The Satanic Bible and The Vampire Bible

The Vampire Bible – ???
Temple of the Vampire – 1989

The Satanic Bible – Anton Lavey
Avon – 1969

I’ve just finished reading The Vampire Bible from the Temple of the Vampire. I’m going to talk a little about that and a little about the Satanic Bible. I want to get LaVey out of the way early on.

(The fonts and imagery are one of the sweetest things about this book.)

I am glad that I bought my copy of the Vampire Bible in a parking lot, off some dude from craigslist. I sure would feel like a dummy if I had given the person who wrote this tripe any of my money.

To join the Temple of the Vampire, you have to buy a copy of this book from them. I would hope that they also give you extra material to make sense of it, or maybe call you up to explain the crazy nonsense that’s included. The book doesn’t even include a definition of what they mean by ‘vampire’. The vampires described are non-violent vampires who don’t murder or drink blood. These vampires just float about in the astral realm, giving thanks to the undead gods and sucking life-force from their prey. It’s not very clear as to what effect this floating has on the vampire’s prey though, and the book specifically says that it doesn’t harm them. That sounds like a pathetic vampire to me.

The content is an awkward mix of instruction and fantasy. The book states that its contents are based in fantasy, yet it prohibits any kind of violence. If this is all fantasy, why shouldn’t I swally down the blood of my enemies? At least the Satanic Bible has some balls and tells you to ‘SMASH’ people that you don’t like. My favourite part of the entire book was the second item on the the list of things that suggest that you are in the presence of the Undead:
“2. Tingling sensations in the fingertips”
Perhaps the author has gotten mixed up. These vampires sound a lot like fairies to me.

(I haven’t read my copy of the Satanic Rituals yet and probably won’t ever get around to it. It has a nice pink cover though.)

The Vampire Bible is dumb. Like the Satanic Bible, it makes no effort to emulate the actual Bible in any way. Unlike the Satanic Bible, it’s not even remotely clever. I actually enjoyed reading the LaVey’s Bible. It’s camp and silly, but there is some actual reasoning behind it. You get the feeling that he actually believed in some of what he was writing. There’s not an ounce of reasoning behind anything written by Vlad, or whoever the fuck shat out the Vampire Bible. The ideas in the Satanic Bible are obviously not completely original, but I think that LaVey did a decent job of synthesizing them into an entertaining whole.

Coincidentally, perhaps my least favourite part of the Satanic Bible (apart from the silly Enochian bits) was the section on Psychic Vampires. It seemed like it was a metaphor for something that had happened in LaVey’s own private life that was too embarrassing to clarify but too upsetting for him to leave out completely. It’s funny looking back at that section now and reading the lines: Psychic vampires are individuals who drain others of their vital energy… They fill no useful purpose in our lives. Perhaps he was in contact with some of the members from the Temple of the Vampire! Well, actually… probably not; the Satanic Bible was written 20 years before the Temple was founded.

Anyways, to conclude, I’m giving the Vampire Bible a generous 3/10. It looks and sounds pretty cool as long as you don’t take the time to actually read it. It’s not nearly as spooky as it could have been. The Satanic Bible gets a 7/10 for being good hellish fun. Even if you don’t like the writing, this book is worth owning just for the sweet portrait of LaVey on the back.