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.
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