Fortean Times – September 2019

38 FT383

THE ‘OCCULT EXPLOSION’

Charles Manson and theFamily emerged

out of this post-war interest in ‘slipstream

knowledge’. Manson arrived in San

Francisco in March 1967, having been in

jail since 1961 onchargesrelating to prior

parole violations and trafficking across

state lines.While inside, Manson, the thief,

hustler, conman and pimp, came under the

sway of the usual prison influences, but he

alsoread Robert Heinlein’s sciencefi ction

novelStranger in a Strange Land(1961),

learntabout L Ron Hubbard, Dianetics

and Scientology from his cellmate Lanier

Ramer, and sawThe Beatles perform on the

Ed Sullivan Showin 1964.When he arrived

in SanFrancisco’sgrowing countercultural

enclave of Haight-Ashbury (seeFT356:40-

47 ), Mansonwould have benefitted from its

crashpads, streetcharity and legal clinics,

but he alsowould have beenable to bask

in the harmonious sense of good will and

positive energy as the area transformed

into thesymboliccapital of the Summer of

Love. He looked the part; he carried – along

with practicallyevery other new arrival – a

guitar on which he played hisown songs,

and with a headful ofThe Beatles, Heinlein

and Hubbard, he quickly tuned into the

Haight’swavelength.With its communes, its

cosmicmysticism, its emphasis on free sex

and its clear desire tochallenge the social

mores of the day,Stranger in a Strange Land

already had its place in the countercultural

mindset when Manson arrived. Indeed, one

of Heinlein’s Martian coinages, theverb

‘grok’, meaning to know or to understand

something to the point ofabsorption, hadby

1967 become part of whatJay Stevens has

called the “hippiesprecht”. This “charged

code” helped to mark out one’s membership

of the counterculture while also succinctly

expressing itskey ideas. Mansongrokked

the Haight and the Haightgrokked him

back.^7

At the same time, artists like the

fi lmmaker and magicianKenneth Anger

(seeFT231:51-52) were makinggrand

claimsabout the historical significance

of Haight-Ashbury and the community it

supported. Anger saw thegrowth of the post-

war counterculture as marking an epochal

change in human culture, a transition to

what he termed –following Aleister Crowley

• the‘Aeon of Horus’, a spiritual period
  definedby the “crowned and conquering
  child”. Others dubbed this paradigm shift
  the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Although
  Anton LaVey had littlerespectfor his
  neighbours in the Haight, the seemingly
  passive and sheep-like ‘hippies’, the Church
  of Satanfollowed a similar tack.For LaVey,
  Satanwas not a deity who demanded
  worship somuch as an aspect of one’s
  personality thatrequired acknowledgement.
  “Satanrepresents indulgence, instead of
  abstinence!” he preached from the pages of
  The Satanic Bible, “vitalexistence, instead of

spiritual pipe dreams!... undefiled wisdom

instead ofhypocritical self-deceit!” LaVey’s

Satanism encouraged afocus on the self, the

exercise of individual desires in theabsence

of a Christian morality that pushes the

guilt-riddenworshipper towards humility,

piety and subservience to a higher authority.

LaVey had no interest in the communality

of the stereotypical SanFranciscan

counterculture but just like the hippies

who gathered in Golden GatePark for the

Human Be-In inJanuary 1967, the Church of

Satanwas steppingaway from theexpected

conventions of American Society.^8

Writing inThe Family(1971), his early

account of the Manson case, Ed Sanders

suggested that the tendrils of an occult

conspiracy connected Manson, the Church

of Satan and othergroups like the Process

Church of theFinal Judgement (see

FT134:34-39). These zones didoverlap

within the intense bubble of 1960s San

Francisco: in 1966 Susan Atkinswas a go-go

dancer in aWitches’ Sabbat-themedrevue

show organisedby Anton LaVey; as hewas

gathering together the embryonic Family

in 1967, Manson lived in Haight Ashbury

close to the Process Church’s SanFrancisco

chapterhouse; andFamily member Bobby

Beausoleilwas a close associate ofKenneth

Anger, having starred in thefi rst version

of Anger’s occult-epicLucifer Rising. That

said, such links arerather more coincidental

than actively conspiratorial.The ‘w eb’, as it

were, of associations that surround Manson

and theFamily speak less of agrand project

with sinister intent and more to thefact that

parallel, occasionally intersecting,groups

proliferated in the mid to late 1960s.^9

America’s ‘Occult Explosion’was a typical

STEVE

LYON / CREATIVE COMMONS

ABOVE LEFT: The remains of Barker Ranch, DeathValley, where Manson and followers were arested in October 1969 (for petty crimes unrelated to the murders).

ABOVE RIGHT: Robert E Heinlein’sStranger in a Strange Landwas influential on both the Manson Family and the wider countercultural scene of the late Sixties.

“Satanrepresents

indulgence instead

of abstinence!”

LaVey preached