The story of modern Satanism begins in the mid‑20th century United States but draws on longer cultural and intellectual currents. In its most widely recognized institutional form, the Church of Satan was announced in San Francisco in 1966 and made the figure of Satan the focal point for a self‑consciously modern statement about individuality and materialism. Anton Szandor LaVey (born 1930) published The Satanic Bible in 1969, which quickly became the single most influential text for many who identified with what later scholars called LaVeyan Satanism. This sequence—organization in 1966, The Satanic Bible in 1969, and subsequent publications such as The Satanic Rituals (1972)—is a concrete, well‑documented axis around which later currents formed.
LaVey presented his movement as a radical inversion of Christian morality, but he framed it not as a worship of a supernatural devil but as a new religious aesthetic oriented to ego, theatrical ritual, and a symbolic reclaiming of the figure of Satan. Historians of religion distinguish the tradition's own origin story—that LaVey received revelations and founded a church—from sociological descriptions that place the Church of Satan within 1960s countercultural currents, the rise of secularism, and American show business. The city of San Francisco, and particularly the neighborhood around the Haight‑Ashbury and the area where LaVey's residence known as the Black House functioned as a ritual locus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is a verifiable geographical detail that anchors the narrative.
Modern Satanism does not emerge ex nihilo; it is a bricolage of literary romanticism, Enlightenment critiques of Christian orthodoxy, and occultist practices from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Scholars point to the influence of 19th‑century literary Satanic figures—from Milton's Lucifer to Byron's Byronic hero—and to the ceremonial magic traditions popularized by figures such as Aleister Crowley. LaVey and his contemporaries both borrowed from and reacted against these sources. A useful comparison is with modern Pagan revivals: like some Pagan groups, LaVeyan Satanists repurposed older symbols and ritual forms, but the movement's explicit antagonism to Christian norms and its often theatrical public style set it apart.
A second branching event in the formative period occurred in 1975, when Michael A. Aquino (born 1946) and others split from the Church of Satan and established the Temple of Set, which emphasized esoteric metaphysics and an initiatory priesthood. This schism—dating to 1975 and documented in contemporary accounts—illustrates an early internal diversity: LaVey's strain tended to be explicitly non‑theistic and theatrical, while the Temple of Set adopted a different metaphysical vocabulary, sometimes accepting metaphysical claims about the Setian or initiatory experience.
The late 1960s and 1970s therefore produced at least three enduring outcomes: the institutionalization of LaVeyan ideas in the Church of Satan, the publication of canonical LaVey texts, and the creation of alternative organizations such as the Temple of Set. Each of these has a concrete provenance: Church of Satan incorporation in 1966, The Satanic Bible (1969), and Temple of Set formation in 1975. These early developments also reveal a tension that persists: whether to understand Satanism primarily as symbolic atheism, as an occult initiatory religion, or as a set of cultural and political statements.
During the 1980s and 1990s, another important historical context reshaped public perceptions of Satanism: the so‑called "Satanic Panic"—a moral panic in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries that produced widespread accusations of ritual abuse, high‑profile criminal investigations, and extensive media coverage. Scholarly studies such as Jeffrey S. Victor's work on the panic date the phenomenon to the 1980s and early 1990s and offer a critical frame for understanding how modern Satanic movements were portrayed and litigated in public life. The panic had legal and social consequences, from sensational trials to official inquiries, and it also prompted scholarly attention that would later differentiate between organized Satanic groups and alleged criminal conspiracies.
In the first decades of the 21st century the history accelerates in another direction: the symbolic vocabulary of Satanism is adopted by online communities and activist groups that recast Satanic imagery for political purposes. The Satanic Temple, founded in 2013 and associated with political advocacy for secularism and civil liberties, exemplifies this newer phase. Its founders placed emphasis on non‑belief and on using legal tools to test and contest government endorsement of religion—strategies that differ from LaVey's 1960s theatricalism and Aquino's occult initiation. The founding year 2013 is a specific datum that scholars and journalists use to mark the emergence of an activist strand in modern Satanism.
When historians attempt to periodize modern Satanism they therefore identify at least three overlapping phases: the mid‑20th‑century institutionalization under LaVey (1966–1970s), the diversification and schisms such as the Temple of Set (1975 onward), and the 21st‑century digital and activist revitalizations including The Satanic Temple (2013 onward). Each phase is anchored in dates and places—San Francisco in 1966, the publication of The Satanic Bible in 1969, the Temple of Set in 1975, and The Satanic Temple in 2013—yet all phases show continuity in certain themes: a symbolic embrace of Satanic imagery, a concern with individual autonomy, and a persistent engagement with public culture.
Finally, it is important to stress that adherents and organizations within this family often disagree about origins and meanings. Where LaVey's writings present doctrinal pronouncements, scholars read those texts as rhetorical constructions shaped by personal showmanship, media attention, and the marketplaces of religion and entertainment. The tradition's origin story is therefore both a lived memory for adherents and a subject of scholarly reconstruction, and both perspectives are crucial for a full historical account.
This chapter has aimed to map the concrete milestones and the interpretive tensions that constitute the movement's beginnings: the 1966 founding of the Church of Satan in San Francisco, the publication of The Satanic Bible in 1969, the 1975 formation of the Temple of Set, the 1980s Satanic Panic that transformed public perception, and the activist initiatives from 2013 that ushered in a new public phase. Each milestone is a verifiable anchor point; together they explain how modern Satanism emerged as a distinct, plural, and living religious family.