Leon, after defending Luther and St. John, agreed that “the hierarchy of the Catholic Church are against us. Listening to their misrepresentation of the truth, sentimental trash. I don’t care for no part of it, whether it’s from a priest, a minister, or whomever it may come from. Worshipping the body of Jesus Christ! That’s idolatry! It’s a dirty shame they do not recognize reincarnation. Devils go to church, too, by which I mean that it isn’t the building that sanctifies the person; it’s the condition of the heart and the grace of God. There were some good points about the Reformation, deploring some of the works of the Popes, their misdemeanors at the time. History says that he was selling indulgences and Martin Luther had every right to speak up against … and as far as that goes, the present-day Pope is also a sentimentalist. I don’t care for his ideology.”
And what is the truth? “God is truth,” said Leon. “He cannot lie.”
“Why can’t He lie for a purpose?” asked Joseph.
“Because He is the truth. You can’t use a bad means to a good end.”
“It’s a good means to a good end,” Joseph persisted.
“When you speak a lie,” Leon said, “it’s in the wrong direction.”
“You’re awfully limited!” Joseph snorted. “You don’t seem to be sure there is a God. You don’t believe in God being on earth, but only in the clouds.”
“God is everywhere. Ponder that over, sir.”
“You don’t believe that God could be in the hospital, as I am now?”
“I believe that God is in this chair. He is in my dung and urine and farts and burps and everything,” Leon said.
“That’s crazy. You don’t believe that God can be a patient in this hospital.”
“God is truth. He’s not sick, Mr. Cassel. Please understand that!”
“I’m the real God,” Joseph said positively, “and I know I can be in many forms.”
“You’re a false individual,” replied Leon. “I’ve got news for you. You’re on my uncle’s dung list.”
Joseph and Leon likewise were in sharp disagreement over the nature of hell and the identity of the Devil.
“There is only one hell,” said Joseph. “It is where it is. I had a fight with the Devil in C building. What I didn’t like about the Devil was that he would say: ‘You’re not seeing me. You’re just imagining.’ Then I would say: ‘Now be a good sport. We’ve always been good friends and worked together. Somebody has to take care of those condemned to hell. Why don’t you go back to your business and take care of that?”’ It had taken him years, Joseph said, to convince the Devil to go back to hell, and he had worked day and night to get conditions set up right in hell. “The fallen angels are in charge now, paid by the government there to take care of the fires and run things.”
“God sets conditions in hell!” Leon countered vehemently. “Have you ever met Satan who was walking about in human form? Do you know who he is? I want to see how well you’re equipped on your deviltry.”
“Satan?”
“He’s a colored fellow,” Leon said; “works in the hospital in Detroit. If you’re so well informed, what’s his name?”
“He’s controlled,” Joseph yelled, “he’s restricted to hell, not walking around. He’s in hell.”
“He’s in a hospital in Detroit.”
On “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” “I’m the law,” said Clyde, “and I can do it. It isn’t sin, either.”
“Oh, it’s very nice,” Joseph said, “a very nice Commandment to observe. You can go right ahead and kill. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ and the punishment is death. You should kill every time. I’m not one for modification. In Michigan they send them to prison for life. Isn’t that worse than being killed? It costs too much money for the state to give food to these people.”
“We should follow the habeas corpus in front of our face,” said Leon. “If it specifies that the person is worthy of death, he should die. It is all right to kill all the people who conspired with anyone who killed or stole. The Israelites bashed in the heads of babies of their enemies and bathed in their blood. They, the Israelites, had strong hearts.”
On art. Modern art, Leon said, represents the suppressed desires that would get a person in trouble if he acted upon them. “An unconscious desire may slip into paintings because the artist needs release; a reflected, indirect suppression expression.”
On hallucinations and delusions. “It’s like a mirror of life, but it’s different than the mirror of life,” said Joseph. “Hallucinations are not ideas that a person should have in life. It should be discouraged.”
“Why sure, I work on the air,” Clyde said. “I hear them all over. It’s the spirit coming close. I talk to people spiritually. I know them without their telling their name. They see me better than I see them.”
“Hallucinations,” said Leon, “represent a subconscious desire to have someone to talk to, something to drink or eat, which puts whatever the person wants in front of him as a picture. With a hundred per cent concentration, I have heard of the picture actually becoming real. I admit seeing things through duping. I do acknowledge it when it happens—I don’t care for it.”
On changing into other shapes. “I prefer to be a swallow,” Joseph said, “a bird that comes north in the summer and goes south in the winter. A little swallow so they won’t see you or bother you.”
“At the State Fair in Detroit,” said Leon, “I came to the cage where they had the largest type of pouter dove, a white dove. I saw myself in the dove. Me and my wife changed into doves. We vacationed in Acapulco.”
Joseph said: “A man’s a man, a woman’s a woman, a child’s a child. I don’t believe in changing things around.”
“It’s my sincere belief,” Leon said, “that Clyde’s foster father is a sandpiper.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Clyde. “Castles are built on sand. We build on a solid foundation.”
“I was an elephant once in Cambodia,” said Joseph, “and I was a lion once, in the Congo, among the old gunshots there. There was a lion there. He was formerly a man and he changed himself into a lion, and he always wanted to take my place as God. So I kind of had to talk to him for a while, and I finally took enough power out of him and I finally changed myself into a lion so as to be near him and beat him. We had a fight there and I got my godliness back and I left.”
Several days later Leon remarked: “Mr. Cassel, you mentioned that you changed into the shape of an elephant or a lion?”
“Jesus Christ! How would I turn into the shape of an elephant?”
“You can check it,” Leon said. “It’s on the tape recorder several days back. And now you deny it. That shows you have a short memory.”
“I’m not an elephant!”
“I didn’t say you were.”
On tape recorders. Joseph said: “I was in the tape recorder once. There is a world in the machine.”
—Would you like me to play back the tape?—
“Yes,” agreed Joseph.
“I’m for it,” Leon said, “if you are going to study the truth and I’m against it if it is put on for a big laugh.”
—Where did you get that idea?—
“Two attendants on Ward C laughed at me in a maniacal cackle when I was writing my self-analysis, which took me a year and some months.”
After the playback the men were asked what they thought of it.
“Excellent speech!” said Leon.
Joseph protested. “There was an enemy in that machine. We finally stopped him. Someone impersonating me. All my words are being said by someone else. There is only one God, not anybody else. I am God.”
“I am the one,” said Clyde.
“Don’t worry,” Joseph said, “if a patient says he’s God.”
Leon and Clyde agreed that it was Joseph’s voice, and Leon explained how the machine works, adding that no one could force Joseph to believe it if he chose not to. When Joseph was asked if he’d like to say something into the microphone and have
it played back, he picked up the mike and made a speech about Aristotle going too far in claiming to be God, saying he himself had done better than Aristotle. When the speech was played back and he was asked who it was, he replied that it was Joseph Cassel, that there wasn’t any little man in the machine, that it was his own voice. Asked why he had changed his mind, Joseph said: “You told me that it was my voice so I gave recognition to my voice.”
On Christmas. “Santa Claus represents God on assistance,” said Clyde.
“Santa Claus is a negative-idealed god, the pagan god of material worship,” Leon stated. “Christmas means the rebirth, regeneration. Some people have Christmas every day. The Christmas tree stands up and either the wife trims it or they trim it together with righteous-idealed sexual intercourse. Or the husband prays to God through his Christmas tree and trims his bodily Christmas tree. Christ-mast; the mast of Christ, the upstanding penis—that’s what it means to me.”
“Santa Claus is a good symbolization for Christmas,” said Joseph. “Department stores, shopping, the coming of the New Year. Christmas means better business in the stores.”
Leon asked Joseph what would be the “most helpful gift—ideological, physical, or spiritual?”
“Physical,” Joseph said.
“Is that your—?”
“That’s my answer—physical. I want a bottle of Lydia Pinkhams.”
[1] Luke 3:22. “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.’ ” Leon apparently took from the Bible much of the material for his delusional system. There are numerous Biblical references, for example, to the “vine” and to the “rock,” as well as others on which he could have based such conceptions as “light brother” and the “center eye of light” which he used later in the process of changing his system.
[2] In this instance Leon not only has interpreted the Scriptures for his own uses, but has distorted them to suit his needs. Cf. Luke 6:43–44: “For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit …” Also Matthew 7:17–18, 12:33.
CHAPTER V
DAYS AND NIGHTS AT YPSILANTI
6:30 A.M. The three Christs stand separated from one another in the long breakfast line; as the line enters the dining room, there is a disturbance. Leon has accused one of the other patients of touching him indecently.
Coming to the table reserved for Clyde, Joseph, and himself, he says: “Ah, good morning, ye instrumental gods,” and sits down with a self-satisfied smile. “These men are victims of electronic imposition,” he continues.
Clyde leaps up, yelling: “I made the place!”
They exchange insults. “Shut up, you bitch,” Clyde shouts, and Leon answers: “I’m not a bitch, sir. I’m a lamb of God.”
10:45 a.m. Clyde sits in a rocking chair, smoking and rhythmically tapping his feet, although there is no music to be heard. Leon and Joseph stand close together, leafing through magazines, paying no attention to one another.
1:46 p.m. Joseph, standing up, banging his fist on the table, talks to Leon about “good old England.” Leon, who is sitting down, stands up, and Joseph sits down. “My salute to you, sir,” says Leon. Joseph gets to his feet again and they salute each other. Then they shake hands, after which Leon shakes hands with Clyde, who is sitting close by, telling him he’s an instrumental God, hollowed-out four or six times. “Hallowed,” Clyde insists, “not hollowed.”
2:15 p.m. Clyde shows Leon a picture in a magazine, of a ship with bathing beauties on deck, describing the girls as “my girls—I made them.”
2:50 p.m. Queen Elizabeth is on TV. Joseph says he’s not interested in watching the Queen because she is taking his place, although he saved her years ago by preventing two men from throwing her off London Bridge.
3:00 p.m. Leon writes something on a piece of paper, holding his ball-point pen in his fist and writing slowly and clumsily. Asked why he writes with the pen in his fist, he replies: “I was taught in Europe that this is the positive way because of the cosmic organics.” He then asks if “they teach the proper use of the palm of the hand in respect to organics in college.”
3:15 p.m. Clyde, smoking a pipe, is writing on a scrap of paper, adding up columns of astronomical figures, incorrectly. He states he has four hundred girls and women to care for, and that he “can’t hardly understand why I can’t buy anything when I have forty cars of money.”
3:30 p.m. Daily group session. The three men take turns reading from the Bible. Then Clyde takes a copy of the Reader’s Digest from his pocket and each of the men in turn reads one item from “Increase Your Word Power,” a game designed to test the player’s knowledge of word meanings. Whenever Leon guesses which of a series of alternative words is correct, he exuberantly shouts: “Yay!” Although he does not know many of the words, he takes the game very seriously. Clyde mumbles throughout about various and sundry topics, but when he is asked which word is correct he frequently makes the right choice, offering it almost as a non sequitur among his mutterings. Joseph, although he grasps the idea of choosing an alternative, gives his own definitions when his turn comes. Leon is polite and helpful to Clyde, who visibly enjoys listening to Leon read.
Supper. Clyde, passing a table of women patients, stops for small talk. The women offer little response. When the meal is finished, a woman stands beside Joseph, as she does every day, without saying anything. Joseph, also wordlessly, rolls a cigarette, lights it, and gives it to her—whereupon she goes away. Another woman patient, picking up food trays, accidentally brushes against Leon. “Madame, I don’t like the idea of strange women brushing me suggestively,” Leon says, “I’m married, I have a wife, and even if I didn’t I don’t advocate hurtful behavior in hospitals.” The woman smirks and walks away.
6:12 p.m. Back in the recreation room. Leon walks the length of the room to get a light for Clyde. After Leon has given him the light and walked away, Clyde claps his hands loudly several times, with no visible emotion. He sits with his legs drawn up on the chair.
8:00 p.m. Leon is kneeling at his bed. I stand there for a while watching him and as I start to leave he says: “Good evening, sir, and thank you for your trouble.”
7:30 a.m. At work in the laundry room, Joseph hangs back quite frequently, and has to be called to participate. Clyde takes many rests. Leon is a steady, intelligent, and good worker. He rests only when there is nothing to do. When he rests he stands straight, with his hands in front of him, palms up. He seems to have a compulsion to keep his hands in sight, as if to keep track of them.
3:15 p.m. Leon is in the recreation room, watching TV. Another patient changes the channel in the middle of the program. Leon says nothing and continues watching. Brassiere ad comes on; Leon averts his eyes. Another ad begins; Leon again watches.
3:42 p.m. Girl in TV movie asks: “Do you ever go out with girls?” Leon goes through ritual of “shaking off.”
Supper. A patient, seeing Leon in the dining room, says: “Hi, Rex, do you still think you’re Jesus Christ?”
“Sir,” Leon replies, “I most certainly am Jesus Christ.”
The patient, turning to Joseph, says: “This guy thinks he’s Christ. He’s nuts, isn’t he?” Joseph, agitated, says: “He’s not Jesus Christ. I am!”
Clyde enters the fray, shouting: “No, he’s not! I am!”
The patient, somewhat bewildered, steps back and says to Leon: “I think you’re faking.”
Leon explains later that the patient is one of his arch enemies, that even though the man is a Jesus Christ, too, in the sense that he has a vine and a rock, he has an evil ideal which Leon hates because he misuses his vine by placing it in the wrong hole.
7:30 p.m. Leon is engrossed in a TV movie, Nazi Spy. He leaves in the middle to say his prayers. The ward is very unsettled tonight; only two patients are lying down. Others are pacing, sitting, talking. Th
ree fights on the ward this evening.
Supper. Leon’s tormentor appears again. Clyde says: “Stop making trouble for him. Talking about my name. I’m Jesus Christ. You wanta make something of it?” Clyde gets up, tries to hit the patient. The patient melts away and Clyde is very upset. Leon is calm.
9:00 a.m. Group meeting—poetry reading. Leon reads Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, and interprets it as a description of copulation. His interpretations would not raise an eyebrow in Freudian circles: cave=womb; river=penis; cave of ice=frigid woman.
4:43 p.m. At supper table, Clyde holds out his pipe for me to light. Smiling and clowning, he puts the salt cellar on top of the pipe bowl. I laugh, he guffaws. Leon says: “I put my sodium in it, Mr. Benson, it will act like a flare.” Clyde cackles again. Joseph bows his head and makes gestures. Such playful episodes occur only rarely.
1:55 p.m. All three men are leaving the laundry. When Leon approaches a tunnel junction, he calls out: “Coming through, coming through, please!” thereby commanding one and all to get out of his way. Joseph, pushing his truck, repeatedly booms out: “Thar she blows! All the enemies of the world are going to be blown up!”
5:30 p.m. Joseph reminisces about life outside the hospital, about where he used to eat and drink, in what restaurants, and the fact that he used to ride a streetcar for six cents. Informed by Leon that it costs twenty-five cents now, Joseph exclaims: “Twenty-five cents! I’ll walk!”
6:44 a.m. Clyde sits in the recreation room mumbling quietly to himself. His soliloquy is incomprehensible. The only things I can make out are: “God,” “man,” “banks,” “kill,” “dead,” “that’s the way it has been,” “Bible”—in that order.
9:40 a.m. At work, Joseph tells the foreman that he used to be an artist. The foreman asks if he painted in oils. Joseph replies that he painted in fresco to save money for Wesson and Mazola oil.
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Page 11