The Law of the Trapezoid

Any "Satanist" worth the name should be familiar with the Law of the Trapezoid essay featured in LaVey's The Devil's Notebook.  The purpose of this article is to recap some of the particular details and to provide further examples to the ones given in said essay; a modest effort towards providing supporting evidence for the basic concepts of Satanic, or "demonic" geometry.

To surmise, I will quote: "In 1962 I isolated my suppositions and distilled them into what I termed 'the Law of the Trapezoid.'  I had ample evidence that spatial concepts were not only able to effect those who were involved in visual confrontations, but far more insidiously, other parties with whom a viewer came into contact.  As in any form of contagion, family, friends and co-workers are effected by signals of anxiety projected by another.  The most tranquil and stoical person can be drawn into a chaotic situation if his surroundings are sufficiently disturbing.  Often I discovered that subtle aberrations had a more profound effect than readily-recognizable and overt spatial distortions." (Anton Szandor LaVey, The Devil's Notebook)

Some of the examples mentioned in the essay are the Yezidi "Towers of Satan," the Maya and Aztec temples (which are overtly isosceles trapezoids), the "Witch's House" of Beverly Hills, the John Hancock Center of Chicago, the Wyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, Frank Lloyd Wright's ill-fated Midway Gardens project, and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Yezidi "Towers of Satan."

 

"The Witch's House" of Beverly Hills.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's "Midway Gardens," opened 1914 and demolished 1929.

 

"Taliesin," Frank Lloyd Wright's studio and home, where his houseboy went insane, killed seven persons and set fire to the house exactly when the Midway Gardens project was completed.

 

Chicago's John Hancock Center

 

A little over three years after the Hancock's completion, a 29-year-old Chicago woman named Lorraine Kowalski fell to her death from her boyfriend's 90th-floor Hancock Center apartment. To this day, detectives are dumbfounded by the event; the building's windows are capable of withstanding more than 200 pounds of pressure per square foot and winds of more than 150 miles per hour, yet Kowalski actually broke through the glass. Four years later, a transmitter technician for a local radio station plunged to his death from the 97th floor offices of his television station. Just three months later, a 27-year old tenant "fell" from his 91st-floor apartment while studying for an exam at breakfast. In 1978, a 31-year old woman shot a man to death in his home on the Hancock's 65th floor, and in 1998, beloved comedian Chris Farley was found dead in the entrance hall of his 60th-floor apartment. Most recently, in March of 2002, a 25-foot aluminum scaffold fell from the building's 43rd floor, crushing three cars, killing three women and injuring 8 others. All of these incidents were called "baffling," "inexplicable."

 

 

The Golden Gate Bridge is the second most used suicide site in the world.  A documentary was made, and can be seen in full on YouTube:





 

"I examined files of cases dealing with structures supposedly haunted or cursed with continuing failure, death, financial loss, insanity, fire, tragedy.  Many were visually aberrant in the most flagrant manner.  Others were not.  A mansard roof is de rigeur in every artist's conception of the haunted house.  Why did the artists automatically render them in that fashion?  Good fairies' castles all were depicted as having peaked towers and gently rounded arches. Jolly elves lived in cottages with rounded corners and cake icing roofs.  The good folk dwelt in Graustarkian tranquility in snug and womblike home with curlicues cut into the shutters.  Bluebeards and Frankensteins all lived in stark, monolithic and grotesquely bastioned abodes.  Frankenstein created change and reaction by duplicating God's handiwork." (Anton Szandor LaVey, The Devil's Notebook)

The "mansard roof" style, named for French architect Francois Mansart.

 

Chateau de Maisons, by Mansart

 

 

     The architecturally aberrant cityscape featured in the German expressionist film Metropolis (1927)

 

Expressionist-surrealist set design of the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

 

Another example not given by LaVey may be found in the widely-famous Pennhurst State School and Hospital, which was shut down in 1987 after decades of controversy.  It has been featured on a wide variety of "ghost-hunting" television programs such as Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures, and in 2010 was officially renovated and reopened as an official "haunted attraction."  In 2012, a fictionalized movie starring Haylie Duff called Asylum of the Dead was made about it.  As early as 1968, the extensive abusive treatment of patients gained them negative attention and was brought to public attention in a five-part 1968 documentary for CBS called "Suffer the Little Children."

 

 

Pennhurst asylum explored on Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures

 

More examples will be given and this post will be updated in the future as my studies and explorations of the Law of the Trapezoid yield more results.