R. Joseph Hoffmann's translation of Celsus: On the True Doctrine [a review and post-script]

So whilst sick, I finished up a book I'd gotten for a WHOLE DOLLAR, by a Roman fellow of the second century AD entitled The True Doctrine.
The fellow was a gent named Celsus, though further details are unknown. Much in conjectured, but the problem is, Celsus' identity was lost to time. As he was a writer against Christianity, his writings fell out of favour and, like many other works it was destroyed.
Our record of Celsus' work remains only in a large text by Church father Origen (who was himself a curious character) refuting it. Bear in mind that Origen wrote Contra Celsum at least 50 years after it was presumably written. A companion work promised by Celsus, on how to live one's life properly,was either never written or has otherwise been lost to history.
The work was translated by one R. Joseph Hoffmann, a humanist academic in Christian origins, Near Eastern studies, and theology, with degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Hoffmann has an interest in translating and publishing the fragments of anti-Christian polemic from the ancient world, and has also published fragments from Porphyry and Julian the Apostate.
Celsus' work is important in understand the way early intellectual Romans responded to Christianity - with mild amusement coupled with disgust and confusion. To his credit, Celsus doesn't generally traffic in some of the myths believed by Roman citizens, such as the notion that Christians were partaking in incest (due to their calling one another "brother" and "sister," even between husband and wife) or that they were cannibals.
Instead, he seems to be familiar with Christianity in its wide variety in the 2nd century CE. Christianity was not merely "belief in Christ as the son of God." It encompassed a spectrum of beliefs, from gnostic ideas to magical rites to philosophical arguments.
While Celsus retains the typical Roman citizen's disdain for Jews, women, and slaves, he seems conversant in at least some aspects of Christianity. There is evidence that he has read some of the Hebrew scriptures, and it is entirely likely that he had read some of the various Christian scriptures, though which ones can be difficult to determine at times.
Hoffmann's scholarship has come under question, because it appears that he is more interested in writing an accessible translation of Celsus rather than an accurate one. Therefore he will combine sentence fragments and ideas, presenting them as entire, complete sentences and concrete arguments rather than indicating where the sentence fragments are and the reasons behind combining them.
I can understand the argument against this sort of thing, and it does make one wonder which ideas are genuinely Celsus' and which ones are Hoffmann's, but at the same time, I've read translations of, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh that transform it from a fragmentary poem into a straight narrative.
Having owned Pritchard's book on the ANE, with the translation fragments of Gilgamesh, I must say that the Penguin translation, with the streamlined narrative, is much better for general reading.
Nevertheless, it is wise to note that the ideas and words may be "inspired" by Celsus rather than taken directly from him.
Hoffmann has published works, as I said, on other critics of Christianity, but while Celsus was published by Oxford University Press, those were published by Prometheus Books, a purported "critical thinking" publisher that is atheist but nevertheless named itself after a Greek god.
Back in my angry atheist days, I used to read a fair amount from Prometheus, but it didn't generally have a roster of acclaimed Biblical scholars. It didn't publish Borg, Crossan, Funk, Wright, etc.
It mostly concerned itself with issues regarding modern atheism, and history of atheism in the US, with some outdated works of Biblical criticism. I don't know what the academic quality of Hoffmann's later works are, but if I see them for cheap, I'll certainly give them a try. He also has a book or two out about Marcion, which also sounds like a good read.


One of the interesting aspects of Celsus' work is the reference to Jesus' father being a man named Pantera. No, he does not mean that Dimebag is Jesus' father (although Dimebag is a guitar god, he is not The God, God.)
This is one of those weird things that pops up every now and again. "Pantera" is generally taken to be a pun on Parthenos, virgin in Grk. Perhaps that's all it is (I am no expert in Greek, but "Panthera" and "Parthenos" do not sound particularly 'punny' to me), but there were soldiers by that name in the Roman Empire, and so the notion that Mary was made pregnant, not by an act of Divine fiat, but by either consensual sex or rape with a Roman soldier is technically within the realm of possibility. Certainly Celsus believed so, and he wasn't the only one.

Celsus, as I recall, claimed that the Jewish community made this claim. Roman soldiers were in the area enough, due to the constant rebellions by the Jewish community. There is a grave of a certain Tiberius Pantera in Germany, who was a member of the first archer cohort and was stationed in Judea during Jesus' birth and childhood, and "Pantera" was a common name among Roman soldiers.
The notion of a Jesus the son of Pantera crops up later in the Mishnah and in a text called the Toledoth Yeshu, a sort of "satire" on the Gospels from a Jewish perspective. These texts also relate that this Yeshua ben Pantera was viewed by the Jewish community as a sorcerer who obtained his knowledge of the magical arts from sojourns in Egypt - again, Celsus says much the same thing.
Very few scholars accept this notion, be they Christian or not. Celsus is the earliest evidence of this tradition, and whenever the patristic writers encounter it, they make claims that "Panther" was a nick-name of Joseph, or Mary's grandfather, or some other figure in Jesus' lineage.
I certainly don't advocate such a view, however, it illustrates just how odd the study of Christian origins can get, and just how much information has been lost over time.

Process Church writings

All of these writings were originally written for my Facebook account, and thus certain statements may not make sense outside of that context.  I apologise in advance.  I have other writings I am slowly but surely migrating over here, but I wanted to move all of the Process material here first.

And the Phoenix is Reborn [The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, fin]

The Process Church is long dead, now, but it still lives online and in print media.

Most cults of that era are long gone by now, but the Process lives on.  Almost 30 years after Mary Ann and Robert parted ways, and Mary Ann and her followers 'exorcised' Christ and Satan in each Process Chapter house (literally, with a bell, book, and candle), Robert's original vision is what remains.

Mary's does, too, of course, in a sense - the Best Friends Society certainly is a testament to her unique anti-animal cruelty stance within the cult.  Long gone is the worship of Jehovah, or the preeminence of Jewish members (both aspects of the Foundation Faith), and certainly long gone are Satan, Lucifer, and Christ.

In a sense, it never really left.  After Sanders' book, the Process achieved a certain noteriety that, while not at all condusive to garnering converts, certainly made them well-known, and despite PR attempts to refashion their image, the Process never recovered.

However, they lingered in the popular imagination, due to the lurid prose of Sanders.

In 1978, sociologist William Sims Bainbridge published a book known as "Satan's Power."  Unfortunately, it was an academic study, and thus unlikely to be read by a mainstream audience, but in it, Bainbridge recorded his experiences with "The Power" - his code-name for the Process Church.

It's been quite some time since I've read it, and it's very pricey these days ($120 used, on Amazon) and I can't find any review I wrote of it anywhere online.  Weird.

All of that being said, the book showed the cult to be a weird, but generally non-dangerous group of religious oddballs.  They didn't literally 'worship' Satan (or the other gods), they were Scientology based, etc.  He described some of their rituals, and was there when the Omega split, communicated with Robert as he tried and failed to re-start the Process, was involved when the Process was rechristened the Foundaition Faith of the Millennium, etc.

Unfortunately, as I said, the work was academic in scope and not really for the lay reader, so it made no impact on the public at large, in which hushed voices claimed that the Process was involved in all sorts of scary, nefarious deeds.

One of the biggies started with the shooting of two young women in a vehicle, at point-blank range, on July 29th, 1976.  Terror, due to the media-dubbed ".44 Caliber Killer," gripped New York until August 10th of 1977, when David Berkowitz, the so-called "Son of Sam" was arrested by the NYPD and the shootings ended.

While Berkowitz was enjoying his reign of terror, journalist Maury Terry began investigating the case, writing articles that suggested multiple gunmen in New York papers, based on eyewitness accounts and wildly differing sketch artist renderings of those accounts.

Even after Berkowitz was arrested, Terry remained unconvinced that he was the sole culprit, and continued to contend for a multiple-killers angle.  Correspondence and interviews with Berkowitz only enhanced his belief that something weird was going on.  Reports of bloodless, skinned german shepherds, like those in Santa Cruz almost a decade earlier, were surfacing from Untermyer Park in Yonkers, not far from the home of Berkowitz.

In 1987, Terry released THE ULTIMATE EVIL, a key book in the late 80s "Satanic panic" craze - in it, he outlined a purported Satanic network responsible for a large number of deaths, as well as drug trafficking, prostitution, child pornography, and all other manner of vice.  It should be noted that, like the notorious Four P movement, Terry doesn't pin the blame on Robert and Mary Ann - splinter groups from the Process were involved.

I'll probably discuss the Son of Sam case at some point on here (see my obsessions?) but needless to say, this book fed into interest surrounding the cult.

However, oddly, I will note that despite the prominence of the Process Church in conspiracy lore, I don't recall any Christians ever picking up on the meme.  In the 70s and 80s, the evangelical and fundamentalist circuit was filled with testimonies of "former witches," like Mike Warnke and Michelle of "Michelle Remembers" fame.  Most of these have since been proven to be frauds (Warnke's timeline doesn't work at all, Michelle was clearly being used by her therapist) - not even John Todd seemed familiar with the Process, despite the fact that he claimed to be a high Satanist, Mason, Illuminati agent, and claimed to possess evidence that JFK survived the assassination and was the Beast foretold in Revelation.

Wherever there's the hint of evil or general "naughtiness," people will flock, and among those to first adhere to the defunct Process as more than just a Satanic-panic meme was Brit Genesis P-Orridge, of Psychic TV, Temple of thee Psychic Youth, Throbbing Gristle, and other noise/electronica bands.

P-Orridge is a weird, weird, weird person - occultist, transgendered, fan of the esoteric, excellent and prolific musician and author - but eir (here I use the spivak pronouns because I am not sure what gender is proper for Genesis) interest in the Process brought it to the attention of the 80s underground.

As a Brit alive during the 60s, Genesis no doubt was familiar with the Process in eir own country, and I would imagine that E was instantly attracted to their flamboyance, garish artwork, and bizarre, misanthropic, theology.  When Genesis made the Process known to the industrial underground, other artists, like Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy, also picked up on it - Skinny Puppy even made an LP called Process.

The Process meme worked its way through the underground to men like Adam Parfrey, of Amok media, Feral House media, etc. where some of DeGrimston's writings were published in Apocalypse Culture - since The Process was very much convinced of an Apocalypse, they meshed well with the theme of Apocolypse Culture, and their Scientology/Christian gnosticism was refreshing in an age of begging televangelists who were constantly being caught with their pants down and droves of cash in their pockets and Satanism was just Ayn Rand with robes.

I remember being interested in the Process when I first got the Internet, all of those years ago - and one of the earliest sites I found contained the old writings of DeGrimston from the magazine, many of which had probably been transcribed by P-Orridge and uploaded to FTP sites and circulated amongst industrial music newsgroups before http became prominent.

I was never much part of the industrial subculture - give me hippie folk music, sorry - but it was good to read the writings of this allegedly Satanic group that I'd learned about in books like SATAN WANTS YOU from Arthur Lyons and, of course, THE ULTIMATE EVIL, which I'd read in high school, along with Sanders.

Now the Process has become something of an underground touchstone, I suppose - especially with the release of LOVE, SEX, FEAR, DEATH, the Feral House reprints of the old Process magazines, and the Sabbath Assembly albums (both of which are excellent, btw...)

The final verdict is that they were hardly "the ultimate evil."  They were sincere spiritual seekers in an age awash in them - and with the changes in society, the Vietnam war, the racial violence, etc. the Process were hardly the only people calling for the Apocalypse.  People familiar with a very sanitised version of the 60s - all peace, and love, and smoking grass - are unaware of the fact that the decade that more or less began with the assassination of a sitting president and ended with the brutal murder of a beautiful young acctress was filled with terror, horror, dark visions, fear, and a belief in the imminent end of all things.  This was a belief that stretched from the burgeoning Jesus freaks to the mainstream conservatives to the radical leftists to, yes, even the crazy cultists.  Your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions, as the book of Joel says.

Rather a shame, though, that the imminent end of humanity didn't come, though, isn't it?

Instead, the ultimate evil still occupies its positions of power in governments and in banks, and no end is in sight.  Let's hope for more crazies that can, for a moment at least, give us hope that our desire for liberation from the evil of wicked men is possible before they finally crush us all under their boots.

Incidentally, in the conspiracy lit, even written about by Adam Gorightly, there's claims that Mary Ann founded an occult shop in Toledo, Ohio as "Lady Circe," part of the "Circe (or Kirke) order of Dog Blood," a cult centering around murdering dogs in ritual.

Lady Circe is dead, but she was a lady known as Jeffrey B. Cather (that's a lady's name, weirdly enough) and not Mary Ann at all.

Christ, You Bring the End [The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, part 9]

From the so-called Four P/Pi Movement came a legion of conspiracy theories, connecting the "Process Church" with all manner of Satanic groups, and the range of this supposed group would make any cultist or evangelist envious - from Wyoming and North Dakota, to California, to New York City, to possibly even Florida, the "Four P Movement" spread out across the country, enlisting Satanic worshipers to carry out murders, drug smuggling, white slavery, prostitution, and even child pornography.  The claims are many, but the evidence is little.

While the "Four P" was allegedly spreading across the country, the Process Church itself was breaking down, slowly but surely.  It all began with the attention on the cult from the alleged Manson connection.  The cult brought charges against Sanders, but didn't force monetary compensation - they simply wanted the offending passages excised from the book.

According to Wylie, this was a strategy that Mary Ann proposed, in order to make people feel that the cult wasn't merely out for money, but were 'nice guys' that were just trying to protect their name.  Unfortunately, Wylie surmises, it made them look like pushovers.  As I've written earlier, the passages were excised from the US editions, but remained in the British editions, making the cult look worse in its home country.

All of this negative attention also brought the group under closer scrutiny by law enforcement officers and those who worked against cults and brainwashing, from civic leaders to members of orthodox religious clergy.

After Manson, too, the cultural outlook on devil worship went from chic and trendy to downright scary.  Roman Polanski had played with that stuff in Rosemary's Baby, and look where it got him, people reasoned.  People left the occult, instead seeking out self-help movements, human potential groups, and the fluffier elements of the New Age movement.  A blockbuster movie in 1973 said it all about the public's fascination with Satan:  The Exorcist.

In response, the Process dropped the German shepherds and the scary black cloaks, opting instead for gray leisure suits and an air of respectability.

It didn't work.

In 1974, things finally came to a head.  Robert's visions of the unity of Jehovah, Satan, and Lucifer in Christ were declared heretical.  According to the church leaders, all of their problems began with Robert's visions.  He was removed from church leadership, and his unification doctrine was anathema.

On a more carnal level, Robert, who had had dalliances with lovely young cultists in the past, was becoming more blatant about it, trying to convince Mary Ann to share him with a particular lady who had caught his fancy.  Mary Anne refused, and Robert was removed from the church - it was named The Foundation Church by Mary Ann, who now held complete control.

The Omega was splintered, the gods were removed, and Robert's name and thoughts were stricken from official church records.

Robert tried at first to re-found the Process, but it never took off.  According to one story, one day in 1975, whilst crossing the Boston Commons, Robert, with his current fling and a band of followers, turned and said, "I'm just going to leave you now, ok?"

Taking the hand of his fling, she and Robert walked off to obscurity.  Robert changed his surname to Moore and, at last reports, works for AT&T in upstate New York, and gives lectures at NYU.  He has since put the Process behind him, and those who have phoned the Robert Moore in question have described a polite man with a British accent, who makes it abundantly clear that he does not want to be bothered with the Process Church or its fans.

Mary Anne continued on with the Jehovan theology she embraced, renaming the Foundation Church to the Foundation Faith of the Millinneum, then the Foundaition Faith of God.  She also remarried, to a Jonathan (Gabriel) DePeyer, an early supporter and member of the Process itself.

While Mary Anne was lucky in love, she was less fortunate when ti came to religion, and finally the Jehovan cult reinvented itself again, this time as the Best Friends Animal Society, in 1984.  Best Friends is an animal sanctuary in Utah, that originated in Arizona.  It is is billed as the largest no-kill animal shelter in the United States.

Mary Ann died in 2005, after two years of living in a coma, and it appears that Jonathan DePeyer has since remarried to a woman named Jana.

Nowadays, the Best Friends Animal Society makes millions in donations, and does indeed appear to operate the US's largest no-kill shelter, and for that, they should be commended.  The Society has come under attack due to its former life as the Process Church, but in reality, it seems that there's a lot of smoke with very little fire.

I have no doubt that Satanists existed, that animals were skinned and bled, or that there were human sacrifices in the wastes of the mountains.  It was a genuinely weird time, and there are always going to be weird people who do horrible things.  I just don't think that the Process Church was behind it.

They ought to have been more responsible, certainly.  All of the talk about letting the fiend within you out, the glorification of Satan and Jehovah, the talk of war and slaughter and the Apocalypse - I have little doubt that it influenced some easily influenced minds, and may have given people ideas or an impetus that they didn't initially have, to pursue the dark side of life.

However, if we blame Robert and Mary Ann for the actions of unstable people, we will have to also blame, say, Francis Ford Coppola if someone sees the Godfather and decides that killing others is the way to accomplish their goals.  If someone delusional is influenced by Alexander the Great to try to conquer their neighbour's home, perhaps we ought to ban Plutarch.  If I decided to burn down a mosque and give my inspiration as King Josiah, perhaps we can also ban the Bible.

You can see how silly such a blame-game is.  It accomplishes nothing except renders any art whatsoever useless - the Teletubbies make people gay, the Bible and Godfather make people violent, etc etc.  Perhaps we should all be locked up, individually, in a white room for our entire lives to ensure no one gets any outside influences - then we will have a perfect society.

The two main players of the Process, the Omega, are not talking - they either cannot or will not.  Other members are, and the picture painted is hardly menacing - it mostly seems simply weird and a bit silly.  In the end, while the cult itself may have been strange, the Society is not, and it should not be judged due to misdeeds of non-members ("Four P"), or writings from over 45 years ago ("Humanity is the Devil," etc.).

Next up, I will write a bit about the Process "revival."  Then, I think, this comes to a close, but of course, I will continue writing on other subjects.

So be it.

"I have a problem..." [The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, part 9]

Though it seems clear that Manson wasn't involved with the Process, it was Manson who, ironically, gave the church the sort of longevity in the public imagination that it may not have ever achieved on its own.

Bugliosi writes that Manson spoke about the Process when he was first arrested for his murders, but that Process members visited him and he shut up about the Process quickly thereafter.

He also writes that Manson was asked if he knew Robert DeGrimston, and replied that he did not.  When asked if he knew Robert Moor, he said, "You're looking at him.  He and I are one in the same."

Insofar as the first claim by Bugliosi goes, it proves little beyond Bugliosi's own subjective estimation of Manson's discussion of the subject, while the second claim seems very Manson-esque in his "I am he and you are he and you are me and we are all together" philosophy.  It doesn't prove anything.

It also seems unlikely that Manson, a homeless drifter and pimp, was aware of DeGrimston's real name.  Bugliosi shrugs it off, writing that he assumed it merely meant that Manson felt that he and Moor shared similar worldviews, though he (Bugliosi) was visited by the very members ("Father John" and "Brother Matthew") of the Process that later visited Manson and purportedly made him silent on the subject of the Process.

These members came from Cambridge, Massachusetts, incidentally.  I really should get up there some time...

In the end, the only definitive link between Manson and the Process is the fact that Manson did semi-write an article on death in the "Death" issue of the Process magazine.  This was before he was convicted, and all it really illustrates is that he was a hot topic at the time and that his name meant that more people would read the magazine.

Manson wrote half of the article, and his views were contrasted with Malcolm Muggeridge's views.  That is all.  Tacky?  In poor taste?  Perhaps, but this was before Manson had been convicted and I imagine a number of counterculture people, in the early days, thought that it was likely that Manson was a scapegoat because he was "weird."

And the "straight" world has mass murderers write books routinely, and they sell - if you disbelieve me, look for books by Henry Kissinger or Oliver North at your local book store, or check for those books written by President Obama.

It's hardly a novel statement, but some murderers are held in the highest regard, while others are condemned.

More interesting, however, are claims of Process-related crimes that do not originate from the group itself, but from splinter groups.  One such crime involves a two men picked up on July 13th, 1970, by the CHP - Stanley Dean Baker and his friend Harry A. Stroup.

Baker

Stroup

Both men hailed from Wyoming, and had been hitch-hiking together, but decided to split up in order to get a ride.  Baker got a ride with a man named James Schlosser, and had camped in Yellowstone National Park with Schlosser.

During the night, Baker murdered Schlosser by first shooting him in the head twice, then stabbing him over twenty times, then, cut off his fingers, and cut out his heart, which Baker then proceeded to eat.  Baker then beheaded Schlosser's corpse, and cut the legs off below the knees, then dumped the headless torso, the severed head and limbs, and the gun, into the Yellowstone river.

Baker then took the fingers for something to munch on and stole Schlosser's Opel Kadett car.  After picking up Stroup, the two men went to California, whereupon the Opel Kadett was involved in a minor hit-and-run 30 miles from Big Sur.  CHPs were alerted, since the corpse of Schlosser had since been found and his vehicle had been stolen.

Randy Newton, a CHP officer, caught up with the two men.  Oddly, Baker was happy to talk, emphasising that Stroup was not involved in the murder, then offering this classic line:  "I have a problem.  I'm a cannibal."

Both Baker and Stroup still had some of the 'finger foods' on them, and Baker showed them to the cop, noting, "these aren't chicken bones."  Reportedly, in addition to the fingers, Baker had a copy of LaVey's Satanic Bible on him, and a handwritten recipe for LSD.

Baker talked about a "blood drinking cult" that he belonged to in Wyoming called the "Four P Movement" (or Pi), which was headquartered in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and led by a man designated the "Grand Chingon."

Curiously, Manson was called "Grand Chingon" by some of his own followers in the presence of Ed Sanders.  This term is considered synonymous with a term of 'Head Devil,' even though in Spanish, a Chingon simply means someone who is "good, great, bad-ass," etc.  To be a "Grand Chingon" would therefore be the Grand Bad-ass.  Hardly diabolic, unless you consider being skilled or being 'awesome' or whatever to be Satanic.

The 'Grand Chingon' of the Santa Cruz cult was said to be a wealthy LA businessman, and Sanders also records talk of this cult.  Cops at the time do, apparently, report finding the skinned, bloodless corpses of dogs, specifically Dobermans and German Shepherds.  Reportedly, eating the heart of the sacrificed animals was part of the ritual.

How is the Four P movement tied to the Process?  Predominately in the fact that the Process logo looks like Four Ps - and also resembles a swastika.  According to Sanders, the Four P people were also very racist and admired Hitler - much like Manson and like Mary Ann MacLean.

However, the murder of dogs seems completely unlike anything Mary Ann would promote.  While her love of Hitler hindered her love for her fellow man, it enhanced her love for animals.



If the Four P Movement (it is, as I said, sometimes called the "Four Pi Movement," but I cannot imagine what in the world the mathematical concept of Pi has to do with devil-worship or religion in general, so I tend to assume that it is merely a typo) is not merely a spectre - if it was a real group - then it seems likely that it was a branch of renegade Processeans who were striking back against Mary Ann by slaughtering animals that she adored.

Whatever it was, the Four P movement was, depending on how you look at it, either a minor blip of weirdos who were guilty of animal and human murder or the origins of a world-wide Satanic group that resulted in, among other things, the Son of Sam.  I may write about these groups at a later date, as the topic is rather interesting in its own right, but not here.  Suffice to say that it appears such a group did exist, and may have been involved, at least peripherally, with unsolved crimes, but very little concrete can be said on the subject since there have been no convictions.

As for Baker, he also confessed to the murder of a 40 year old lighting designer named Robert Salem, who was stabbed 27 times and again nearly decapitated.  His left ear was cut off, presumably for later munching.

Baker and Stroup were extradited to Montana for the murder of Schlosser (Montana was Schlosser's home state) and were both convicted, Stroup of manslaughter and Baker of murder.

Attempts were made to extradite Baker to California for the murder of Salem (apparently Baker's fingerprints, in blood, were found at the scene, proving that his confession had some weight to it) but for some reason, he was never extradited.  From what I've read, the judge in California selected refused to hear the case.  It seems that the state of Montana did not want to extradite Baker until after Stroup's trial had finished.  The judge declared that this would violate Baker's right to a speedy trial.

I don't understand it either.

Salem's murder is still officially unsolved.

Before the conviction, a blog comment shows the sort of man that Baker was at the time:

My brother worked in the Montana state mental institution in Warm Springs in 1970. What a summer job! He was there when they brought in Stanley Baker. Prior to his arrival, some of the moreignorant orderlies had riled the most paranoid of the residents, telling them if they didn't behave that Stanley the Cannibal would be there soon and they would arrange to have him be their room mate.
Stanley did indeed arrive, hip and wrists with drag chains on his annkles accompanied by several Hiway Patrol cars, local and county police. My brother said there were at leas half a dozen vehicles. Stanley had to be evaluated before trial.
Amazingly enough, kind of like in the Movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest when Jack Nicholson as RP McMurphy gives out a hoot when he first walks in...so too did Stanley, only he broke free long enough to scream "I'm goin to eat you all!"
The whole place erupted in a panic. My brother was scared to death himself after that.

After conviction, Baker recruited for his Satanic cult while in prison, had home-made weapons confiscated from him several times and howled at the moon on full moons.  Incredibly, Baker was paroled in 1986, and was allowed to change his name.  He has apparently since died.

Stroup was allowed out in 1979, but kept his name, and according to a document I found dating from August 31, 2012, was denied an appeal over his prosecution on federal drug charges.

Sympathy for the Devil [The Process, Church of the Final Judgment part 8]

After the Manson slaughter and arrests, a hush came across the counterculture community.  Manson and his followers were archetypal hippies, at least in the way they looked - scruffy, beareded men and lovely young women who eschewed makeup for natural beauty, who lived in a communal atmosphere.  The sordid sex and drug tales coming out of the Spahn ranch tittitated straights and devastated freaks.

Certainly, there were some who embraced Manson and his girls as heroes.  The Weather Underground, for their part, celebrated him.  Bernadine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers, friend of our Drone-Master in Chief noted how awesome it was that the Family, ".. killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the pig Tate's stomach! Wild!"

Most hippies, however, who simply wanted to smoke pot, grow organic crops, and spend their lives peacefully, were less accepting of Charles' actions.

Among them was Sanders, who went to California to figure out just what the hell had gone wrong with the countercultural movement.  His book, The Family, went on to infamy, but at the time, Sanders just wanted to find out what the hell was going on, and discovered a that certain elements of the LA scene had gotten very, very dark, and that Manson was connected to them in some way.

I used to actually own a copy of an original hardcover of The Family - whether I still own it anymore remains to be seen.  It might well be in the storage unit, it might well be gone forever.  It's hard to say.  But it is filled with all manner of dark stories, two of which tie Manson to the Solar Lodge and to the Process Church.

The Process chapter has been cut from all American releases aside from the original hardcover, due to a successful lawsuit by the Church (and by the Solar Lodge OTO, for their chapter), though the case rests less on its legal merits and more on the fact that Sanders' American publishers decided to capitulate to the cults.  In the UK, the Process, at least, if not the Solar Lodge as well, lost their case and had to pay Sanders' legal fees.

While Sanders' language is vivid, it is far from academic or neutral - he really does consider the Process Church to be terrible, and is not ashamed to admit it.  Describing them as, "black-caped, black-garbed, death-worshiping" and "hooded snuffoids," though even Sanders' evidence doesn't provide a direct link, but rather a "this stuff was in the air, these guys were dangerous, and their message may have inspired Manson."

And, it is hard to not be sympathetic to Sanders' stance.  Possessing, as I do, a copy of the Feral House Holy Writ publication, there are in fact misanthropic screeds, writings about sex that strongly suggest corpse desecration (at least in fantasy), and Jehovah as a god, in Process theology, was very much devoted to war and death for purification, while Satan as a god was devoted to war and death for "kicks."  There's no evidence that Manson was involved with the Process Church, however.  None whatsoever.  Is it possible that Manson read their literature?  Quite possible, as the covers were garish, morbid, and eye-catching - but there's no evidence beyond the fact that the two operated in a similar mileau and that both believed in the unification of God and Satan - although Manson went beyond Process theology, which taught a unification of opposites, but saying that the two were unified in himself, not in an abstract metaphysical sense, and that he was Christ on top of it.

Again, it is possible that Manson was influenced by the group, but given how tightly Robert and Mary Anne held the reins, it's highly unlikely that Manson would ever have been a member.

There are a number of curious things about Manson I will recount when I write about him, but for right now, it seems very unlikely that he was involved with the Process in any realistic way, though whether he was involved with peripheral groups is less difficult to ascertain, and those peripheral groups will be discussed next - or at least, what little is known about them

Turn Off Your Mind [The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, part 7)

The Process and the Solar Lodge OTO were not really related.  They had rather draconian female leadership, and were based upon vaguely occult principles (the Solar Lodge OTO, however, based on Crowley's magick, was much more set-in-stone than the 'making it up as we go along' Process).  They both had bases in southern California, and no doubt, in those heady days of anything-goes exploration, they both probably got some of the same seekers - of thrills and spiritual enlightenment alike.

Occultism - in both its vulgar definition and its literal definition - was all the rage.  People were seeking out the hidden in the late 60s.  Conventional, mainline Protestantism had failed, and people, especially the young, were seeking other avenues.

Based on their desire to experience and live God, rather than just talk about Him - or, more likely, gossip about fellow church-goers - at a Sunday social, this took a number of forms.  From using psychedelic drugs like LSD as a guide to the divine, to yogic postures and rythmic breathing, to Catholic rituals, to Native American ceremonies, to a revival of the olds gods, to Pentecostal hands-on healing and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to ceremonial magic, to witchcraft, and to devil worship, all paths to an experience of the numinous were explored, torn down, re-shaped, and combined with other paths.

Many gurus stepped into the fray, among them DeGrimston, Brayton, Mel Lyman, L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, James Baker ("Father Yod"), Lonnie Frisbee, Richard Thorne ("Om"), and many others appeared on the scene to guide the young to enlightenment - or more likely, destruction - and these were just those with religious claims, and even then, the line between secular and religious was thin.

Frisbee and Baker were able to largely keep their cults of personality intact, and are forgotten because of it.  Both men had tragic ends - Baker died while skydiving, while Frisbee died of AIDS and was written out of the history of Calvary Chapel as a result.

On the outskirts of these groups were even more groups, even more shadowy cults.  No matter where you step, there's something strange going on.

One of the most notorious, in retrospect, was an older ex-con named Charles Manson.  Manson was short of stature, but he had a charisma and an appeal that drew people in.

His history was a series of incarcarations and criminal activities; auto theft, pimping, burglary, forgery.  I will most likely cover Manson in an entirely different series - however, Manson is ultimately integral to the Process story.

He was never an established member, though it is very likely that he came across Process missionaries and literature after his release from prison in 1967.  It is reported that he lived on Cole Street, which was where the Process also had a base, but he lived there before the Process moved in.

However, the horrific Tate-LaBianca murders, their brutal nature and seeming randomness, led to a lot of people investigating the milieu around Manson to find explanations.  One of those people was Ed Sanders.

Sanders, a Lower East Side radical, formed the band The Fugs in 1963 with Tuli Kupferberg.  Both men were politically radical, eschewed conventional "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" liberalism for direct, non-violent action, flagrant obscenity, and held an anarchist worldview.

Their band, the Fugs, was named after the euphemism for the word "fuck" in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead.  It was very underground and very satirical and sexual, with songs titled "Kill For Peace," "Group Grope," "Boobs a Lot," etc.

Sanders is a very colourful figure, but for the purposes of this piece, it is enough to note that he very much supported the hippie dream.  He was into sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as means for fun and social change, and his poetry and music was gleefully counterculture.

When the Tate-LaBiancia murders happened, Sanders asked, "How?"  How was it that the "turned on" went so very wrong?

It shattered his beliefs and he saw it as a betrayl of the hippie movement.  So he went to Southern California to investigate.