Herbert Arthur Sloane
Herbert Arthur Sloane was the first person known to have organized and led a specifically Satanic religious group. Its name was the Ophite Cultus Sathanas. Sloane -- a World War II U. S. Army veteran, barber, Spiritualist minister, numerologist, card and tea leaf reader, hypnotist, and evidentiary medium -- formed the group in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1948, and also headed his own local branch of the organization, Our Lady of Endor Coven. As Sloane changed location, the headquarters of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas relocated with him, first to Mishawaka and South Bend, Indiana in the 1950s, and then to Toledo, Ohio in the 1960s, where it remained until Sloane's death in 1975. It is estimated that membership in his group numbered fewer than a dozen people at any given time; according to one contemporary account there were five local members.
Despite his importance to the history of Satanism, Sloane's life has been poorly documented. This article represents a great deal of original research into Sloane's Satanism and his related occult, mystical, and sexual interests, along with glimpses of what his life was like, year by year. It is offered as a bouquet of information from researcher and writer catherine yronwode to her delightfully Satanic husband, nagasiva yronwode, with love and laughter.
Contents
- 1 1905 Herbert Arthur Sloane - born in Rowsburg, Ohio
- 2 1908 Herbert Sloane sees the Horned God Sathanas in the woods in Ohio
- 3 1919 - 1920 Herbert Sloane, high school drop-out, Ohio
- 4 1928 Herbert Sloane, barber, marries Lillian Mae Harris, clerk, in Akron, Ohio
- 5 1932 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with Lillian Mae Sloane, Mansfield, Ohio
- 6 1932 Herbert Sloane - "Spiritualist Reading and Consultation" sign stolen, Mansfield, Ohio
- 7 1933 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Mansfield, Ohio
- 8 1933 Herbert A. Sloane - Spiritualist minister with Mrs. Edna Brennan, Mansfield, Ohio
- 9 1933 Herbert A. Sloane - Spiritualist minister with Mrs. Edna Brennan, Mansfield, Ohio
- 10 1934 Herbert A. Sloane - numerologist, with Lillian Mae Sloane, Mansfield, Ohio
- 11 1938 Lillian Sloane (a.k.a. Mae Benson) indicted for White Slavery in Alliance, Ohio!
- 12 1938 Lillian Sloane on trial for White Slavery!
- 13 1938 Lillian Sloane Acquitted of White Slavery Charges!
- 14 1938 Lillian Mae Sloane flees from Mansfield, Ohio to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin!
- 15 1941 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Holmes County, Ohio
- 16 1941 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Army Enlistment in Huntington, West Virginia
- 17 1945 Herbert A. Sloane released from Army service
- 18 1945 - 1947 Herbert A. Sloane - Cuyahoga County, Ohio, marriage to Margaret J. [Unknown]
- 19 1946 Herbert A. Sloane has a friend in Cleveland make April Belle for him
- 20 1947 Herbert A. Sloane -- barber, with wife Margaret J. Sloane, Cleveland, Ohio
- 21 1948 Herbert A. Sloane founds Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas in Cleveland, Ohio
- 22 1951 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, no wife listed, Cleveland, Ohio
- 23 1952 Herbert A. Sloane -- WEIRD RECORD - Cleveland, Oho, possible child
- 24 1953 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, single, in Mishawaka / South Bend, Indiana
- 25 1953 Herbert A. Sloane - writes a book on Hair Culture in South Bend, Indiana
- 26 1953 Herbert A. Sloane - trichologist, advertises The Sloane System of Hair Culture in Ebony Magazine
- 27 1956 Mrs. Margaret Sloane - single and in Lorain, Ohio
- 28 1956 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with wife Jean E. Sloane in South Bend, Indiana
- 29 1957 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with wife Jean E. Sloane in South Bend, Indiana
- 30 1957 Mrs. Jean E. Sloane - artist in South Bend, Indiana (separate listing for her)
- 31 9 Year Gap
- 32 1967 Kala the Cardopractor, President of the Rita Atlanta Fan Club, Toledo, Ohio
- 33 1968 Richard Cavendish Reports Existence of Satanists in Toledo, Oho, Won't Name Names
- 34 1968 Herbert A. Sloane - a.k.a. Kala, Local 'Witch' Leads Group in Satanist Worship
- 35 1969 Interviews with Herbert A. Sloane
- 36 1970 Herbert A. Sloane Interviewed by Dr. Leo Martello
- 37 1972 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Satanist, single, interviewed twice in Toledo, Ohio
- 38 Side Trip: Lady Circe, Toledo Ohio
- 39 1974 Herbert Sloane is identified with "White Satanism" by Jorgensen and Truzzi
- 40 1975 Herbert Sloane - death at age 69 in Toledo, Ohio
- 41 1975 Herbert Sloane Social Security Death Index
- 42 1975 Herbert Sloane obituary
- 43 Members of Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas
- 44 1993 Herbert Sloane -- The SON?
- 45 List of locations cited in this article
- 46 Copyright Notice
1905 Herbert Arthur Sloane - born in Rowsburg, Ohio
According to his first marriage license:
Birth Date: 3 Sep 1905
Birthplace: Rowsburg, Ohio
Father's Name: Robert Sloane
Mother's Name: Hattie Harter
In an interview with Brad Steiger, Sloane was described as having been a "farmboy" and so it might be assumed that his family lived outside of town.
1908 Herbert Sloane sees the Horned God Sathanas in the woods in Ohio
As he related in 1969 and 1972 to his interviewers Brad Steiger, Hans Holzer, and Leo Martello, Herbert Sloane saw a "horned god" in the woods in Ohio as a child. Steiger recounted that "Lord Sathan appeared to [Sloane] when he was a but a three year-old farmboy," which would place this event in 1908, but Sloane also told others that it was not until he obtained a copy of Margaret Murray's 1933 book "The God of the Witches" that he recognized the entity that he had seen was Sathanas, another name for Satan.
He was 3 years old.
1919 - 1920 Herbert Sloane, high school drop-out, Ohio
According to his WW II Army enlistment, Sloane only completed 1 year of High School. This means that his formal education ended when he was around 15 years old.
For reasons unknown, Herbert Sloane was not enumerated in the 1920 Federal Census.
1928 Herbert Sloane, barber, marries Lillian Mae Harris, clerk, in Akron, Ohio
Summit County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1840-1980
Name: Herbert Sloane
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Birth Date: 3 Sep 1905
Birthplace: Rowsburg, Ohio
Father's Name: Robert Sloane
Mother's Name: Hattie Harter
Occupation: Barber
Residence: 9 N. Walnut St., Akron, Ohio
Age: 23
Not previously married
Spouse's Name: Lillian Mae Harris
Spouse Gender: Female
Spouse Birth Date: 8 Aug 1902
Birthplace: Knoxville, Tennessee
Spouse Father's Name: Earl Wilson
Spouse Mother's Name: Louise Smith
Occupation: Clerk
Residence: 97 E. Voris St., Akron, Ohio
Age: 26
Previously married once and widowed
Marriage Date: 13 Nov 1928
Marriage by Rev. Robert Davison, Akron, Ohio
See Marriage-to-Lillian-1928.jpg
He was 23 years old when he married 26 year old Lillian Mae Wilson Harris, a widow.
For reasons unknown, Herbert A. Sloane and Lillian M. Sloane were not enumerated in the 1930 Federal Census.
1932 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with Lillian Mae Sloane, Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield, Ohio, City Directory, 1932
Herbert A Sloane (Lillian) barber, home 206 North Mulberry, Mansfield, Ohio
He was 27 years old.
1932 Herbert Sloane - "Spiritualist Reading and Consultation" sign stolen, Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield News, Mansfield Ohio, September 6, 1932 (page 2)
Steal Name Plate Off Mulberry Street Home
See Steal-Name-Plate-1932.jpg
This was the second theft in the small town of Mansfield on a single day (Sunday, September 4, 1932), the first theft targeting "Labor Day rations," that is, supplies stocked for Labor Day parties and celebrations scheduled for September 5th. The notice of Sloane's sign being stolen was inserted as a smaller sidebar into the longer article on the grocery thefts.
Sloane's address was 206 North Mulberry Street and the stolen sign read "Rev. H. A. Sloane Spiritualist Reading and Consultation."
The theft took place on Sunday, September 4, 1932, the day before Sloane's birthday, which fell on Labor Day that year. He turned 27 years old the day after the theft.
1933 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Mansfield, Ohio
http://newspaperarchive.com/mansfield-news/1933-07-29/page-11/
Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, July 29, 1933 (page 9)
As H. A. Sloane, he was a barber and was cutting hair at his home, 206 North Mulberry, Mansfield, Ohio in July 1933. He signed a published notice by many barbers in Mansfield setting shop hours and prices -- a sort of NRA-style agreement.
See Barbershop-Notice-Mansfield-News-July-29-1933-page11.jpg
He was 27 years old.
1933 Herbert A. Sloane - Spiritualist minister with Mrs. Edna Brennan, Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, September 9, 1933 (page 9)
Service Planned -- weekly services of the Spiritualist Church of Truth, Mrs. Edna Brennan of South Main Street will go to Bucyrus, Ohio to conduct services, assisted by Rev. Herbert Sloane of Mansfield.
See Services-Planned-1933.jpg
According to the standards of the time, the night-time services conducted by Edna Brennan and Herbert A. Sloane would have included evidentiary messages from the dead, possibly accompanied by auditory, tactile, or visual seance manifestations.
He was 28 years old.
1933 Herbert A. Sloane - Spiritualist minister with Mrs. Edna Brennan, Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, September 16, 1933 (page 9)
Similar to the above entry, this notice tells us that Sloane was again travelling with Mrs. Edna Brennan to hold a night-time mediumship service -- that is, a dark seance -- at the Spiritualistic Church of Truth in Bucyrus, Ohio.
See Conducts-Services-1933.jpg
This was the year that Margaret Murray's influential book "The God of the Witches" was published. It is not known when Sloane first obtained a copy, but as he later told interviewers, when he read the book, he realized that the "horned god" he had seen in the woods as a child in or near Rowsburg, Ohio, was Sathanas or Satan.
He was 28 years old.
1934 Herbert A. Sloane - numerologist, with Lillian Mae Sloane, Mansfield, Ohio
Herbert A Sloane 1934 Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield, Ohio, City Directory, 1934
Sloane Herbert A (Lilliam M) numerologist home 112 North Walnut, Mansfield, Ohio
In this city directory, Sloane lists his occupation as a numerologist and not as a barber.
He was 29 years old.
1938 Lillian Sloane (a.k.a. Mae Benson) indicted for White Slavery in Alliance, Ohio!
The Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) May 4, 1938, page 1
See White-Slavers-1938.jpg
Lillian Sloane 33, a.k.a. Mae Benson, was indicted in a group of 9 men and 5 women for transporting women from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Alliance, Ohio, for immoral purposes. Herbert Sloane was not named or indicted, but his wife was Lillian Mae Sloane and this woman, a.k.a. Mae Benson (similar to his wife's maiden name Lillian Mae Wilson) was the only Lillian Sloane in the state of Ohio at this time.
If the idea that Lillian Sloane was Herbert's dear little housewife creates dissonance at this point, allow me to foretell that shortly after this, Lillian Mae Sloane was to flee from the home she had shared with Herbert A. Sloane in Mansfield, Ohio, stealing an unpaid-for refrigerator in the process (see below).
For the record, the original list of 14 co-defendents in the prostitution ring were as follows -- and all variant names from subsequent news articles are given, even those which may have been typographical errors::
- Samuel Davis, 33 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- James Godfrey Demeir, 23 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Jeanette Donaldson alias Virginia Davis, 22 years old, Alliance, Ohio
- Isadore Friedman, 33 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Harry Joseph McAfee, 41 years old, Millville / Millvale Pennsylvania
- Charles Lawrence Martin, 47 years old, Alliance, Ohio
- David Winchell Moore, 38 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Emil Joseph Reiss, 30 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Margaret Ross alias Margaret Roos alias Margaret Bolton, 43 years old, Alliance, Ohio and/or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Lee Morton Ryave, 19 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Abe M. Scott, 39 years old, McDonald, Pennsylvania
- Lillian Sloane alias Mae Benson, 33 years old, Alliance, Ohio
- Madeline Ruth Smith alias Madeline Evans, 22 years old, Alliance,Ohio
- Elizabeth Townsend alias Elizabeth Hines alias Virginia Hines, 47 years old, Alliance, Ohio
Although at first encounter, this article presents the reader with an unexpected and almost unbelievable connection between Herbert A. Sloane, Spiritualist Minister, and the demi-monde of prostitution, a further review of Sloane's life will reveal a consistent pattern of interest in, and promotion of, what at the time was a sexually edgy lifestyle associated with prostitutes, strippers, and bondage sex.
He was 32 years old.
1938 Lillian Sloane on trial for White Slavery!
The Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) May 23, 1938, page 6
See White-Slavers-On-Trial-1938.jpg
Two more defendants were added to the inter-state prostitution case; their names do not appear in any newspaper accounts i have been able to locate. In any case, 16 people were now to go on trial for "white slavery" or running a prostitution ring, including Lillian Sloane, a.k.a. Mae Benson, 33.
He was 32 years old.
1938 Lillian Sloane Acquitted of White Slavery Charges!
The Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) May 27,1938, page 29
At the inter-state prostitution trial, six defendants were convicted and two defendants were acquitted -- the other eight who were charged are not mentioned in this article. Lillian Sloane, a.k.a. Mae Benson, was acquitted.
See Six-Convicted-1938.jpg
For the record, out of a total of 16 co-defendents, two remained unnamed in newspaper accounts (see above).
The six co-defendents convicted of operating a prostitution ring were:
- Samuel Davis, 33 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Isadore Friedman, 33 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Charles Lawrence Martin, 47 years old, Alliance, Ohio
- David Winchell Moore, 38 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Margaret Ross alias Margaret Roos alias Margaret Bolton, 43 years old, Alliance, Ohio and/or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Elizabeth Townsend alias Elizabeth Hines alias Virginia Hines, 47 years old, Alliance, Ohio
The two co-defendents acquitted of operating a prostitution ring were:
- Harry Joseph McAfee, 41 years old, Millville / Millvale Pennsylvania
- Lillian Sloane alias Mae Benson, 33 years old, Alliance, Ohio
The disposition of the case against eight others previously named and two others previously not named was not reported. Charges may have been dropped, they may have received prosecutorial immunity in exhange for testifying, they may have skipped out on bail, or their trials may have been severed from those of the others and remained pending at the time of this report.For the reord, those named but for whom the outcome remains unknown were:
- James Godfrey Demeir, 23 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Jeanette Donaldson alias Virginia Davis, 22 years old, Alliance, Ohio
- Emil Joseph Reiss, 30 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Lee Morton Ryave, 19 years old, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Abe M.Scott, 39 years old, McDonald, Pennsylvania
- Madeline Ruth Smith alias Madeline Evans, 22 years old, Alliance,Ohio
- Two unnamed
And so Lillian Mae Sloane was returned to her husband, Herbert A. Sloane, after a close brush with the law.
He was 32 years old.
1938 Lillian Mae Sloane flees from Mansfield, Ohio to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin!
Mansfield News Journal (Mansfield, Ohio) November 4, 1938, page 6
Lillian Mae Sloane, wife of Herbert A. Sloane, last seen in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, took a refrigerator she had not paid for! The company that sold it to her on a time-payment plan "filed an action in replevin against her in the Municipal Court of Mansfield, Ohio."
Ohio Public Service Co. wants its Westinghouse Refrigerator Style CL 53 back!
The exact same text was also published in the Mansfield News Journal on November 4, November 11, November 18, November 26, December 2, and December 9, 1938.
He was 33 years old.
1941 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Holmes County, Ohio
Sometime between 1938 and 1941, Herbert Sloane moved out of Mansfield, Ohio, and relocated to Holmes County, Ohio, where he continued to work as a barber. This occupation and place of residence are as stated in his March 21, 1941 Army enlistment record. Also clearly stated on his Army enlistment is that he had not divorced Lillian Mae Sloane, although they seem to have separated.
It is not difficult to imagine that after his wife was arrested for inter-state transportation of prostitutes and for stealing a refrigerator, Herbert Sloane found it uncomfortable to live and work any longer in his home of the past 8 - 10 years, Mansfield, Ohio. Rural Holmes county, known for its high population of Amish farmers, may have seemed like a good place to lay low.
For reasons unknown, Herbert Sloane was not enumerated in the 1940 Federal Census.
Note: Holmes County is in northern central Ohio, and it is very rural. On his Army enlistment record, only the county name, with no specific town, is given as his location. This leaves numerous possibilities. According to Wikipedia, these are the towns in Holmes County:
Villages: Baltic, Glenmont, Holmesville, Killbuck, Loudonville, Millersburg, Nashville.
Townships: Berlin, Clark, Hardy, Killbuck, Knox, Mechanic, Monroe, Paint, Prairie, Richland, Ripley, Salt Creek, Walnut Creek, Washington.
Unincorporated communities: Berlin, Big Prairie, Charm, Lakeville, Mt. Hope, Trail, Walnut Creek, Winesburg.
He was 33 - 35 years old.
1941 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Army Enlistment in Huntington, West Virginia
U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 about Herbert A Sloane
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Birth Year: 1905
Race: White, citizen (White)
Nativity State or Country: Ohio
State of Residence: Ohio
County or City: Holmes [This is a county, not a city]
Enlistment Date: 31 Mar 1941
Enlistment State: West Virginia
Enlistment City: Huntington
Branch: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
Branch Code: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
Grade Code: Private
Component: Selectees (Enlisted Men)
Source: Civil Life
Education: 1 year of high school
Civil Occupation: Barbers, beauticians, and manicurists
Marital Status: Married
Height: 69
Weight: 148
It is unknown why Sloane went to Huntington, West Virginia, to enlist; the city is on the Ohio border. He was still married to Lillian Mae Sloane when he enlisted. The United States had not yet entered World War Two and Sloane was not subject to the draft. He was 5'9" tall and weighed 148 lbs.
He was 35 years old.
1945 Herbert A. Sloane released from Army service
Herbert Sloane's Army Enlistment and Release dates can be found on his U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 about Herbert Sloane
Name: Herbert Sloane
Gender: Male
Death Date: 16 Jun 1975
SSN: 302097784
Enlistment Date 1: 31 Mar 1941
Release Date 1: 3 Jan 1945
He served a little less than four years in the military. I have found no record that he was sent overseas or saw combat, nor can i find his location stateside. All that is obvious is that he enlisted as a barber and served in that capacity.
He was 40 years old.
1945 - 1947 Herbert A. Sloane - Cuyahoga County, Ohio, marriage to Margaret J. [Unknown]
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Records and Indexes, 1810-1973 Record for Herbert A Sloane
Index > Reel 014 Marriage Index 1945-1947 > 374
line 51 Sloane Herbert A Vol. 292 Page 58
No record of Herbert Sloane's divorce from Lillian Mae Sloane has been found to date. The name of his second bride is not given on this page as it is merely a digitized index, not the actual marriage record. To find the record (not online yet), you must go to the Volume and Page noted.
In the records that follow it becomes evident that Sloane's second marriage was to Margaret J. [Unknown], and although only the county of Cuyahoga is mentioned in the marriage index, this record marks his post-War move to Cleveland, Ohio, which is in Cuyuhoga County.
He was 40 - 42 years old.
1946 Herbert A. Sloane has a friend in Cleveland make April Belle for him
According to Sloane's 1972 interview with Hans Holzer, in 1946 he had the life-size doll April Belle made for him by "a friend in Cleveland." The date checks out, as Sloane was actually living in Cleveland at the time.
In the interview, it is implied that Sloane had become interested in working with such a doll in order to develop his gift for "telepathy." However, such life-size dolls were, at that time, frequently used by fraudulent seance mediums to provide false evidentiary demonstrations of visual contact with the dead.
Given that Sloane had been a night-time seance medium as early as 1932-33 in Mansfield, Ohio, it seems obvious that he would invest in such a figure in order to continue his work after the War. And indeed, 25 years later, April Belle was still being used to provide a "misty" glimpse to one of Sloane's followers during a seance held by an unnamed medium in Toledo, Ohio. See the entry on the interviews of 1972 for details.
He was 41 years old.
1947 Herbert A. Sloane -- barber, with wife Margaret J. Sloane, Cleveland, Ohio
Herbert A Sloane 1947 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio, City Directory, 1947
Sloane, Herbert A. (Margt J.) barber, 5307 St. Clair Av NE h (home) 10100 Garfield Av apt 6
This is an old brick six-plex house.
He was 42 years old.
1948 Herbert A. Sloane founds Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas in Cleveland, Ohio
In 1948 Sloane was living in Cleveland, and was married to his second wife, Margaret J. Sloane. Two years earlier he had acquired the life-size figure he called April Belle, which his 1972 interviewers referred to as a "doll," although it was certainly not a play-thing. As a Spiritualist Reverend with the tools of a fraudulent seance medium at hand -- namely, the figure of April Belle -- it seems likely that Sloane was engaged in conducting dark seances.
According to the 1972 interviews that he gave to Hans Holzer and Leo Martello, this was the year that he founded Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas, which he also created.
The name of Sloane's group has puzzled many, but knowing what we do of Sloane's career up to this point, the meaning is not difficult to unpack:
The name "Our Lady of Endor" is a word-play on the use of the common Roman Catholic term for an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary -- Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so forth -- however, in this case, "Our Lady" refers to the Witch of Endor, mentioned in the Bible in the First Book of Samuel.
The word translated as "Witch" in the King James Bible is more properly rendered as "spirit medium," and, in fact, many modern Bible historians refer to her as "the medium of Endor." In the Bible she is described as a manifesting spirit medium known for her ability to raise the ghosts of the dead to visible form and to converse with them. King Saul, going against God's specific wishes, has the medium of Endor call up the ghost of the recently deceased prophet Samuel to advise him.
Interestingly, in French books, the Biblical Hebrew word rendered as "witch" or "spirit medium" in English is sometimes encountered as "Pythonisse" -- a priestess of Apollo, known as a Pythia or Pythoness, named in honour of Pythian Apollo who killed the serpent Python. In French, the word "Pythonisse" refers generally to any female psychic who claims to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and is also the specific name given to the medium of Endor. Pierre-Gustave-Eugene Staal's "Pythonisse d’Endor" ("Pythoness of Endor") from his series of “Portraits des Femmes Remarquables de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament” ("Portraits of the Remarkable Women of the Old and New Testament") is a typical 19th century fantasy of the Witch of Endor as a sexy young woman holding a small wand on which two snakes are intertwined.
Some think that the word "Coven" in Sloane's group's name is derived from Medieval or Neo-Pagan Witchcraft or from Wicca, but the term simply flows from the word "Witch" as the descriptor of the medium of Endor in the Bible. Witches have covens, therefore Our Lady of Endor must have a Coven. The group that Sloane called a "coven" was his circle of seance sitters, but he had left mainstream Spiritualism by this point and was experimenting with dark seance performances, so the Spiritualist term "Development Circle" would have seemed out of place, while "Coven" had just the right ring of edginess.
Sloane's local coven, Our Lady of Endor, was presented as being a branch of the larger Ophite Cultus Sathanas, a Gnostic religious organization. "Ophite Cultus Sathanas" translates roughly from Latin as the Snake-Worshiping Cult of Satan, identifying Satan with the Serpent in the Bible account of Genesis and not with Lucifer the Morning Star, as seen in some other Satanic cults.
Sloane was later to refer to himself as a "Gnostic" (see below) he apparently chose the word "Ophite" for his cult in reference to a defunct historical group of Christian Gnostics, the Ophites or Ophians, described by Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) in his lost book, the "Syntagma," and known through later redactions of Hyppolytus's works.
The veneration of snakes -- both in the general anthropological sense and in the specific case of Gnostic Satanism -- is sometimes referred to as Ophiolatreia and is further considered to be a sub-set of sex-worship or sex-magic, as can be seen in the title of Hargrave Jenning's 1889 book "Ophiolatreia: An Account of the Rites and Mysteries Connected with the Origin, Rise, and Development of Serpent Worship in Various Parts of the Word, Enriched with Interesting Traditions, and a Full Description of the Celebrated Serpent Mounds and Temples, the Whole Forming an Exposition of One of the Phases of Phallic, or Sex Worship."
It is possible that Sloane knew of Staal's sexy "witch" engraving (it was reprinted numerous times) and thus he connected the Witch of Endor to the Spirit Medium of Endor to the Pythoness of Endor in his over-arching Satanic Snake cult
However, there is more to the word "Sathanas" in the cult's name than an archaic spelling of Satanas or Satan.
Two years earlier, in November, 1946, Sloane's contemporary, the pulp science fiction author Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907 - 1975), had written a novella titled "The Return of Sathanas," which was published in the science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories," edited by Ray Palmer. "The Return of Sathanas" was the second of Shaver's novellas, and was a sequel to the novella "I Remember Lemuria!," which Palmer had published in "Amazing Stories" in March, 1945.
Shaver, a Communist art student and mental patient turned welder, was a very rough and unschooled writer. Without Ray Palmer (or the unknown co-writer Bob McKenna -- possibly Palmer) to refine his texts, Shaver's strange stories -- which featured hollow planets inhabited by malevolent deros (detrimental energy robots), giant blonde humanoid aliens, death-rays, the use of women as orgasmic "wall ornaments," females with cloven feet and the tails of ponies, hideous dwarfs, intergalactic flight, subterranean kingdoms, and multiple scenes of the sexual bondage and torture of women with "stim rays," "mechs" (mechanisms), and "defective pleasure stimulators" -- would never have seen print. Why Palmer championed Shaver is unknown, but within a three-year period he published 20 sequels to Shaver's original tale, all of them set in the same consistent universe. Shaver's insistence on the literal "truth" of his fiction, Palmer's obsessive publication of Shaver's badly plotted but highly sexualized fantasies, and the sheer creepiness of "The Shaver Mystery," as the mythos came to be known, generated public controversy, and in December 1948, the magazine's management banned Shaver from their list of writers, which in turn led Palmer to quit his editorial job at "Amazing" and to go on to found and edit "Fate Magazine."
In 1948, the year that Herbert A. Sloane founded the Ophite Cultus Sathanas, Shaver's first two novellas, "I Remember Lemuria" and "The Return of Sathanas" were published in book form. (They are currently in print as books and can also be read online at various sites.)
Shaver's Sathanas is a sex trafficker -- that is, a degenerate and evil Earth-born "Angle" [sic] of "vari-form" parentage who kidnaps young women of numerous intergalactic races, uses them for pleasure, and sells them into depraved lives of "stim"-addicted prostitution and harem-hood. Sathanas is the ruler of the planet Satana, which is, logically enough, is inhabited by "Satanists." He is described as having cloven feet, goat legs, a horned head, dark skin, and an evil leer. He is definitely identified with the Christian Satan, for Shaver's novella begins with a quote from John Milton's "Paradise Lost," a sure mark of the intended linkage between the two, and Sathanas is described as an "Arch-Angle" in an apparent punning double-reference to the Angels of Jewish and Christian theology and the Germanic tribe known in Classical times as the Angles.
Considering also Herbert A. Sloane's earlier interaction with "white slavery" (see above), Sloane's use of the name "Sathanas" to describe his cult's deity, during the time that Shaver was popularizing the name, seems to point to a melange of religion, occultism, pop-culture, and sexual libertinage that bears further research.
On the other hand, if Sathanas was simply Sloane's archaicized name for Satan, and there was no intended link to Shaver's 1946 - 1948 publication of "The Return of Sathanas," then we are left to wonder, "What does Satan have to do with the medium of Endor?"
Only this: It is a mainstay of hard-shell or fundamentalist Protestant teachings of the type that Sloane grew up with that the medium of Endor was not a fraud in the skeptic's or scientist's sense of the word -- that is, she is not thought to have used a life-sized doll swathed in gauze and daubed with luminous paint to impersonate the deceased prophet Samuel, but rather it is held as a matter of doctrine that the spirit she called up was that of Satan himself, and that Satan did her the courtesy of impersonating Samuel's appearance and voice in order to trick King Saul.
If the one who impersonates a ghost is Satan, then in Sloane's case, this may well have referred to Sloane himself.
He was 43 years old.
1951 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, no wife listed, Cleveland, Ohio
Herbert A Sloane 1951 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio, City Directory, 1951
Barber Shops, Sloane Herbert A, 5307 St. Clair Av NE
This city directory listing is for Sloane's barber shop, which is the same as before. The absence of his wife Margaret from the listing does not necessarily mean that they were separated at this point, only that in this particular city directory there was no listing for his home.
He was 46 years old.
1952 Herbert A. Sloane -- WEIRD RECORD - Cleveland, Oho, possible child
He may have had a child in 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Margaret, as there is a listing in U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 2 about Herbert A Sloane for
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Birth Date: 5 Aug 1952
Address: 2865 E 112th St, Cleveland, OH, 44104-4807
But this record is not viewable, merely indexed. Without the names of the parents, this indexed record remains a mystery.
The stated home address is a modest two-story, possibly two family, wood frame house.
He was 47 years old.
1953 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, single, in Mishawaka / South Bend, Indiana
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Residence Year: 1953
Residence Place: Mishawaka; South Bend, Indiana
Occupation: Barber
Publication Title: Mishawaka, Indiana, City Directory, 1953
Sloane Herbert A barber So Shore Barber Shop r (room/rent) 220 E 7th, Mishawaka / South Bend, Indiana
See tiff Mishawaka-South-Bend-1953.tiff
No location is given for the South Shore Barber shop, but Sloane's home at 220 E 7th, Mishawaka, Indiana (a suburb of South Bend, Indiana) is on a street of mingled modest white bungalows and simple two-story Victorian farm houses.
This marks the first time, other than at his WW II Army enlistment, that i have located a record for Herbert Sloane outside the state of Ohio.
He was 48 years old.
1953 Herbert A. Sloane - writes a book on Hair Culture in South Bend, Indiana
In 1953 Sloane wrote, copyrighted, and published a book:
Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1953: July-December
By Library of Congress. Copyright Office
"The Sloane System of Hair Culture" by Herbert Arthur Sloane
(c) 26 September, 1953 A107647
See tiff Sloane-System-Of-Hair-Culture-1953.tiff
He was 48 years old.
1953 Herbert A. Sloane - trichologist, advertises The Sloane System of Hair Culture in Ebony Magazine
google snippet only, on search in Books for "Sloane" "Hair Culture"
Ebony: Volume 9
books.google.com1953 - Snippet view
Hair Culture: Licensed Trichologist assures you can have Healthy,
Radiant Hair without using expensive Tonics, Drugs, Salves, or Machines.
Free Yourself from Dandruff, Itchy Scalp, Excess Shedding, and Allied Disorders.
Procedure as Easy to Follow as Taking a Shampoo. Complete instructions with
letter of professional consultation: $10.00 Fee. HERBERT A. SLOANE ...
Ebony Magazine carried numerous advertisements for hair care systems for African Americans. Sloane's targeting of this particular population may seem unexpected, given that he was a Caucasian, but it is a fact that African Americans spend more money on hair care than other demographic sectors in the United States and also a fact that Ebony Magazine prided itself on never carrying ads for anything that fueled "superstitions," that is, ads for Spiritualist mediums, hoodoo root doctors, purveyors of numerology or cartomancy, or fortune tellers of any sort.
In an entry that follows, we will see that Sloane and his third wife Jean had entered into the direct marketing or mail order business. Therefore it seems likely that advertising the Sloane System of Hair Care in Ebony Magazine may have been a foot-in-the-door technique that allowed them to gather a mailing list to which they could send circulars advertising their Spiritualistic and divinatory services.
He was 48 years old.
1956 Mrs. Margaret Sloane - single and in Lorain, Ohio
This Margaret Sloane in Lorain, Ohio, is a hotel manager who is listed in a city directory. She is very likely the un-remarried ex-wife of Herbert A. Sloane.
Name: Mrs Margt Sloane
Location: Lorain, Ohio
Year Range: 1956
Directory Title: The Mullin-Kille and Brown Co. Elyria Ohio Resident Directory and Cosmopolitan Telephone Directory
No jpg, but the URL is good.
He was 51 years old.
1956 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with wife Jean E. Sloane in South Bend, Indiana
Indiana > South Bend > 1956 > South Bend, Indiana, City Directory, 1956 page 300
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Gender: M (Male)
Residence Year: 1956
Street Address: W Navarre
Residence Place: South Bend; Mishawaka, Indiana
Occupation: Barber
Spouse: Jean E Sloane
Publication Title: South Bend, Indiana, City Directory, 1956
Sloane Herbert A (Jean E) barber S Harold Fabian h (home) 516 W Navarre, South Bend, Indiana
The house at 516 W Navarre is a four-bedroom, one-bath, two-story wooden farmhouse built in 1873.
This listing, with wife Jean E. Sloane, marks our first look at Herbert A. Sloane's third marriage.
See South-Bend-Indiana-1956.tiff
He was 51 years old.
1957 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, with wife Jean E. Sloane in South Bend, Indiana
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Gender: M (Male)
Residence Year: 1957
Street Address: 516 W Navarre
Residence Place: South Bend; Mishawaka; Ardmore, Indiana
Occupation: Barber
Spouse: Jean E Sloane
Publication Title: South Bend, Indiana, City Directory, 1957
This city directory listing of 1957 is essentially identical to the listing of 1956, so no jpg is necessary.
He was 52 years old.
1957 Mrs. Jean E. Sloane - artist in South Bend, Indiana (separate listing for her)
Name: Mrs Jean E Sloane
Gender: F (Female)
Residence Year: 1957
Street Address: 516 W Navarre
Residence Place: South Bend; Mishawaka; Ardmore, Indiana
Occupation: Artist
Publication Title: South Bend, Indiana, City Directory, 1957
Jean E Mrs artist Direct Mail Letter Serv r (room/rental) 516 W Navarre
Note that Jean E.Sloane was not listed as living separately from Herbert Sloane in the 1957 city directory, but was both co-listed with Herbert and also listed solo by her own profession. Her occupation as an artist and as someone operating a "direct mail letter service" indicates that she (and probably Herbert as well) had a mail order company selling materials via circulars; his "Sloane System of Hair Culture" was likely one of the items that they sold.
He was 52 years old.
9 Year Gap
I have located no records of Herbert A. Sloane from 1958, when he was 53 years old, through 1967, when he was 62 years old. Subsequent records show that he continued his life-long work as a barber, a Spiritualist medium, a numerologist, a card reader, a tea leaf diviner, a fortune teller, a Satanist, and an occultist during this time. The end-date for his third marriage has not been found.
1967 Kala the Cardopractor, President of the Rita Atlanta Fan Club, Toledo, Ohio
Toledo Ohio Blade, Sunday, August 6, 1967
On this day a three-page article titled "Toledo's Crystal Ball Business: Fortune and Misfortune told by 'gifted readers'" ran in the Toledo Blade Sunday Magazine. Written by the Blade staff writer Tom Gearhart, the article recounted the author's experiences with various of the city's licensed phrenologists, seers, and diviners. Among these was Kala, "the local mystic, an elderly man who lives in a musty little shop in West Toledo." As will be seen below, Kala the "cardopractor" was none other than Herbert A. Sloane.
For a fee of $5.00, Sloane's 30-minute reading consisted of a card reading, a tea leaf reading, advice on extrasensory perception and influence of a person who is asleep, the answering of exactly two questions, and the blessing of money by speaking in tongues. A great deal of Sloane's delivery of the reading was documented.
There is no mention in this article of Sloane's being a barber, nor of his Spiritualism or Satanism -- nor of his third wife, Jean -- although, tantalizingly, one of the other readers whom Gearhart consulted during his tour of Toledo's seers was a "Mrs Jean" who lived on Cherry Street. One wonders if this was Mrs. Jean E. Sloane, now separated from Herbert.
The strangest thing revealed in this article is that Sloane -- as Kala -- was "the president of the Rita Atlanta Fan Club." As Gearhart explained, "Rita Atlanta, for those few who don't know, is a belly dancer. One dollar will buy a life-time membership in the club." Obviously Sloane was continuing to maintain his connections to the sexually licentious demi-monde. Rita Atlanta was an Austrian stripper of the mid 1950s through the early 1970s who presented a belly-dancing act, often accompanied by her pet skunks. She was also known for writhing around in a giant champagne glass. She married a U.S. Lt. Colonel named Frank Bane and toured the United States frequently. She starred in a 1967 erotic movie titled "Bed of Violence."
He was 62 years old.
1968 Richard Cavendish Reports Existence of Satanists in Toledo, Oho, Won't Name Names
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hyYxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nwEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1909,1617045&dq=ophite&hl=en
Toledo Ohio Blade, Monday, December 2, 1968
"Witches Reported Active in Toledo: Briton Surprised to learn of Black Magic Practice Here"
Fernand Auberjonois, the Toledo Blade's European correspondent, reports that the British writer Richard Cavendish, author of"The Black Arts," has told the London Observer newspaper that he is in correspondence with a Satanist in Toledo, Ohio. Cavendish says he has received a mimeographed three page "manifesto" from a Satanist in Toledo, "written in question and answer form,and 'very philosophical in tone.'" He declines to reveal the name of the Satanic sender of the manifesto but reports that his group is "Our Lady of Indore" [sic; a typo for Endor; Indore is a city in India] and the "Ophite Cultus Sathanas."
According to Cavendish, the author of the manifesto believes in "Sathan" as "a messenger of God."
1968 Herbert A. Sloane - a.k.a. Kala, Local 'Witch' Leads Group in Satanist Worship
Toledo Ohio Blade, Wednesday, December 4, 1968
Toledo Ohio Blade, Wednesday, December 5, 1968
Following up on the article of December 2, the identity of Toledo's Satanist leader was revealed to be Herbert A. Sloane. The article naming Sloane as the leader of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas ran on two successive days in the Toledo, Ohio, Blade newspaper.
On December 4 the headline read "Local 'Witch' Deadly Serious: Leads Group in Satan Worship When Moon Is Full."
On December 5 the headline read "Local 'Witch' Devilishly Serious: Leads 'Coven' in Worship of Satan When Moon Is Full."
Aside from minor typographic errors and changes, the text is the same in both articles, as is the pen-and-ink illustration. In this profile we learn a number of interesting things about Sloane and the Ophite Cultus Sathanas, 20 years after its founding.
Sloane is described as a barber and fortune teller. Here we learn that a tea leaf and card reader he uses the professional name "Kala, gifted reader." (Kala means "The Black One" in Sanskrit and Sloane probably derived it from the fearsome and wrathful deity Mahakala or "Great Black One" of Tibetan Buddhism.) This ties back to the previous article in which Kala was profiled as a card and tea leaf reader but was not named as Sloane. We now see that they are one and the same person.
In this article, Sloane self-describes as an "ophitic gnostic" who regards "the Devil, or Satan" as "a power for good."
He is in correspondence with the British author Richard Cavendish to whom he has sent a three-page "manifesto" on Satanism -- and this is reported by the Blade's European correspondent, Fernand Auberjornois.
He says that there are five people in his coven, Our Lady of Indore [sic, the reporter's error for Endor] in Toledo.
"The local coven has no connection with a Toledo group affiliated with [Anton Lavey's] the Church of Satan."
Full Moon Sabbat services feature an invocation, communion, and "a social hour over coffee and doughnuts."
He was 63 years old.
1969 Interviews with Herbert A. Sloane
In 1969 Sloane began to correspond with authors and to invite interviewers to his coven meetings.
- Eckman, 1969 (cited by Truzzi, not yet located)
- David St. Albin Greene, 1969 (cited by Truzzi, not yet located)
- Brad Steiger, "Sex and Satanism" 1969.
Pages 16 - 21 contain correspondence between Steiger and Sloane -- now known as "Dr. Sloane" -- as well as most of the text of Sloane's 1968 mimeographed "Manifesto" in question-and-answer form, which Sloane had also sent to the British author Richard Cavendish in 1968. Sloane invited Steiger to attend a sabbat featuring "a young witch who was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at one of our nation's largest air bases, who would lecture on, 'Divination -- Its History, Theory, and Practice.'" The identity of this speaker has not been uncovered.
1970 Herbert A. Sloane Interviewed by Dr. Leo Martello
In 1970, Sloane -- now known as "Dr. Sloane" -- was interviewed by Dr. Leo L. Martello in Toledo, Ohio.
Martello described him as gray haired, about six feet tall, with a white goatee, "mild mannered [and] locquacious." He noted that Sloane, far from being an isolated "covenator," had been in correspondence with his contemporary, the ritual designer, sexual libertine, and religionist Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca. Sloane also stated that he saw resemblances between "Paleolithic" or "Stone Age" Devil worship and modern religions such as "Christian Science, Unity, New Thought, [and] Science of Mind."
- Dr. Leo L. Martello, "Black Magic, Satanism and Voodoo," 1972 (Our Lord Sathanas, pp. 31-34)
He was 64 years old.
1972 Herbert A. Sloane - barber, Satanist, single, interviewed twice in Toledo, Ohio
1) Herbert A. Sloane was interviewed by Hans Holzer in Toledo, Ohio.
- Hans Holzer, "The New Pagans: An Inside Report On the Mystery Cults of Today," 1972.
Holzer -- who did not seem to know about Sloane's then 36-year history as a numerologist and Spiritualist medium, described him as Herbert Arthur Sloane, a barber from Toledo, Ohio, a tarot card reader ("cardopractor") and occultist ("covenator") who claimed to have had a vision of the Horned God in the woods as a child, and had been influenced by Margaert Murray's "The God of the Witches," which had led him to found Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas in 1948. Sloane also conducted a special ritual for Holzer and mentioned his admiration for Hans Jonas' book "The Gnostic Religion."
According to Holzer, Sloane went by the name of "Herb" and he had the life-size doll April Belle with him. Holzer described Sloane's unusual mediumship experiences with April Belle, who had became the focus of magical group workings.
Holzer: "He had read about a similar life-size doll in a book some years before and become so obsessed with the idea of owning such a doll that he got a friend in Cleveland to make him one. As time went on, he became convinced that there was telepathy between April Belle and himself. ... when the doll joined him in 1946, it seems, things fell into place. She has even 'materialized' for Herb through a local medium, sort of misty but clear enough for him to make her out. Melinda, one of his covenites, also noticed the manifestation. Herb Sloane credits April Belle with his present coven. He thinks it was the doll who brought them all together."
Holzer presents Sloane as a credulous believer who "obsessed" about owning a life-sized "doll," then somehow "became convinced" that there was "telepathy between [the doll] and himself," and was rewarded when she "even 'materialized' for Herb through a local medium, sort of misty but clear enough for him to make her out."
This is ridiculous. Sloane had been performing dark seances and raising ghosts to visible manifestation since 1933, first with his confederate Mrs. Edna Brennan, then with a series of three wives, and eventually with the unnamed "local medium." No wonder, then, that "Melinda, one of his covenites, also noticed the manifestation" of his trusty 26-year old prop April Belle: By the time Holzer wandered, clueless, into Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Satanas, Herbert Sloane had had a full 40 years of experience at taking on the role assigned to Satan by Bible-believing Christians, namely impersonating the ghosts of the dead in order to help a female medium communicate with the departed!
Sloane again recommended Hans Jonas' "The Gnostic Religion," and Martello noted that sections of this book were sometimes read at Ophite Cultus Sathanas ceremonies.
Gnosticism, with its belief that the material world is a prison for the spirit, accorded well with Sloane's Satanic form of Spiritualism, and he may also have been attracted to Jonas' detailed descriptions of Manichaean Gnosticism as a Satanian heresy against the Church, as well as to Jonas' linkage of Gnosticism with more modern philosophies such as Existentialism and Nihilism.
Dr. Leo L. Martello's interview with Herbert Sloane, conducted in 1970, was published in 1972:
- Dr. Leo L. Martello, "Black Magic, Satanism and Voodoo," 1972 (Our Lord Sathanas, pp. 31-34)
He was 67 years old.
Side Trip: Lady Circe, Toledo Ohio
During his time in Toledo, Herbert Sloane may have become acquainted with "Lady Circe" -- Alma Mary Jeffries a.k.a. Jeffrey B. Cather, 9/8/1921 - 5/31/2004. Because she was a priestess of Wicca, it has been assumed that Sloane too was a Wiccan, but he was 15 years older than her, and he died in 1975, long before she reached her zenith of popularity as a teacher. Sloane was not a member of Circe's group, but rather the leader of his own Satanic coven. Still, for those who are curious about any links between the two, here is some data on Lady Circe:
According to her obituary in the Toledo Blade newspaper, Jeffries was "a shop owner, a witch, and founder and queen of a church." Her shop was The House of Circe and her church was the Sisterhood & Brotherhood of the Old Religion a.k.a. Wicca Alliance of the Old Religion.
Alma Jeffries grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. As an adult, she was employed as a nurse and she was at one time married to Dr. William Cather (who died in Feb. 2002). Their children were sons Jeffrey Cather, William Cather, and Robert Cather; and daughter Sheryl Cather ("Lady Medea"). Her sisters were Emma F. Jeffries Sadowsky and Norma J.Jeffries Robertson. At the time of her death she had 3 grandchildren.
Alma M. Jeffries began using the name Jeffrey B. Cather (her eldest son's name) as early as 1973 in Marina Del Rey, California. Her boutique on Floyd Street, Toledo, Ohio, eventually became the House of Circe. According to Ohio State business files dated 9/23/03, the House of Circe had been founded 9 years, 11 months earlier -- in October 1993, 18 years after the death of Herbert A. Sloane -- and was registered to Jeffrey Cather. At her death, Alma Jeffreies' home was at 2442 Parkwood, Toledo, Ohio, and The House of Circe Original Boutique of the Unusual was nearby, at 2509 Parkwood. The phone number was 419-242-9371.
1930 United States Federal Census Record for Alma M Jeffries
Name: Alma M Jeffries
Gender: Female
Birth Year: abt 1922 [1921]
Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Race: White
Home in 1930: Wilkinsburg, Allegheny, Pennsylvania
Marital Status: Single
Relation to Head of House: Granddaughter
Father's Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Mother's Name: Ruth A Jeffries [Orrin Lynch Jeffries was her father, not in the house in 1930]
Mother's Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Household Members:
Samuel H Jeffries 58 Fire Chief [Alma's paternal grandfather]
Emma F Jeffries 58 None [Alma's paternal grandmother]
Ruth A Jeffries 32 Daughter-in-Law None [Alma's mother]
Alma M Jeffries 8 None
Norma J Jeffries 3 [3 2/12] None
Emma F Jeffries 1 [1 6/12] None
1974 Herbert Sloane is identified with "White Satanism" by Jorgensen and Truzzi
Two years after the Martello and Holzer interviews, Sloane was being described as a proponent of "white-Satanism" in two books to which Marcello Truzzi had contributed:
1) "Anthropology and American Life"
books.google.com Joseph G. Jorgensen, Marcello Truzzi - 1974 - 524 pages - Snippet view
"A good example of this sort of "white-Satanism" is a small group in Toledo, Ohio, who practices this under the leadership of Herbert A. Sloane."
2) "Sociology for Pleasure"
books.google.com Marcello Truzzi - 1974 - 425 pages - Snippet view
"A good example of this sort of "white-Satanism" is a small group in Toledo, Ohio, who practices this under the leadership of Herbert A. Sloane. (See Eckman, 1969; St. Albin-Greene, 1969; and in Steiger, 1969:16-21,"
By "white-Satanism," Truzzi seems to imply not that Sloane was interested in Caucasian or Anglo-Saxon Satanism but that he did not practice evil, perform curses, or slay victims. Sloane's form of Satanic belief and practice, disguised as it was by the punning name he gave his group, was held by Truzzi to be a mild or gentle form of Satanism, possibly tinged with Wicca or "White Magic"or "White Light" beliefs -- but such was not the case. A closer look at Sloane's life and interests reveals a socially unusual man whose beliefs blended Satanism, Manichean Gnosticism, Existentialism, Nihilism, and Spiritualism with a lifetime of practice as both a barber and a spirit medium.
He was 68 years old.
1975 Herbert Sloane - death at age 69 in Toledo, Ohio
Herbert Sloane Death
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=ohdeath93-98&h=835524&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=8939
Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-1944, & 1958-2007 about Herbert A Sloane
Name: Herbert A Sloane
Birth Date: 1906 [Note, this is wrong; he was born in 1905]
Gender: Male
Race: White
Residence City: Toledo
Residence County: Lucas
Residence State: Ohio
Residence Country: United States
Death Date: 16 Jun 1975
Hospital of Death: Home
City of Death: Toledo
County of Death: Lucas
Certificate: 044520
Age at Death: 69
Certifier: Physician
Autopsy: No Autopsy performed
Marital Status: Never Married (Single) [Note, this is an error; see 3 marriages above]
Census Tract: 0472
Herbert A. Sloane was a man used to keeping secrets, a man who moved from place to place and successfully avoided being enumerated in any Federal Census. At his death he was said to have been "never married," despite having had three wives. A spirit medium for more than four decades, he was never exposed, and even when he openly showed his prop figure to two interviewers, he managed to spin a tale that left them convinced that he was a strange innocent who, after many years of attempted "telepathy," had briefly been granted a "sort of misty" vision of the life-sized "doll" with which he was "obsessed."
He was a man who liked to play with words -- a "cardopractor" and "covenator," the founder of "Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas" -- but the only book he left the world was "The Sloane System of Hair Culture."
He was 69 years old.
1975 Herbert Sloane Social Security Death Index
Herbert Sloane SSDI
Social Security Death Index about Herbert Sloane
Name: Herbert Sloane
SSN: 302-09-7784
Last Residence: 43605 Toledo, Lucas, Ohio, United States of America
Born: 3 Sep 1905
Died: Jun 1975
State (Year) SSN issued: Ohio (Before 1951)
He was 69 years old.
1975 Herbert Sloane obituary
State Library of Ohio, in Columbus
http://www.library.ohio.gov/
Toledo-Lucas County Public Library
http://www.toledolibrary.org/pageselector.aspx?31001
You can email the local history department of Toledo at lhisref@toledolibrary.org
Mailing Address:
274 East 1st Avenue, Suite 100
Columbus, OH 43201-3692
General Information: (614) 644-7061 or (800) 686-1532 (Ohio only)
Circulation Services: (614) 644-6950
Research Services: (614) 644-7051
Business Hours: 8am-5pm Monday - Friday (Closed for State Holidays).
Toledo newspaper
The Toledo Blade microfilm is in the State Library catalog:
http://olc1.ohiolink.edu/search~S0?/Xtoledo+blade&SORT=D/Xtoledo+blade&SORT=D&SUBKEY=toledo+blade/1%2C119%2C119%2CB/frameset&FF=Xtoledo+blade&SORT=D&6%2C6%2C
The Toled0-Lucas County Library has an Obituary Index.
http://database.toledolibrary.org/obits/view1.asp?id1=267452
Headline: Herbert Sloane
Name: Sloane, Herbert
Date of death: Jun 16, 1975
Age: 69
Address: 178 Ravine Park Dr.
Spouse: None listed
Source:
Newspaper: The Blade
Newspaper date: 19750617
Type: Obituaries
Section:
Page:
Column:
Inches:
Photo: No
His last residence was in a small enclosed area of low-income housing.
He was 69 years old.
Members of Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas
No membership rolls exist for Sloane's group, and it was never very large, but this is what has turned up so far:
KNOWN MEMBERS of Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas:
- Herbert A. Sloane
- "Melinda, one of his covenites" (per Hans Holzer, 1972)
- "The Maid of the Coven" who died of cancer and whose son forbade Sloane to attend her funeral (per Leo Martello, 1972)
PROBABLE MEMBERS of Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas:
- Margaret J. [Unknown] Sloane (his second wife, circa 1946 - circa 1952)
- Jean E. [Unknown] Sloane (his third wife, circa 1956 - before 1972)
- "A young witch who was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at one of our nation's largest air bases" (per Brad Steiger, 1969)
- "A local medium" who manifested April Belle as a misty form for Sloane and Melinda" (per Hans Holzer, 1972)
Of course, some of these personages may be identical with one another; there is, as yet, no way to distinguish them.
1993 Herbert Sloane -- The SON?
U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 1 about Herbert Sloane
Name: Herbert Sloane
Address: 2235 E 85th St, Cleveland, OH, 44106-3462 (1993)
This is probably the Herbert A. Sloane born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952; if so, he was 41 years old.
List of locations cited in this article
- Rowsburg, Ohio
- Summit County, Ohio
- Akron, Ohio
- Mansfield, Ohio
- Bucyrus, Ohio
- Alliance, Ohio
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Zanesville, Ohio
- Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
- Holmes County, Ohio
- Huntington, West Virginia
- Cuyahoga County, Ohio
- Cleveland, Ohio
- Lorain, Ohio
- Mishawaka, Indiana
- South Bend, Indiana
- Toledo, Ohio
Copyright Notice
TEXT AND RESEARCH COPYRIGHT (c) 2012 by CATHERINE YRONWODE.
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