freedom from church and state – but ran contrary to some of the counterculture's other main themes, such as peace and love, compassion, and the use of mind-altering drugs. He expressed condemnation of the hippies; in one ritual he hung an image of Timothy Leary upside down while stamping on a tablet of LSD. Later development: 1972–present LaVey ceased conducting group rituals and workshops in his home in 1972. In 1973, church leaders in Michigan, Ohio, and Florida split to form their own Church of Satanic Brotherhood, however this disbanded in 1974 when one of its founders publicly converted to Christianity. Subsequently, Church members based in Kentucky and Indiana left to found the Ordo Templi Satanis. In 1975, LaVey disbanded all grottos, leaving the organisation as a membership-based group that existed largely on paper. He claimed that this had been necessary because the grottos had come to be dominated by social misfits who had not benefitted the church as a whole. In a private letter, he expressed frustration that despite growing church membership, "brain surgeons and Congressmen are still in short supply". He also announced that thenceforth all higher degrees in the church would be awarded in exchange for contributions of cash, real estate, or valuable art. Dissatisfied with these actions, in 1975, the high-ranking Church member Michael Aquino left to found his own Satanic organisation, the Temple of Set, which differed from LaVey's Church by adopting a belief that Satan literally existed. According to Lap, from this point on Satanism became a "splintered and disorganized movement". Between the abolition of the grotto system in 1975 and the establishment of the internet in the mid-1990s, The Satanic Bible remained the primary means of propagating Satanism. During this period, a decentralized, anarchistic movement of Satanists developed that was shaped by many of the central themes that had pervaded LaVey's thought and which was expressed in The Satanic Bible. Lewis argued that in this community, The Satanic Bible served as a "quasi-scripture" because these independent Satanists were able to adopt certain ideas from the book while merging them with ideas and practices drawn from elsewhere. During the late 1980s, LaVey returned to the limelight, giving media interviews, attracting further celebrities, and reinstating the grotto system. In 1984 he separated from his wife, Diane Hegarty, and began a relationship with Blanche Barton, who was his personal assistant. In 1988 Hegarty brought a court