“We see the shit in the rivers, we see the shit in the oceans, and the only thing we do is add to it for a paycheck. Everybody feels trapped, everybody’s confused, everybody’s frightened, and the TV just sells more shit right back to us.” Graywolf pointed out that over the years the media has deliberately and grossly misrepresented Charlie’s essence and turned his ideology on its head. “They’ve thrown blood at it, they’ve made it a horror story; they introduce him as a serial killer, which he is not, they introduce him as a mass murderer, which he is not, and then they let things spin out of control from there.” This, he says, is because Manson’s philosophy requires people to stop spending money on things that don’t matter. Manson’s solution to pollution is to stop, and start all over again. Graywolf declared, “We have to stop cutting down so many trees everyday and using them for toilet paper and toothpicks. It doesn’t make any sense. Unless you happen to be a banker.” Graywolf assured me that if we continue as we are, at the pinnacle of the world’s wealth the world’s people will have nothing left to breathe.
Graywolf believes one of the most egregiously misrepresented and poorly understood ofManson’s ideas is a concept called “ego death,” which he explained as the process by which a person “ceases to exist, dies in his mind, and thus lives forever.” The idea, he says, relates back to Buddhist and other religious texts: “It’s a concept, an abstract thought, an ancient thought.” To achieve ego death, you must slow down, stop being the person you tried to be for the people you felt you had to please, and, ultimately, be yourself. It amounts to changing your definition of self, which others have undoubtedly doled out to you. “This process”, Graywolf explained, “is a kind of death, because you die to your old self. You may fast, or meditate, or place yourself into a high-danger, high-fear, high-suffering situation, like a long trip through the desert or a journey to some other place previously unknown to you, perhaps even a back alley in a violent city. You then have to face your fears, what you perceive to be dangerous, threatening, and come out on the other side, reborn.” This, says Graywolf, is what the entire planet must do in order to save itself.
“A lot of people have a hard time grasping the concept of ego death, and an even more difficult time accepting Manson’s as the only mind free enough of ego to stop the insanity we’ve organized on this planet.” Graywolf fully supports Manson’s desire to lead the world under the ideology of ATWA. But until then, Graywolf does his best to respond to people “hungry for a direction, hungry for something that is not tied to money, or just a way to garner attention, but to offer something that represents a long line of people who have given their lives and their energy, their hearts and their souls to changing the direction of what people are doing on this earth.” Graywolf went on to say, “It all comes down to one man, his knowledge of the natural order of life, and the truth flowing from that one, egoless soul.” To Graywolf, Charlie is like an Oracle, a “Soul” source of valid information supporting a worldwide “green” revolution. Of himself, he says, simply, “I’m just a witness to that.”
During my trip, Graywolf invited me to his home, which he shares with a young woman and fellow ATWA devotee called “Star,” like “Graywolf,” a nickname picked out by Charlie to suit an individual’s personality and relationship to him. Charlie gives people nicknames all of the time; often it’s one of the first things he’ll do when he meets someone worthy of the special attention. Mine, of course, is Fish. Kenny’s is “Irish,” simply because he is Irish. David Hooker’s is “Hook,” I suppose in a play off his real name to show he is sharp. But some of Manson’s friends, for whatever reason, keep the meaning of their nicknames private. I assume that “Graywolf” is called that because he is cunning and wise. And Star, much like the inspiration for her nickname, is seemingly small, yet extremely bright and in charge of a vast body of knowledge. She has a maturity that makes her seem much older than she could possibly be.
Before my trip, I’d spoken to Star a few times on the phone. She has a lighthearted and laid-back style of conversation. She seems as though she were born forty years too late; her beliefs and values are much more aligned with those of the ‘60s than with those of the modern world. She is an old soul. Meeting Star in person, I could see that she would have been a classic flower child. She is slight, and wears her brown hair long over loose, relaxed clothing. She smiled a lot as we spoke about her life, her beliefs, her relationship with Charlie. Star is just twenty-two years old, but she exudes a mature ease, a complete comfort with who she is.
Clearly, Charles Manson had magnetism about him during the late ‘60s in San Francisco, the ultimate hippie hot-spot during the age of the Summer of Love, a time and place set like a stage for a man upholding ancient beliefs on egoless living and environmental harmony. But Manson is still alluring to youth today, forty years later, after being branded America’s icon of evil, while serving life behind the bars of the country’s most mysterious prison cell. I was eager to hear how Star discovered Manson and, more incredibly, how she became one of his most trusted confidantes.
Star told me about her childhood, which, like all childhoods, contained elements of good and bad. The eldest of four children, Star was brought up in a faith-filled family, with which she attended church every Sunday - whether she liked it or not. Star described a comfortable family environment where there was always enough food, room to run around and play, and an overall feeling of safety and security. But, for a self-described “extremely strong-willed being,” conservative family values combined with an overprotective mother caused conflict. “I wouldn’t submit,” Star explained. “If I wanted to do something or be with certain people, I found a way to do it.” Star’s mother did not like her daughter’s friends and so it took considerable, deceptive means for Star to maintain the friendships she desired. “My entire childhood was spent sneaking around. This ultimately got me locked up in my room for a large portion of my teenage years.” Unwilling to run away for fear of trouble with the law, Star stuck things out, and ultimately cultivated a better relationship with her parents and extended family. “I miss them,” she told me, “and I try and go back to visit whenever I can.”
“Before I ever heard the name Charles Manson, or what it was supposed to mean, I already knew I couldn’t believe anything you hear on TV.” Star says she’s never been influenced by what mainstream media had to say about Manson. Her first encounter with Manson and all he represents didn’t come through the television or Internet, but from a piece of paper containing Manson quotes that a friend gave her at school when she was about sixteen. I asked Star to explain what moved her about Manson’s words. She told me that most of the ideas on the page were about ATWA. One quote she noted in particular: “Air is God, because without air, we do not exist.” Star confessed she sometimes has trouble finding words for the things she thinks, feels, and believes. “I was already hip to what he said, so I felt a real connection. When I read what Charles Manson was saying, it was like reading a lot of my own thoughts, those I’d never really been able to put to words. I read it, and I felt really good. I started writing him right away.”
Star doesn’t remember much of her end of this initial correspondence, but the gist of her first letter went something like, “Hey, I’m out here, I really have a connection to you, and you’re right on. Keep on.” Manson responded in no time, with a simple postcard that read, “How far is bunker hill from Chicago?” Star wrote back, “Okay. I got your postcard. It is about a six-hour drive south.” From there, their exchange would delve into Manson’s in-depth explanation of ATWA. He sent Star a letter stamped with “A T W A,” the letters aligned with the numbers “1 2 3 4” and the words “Air Force, Army, Navy, US Marines.” Star felt her mind open up. “The people in the government and the military are the people that can get things done. They’re the people that can do whatever, because they’ve got the guns.” Star explained that Charlie aspired to designate the four branches of the armed services to preserve the four different components of
ATWA. “I really dug that,” she said. “I thought, ‘Man, this guy is ahead of everybody else.’“
And while Star was happy about her epistolary relationship with her new mentor, her parents were not. “When my parents found out I’d been writing to Charles Manson, they were very, very upset. They were very alarmed.” Their reaction to her correspondence with Charlie marked a shift in the kind of information she had to confront. “That’s when I really started learning about how evil he has been portrayed to be. Then I knew what the media has said for the past forty years, but, by that point, I didn’t care about that stuff at all.” Star said she still couldn’t believe the extreme opinions people have about a person who’s so poorly understood. “They have no idea. What kind of a person can pass a judgment over a man they’ve never met? Who could pass a judgment on someone just because of what they heard about him on TV? Our world is full of those people; what does that say about us humans? I don’t judge anybody unless they’ve proved their nature to me directly.”
Star made the decision to move to Corcoran around the time she began exchanging letters with Manson. She even wrote a song called “Road to Corcoran” about the journey. “It seems like forever ago,” she reminisced. “I remember I told my mom, I told everybody, that I was going to move to Corcoran, California, and I was going to help Charlie. Nobody believed me, and when I went, they couldn’t believe that either.”
Star saved up two thousand dollars from the money she earned working in a kitchen at a retirement home. And in 2007, she made the move to Corcoran. When she got off the train, it was a sweltering 115 degrees, but all she could think was, “Ah, so this is my town.” The only employment the teenager could find was a job at a fast food restaurant. Eventually, she found an apartment. At around the same time, she met Graywolf while he was visiting Charlie. He made successive trips, until finally, Graywolf moved to Corcoran too.
Learning more about Manson’s life in prison, Star became acquainted with the unprovoked, routine hostility Charlie receives from prison officials and fellow inmates alike. She got to know the other prisoners in PHU, and even visited one of Manson’s inmate friends. “One inmate I was visiting became very jealous of Charlie. A lot of problems arose; fortunately he was moved to a different prison and I cut off association with that person.” Star explained that there still exist masses of people who want to keep Charlie down, so-called “professionals” inside of Corcoran prison, and on the outside, “an entire world of people that believe what they see on TV.” I asked Star why. She explained that Manson is met with a lot of jealousy from people who are either inadequate, or unhappy with themselves, or both. And she described the existence of an unending chain of people, under pressure from other people, under pressure from someone in charge who is threatened by what Charles Manson has to say. “It’s the reason we’re having such a hard time getting cameras in to Charlie. They don’t want people to rise up. They want people to keep popping pills and drinking beer and sitting in front of their TVs all day long, getting up and going to work so they can buy more of their stuff while they continue doing whatever the fuck they want to do to our planet. They’re going to keep doing it as long as they can get away with it. They don’t want someone like Charlie saying what Charlie says.”
I asked Star what she hears Charlie saying. She defined ATWA for me:
“Air, Trees, Water, and Animals. It is the life that is growing and living on this planet, that is orbiting around a star, that is orbiting around the Milky Way Galaxy. ATWA is our life on the planet Earth. Scientists would probably call it the biosphere. ATWA is a movement and intelligent life forms, against the things that are destroying life on Earth.”
Star expressed that her lifestyle works to promote ATWA and reject pollution of our natural resources, but she lamented, “It’s hard to do that, with the way our civilization is set up.” Star told me she used to want to run away to the mountains and live like a Native American, but Charlie compelled her ultimately to reject this idea. “I wasn’t going to change anything by running off into the mountains, or into the wilderness somewhere. That wouldn’t stop the people from cutting down trees in Madagascar or killing whales off the coast ofJapan.” Star knows she’s just one person, but she envisions herself as a single ant in a giant colony. “I feel the need to take action. If humans were ants, a lot of them would be fucking around the anthill, doing nothing, and some of them would be completely destroying the nest. I’m going to try and rally all the other ants to stop this self-destructive behavior.”
Star noted a few of the plans Manson has proposed to end the world’s environmental woes. “First of all, we have got to get back to the horse; that’s what Charlie said forty years ago. He’s been saying it all this time but nobody wants to listen to him because of what they’ve heard on TV.” Star acknowledged that a global regression in transportation would be part of an extreme approach to saving the planet, but, “The only solutions we have are extreme solutions because we’re in an extreme situation.” She suggested that a dense wall of denial prevents people from accepting the immensity of what has to be accomplished, what has to be changed for humanity to see its future. “We have to stop making plastic. Just stop. We need to stop making all those stupid little fucking toys; we have enough already.” Star further clarified her stance. “I do believe, though, that we should keep and use the technology we need to help solve our problem.”
Then, Star proclaimed, there is the issue of the world’s population. “There cannot be six or seven billion humans on the earth. It’s not going to last. The earth cannot sustain six billion people, especially with what we’re doing to the earth now.” Star was most upset with the way humanity’s exponentially growing numbers affect the purity of its food supply. She was greatly concerned with recent trends in agriculture, the extreme amount of pesticides required to grow the planet’s produce, the hoards of animals butchered for their meat. “We need to stop having babies. We have to stop using all these soaps with chemicals and antibacterial bullshit in them. Germs are here for a reason!” The reason for germs, Star said, is natural population reduction. It’s the fact that we have eliminated so much of what ails us that so many people live long enough to produce so many more people. And though the thought of allowing disease to control the planet seems grim, it isn’t as dismal as what Star sees as the alternative. “Either we start implementing these changes now, or it’s going to be a really, really big disaster and there’s going to be a lot ofblood, guts and horror, all the things people want to see on TV. It’s going to be real.”
I asked Star about being a young woman and simultaneously being a friend of Charles Manson, a man accused of pimping young, impressionable women, brainwashing them, encouraging them to do his dirty work. In televised interviews, Manson seems to espouse distinct, double standards with regards to gender, stating that women are “nice” as long as “they keep their mouths shut.” Star told me that the media is guilty of twisting Charlie’s words around and arranging the interviews specifically to show him in a bad light. “Charlie doesn’t hate women; that’s crazy. He says that woman is the Earth, and Love. Man is the Sky, and Honor.” In their relationship, Star asserts that Manson displays “the utmost care and respect at all times,” is “honest, truthful, and forthright,” and would “never try to break the will of anyone whatsoever, be it a man or a woman.”
Because the overwhelming majority of the Manson family members were women, I asked Star to explain Manson’s masculine appeal. “He’s a patriarch,” said Star. “A real man, not a momma’s boy.” She further explained that Charlie is absent of ego at the same time he is fully responsible for his own unique character. “He didn’t really have parents the way most people do. He kind of raised himself, learning from a lot of different people, a lot of different kinds of people. He’s his own person; he’s unique.” Star attributed some of Charlie’s charm to his talent and good looks. “I know that, if nothing else, the other girls simply enjoyed watching him move, like I do. He’s
got his own motions.”
I enjoyed my time with Graywolf and Star in the comfort and simplicity of their home. Their space is a testament to their values: small and efficient, absent of frivolities like television. Framed photographs of friends and family members hang about the walls. Star and Graywolf have ATWA friends all over the world, and so there is a small computer set up in the living room. Propped up against the couch are a guitar and a violin. Star and Graywolf are both passionate and accomplished musicians and they specialize in traditional mountain music. They are vegetarian and Star is a great cook. They spend as much time as possible out of doors.
We spent the rest of my visit going through old photos of Charlie, and I listened, rapt, to the many Charlie stories Star and Graywolf had to tell. Most of the photos were from their visits to Corcoran Prison. These shots depicted Manson in various roles and poses, almost as if he were an actor. There were photos of Manson wearing dark sunglasses, Manson with a Bible, preaching, Manson playing chess, and Manson acting like a goof. The collection is a candid look at Manson, unlike anything I’d ever seen. In a few other pictures he is looking directly into the camera and, though he has aged, he still showed the same intensity, inherent in all of the infamous photographs taken of him in his younger years.
In one photograph, I noticed Star was wearing a string of beads that now were hanging nearby, on a wall by a calendar. Curious, I asked her if the beads had any sentimental value. Star told me that Manson had made them for her out of toilet paper. He’d given the necklace to her the first time they met in person. “He turns the paper back into wood,” she explained. She removed them from the wall and handed them to me to examine. The beads were large, yet light, pretty and purplish in color. It was clear that a lot of care had gone into making them. Already aware of how difficult it can be to obtain art supplies in prison, I asked Star how Charlie had managed to paint his creation. She told me Manson used whatever he could get his hands on: ink pens used for letter-writing, mustard left over from lunch, even his own urine if nothing else were available.
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