840 martyrdom of false

00:55:03.360 compassion, right?

00:55:05.160 And it's...

00:55:05.660 Okay, can I interject

00:55:06.900 something?

00:55:07.660 You absolutely can, yes.

00:55:10.540 It's interesting you say that,

00:55:12.300 because in Buddhism, we also,

00:55:14.500 you know, I mean, of course,

00:55:15.380 Buddhism teaches compassion.

00:55:17.200 It teaches that compassion

00:55:18.300 should be, you know, the

00:55:20.880 foundation from which all of

00:55:22.380 our activities spring from.

00:55:25.000 However, there's also

00:55:27.060 very strict teachings about

00:55:30.800 the false understanding of

00:55:35.680 compassion.

00:55:36.860 And in Tibetan Buddhism, it's

00:55:38.900 referred to in the translation

00:55:40.120 is, it's referred to as

00:55:41.960 idiot compassion.

00:55:44.060 Now, idiot compassion is when

00:55:46.760 it's motivated for the wrong

00:55:49.100 reasons.

00:55:49.680 If it's either motivated for

00:55:52.740 personal gain, or it's

00:55:54.160 motivated to, you know,

00:55:56.220 create some favorable response

00:55:59.020 for yourself, maybe you want to

00:56:00.220 look better in other people's

00:56:01.600 eyes, you're doing it for some

00:56:03.580 reason that's going to actually

00:56:04.940 buttress your ego.

00:56:06.280 That's idiot compassion.

00:56:08.420 And you have to really be careful

00:56:11.320 not to do that.

00:56:12.960 Okay, so in the story of Adam and

00:56:15.060 Eve, right, it's Eve who

00:56:17.020 precipitates the fall, although

00:56:18.740 Adam is equally at fault.

00:56:20.500 His role in that particular

00:56:22.000 catastrophe is secondary.

00:56:24.320 But Eve's fundamental, I think

00:56:26.100 Eve's fundamental sin is the

00:56:27.740 idiot compassion that you just

00:56:29.240 described.

00:56:30.040 So let me untangle that a bit and

00:56:32.140 tell me what you think about it.

00:56:33.600 Because we're getting at something

00:56:34.640 very fundamental here.

00:56:35.760 Like, your father was a showman for

00:56:38.500 the cult of Lucifer, let's say, but

00:56:40.520 you're pointing out very clearly that

00:56:42.120 your mother enabled and abetted that

00:56:44.000 and for her own martyrdom reasons.

00:56:46.360 Okay, so what Eve's basic sin, well,

00:56:51.020 and she also ignored you, which is an

00:56:52.640 interesting detail, and then also in

00:56:54.580 some ways sacrificed you to the

00:56:56.320 propagation of the cult.

00:56:57.660 Now, Eve's fundamental sin, so you

00:56:59.860 could imagine what the story of Adam

00:57:02.020 and Eve does is it sets up the

00:57:04.080 fundamental patterns of masculinity

00:57:06.120 and femininity, and it does that in a

00:57:08.400 very compacted manner.

00:57:10.380 I would say, according to the

00:57:12.500 Abrahamic paradigm.

00:57:14.500 Yes, yes, yes, yes, definitely.

00:57:16.320 But not according to all paradigm.

00:57:18.920 No, but there's an interesting

00:57:20.240 overlap with what you just described,

00:57:22.560 and I'd like to delve into that.

00:57:24.740 And the reason why is, I just want

00:57:27.160 to interject, the reason why there's

00:57:28.560 an interesting overlap is because, in

00:57:30.240 essence, even a church of Satan is

00:57:32.720 Abrahamic.

00:57:33.780 So, yes, that would be, because it has

00:57:36.920 to, by sheer definition, how can you

00:57:40.220 have a church of Satan if it isn't in

00:57:41.860 reaction to something that is, you know,

00:57:45.000 it is, in essence, a sect, an

00:57:47.900 Abrahamic, just yet another offshoot or

00:57:51.200 sect of the Abrahamic religions.

00:57:53.020 An anti-sect.

00:57:53.420 Mm-hmm.

00:57:53.780 Correct.

00:57:54.280 I understand.

00:57:55.000 I understand what you're saying.

00:57:56.040 But still, within that framework, within

00:57:58.220 that framework.

00:57:58.920 Yes.

00:57:59.280 And as such, as such, that's what my

00:58:02.300 father was playing with, was flipping

00:58:05.400 the archetype of, okay, if the church

00:58:08.480 says Satan is evil, then we're going to

00:58:11.600 flip it and we're going to say he's

00:58:12.700 good, and then it's just a reversal.

00:58:14.900 It's a role reversal.

00:58:16.200 But within that same paradigm, so I'm

00:58:19.180 only elucidating on why what you're

00:58:23.480 about to describe is under the paradigm

00:58:27.340 of Abrahamic religions, this archetype

00:58:30.480 of, or this example of typical

00:58:33.360 masculine, typical feminine.

00:58:35.200 But I would disagree that that's the

00:58:37.960 only way of defining masculine,

00:58:40.500 feminine, because, to my understanding,

00:58:43.760 in a more broad sense, there is more

00:58:48.280 of a spectrum.

00:58:49.760 So you can have malignant, you can have

00:58:51.760 malignant feminine, you can have

00:58:53.700 malignant feminine behavior, and you

00:58:56.560 can have heroic feminine behavior.

00:58:58.960 You can have malignant masculine

00:59:01.680 behavior and heroic masculine behavior.

00:59:05.020 And so that's more like a grid or a

00:59:07.260 spectrum.

00:59:07.980 It's not just this or that.

00:59:10.420 Now, with that understanding, because

00:59:13.420 I just wanted to clarify that, now

00:59:15.580 present what you were going to say in

00:59:17.700 terms of the relationship between my

00:59:19.920 parents and the Adam and Eve.

00:59:21.120 Yeah, well, there's no, like, there's

00:59:22.760 nothing in what you said that strikes

00:59:24.680 me as, like, what would you say that

00:59:27.820 would motivate any contention on my

00:59:29.340 part?

00:59:29.960 I think the idea of malignant and

00:59:32.220 positive masculine and feminine, that's

00:59:34.220 yes.

00:59:35.960 So let's concentrate on the malignant

00:59:38.240 element of the feminine to begin with,

00:59:40.280 because you brought up this issue of

00:59:41.660 idiot compassion.

00:59:43.020 And it's not just idiot compassion, it's

00:59:45.500 something worse, you see.

00:59:46.640 And this is also partly how it's

00:59:48.000 portrayed in the story of Adam and Eve,

00:59:50.280 because what Eve essentially does is

00:59:52.440 proclaim her ability to take formulation

00:59:56.040 of the moral order to herself and then to

00:59:59.340 clutch the serpent itself to her breast.

01:00:02.020 So what she's doing is proclaiming to

01:00:04.080 herself and the world that her compassion

01:00:06.000 is so complete and godlike that she can

01:00:09.740 even hearken to the voice of the serpent and

01:00:12.480 clut and bring that into the family

01:00:14.440 circle, right?

01:00:15.720 And that's, now you, your point with

01:00:17.780 idiot.

01:00:18.100 Can I interject here?

01:00:18.460 So that's the ego.

01:00:19.740 That's the ego believing I'm above all

01:00:21.900 this, I can handle it.

01:00:23.700 Right.

01:00:24.080 Yeah, and a lot of women have this

01:00:25.260 attitude.

01:00:27.760 Yeah.

01:00:28.160 But that's a false confidence.

01:00:30.600 Yeah, 100%.

01:00:32.020 And it has cataclysmic consequences.

01:00:34.480 But it's very interesting to delineate that

01:00:36.960 issue of martyrdom out, because you

01:00:39.000 characterized your mother to begin with

01:00:40.800 that way.

01:00:42.480 And so I want to delve into that, because

01:00:45.040 I want to know from your perspective, what

01:00:47.560 benefit that martyrdom to the cause

01:00:51.140 conferred upon your mother.

01:00:53.320 And why do you, and what, now you also

01:00:54.960 said she was very young when she got

01:00:56.480 tangled up in this.

01:00:57.440 And so, but she was also attracted to

01:00:59.400 your father, right?

01:01:00.220 I mean, there was some reason that she

01:01:01.480 invited him and was open to his

01:01:04.640 seductions, let's say.

01:01:05.780 Okay, so what do you think your mother

01:01:07.960 gained from this?

01:01:09.000 It's exciting for a young teenage.

01:01:09.640 Okay, exciting.

01:01:10.420 See, he was a musician.

01:01:12.140 Yeah.

01:01:12.420 He was a musician.

01:01:13.880 He played the organ at various

01:01:16.620 civic events in San Francisco, but also

01:01:19.180 at certain nightclubs, lounges, and

01:01:23.340 bars.

01:01:24.220 So in those days, being an organist

01:01:27.080 was sort of the equivalent of being a

01:01:30.740 DJ today.

01:01:32.160 I mean, because you would play requests.

01:01:33.980 People would, you know, drop a buck in

01:01:36.840 your fishbowl that's sitting on the

01:01:39.280 organ and they'd request something.

01:01:40.780 And so it was sort of like being a human

01:01:42.020 jukebox or like a DJ or something.

01:01:45.180 So that was kind of an exciting thing for

01:01:48.640 a teenager who was living actually not in,

01:01:52.080 she was living not in San Francisco, but in

01:01:54.140 a suburb of San Francisco.

01:01:55.640 So to a teenage girl, it seems like, oh, I want to gravitate to the bright lights and city

01:02:01.800 of San Francisco, the big city, because I'm just in Pacifica and that's kind of a dirt

01:02:06.260 bowl, you know, and I want to get out and I want to, I want to experience some excitement.

01:02:10.800 And he seemed to her like, you know.

01:02:13.640 Capable of delivering.

01:02:16.540 Yes.

01:02:18.120 Yeah.

01:02:18.660 Okay.

01:02:19.160 And so, and what was her upbringing like?

01:02:21.080 Was she, was she, what kind of background did she come from?

01:02:23.600 She was working class.

01:02:24.260 She was from a working class family, blue collar, working class family.

01:02:27.620 Her father, her natural father actually died.

01:02:34.260 She never knew her natural father.

01:02:35.880 He died in Alaska jail, an Alaskan jail of liver, of liver failure because he was an Irish alcoholic

01:02:43.620 and he just drank himself to death by the age of 36.

01:02:47.320 So she never knew him and her mother, I guess, to protect her from that realization.

01:02:54.860 This, this is kind of, what I'm about to say is kind of the germ of how family lies get

01:03:06.540 promulgated and, yeah, and propagated and, and, and take on momentum.

01:03:13.960 And then once you realize that that, once, once a child or a parent realizes they can get

01:03:19.560 away with that, then they, then they just make up many more lies.

01:03:23.020 This is, this is how, why I, I often sort of jokingly say that I was born into a web of lies.

01:03:31.420 Oh, absolutely.

01:03:32.380 Yeah, because I didn't know, I didn't know so much.

01:03:35.100 I didn't know so much.

01:03:36.140 So, so the first lie was that my grandmother, my Swedish grandmother, uh, didn't, maybe to

01:03:43.260 protect her daughter because her daughter was born, uh, in those days they used to say

01:03:48.540 it was a reconciliation baby.

01:03:50.480 Apparently the father would go away and come back and go away and come back.

01:03:54.080 And so it was at a period of temporary reconciliation that my grandmother got pregnant with my mother

01:03:59.280 and then he went away again.

01:04:01.700 So, um, so, so, so naturally that set up a kind of psychological, uh, ambiguity on my grandmother's part

01:04:09.940 about my mother because she was the product of this, um, of this, uh, somebody that, that my grandmother

01:04:17.300 didn't have, eventually had to divorce.

01:04:20.840 Um, but he died actually.

01:04:22.940 He died before she even divorced him.

01:04:24.680 I think, I think that's how it happened.

01:04:27.400 And then, um, so then my grandmother, Swedes are very, Swedish women are really strong women

01:04:35.320 and they're very responsible women and they have a Lutheran work ethic.

01:04:41.000 And this was something that was passed down to my mother, this Lutheran work ethic.

01:04:44.900 But to make a long story short, my grandmother, um, had these two young daughters and she moved

01:04:50.600 from Chicago to San Francisco and, um, because she thought there would be better opportunities

01:04:55.740 for work in San Francisco and she got herself a job at the phone company and she was a single

01:05:00.200 mother in the forties, raising two little girls, um, on her own.

01:05:05.620 And it was at the phone company that she met her, um, her next husband who wound up being

01:05:11.020 her husband for life.

01:05:12.440 So, uh, uh, so at the phone company, he was a delivery person.

01:05:17.420 Uh, I think he delivered bottled water.

01:05:19.800 Actually, he was a teamster.

01:05:20.940 He was totally blue collar, hardworking teamster, worked 12 hour days and, uh, really solid salt

01:05:27.120 of the earth kind of guy, um, like baseball, but he was second generation Hungarian.

01:05:32.520 So he was really, really very keen on being all American, you know, baseball, hot dogs and

01:05:40.340 everything.

01:05:41.400 And, um, and, uh, so, uh, so my grandmother remarried.

01:05:47.160 And then my mother knew that this was her stepfather.

01:05:50.860 He, she knew that this wasn't her natural father, but she always really loved him.

01:05:55.680 And so that was, it was a good relationship in that way.

01:05:58.700 But in the back of her mind, she always knew that she had no idea who, or she didn't know

01:06:05.520 anything about her natural father.

01:06:07.480 Uh, so that left some kind of like a hole in her psyche, which was easily filled then

01:06:12.720 by my father.

01:06:13.660 Right, right.

01:06:13.920 Got it.

01:06:14.460 Got it.

01:06:14.920 Got it.

01:06:15.340 Okay.

01:06:15.960 Okay.

01:06:16.240 So let's go into that martyrdom element.

01:06:18.200 Okay.

01:06:18.420 So now you've set up the background for, of the motivation for your mother and perhaps

01:06:22.800 described her, the origins of her susceptibility to, well, to the more showy sort of carnival

01:06:30.000 character, musician, right, and center of attention that was your father.

01:06:34.680 Okay.

01:06:34.980 But, but now let's go into what she gained from this, because as again, you characterized

01:06:39.940 it as a kind of narcissism of narcissism of martyrdom.

01:06:43.860 And so tell me, tell me how you saw that in your mother and how you figured out that

01:06:49.740 that was going on.

01:06:51.240 Okay.

01:06:51.740 The way I saw it was because of the dynamics between her and her mother, I always had the

01:06:57.000 depression, and it was stated explicitly to me by my mother that she always felt that

01:07:02.420 her mother really didn't like her very much.

01:07:04.480 And that because one of my mother's classic things was to tell me, like if anything ever

01:07:09.640 bothered me or hurt my feelings, her mantra was toughen up, Zena.

01:07:13.520 Things are tough all over.

01:07:14.840 At least I don't beat you like my mother did.

01:07:17.680 And because she would always tell me that her mother would beat her so hard with, in those

01:07:22.160 days, a brush, you know, a hand brush was bigger.

01:07:26.140 They had big ivory brushes that, that, you know, could be used as a weapon, actually.

01:07:32.500 And she used to tell me that her mother would, you know, spank her and beat her with a hair

01:07:36.840 brush until it broke.

01:07:38.760 And so she always held, she always held that over my head.

01:07:42.040 Like I'm being so, she, she believed that by not beating me, she was actually indulging

01:07:48.520 me.

01:07:49.020 But in fact, she was neglecting me.

01:07:51.800 She was just leaving me to my own resources and not giving me any structure or no.

01:07:58.820 And the strange thing, which I didn't understand when I was growing up, was in a sense, she

01:08:04.600 was raising me as a single mother.

01:08:07.600 But I was not aware of that because I did not know that my parents were not married.

01:08:12.420 They lied to me about that.

01:08:13.820 I always thought that they were husband and wife.

01:08:15.940 And we lived in separate parts of the house.

01:08:18.080 My mother and I and my sister, we lived on the top floor.

01:08:21.560 My father had his own apartment in the basement.

01:08:24.320 So we lived in a sense, like two, two floors apart.

01:08:29.140 You know, it's like it would, it would be like if you divided your house into separate

01:08:33.640 apartments or something.

01:08:35.520 So, so to get back to what was your initial question?

01:08:40.520 Okay.

01:08:40.920 So I, I believe that the advantage to her was she always wanted her mother.

01:08:48.080 And her stepfather, she always wanted to have their love and their approval.

01:08:57.140 And their, their, I think, I think she wanted that in her mother's eyes that she would be

01:09:05.520 regarded as someone important.

01:09:07.460 And by aligning herself with this kind of flamboyant entertainer man, and the weird thing was, was

01:09:18.340 even as the Church of Satan was developing, she concealed so much from her mother about

01:09:24.380 what was going on.

01:09:25.300 And she, they didn't, for example, the, her parents weren't allowed to visit our home unless

01:09:30.600 it was really organized and planned and like it was, there was no just dropping by.

01:09:37.200 Nobody just, none of, none of the family members just dropped by.

01:09:40.900 That just wasn't allowed.

01:09:42.420 Um, and so even as the Church of Satan was developing and there were, um, you know, like I said, my

01:09:51.840 father had different factions of the Church of Satan where he had his celebrity friends

01:09:56.840 and his, you know, import, so-called important people that he fraternized with that were,

01:10:02.940 he considered his friends, but not necessarily members of the Church of Satan, although they

01:10:08.060 might have been honorary members or just kind of de facto members, but they were not the

01:10:13.880 people who chose to pay for a card-carrying membership, you know.

01:10:18.020 So those people, I think she really hoped that she, from her own mother, that she would get

01:10:23.320 some sort of respect.

01:10:25.280 Respect.

01:10:26.300 I mean, respect is a, a common motivation in narcissism that people feel like they aren't

01:10:33.340 appreciated enough.

01:10:34.440 They want respect.

01:10:35.680 They want to, um.

01:10:37.300 Is it respect, do you think, or attention?

01:10:39.640 Validation.

01:10:40.900 Hmm?

01:10:41.460 Is it respect or attention?

01:10:44.100 There's a difference.

01:10:45.380 Um, definitely attention, but I don't think she want, in her case, with the dynamics between

01:10:51.020 her and her mother, I don't think it was attention.

01:10:52.840 I just think she wanted, finally, for her mother to think that she was worthy.

01:11:00.640 Yeah, okay, got it.

01:11:01.640 Well, that makes sense.

01:11:03.040 Well, if her mother was torn about her initial validity because she was the

01:11:07.120 product of a sexual union that was ambiguous in its fundamental nature, then you could imagine

01:11:13.040 that that dynamic would play out in the background for your mother, like, constantly, well, possibly

01:11:18.400 throughout her life.

01:11:19.940 And so, this...

01:11:20.900 And even when she tried, like, to get close to her mother, I mean, she did eventually get

01:11:26.940 close to her mother in her senior years, but I can say that I even felt the fallout and

01:11:34.940 the sort of chain reaction of my grandmother's weird attitude about my mother, and probably

01:11:45.240 of my mother's choices in life, because I don't think, even though they tolerated my father,

01:11:49.620 I don't think they were thrilled about her choice in marrying him, although they tolerated

01:11:55.480 him.

01:11:56.060 And yeah, when he could come to the holiday dinner with stories about his friendship with

01:12:02.000 Sammy Davis Jr., then, oh, my grandfather loved that because, you know, he liked those

01:12:05.800 kinds of entertainers and things.

01:12:07.180 But it was sort of superficial.

01:12:09.920 It was rather superficial.

01:12:11.200 So, but I felt myself, I felt from my grandmother, a kind of judgmental attitude about me, like,

01:12:19.940 because I was the product.

01:12:21.780 I was the product of my mother, you know?

01:12:25.320 Right, right, right.

01:12:26.000 So, whatever ambiguous feelings she had about her own daughter, it then continued on to me

01:12:31.960 as well.

01:12:33.120 Right, right.

01:12:33.800 Okay, so let's go into the 80s now, and when you really decided to take up the mantle.

01:12:38.720 Now, you've laid the groundwork for that.

01:12:40.240 You said that you were a dutiful person.

01:12:42.440 You said that it was in your father's interest and your mother's, too, to have someone who

01:12:47.680 was innocent and actually aiming up and a believer in the moral propriety of the enterprise

01:12:54.900 defend them.

01:12:56.080 And you happened to be, as far as I can tell, you happened to be the choice for that role.

01:13:01.360 And so, you played the role of high priestess for how many years?

01:13:06.420 Five.

01:13:07.200 Five years.

01:13:08.040 Okay, so tell me what that meant for you.

01:13:11.600 Like, there's the priestess element, and then there's the family spokesperson element.

01:13:16.400 And then there's the next element would be what the consequences were for you of playing

01:13:21.480 that role, let's say.

01:13:22.620 And then also your disillusionment and movement onward to a different way of conceptualizing

01:13:28.260 the world.

01:13:28.740 So, let's start with, well, let's start with what you actually did.

01:13:32.340 Like, what did it mean to have that role for five years?

01:13:35.620 That's what I had to figure out.

01:13:38.000 Because it just happened suddenly.

01:13:40.820 I had to figure out what does it, because in my mind, my mother was the high priestess,

01:13:45.000 but she had left.

01:13:45.800 So, there was a vacancy, there wasn't, and occasionally, actually, my sister, too, served

01:13:52.040 in that role when she was lecturing, or my father dispatched her to Amsterdam to be sort

01:14:04.420 of the spokesperson and the one to oversee and kind of keep an eye on what was going on

01:14:10.660 in the European Church of Satan.

01:14:13.300 And so, in that capacity, then my sister also was high priestess, like in those days, in

01:14:21.700 that way, in those capacities.

01:14:25.500 But in my mind, my mother was the only high priestess, and I had to think, well, because

01:14:31.960 I was a single mother at that time, and I was not in a position to, and I was also working

01:14:38.220 in hospitals and law offices.

01:14:40.860 Well, no, I think at that time, I was working at UCSF.

01:14:44.540 Oh, I was working at UC Davis in environmental health and safety.

01:14:47.600 So, I had a full-time schedule on my plate, being a single mother.

01:14:55.920 What was most needed was to do interviews, because he told me he didn't have anybody.

01:15:01.980 I mean, the Church of Satan was sort of more abundant at that point.

01:15:04.900 There had been a couple of schisms in the 70s, and that left my father really in a deep state

01:15:14.140 of very dark depression, really malignant black, black dark depression, and agoraphobia.

01:15:21.740 And he had locked him—he just sequestered himself into his home and would only go to very select,

01:15:29.360 safe places in public, but not—he was not doing any interviews anymore.

01:15:36.000 And he did not want to confront these allegations.

01:15:42.160 He—his attitude was, he'll just wait till it blows over.

01:15:45.680 But, you know, not just me, but everybody thought, well, this isn't anything—this is pretty extreme.

01:15:53.480 This isn't going to blow over in a week or so.

01:15:56.680 This is—this is snowballing and continuing to get bigger and bigger.

01:16:00.480 So, um, so I had to—I had to kind of parachute—I had to parachute into the role of, you know,

01:16:13.540 paratroop into the role of high priestess.

01:16:16.560 I had to figure it out on my own as I went along.

01:16:19.800 And then that's when I, as I said, I started having realizations of, like, well, what does

01:16:23.960 it mean to be a religion, and what is religion?

01:16:25.980 And I started doing a lot of my own self-research and looking into certain things.

01:16:32.500 But aside from that, experience was beginning to open my eyes to certain things.

01:16:39.100 And what had happened was because my mother left my father, you know, I got to back up

01:16:46.020 because you said, well, it was to my mother and father's advantage to have me doing this.

01:16:50.140 But no, not exactly.

01:16:51.900 It was to my father's advantage to have me doing this.

01:16:54.240 Because my mother, having left, she was trying to pull me out of doing that.

01:17:01.460 And she was convincing—every time I would talk to her, she was haranguing me about,

01:17:06.800 don't care about anybody else.

01:17:08.200 You shouldn't be doing this.

01:17:09.420 And, you know, and like, I need your support.

01:17:11.600 And if you're doing this for him, then how can I expect you to be supporting me during

01:17:16.200 this divorce, you know, thing?

01:17:18.660 And so, it was very stressful for me being pulled at all sides.

01:17:24.320 And she was actually telling me, don't care about anyone else.

01:17:27.480 Because I was beginning to develop what in Buddhism is called bodhicitta, which is a feeling of

01:17:32.260 a realization that compassion—compassion can't be just for a select few special people.

01:17:38.080 Compassion actually broadens, and it actually—you begin to develop and attain a certain level.

01:17:46.840 It was just like the beginning stages when I began cognizing that, hey, something is really

01:17:54.000 seriously wrong here.

01:17:55.060 Because there's innocent people out there that are not even Satanists, that have never

01:18:00.120 even heard of such a thing.

01:18:01.900 They haven't even heard of such a thing called Satanism, and yet, you know, their neighbors

01:18:07.680 are calling them into the FBI, into the police and stuff, and it's just ruining people's

01:18:14.720 lives.

01:18:15.260 Was that part of that daycare witch hunt, the satanic death ritual?

01:18:19.420 Oh, yeah, that was great.

01:18:21.020 The McMartin preschool case was, up to that point, the hugest waste of time and money in

01:18:27.180 U.S. history devoted to false allegations.

01:18:30.040 Did you ever read Satan's Silence, by any chance?

01:18:33.100 Do you know that book, Satan's Silence?

01:18:35.760 Oh, well, it was written by a lawyer and a social worker, and it's the best account that

01:18:40.000 I've ever read, by a large margin, of the satanic daycare panic in the 1980s.

01:18:44.940 It's an amazing book, Satan's Silence.

01:18:46.960 Yeah, okay, so you were—okay, so I get the picture more thoroughly, because that was an

01:18:51.360 unbelievably widespread panic, right?

01:18:54.720 And it lasted for quite a while.

01:18:56.060 And so, and you were trying to—okay, so let me ask you a question about that.

01:19:00.420 Now, you know, the dark side of this, potentially, is that if you're called upon to be a spokesperson

01:19:05.560 in a time like that, there's also a lot of attention drawn to you.

01:19:09.360 And, you know, you pointed out that your mother was certainly willing to play the role of martyr,

01:19:15.700 to seek attention and to seek respect.

01:19:17.640 And, you know, you said that you were a pretty dutiful person, and that you had a job, and

01:19:22.400 that this role of spokesperson was dropped on you, and that you paid an emotional price

01:19:27.520 because you were torn between your parents.

01:19:29.480 But on retrospect, in retrospect, you've obviously done a lot of thinking about that.

01:19:33.940 Do you believe that there was any contamination of your motivation by a desire for public attention

01:19:40.100 or anything like that, because you had the spotlight put on you?

01:19:43.240 That could be easy to perceive, but the simple answer is everything was happening so fast.

01:19:50.140 I didn't have time to even think about—as everything took off, I didn't have time to

01:19:57.020 even think about—and in fact, even the few times that I did think, oh, well, maybe this

01:20:03.040 could be turned into an advantage, I very quickly learned that, no, in fact, it's not an advantage.

01:20:08.960 It's because I had had seven years of theater training, for example, acting, and I wanted

01:20:14.880 to go into the arts.

01:20:15.980 I just wanted to have a career in the arts some way, and I wasn't sure in which field,

01:20:22.020 I hadn't decided yet.

01:20:23.360 But as a single mother, the only vocation, the only branch of the arts that I could afford

01:20:30.780 to pay for myself with my solitary—nobody was helping me.

01:20:34.920 I had no financial support from my family, or certainly not from the father of my son.

01:20:41.500 No, it was all up to me, was the only thing I could do was take drama courses and coaching,

01:20:48.560 and for example, City College had free tuition in those days.

01:20:52.260 So I had to kind of piece together an education.

01:20:55.940 And yeah, I mean, some of my friends at that time that were in my acting classes, they said,

01:21:00.400 whoa, maybe you can use it to your advantage.

01:21:03.100 But the problem was, it became super clear to me immediately that, no, this is done.

01:21:10.100 It's finished.

01:21:11.040 I can't because of the religiously motivated hysteria that was happening then.

01:21:19.920 If I went to—for example, I had some friends that would set up auditions for me who knew

01:21:28.400 the casting agents, and so they knew, you know, of course, in America you're not allowed to state

01:21:37.240 your reason why you're discriminating against someone, but because through either acting coach

01:21:43.560 or friends who knew casting agents or something, so I'd go on an interview, but the casting person

01:21:51.480 would say, well, we're not going to give any money to this Satanist, are you crazy?

01:21:54.680 And we can't be associated—we can't be associated with this.

01:21:57.940 It was like, you know, being an untouchable.

01:22:03.540 And then that got worse.

01:22:04.800 It was not only—it was not only professionally that I realized, okay, now I am too branded.

01:22:14.340 I am so—I am so much of an identity.

01:22:17.000 And I am known too much.

01:22:19.920 I am too branded.

01:22:20.940 I can never just play a role.

01:22:23.300 That's never going to happen.

01:22:24.700 I can't be like a versatile actress that can play a cowgirl one year or—not that I want

01:22:31.300 to, but I'm just saying, hypothetically, that, you know, I couldn't play a role of like

01:22:35.900 a baseball mom or something like that.

01:22:37.680 It's just not going to happen because word would spread.

01:22:43.240 First of all, my name, my name, because not—at that time, not many people had that last

01:22:48.900 name, LeVay, and then that would ring alarm bells.

01:22:54.160 And then just physically, I was physically known and branded that way.

01:22:59.400 Now, the paradox is, paradox is, there were people—the Church of Satan actually began

01:23:06.080 to—the membership began to grow because of my being out there.

01:23:11.220 So, it created a new upsurge in membership.

01:23:15.540 And my father realizing this, this kind of a funny detail, my father realizing that I

01:23:22.200 was actually generating more income for him and more membership.

01:23:27.060 I remember he told me once that because I was doing such a good job representing him and

01:23:32.680 that there were new members coming in, that he was going to—that he would actually pay

01:23:37.920 me, I think, 25% of all new memberships that come through that actually mention that they've

01:23:45.460 seen me and wrote to join.

01:23:49.080 So, what's funny is he did that for the first three, three memberships.

01:23:54.620 So, I got, like, at that time, I got $75 because at that time, memberships were $100.

01:24:02.340 And so, I got $25 for three.

01:24:05.980 And then it never happened again.

01:24:07.720 Never happened again.

01:24:09.000 Oh, yeah.

01:24:09.280 So, that was one of those pieces of information.

01:24:11.660 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:12.560 It was a gesture that was to dangle the carrot and make me think, oh, well, maybe, you know,

01:24:17.320 but, you know, that dropped out.

01:24:20.060 And not that I was doing it for the money, but I thought, for the first time in my life,

01:24:24.140 I thought, oh, my father's actually doing something for me, to help me, and he's actually

01:24:30.680 acknowledging my contribution to what I'm doing for his organization.

01:24:35.260 But it didn't last.

01:24:36.560 It didn't last.

01:24:38.060 And then that was that, and you asked me something else about—

01:24:43.800 Well, I—

01:24:44.860 So, here, I want to clarify.

01:24:46.920 Yeah.

01:24:47.080 Because of the new upsurge of membership.

01:24:51.280 Here again, my father would cherry-pick the people that he felt like, well, these people

01:24:57.240 are in a category of movers and shakers.

01:24:59.900 You know, they're kind of like in the new punk scene.

01:25:03.300 And, you know, he was an old fart at that point.

01:25:05.360 So, he thought, well, this will, you know, maybe they'll boost my ratings with the, you

01:25:10.320 know, with the cool kids.

01:25:11.340 And so, there was a new upsurge in what—in the membership of what he would call the rubes.

01:25:19.700 But then there was also a new upsurge in what he cherry-picked as his little inner circle.

01:25:25.900 And that was of these new kind of, you know, hipster, kind of edgy, punky or whatever.

01:25:34.820 You know, just—I wouldn't even know how to describe them by today's standards.

01:25:40.780 But the interesting thing is, they always claim, well, she just didn't know how to use

01:25:47.840 it to her advantage.

01:25:49.120 And what they mean by that—do you know what they mean by that?

01:25:53.060 No, please, please elucidate.

01:25:55.460 What they mean by that is, I just wasn't Machiavellian enough.

01:25:59.240 I just wasn't mercenary enough.

01:26:01.420 Right, right.

01:26:01.900 So, that's a failing.

01:26:04.040 I just should have been more—yeah, I should have been more black-hearted.

01:26:07.600 I should have been just more misanthropic.

01:26:10.860 I should have just been more—just plow over everybody and just create my own—

01:26:16.360 Right, right.

01:26:16.580 Create my own—

01:26:17.280 Well, you had the opportunity there to do that, apparently, you know, because you were

01:26:20.780 driving membership.

01:26:21.600 You could have definitely capitalized on that.

01:26:25.060 Not only did I have the opportunity to do that, I realized the power in that.

01:26:30.560 But I was—as I said, everything was happening so fast.

01:26:34.120 I was so swept up in—it was just extremely—it was an extremely chaotic time in my life and

01:26:41.880 for the country that was experiencing that particular satanic panic phenomenon.

01:26:48.340 However, then fast forward many, many years later, like about 15 or 20—I can't remember

01:26:55.600 when this happened—but well after I became a Buddhist.

01:26:58.460 I was meditating, and in Buddhism, they call the—well, really, the meditation session itself is the

01:27:09.240 meditation session.

01:27:10.060 But anything outside of the designated meditation session is referred to post-meditation.

01:27:16.920 Post-meditation can be any time in your ordinary daily routine.

01:27:20.600 But in this case, what I'm going to refer to is the immediate post-meditation, because very

01:27:26.820 often in the immediate post-meditation phase is where things come to you, where realization

01:27:33.660 comes to you, where little sparks of—I'm not going to say enlightenment, because enlightenment

01:27:38.860 is a big thing, but like you could say, are little steps in the path to realization and understanding.

01:27:46.320 And knowing—so the realization that I had was true power is knowing what you're capable

01:28:01.000 of, knowing how dangerous you could be, and refraining.

01:28:09.460 Right, right, right.

01:28:10.740 Of course, of course.

01:28:11.820 Refraining.

01:28:13.340 Refraining.

01:28:14.620 Because I knew that I could mobilize people, and there were times where there were interviews.

01:28:21.420 In fact, the very last interview I did that in my mind I designated, I knew in my mind,

01:28:28.580 this is going to be it.

01:28:29.560 This is going to be the last one.

01:28:31.000 Because I ended on a good note, but it was not without a battle.

01:28:38.440 Because the last interview I did, which was for a Sunday morning religion show in Los Angeles

01:28:48.080 hosted by Tony Valdez, who was a very—he was a very religious, conscientious journalist,

01:28:55.800 unlike many journalists, as you know.

01:28:58.480 He actually did have a conscience, and he was a really, truly kind-hearted person, a very

01:29:04.740 open-minded person.

01:29:06.560 And one of his colleagues had done an interview with me like maybe a month or a couple of weeks

01:29:14.280 prior to that.

01:29:15.100 And her name was Christina Gonzalez, and one thing that I made very clear was because I'm a huge animal lover.

01:29:23.480 I love animals, and in my formative years, because I was not properly socialized,

01:29:30.860 my only companions were animals, cats and dogs, and the odd animals that we had in our home,

01:29:39.280 a capybara, a lion, a mouse and a tarantula, all the crazy, strange animals we had.

01:29:45.380 Well, living happily together?

01:29:49.520 Somewhat happily, yeah.

01:29:52.220 But I did not have human friends of my own.

01:29:55.700 You know, I was not properly socialized.

01:29:57.860 So, I'm still very close to the animal kingdom.

01:30:04.220 So, what I told Christina Gonzalez was, I said, I really didn't even want to do any more interviews.

01:30:10.860 I had felt that I knew at that point that I was leaving the Church of Satan.

01:30:15.120 That was like sometime in March or April.

01:30:18.420 So, and I had already told my father that I was leaving, and yet my dutiful nature and I felt

01:30:27.260 responsible, and she said she was telling me about a new law that was going to be passed

01:30:31.920 by Los Angeles Animal Control about prosecuting religions that practice animal sacrifice,

01:30:39.760 such as Santeria and Satanism, and they were bunching it together.

01:30:43.400 But I told her, yeah, but Satanism doesn't practice animal sacrifice.

01:30:46.760 We don't, and that's a fact.

01:30:48.780 We don't.

01:30:49.300 I mean, at least Levain's Satanism.

01:30:50.660 If other Satanists do, that's not what I was representing.

01:30:53.920 I was representing my father's organization.

01:30:56.840 And so, she convinced me that I really needed to do this, then, you know, to be a voice against

01:31:05.780 this law that was going to be passed about prosecuting people for animal sacrifice.

01:31:11.180 And I said, yeah, but it's kind of a contentious thing for me, because personally, I do not agree

01:31:16.140 with, you know, it was, the problem was, I do not believe animals should be sacrificed.

01:31:21.720 And it's, in fact, other religions that do, even conventional religions that do sacrifice

01:31:26.980 animals or do kill animals in a ritualistic way.

01:31:31.980 So, specifically, I'm talking about Abrahamic religions that they eat their meat in a certain

01:31:37.880 way.

01:31:38.180 They do prayers.

01:31:38.740 They do a certain ritual.

01:31:41.680 It has to be a specific ritual to slaughter the animal.

01:31:46.020 So, anyway, she did, she convinced me to do it, but I did it under the condition.

01:31:52.540 I said, the thing that has been disturbing me the most, being an animal lover, is, you know,

01:31:59.580 they're talking about animal sacrifice all the time, and they always plaster my face side

01:32:04.300 by side with dead animals, and this really is beginning to take its toll on my psyche.

01:32:10.000 It actually really is beginning to wear me down in terms of my mental equilibrium, because

01:32:17.820 the animals at that point were, being raised in a misanthropic household, at that point,

01:32:25.680 animals were more important to me even than most humans, honestly.

01:32:29.360 So, you know, she promised me that.

01:32:32.840 However, immediately, as I watched the news broadcast, they did it.

01:32:38.220 They spliced it, and they edited it with a dead cat.

01:32:41.880 And I got immediate, I was really on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

01:32:47.180 Classic, classic, whatever, whatever the term is for nervous.

01:32:53.180 Hmm?

01:32:53.300 Well, it sounds like, well, you had enough going on in your life to tilt you towards something

01:32:59.060 like post-traumatic stress disorder, like that's just too much, all of that.

01:33:02.680 I've been diagnosed that in the most complex ways, because it wasn't only that that caused

01:33:08.740 me that, it was things in my early life, and things subsequently, even after.

01:33:13.880 So, yeah, that's been something that I've constantly been working on.

01:33:17.840 So, this was in relation to what I was explaining to you about, that I know what my power is.

01:33:25.820 I know that I can mobilize people.

01:33:27.800 Yeah, yeah, got it.

01:33:28.180 I know that I can inspire people to action.

01:33:31.560 Mm-hmm.

01:33:32.060 And you had that opportunity.

01:33:34.700 And I had that opportunity, I made a threat to them.

01:33:37.380 And I said, if you don't make a public retraction by the next news show, that the Church of Satan

01:33:45.060 does not condone and does not support animal sacrifice, then I will have 200 angry Satanists

01:33:52.920 on your studio doorstep picketing, and I'm going to contact all the other local news stations

01:33:59.080 to cover it.

01:34:00.360 And I threatened them with that.

01:34:01.520 And they did it.

01:34:04.100 You know, they did the retraction.

01:34:06.220 But this is what I'm getting to, to my last interview, Tony Valdez, who was a really kind

01:34:11.560 hearted person.

01:34:14.360 He reached out to me, and he actually said, you know, I feel for you.

01:34:20.160 I see that you're under a lot of pressure and that you've been wrongly accused of things

01:34:23.860 that you have nothing to do with.

01:34:26.160 And he actually said, because he was from the same network, I think it was, honestly,

01:34:33.360 I can't remember which network it was, but it was local Los Angeles network.

01:34:37.020 And he said, how can I make it up to you?

01:34:40.080 He said, I have some little bits of authority.

01:34:44.960 He says, I can't do a lot, but he said, I do.

01:34:46.800 I have a Sunday morning show.

01:34:48.780 And I thought, well, that's great.

01:34:50.440 That's great.

01:34:51.160 And I accepted it.

01:34:52.320 And it was actually really nice, and it was the first time anyone ever let me speak without

01:34:57.900 being interrupted.

01:35:00.000 And he was thoughtful and kind.

01:35:03.540 And interestingly, even in that very last interview, there was kind of a premonition of things to

01:35:12.380 come, because he made the comment, he said something like, I see a lot of, in what you're

01:35:18.220 saying, that sounds almost like Buddhism.

01:35:20.460 And I don't know where that came from, but in fact, that was where my path ultimately

01:35:27.200 went.

01:35:28.600 So it's kind of interesting.

01:35:30.700 So the point is, you know, realizing what your power, the true power is knowing that,

01:35:39.780 knowing what you could do, and knowing that you can refrain.

01:35:44.080 You can make a choice, and you can refrain.

01:35:46.420 And I have chosen, this interview we're doing today is an exception to the rule.

01:35:53.220 I don't do any interviews anymore about this topic.

01:35:57.460 Why do you make an exception?

01:35:59.760 Why do you make an exception?

01:36:01.020 Because I felt that you, well, first of all, you're an educated person, and you're a clinical

01:36:07.400 psychologist, so you're approaching it from a different perspective than just a normal

01:36:14.560 podcaster who wants to get attention, or just some other journalist who wants to do

01:36:20.540 it for prurient interest.

01:36:22.000 Because I get a lot of people who are pro-satanic that want to interview me, and they want to

01:36:28.320 make it seem like, well, it was just fun and games, right?

01:36:31.360 Wasn't it just fun?

01:36:32.660 Oh, yeah.

01:36:32.940 Because all they, all of them wanted to jump on the media bandwagon.

01:36:38.180 And after I left, I left a void.

01:36:40.500 And then all of these kind of hipster types in the Church of Satan that were my father's

01:36:44.500 new inner circle, well, then they were all eager to just jump on that bandwagon.

01:36:49.660 They wanted the media attention.

01:36:50.860 But what they didn't get, they didn't get it.

01:36:53.320 I didn't do it for the attention.

01:36:55.720 I did it for my father, because he was my blood father.

01:37:00.080 He wasn't, you know, that those people were just doing it because they thought, I'm going

01:37:05.160 to cash in on this too, and I'm going to get my face on these mainstream media things.

01:37:12.300 So let me ask you a closing question.

01:37:15.140 It's a complicated one.

01:37:16.120 So you've alluded to two things as the pathway out of the mess that you were in, well, until

01:37:22.960 you left the Church in the 80s.

01:37:25.260 The first thing you talked about was the fact that you increasingly became aware that things

01:37:33.020 weren't as they had been described, and that there were things going on in your private

01:37:37.780 life of your family, and then in the Church itself that were violating the integrity of

01:37:44.440 your conscience.

01:37:44.980 And you said that was an incremental process across time.

01:37:48.240 And so I would say that that was the effect of conscience on you accumulating across time.

01:37:52.660 But there's another element too, which we haven't spoken about.

01:37:55.540 We won't be able to delve into it deeply.

01:37:57.460 There was also something that was attracting you forward, and that was what manifested itself

01:38:02.360 eventually as the realization of this Buddhist path that was an alternative for you to the

01:38:07.740 structure that you had inhabited within the family and within the Church.

01:38:11.700 And so can you describe the dynamic between your realization that there were nefarious things

01:38:20.380 afoot and also this new path that you saw as good as an alternative making itself manifest?

01:38:28.500 Because those things were kind of happening in parallel.

01:38:30.760 And so we didn't elaborate much on the Buddhist call, let's say, as a positive way out.

01:38:36.220 Yeah, and honestly, that would take a lot more description.

01:38:39.060 I know, I know, I know.

01:38:40.720 Well, we may talk about that more on the Daily Wire side, because we could delve into that

01:38:45.400 more.

01:38:45.820 But I know that I'm asking you to compress a lot.

01:38:49.360 But I would, like, it isn't only that you saw that things were wrong with what you were

01:38:55.140 tangled up with.

01:38:55.800 You also started to become aware of a different pathway forward.

01:38:59.300 So what, maybe you could just describe for us what it was that was calling to you, do

01:39:04.400 you think?

01:39:05.360 So I was developing, I was developing a kind of broader compassion for people that I didn't

01:39:13.880 even know, strangers, you know, people that I would hear about that were being subjected

01:39:19.380 to accusations that was ruining innocent people's lives, not just our own membership population

01:39:28.480 that was being affected by this.

01:39:31.180 And that was one side.

01:39:33.760 But then I was still, you know, like I said, these things don't just happen like a flip of

01:39:38.560 a switch.

01:39:39.060 They don't happen overnight.

01:39:39.880 So the irony is, because I was raised as a Satanist, and because I was raised with the

01:39:50.540 idea of, you know, revenge, revenge.

01:39:54.460 And if somebody does something to you, I mean, my father wrote it in the Satanic Bible, if

01:39:59.360 someone smite you on one cheek, smash them in the other.

01:40:02.360 Don't turn the other cheek.

01:40:03.680 You smash them in the other.

01:40:05.460 You retaliate.

01:40:06.840 You get revenge.

01:40:07.700 And if you teach this to your children, and you're not kind and compassionate to your

01:40:15.980 own children, and you do something that jeopardizes their life again and again, but then at one

01:40:24.000 time that is really very precise and very clear, what do you expect?

01:40:32.420 You know, what do you expect?

01:40:34.000 Do you think that you've taught retaliation, you've taught revenge, you don't expect that

01:40:40.660 that's going to then come your way too, if that's what your message has been, all through

01:40:46.000 the development of your child.

01:40:47.600 So I honestly felt, when I left the Church of Satan, anger, hurt.

01:40:55.020 I mean, I went through all the myriad emotions, and it took me a very long time to sort out

01:41:03.700 all of my emotions.

01:41:04.920 But my immediate instinct was, I'm going to be a damn worse Satanist than you can even

01:41:13.040 imagine, to my father, you know.

01:41:15.200 And I thought, not only am I going to sever ties with you, and I'm going to look into

01:41:22.100 the origins of all the lies that you've said, and I'm going to look into the origins of even

01:41:29.560 terminology and jargon that you use.

01:41:34.280 And for example, in the Satanic Bible, he's got a list of gods and demons and things that

01:41:40.140 he considers Satanic, but that's ridiculous because so many of those have nothing to do

01:41:44.860 with Satanism.

01:41:45.540 And it's just his misinterpretation, I would say, of really what he was doing.

01:41:53.920 He was taking a Christian idea of deities such as Kali, the Hindu Kali, or the Egyptian deity

01:42:02.880 of Set.

01:42:03.400 He was taking a Christianized interpretation of these deities and just, again, inverting

01:42:08.820 it and saying, I'll Satanize it, I'll make it all about Satan then.

01:42:12.580 So then I went on my own journey to look into the origins of these things and what is the

01:42:17.880 reality of a lot of the things that I was not only raised to believe, but even my own

01:42:24.040 baptism, certain entities that were invoked during my baptism.

01:42:29.340 And my initial thought was, you know, okay, you've done this now to yourself and you deserve

01:42:39.980 everything you're going to get too.

01:42:42.140 Just in the same way that he, his attitude was, you know, if a sucker, if a sucker lets

01:42:49.600 you do something, then they deserve anything they get.

01:42:51.800 So, that was what I was taught.

01:42:54.780 So, I carried out his message onto himself.

01:42:58.540 And how I did that, that's a whole other can of worms that I don't have time to get into

01:43:05.000 today.

01:43:06.520 But ultimately, after I completed a certain ritual that spanned over three consecutive days,

01:43:19.040 and then the fourth day, I sealed it.

01:43:22.420 And after I sealed that ritual, and then I didn't look at it again, then I actually physically

01:43:31.060 sealed it in a contained, in a container.

01:43:36.220 And I didn't look at it again, except for only one precise day a year that I had chosen

01:43:41.680 to kind of reinforce it each year on one particular precise day.

01:43:45.980 And that was a ceremony that you used to sever yourself from the church?

01:43:50.380 Am I understanding that properly?

01:43:52.300 Or was this in relationship?

01:43:54.040 In fact, no.

01:43:55.640 In fact, my ritual that I severed from the church was in April of 90 on Volpergisnacht, which

01:44:03.700 was the anniversary of the founding of the Church of Satan.

01:44:07.080 That was the date that I chose to ritualistically sever myself from the Church of Satan.

01:44:12.180 This, what I'm referring to, was a malediction.

01:44:15.160 It was actually a curse.

01:44:17.640 Oh, on your father and the church?

01:44:20.180 Yes.

01:44:21.000 Yes.

01:44:21.880 And on the name LeVay.

01:44:25.180 And so, that came many months later.

01:44:30.700 I had to first get myself to safety, to a safe place, which was Vienna.

01:44:36.780 So, I left the country.

01:44:40.300 And my intention was to leave permanently, which I have.

01:44:46.360 But interestingly, I moved to a country sight unseen.

01:44:50.220 It was a very stressful time for me because not many people—I mean, I was literally a refugee.

01:44:55.700 But I didn't have the legal status of a refugee.

01:45:01.480 But I was literally seeking refuge away from my insane family, away from my insane country, away from all the insanity that I had been experiencing.

01:45:12.660 And once I got to a safe place, and once I was able to gain some sense of mental equilibrium, then I don't know why I was inspired on this one particular day, except for that it was coming near to Halloween.

01:45:33.980 But I don't think that particularly had anything to do with it.

01:45:38.580 But yes, so I did this ritual that was—it took three days to complete and the fourth day to seal.

01:45:48.780 So, then after that ritual, as I said, then I sealed it away, didn't think about it.

01:45:54.700 I only allowed myself one day a year in which I would reopen it and kind of reinforce it.

01:45:59.980 Because I thought, okay, he always said, if someone smite you on one cheek, smash them on the other.

01:46:07.280 If your father—if your father admits to you over the phone that he actually sent someone after you, well, I didn't send a hitman to him.

01:46:16.900 I didn't send a physical hitman after him.

01:46:20.480 But I did take matters into my own hands magically.

01:46:24.160 How did you reconcile that with—well, I mean, you've gone on a journey down the Buddhist path, which is, by the way, for everyone listening and watching.

01:46:35.360 That is something that I'm going to delve into more on the Daily Wire side of this interview.

01:46:41.300 So, some more autobiographical details and more of the positive development of this journey.

01:46:46.620 I'll close with this, like, how did you reconcile that highly tempted tilt towards vengeance, let's say, that you sealed with that ritual?

01:46:57.420 How did you or do you now reconcile that with the emphasis on compassion that you've been developing as a practitioner of Buddhism?

01:47:06.320 Yeah, quite simply because I was not a Buddhist yet.

01:47:08.940 And I was fresh, I was fresh, fresh out of the Church of Satan, but just because you have just freshly stepped out of a mindset, it doesn't mean that that mindset has just miraculously evaporated.

01:47:25.620 So, this was, in my understanding, this was in keeping with the satanic doctrine.

01:47:34.100 Right, so you were still operating within that framework.

01:47:37.020 Correct. I had not yet dropped all of the belief in that whole system, because that was too deeply ingrained.

01:47:49.000 So, that took a lot more time over the years, over the ensuing years.

01:47:53.780 But in the following couple of years, I actually began to, because I thought, well, okay, maybe I should look into some compromise alternatives,

01:48:03.420 different spiritual paths, whether, you know, European paganism or even Tantra, Indian Vedic Tantra,

01:48:15.600 different spiritual paths that I was exploring and researching and trying out in practice through prayers and rituals and things like that.

01:48:27.160 Right. So, I was beginning a path of exploration.

01:48:30.480 Right. Okay.

01:48:31.160 And as an outgrowth of the path of exploration, then I began realizing the satanic way of life is not sustainable.

01:48:40.580 It just is not.

01:48:41.140 Right.

01:48:41.440 You know, it's not, it is self-destructive.

01:48:43.880 Self-devouring.

01:48:44.680 Yes, yes, yes.

01:48:45.580 It's self-destructive.

01:48:47.640 I mean, even if, even if you think, well, well, I'll just use it for, because the whole point of Satanism is exaltation of the ego.

01:48:57.320 That is, at the core of the doctrine is exaltation of the ego.

01:49:00.960 It's allow your ego to make the decisions.

01:49:03.820 Do what your ego wants and just go with it.

01:49:06.180 And you'll feel better.

01:49:07.760 You'll have no guilt.

01:49:08.740 But the problem is, the ego is also a false construct, and it's also, it will trick you, and you'll do things that will then, you know, it will ricochet, it will like boomerang back onto you.

01:49:26.100 So, so.

01:49:26.600 Well, we can talk more about that issue of sustainability, too, because that's a key realization.

01:49:30.560 Sort of logically, logically, I began realizing, no, this is not a sustainable way of life.

01:49:36.540 And actually, it's so malignant that it eats into, it erodes your health, even.

01:49:42.340 It erodes your soul, your physical health.

01:49:46.740 Yeah, got it.

01:49:47.800 Okay, well, for everybody watching and listening, we're going to continue this conversation.

01:49:54.080 I think I'll delve more into the redemptive pathway.

01:49:58.160 I, I'm very interested in how Zina put herself back together.

01:50:02.940 She made a very astute observation here at the end.

01:50:05.400 You made a very astute observation, which is be, you know, when the Israelites leave the Pharaoh, they're in the desert for three generations.

01:50:13.860 And the reason for that is, as you pointed out, just because you escaped from something doesn't mean you're now where you should be.

01:50:20.700 Now you're lost.

01:50:21.840 And that might be better than being under the thumb of a tyrant, but you're still lost.

01:50:25.600 Being lost is actually a blessing.

01:50:30.360 Being lost is where you need to be, because you need to get so, you need to be so down, you need to lose everything before you can realize what you really are and what is really there at the core.

01:50:43.660 So being lost can actually be a blessing.

01:50:46.720 Yep, right.

01:50:47.720 Got it.

01:50:48.180 Got it.

01:50:48.540 We'll delve into that.

01:50:49.600 So for all of you watching and listening, well, thank you first for your time and attention.

01:50:53.580 Thank you very much for being so forthright and for agreeing to do this.

01:50:58.520 There's like, we barely scratched the surface, you know, but I, and, and that's too bad because there's a lot more that could have been explored productively.

01:51:06.540 But we'll do some more of this on the Daily Wire side and, and pleasure to meet you.

01:51:11.700 And it's quite remarkable, really, that you're still standing as far as I'm concerned.

01:51:15.820 So, you know, congratulations on that.

01:51:17.460 Oh, I'm more than standing.

01:51:18.720 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:19.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:19.700 Well, I want to talk about that too.

01:51:21.340 I'm not only standing, but I'm very, I'm, I'm very.

01:51:24.480 Driving?

01:51:25.420 Joyful.

01:51:26.220 Joyfully, joyfully standing.

01:51:28.120 Oh, great.

01:51:28.780 Great.

01:51:29.060 That's remarkable.

01:51:29.820 So we better, on the Daily Wire side, maybe we'll, we'll, I'd like to find out how you manage that.

01:51:34.320 So everybody, if you're interested in continuing, that's where we'll do it.

01:51:37.940 And again, Zena, thank you very much for agreeing to do this today.

01:51:41.340 Well, thank you too.

01:51:42.500 Many blessings to you.

471. Satanism： Fear, Manipulation, & Suffering ｜ Zeena Schreck

Summary

Transcript