Ben Kissel

speaker

7,902 appearances 30 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 21 Jun

Ben Kissel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.

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Last Podcast On The Left · Episode 669: Anton LaVey Part IV - Old Wizards Die Hard · 19 Jun 2026 podcast

And so now that we've told the tale of Sammy Davis Jr.

and the Church of Satan, let's turn back the narrative clock to the early 1970s, where we return our focus to the inner workings of the Church of Satan itself.

See, in the early to mid-70s, that's when Anton LaVey started turning his eye more towards Hollywood.

And LeVay's right-hand man and head nerd, Michael Aquino, had been just as excited as Anton and Diane about the possibilities of Poor Devil.

But within just two years of those heady days, the schism between Aquino, the academic, and LeVay, the showman, would grow too wide to fix.

when Aquino disagreed with one of LeVay's new church policies.

See, Aquino, and this is very important, Aquino actually believed that Satan was real.

Satan is a dude that you can talk to and ask to do things for you.

Anton LeVay was an atheist.

This, of course, is a problem when two guys with these mindsets are trying to run a church together.

He's just replacing it with another thing.

Yeah, he's actually making Protestantism.

We'll get into here in a sec.

Yes.

Now, for Michael Aquino, the final insult came when he saw a draft for an article that LeVay was planning to publish in the church's internal publication, The Cloven Hoof.

See, Aquino was already miffed at LeVay for dismantling the grotto system.

LeVay's focus on materialism had always rankled Aquino's spiritual standards.

But regardless of the purity that Aquino was wanting and expecting in the fucking Church of Satan...

A man's got to eat, and money was tight within the organization by 1975.

So LaVey decided that he was going to simply sell initiatory ranks within the church, which ironically could be compared to the Catholic Church selling indulgences in the 16th century.

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