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beginning to doubt there were any women like Amodali out there, most of the women
I had encountered on the occult scene up until then were New Age airheads clutching
crystals who backed off when they realised I was into the kind of occult practice that
they labelled “black magic”.
Amodali worked in peepshows in Amsterdam to fund her musical career. Specifically
her main venue was the “Walburga Abbey”, founded by Martin Lamers in 1976 and
annexed to Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. A little bit of history: Anton LaVey set up
the Church of Satan on Walpurgisnacht in 1966 in San Francisco. In 1972 Lamers flew
from the Netherlands to San Francisco to meet with LaVey and returned with the
Charter for the “Magistralis Grotto”, the first official European Church of Satan Grotto,
which he set up in Etersheim in one of the oldest Protestant churches in the country. In
1976 Lamers bought two back-to-back houses in the centre of the red-light district in
Amsterdam, in one he established the Church of Satan and in the other the Walburga
Abbey where the clientele could watch the “sisters” perform “symbolic union with Satan”
for “religious donations”, or, at least, that was what Lamers told the Royal Netherlands
Court when he sought tax exemption status.
Although the Walburga Abbey was essentially a Satanic sex club, Amodali regarded
the Church of Satan as her plaything and used it as a place to manifest Babalon. She
also invoked Baphomet there every day. It had typical Church of Satan chic: luminous
skeletons in the lobby, goat heads on the wall, that kind of crap. The reality of the
Walburga Abbey was that she sat upon an altar naked, the poor unsuspecting punter
would come in off the street imagining he was going to get kinky sex. He entered the
temple lined with black velvet and saw Amodali on the altar, who instructed him to sit
close by and lay back with some money, fifty dollars or more, on his nose. She would
then sit on his face and pick up the money. This is how Amodali described to me in a
letter what happens next:
Then I freak ’em out with some appropriate Satanic textbook nonsense. Suitably awestruck,
they begin to take in their surroundings, the gaudily painted “glitter” magic circles,
inverted pentagrams on the walls etc. Of course they want to fuck me, I’ve been offered
thousands, I just say “I only fuck with Satan, darling”. The place has nothing to do with
sex, real sex, only Power. All the time I’ve spent there naked, proud, amongst the most
ridiculous slime of humanity, my inner core of extreme purity has been tempered to an
exquisite degree. Thousands have gazed upon my naked beauty. None have been worthy
of direct knowledge of it. They give money for the honour of looking and touching.
Then they’re commanded to crawl back to their holes. Thus can I support my magical
and musical career.
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