In mid-1966, Anger began renting a flat on the ground floor of the Westerfeld House, referred to by locals as the Russian Embassy, a dilapidated building located at 1198 Fulton Street in the Alamo Square district of San Francisco. Then in his late thirties, Anger began to plan "Lucifer Rising", initially intending for it to document the growing countercultural movement as it existed in California. As Anger stated, he wanted to film "today's new tribe of teenagers, turned-on children – teeny-boppers and adolescent hippies." Anger was influenced by Aleister Crowley's descriptions of Lucifer as the light-bearing god, and was inspired by Crowley's poem "Hymn to Lucifer". According to his biographer Bill Landis, Anger adopted this deity as a "metaphor for the ultimate bad little boy who could corrupt you without coercion". In this context, Lucifer is not the devil but a rebellious mythic hero representing the spirit of the artist.