The fact for Stanton is that, essentially, the entire Manson Family is an offshoot from the Church of Satan. He said that Susan Atkins ended her association with the Church when she became a member ofthe Manson Family. This happened the same night Bobby Beausoleil renounced his roles as Kenneth Anger’s understudy and apprentice and became, instead, Charlie’s “star” family member. All of this, Stanton told me, was preplanned. Evidence to the higher order behind the murders of August 1969 is the fact that “Bobby effectively martyred himself.” Stanton said no one has heard a complaint from Bobby since the beginning of his incarceration. He insisted it’s highly unlikely that a man who’s spent the last forty years in jail for a murder resulting from “one drug deal gone wrong” would keep so solemnly silent for so long. “Bobby Beausoleil is not in prison as a consequence or penalty; he’s in prison as a form of protection. The same goes for Charlie.” Stanton told me he was hesitant to ask Charlie about the real terms of his imprisonment. “It’s like asking the president, ‘Why isn’t the Constitution abided by?’“
Stanton stopped speaking for a moment and seemed to reflect before he said, “Talking about this stuff and laying it out there like this has me feeling weird, dude, and it takes a lot to make me feel weird. I’ve never told this story this way ever.” The feeling in the room as Stanton spoke was intense. Though I was aware that what Stanton was sharing was very personal and self defining, we both seemed to understand that his story was something that needed to be shared. Up to this point, Stanton’s voice had been calm and controlled. I had a sense he was surprised at the smoothness of his delivery and how the facts had flowed from him exactly, it seemed, as necessary. We sat together in silence for well over a minute, a small moment in time that seemed more like an eternity contained within an eternity.
He smiled, a sort ofmischievous grin, and continued: “My grandfather lit a torch one fateful night in 1967 and handed it to Charlie Manson. Now and forever, Charlie is that torchbearer, so how much of this story will find illumination is yet to be determined. Solely by Man-son, Uncle Chuck. By the way, I love you, Charlie. I don’t care what my grandfather said about you; he was just jealous because he couldn’t get up in the action, get his hands dirty. Well, from my family to yours, love always.”
It had been a very long day and it was late. During our conversation, Sharon had been busy cooking, making spaghetti and meatballs. As she handed me a plate full of food, Stanton said, “It’s human flesh, you know.” The remark caught me off guard; it seemed more sinister than joking because, well, with Stanton, you never know. Stanton enjoyed a good laugh at my expense. “Here’s a bit of trivia you’ll love,” he said. “The plate you are eating off of is from the Church of Satan. My grandfather used it thousands of times.”
As we ate, Stanton talked more about Charles Manson, the man. He told me he believes Charlie is the voice of reason, the quintessential protagonist of the “I’m not crazy; you’re all crazy” kind of story. Stanton remarked on the Charles Manson that made appearances on late night true crime television shows. “All his wild, crazy, dancing jive, his faces and reflections-yeah that’s how fuckin’ crazy all of you crazy fools drive us. I know all these fools, these mortals; they drive me ape shit crazy too, and I find myself making every crazy face imaginable, and spinning around in circles, jumping around, and banging my hands on the ground like a man who has gone completely mad, with good reason; you are all diving us crazy.” Stanton said he felt confident enough about this idea to speak on behalf of Manson. “Any crazy ways he may have acted are only and solely due to how motherfucking crazy these goddamn motherfucks on Earth drive us, for how blindingly stupid, useless, annoying, and destructive they all are.”
Stanton told me that Earth’s biggest problem is its human population, that if this one problem were eliminated, all its other problems would cease to exist. “Problem is a word that should not be allowed to have an s on the end of it, because there is only one problem and that is humanity.” While Stanton says he didn’t quite learn this lesson from Charles Manson, it was Manson who instilled the spark in Stanton’s passion for his preexisting beliefs about people. “He definitely fuckin’ reminded me at a time when I needed that extra little push, that little bit of guidance, that spark, that fire, yes, that fuel. Charlie knows all; he’s the closest we have, our own messiah. I only speak the truth. I don’t need to lie because I’m open and I receive plenty, but there’s frightening fucking truths at the end of the road. So many of these things would be disturbing to me if I didn’t have the comfort ofknowing it’s all over anyways.”
Stanton assured me that if people would just open their ears and close their mouths, they would not be able to escape the essence of the satanic philosophy espoused by Charlie. “There is a reason for the Satanic Bible, a reason for ATWA. My grandfather had a message not at all dissimilar from Charlie’s, not at all. All it takes is just a little bit of patience, and when you open your ears and close your mouth, you will not be able to escape the essential, the essence of the satanic philosophy side by side with Charlie.”
Stanton recited for me the Nine Satanic Statements of the Satanic Bible:
1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!
Stanton continued to explain the teachings of Satanism. He condemned rules and laws and stressed the importance of self preservation and survival of the fittest. He told me might is right, that you either live or die, that you are either predator or prey “People don’t like accepting or admitting stuff like that,” he said. “It’s fucking horrifying.” Stanton shifted his focus, “You see, Marlin, what you are writing, what you are embarking on here, makes you the Mother Goose of the future. A thousand years from now, you will be remembered as Mother Goose, instead of someone recording history as it happened.” Stanton said life is a series of cycles, through which fact and fiction become so intertwined in so distant a memory that it can be impossible to distinguish one from the other down the line. But the subject of our discussion, he said, is something other than fact or fiction; it exists above both, a concept that has yet to be explored and understood. “You may grow a greater understanding and awareness of it than most people,” Stanton said. “It may prove to drive you mad or it may also be your saving grace. For me, that’s where I’ve been this whole time.”
Stanton continued: “I fully support and back up Charlie one hundred percent, until the end. Nothing will sway me. I love Charlie. I don’t need to love Anton LaVey because I am Anton LaVey, and I love myself plenty. I have come to learn this with the use of a lot of LSD and self introspection because, you know, you can only go so far. You know very well because in your career you are dealing with people who went in, got lost, and couldn’t find their way around, and that’s coming from someone who was diagnosed as schizophrenic by nine out of eleven Viennese doctors. Remember: any crazy I am, you made me that way.”
In the midst of this trip of self-discovery, Stanton came to believe in the Hollywood machine, “the latest sort of slime ball religion nouveau of celebrity faith that exists with Tom Cruise as saint and Ron Hubbard as modern messiah, both k
eepers of a powerful awakening in the human subconscious mind.” Understanding Hollywood, according to Stanton, is the closest humanity has come to understanding how reality actually works. “So we have Earth,” he explained, “and then we have Hollywood, the miniature version of Earth.”
Listening to Stanton talk about Hollywood, I was reminded of a conversation I’d had with Charlie, during which he’d told me essentially the same things: “I am Hollywood; that’s my town, man. That’s my garbage dump. Hollywood is actually a really holy place, man. Look at all the images and the body that Hollywood has created around the world. It’s spiritual-look at all the dreams. Look at all the soldiers, look at all the wars, look at all the dying. You can see a thousand million people die in Hollywood, man. You can kill people on the altar of a sacrificial pyramid for five hundred years-still couldn’t beat Hollywood. They do that in a weekend.
Stanton moved on from the topic of Hollywood to a discussion of Satanism as a means for human beings to overcome their destructive nature. He explained that the human animal lives to torture itself, lives a masochistic existence from beginning to end. According to Stanton, the human species is programmed to be a self denying, selfloathing, self punishing, pain-seeking lot. “I have to remind myself everyday not to work or pay bills, but to jack off, smoke a joint, slap someone when they’re not expecting it, and laugh ‘cause it’s funny.”
We talked about Stanton’s ten years in Hollywood: the parties, the debauchery, and the crazy number of celebrities he’d met. “I’ve only been star struck once: when I met Pee-wee Herman. I was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old and I was shaking like a little girl.” Stanton believes Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is and will always be the greatest movie of all time. Because, he explained, it tells all of our stories, the stories of our collective pain, stress, frustration, humor, absurdity, bewilderment, confusion, and craziness. Yet, somewhere amidst all the chaos, there is order. “Just look at Pee-wee himself. Never is there a wrinkle in his suit or a smudge in his perfect makeup but, yet, he embodies chaos.” Stanton said Pee-wee’s Big Adventure embodies its own philosophy. “It sure has shown me a whole lot more about the human condition-what to be prepared for, what to expect out of people and situations-than any book. I’m saying that I have personally gotten more out of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure than even the Satanic Bible.” Stanton asked me, “Have you ever been star struck?” And I told him, “Sure, when I met Alice Cooper for the first time.” Stanton thought about this and said, “I could see that, he’s sort of the Pee-wee Herman of your generation.”
We finished our meal and Stanton offered to show me his personal picture archive. I saw shots from his childhood: his family, his grandfather and grandmother. There were pictures of Susan Atkins and Bobby Beausoleil before they knew Manson. At one point, Stanton stumbled across a photo of Marilyn Manson and scowled, grumbling, “This fuckin’ poser extraordinaire, this guy, this clown-I got wise and realized that this guy is selling my identity for millions of dollars.” Stanton lamented what he sees as human beings’ limited capacity to make connections. He told me people lack more than imagination; they are completely devoid of basic curiosity. “Things were bad when chivalry died and God went with it. Then things got worse when love died and hate did too. There goes romance; good-bye, revolution.”
I asked Stanton about the future, where he believed things were headed, how he thought all of this would play out. “I know what things are leading up to,” he said, “and it’s fuckin’ big, really big.” He told me there is a large satanic undercurrent brewing: a lot of rituals, sacrificial murders, and satanic ceremonies occurring constantly.
Stanton held little back: “There are definitely other people inside the planet. I also believe there’s a governing system to this entire thing, and we really are all some sort of an ant farm. I’ve got dirt that goes all the way through and all the way throughout; it comes right out on the other side and I mean it’s like one steady stream. All of this, all the people involved, everything-it’s one big, grand, orchestrated, fuckin’ satanic ritual, the whole fuckin’ thing, man. That’s why they don’t want me talking to you, or anybody. But, at the same time, they can rely on the fact that everyone thinks I’m about ninety percent crazy.”
I had no idea who “they” could be. I didn’t press for details.
“There’s a helicopter overhead, everywhere I go,” Stanton insisted. “They follow me around. There’s always a helicopter over me - I kid you fucking not.”
Dennis Wilson
The drummer of the Beach Boys was in my band, The Milky Way. He comes from my heart there in Santa Claus and One Horse Open Sleigh. The sleigh is on a butcher man like a red on a suit. We were cutting an album when he changed the words to the songs and stuff, and I told him he shouldn’t do that, but he had an Italian business manager and he had, like, 17 or 13, 14 million dollars he was playing with like that. He wouldn’t pay that, he wouldn’t pay what he owed. He changed. I couldn’t get my money so someone grabbed both his legs and pulled him under the ocean. You remember that? Do you remember how Dennis Wilson died down in the water and somebody had grabbed his legs and he couldn’t come up and he disappeared under the water.
A Bug
Look in the phonebook. You see all them people? All those people have the same person inside of them that you do. There is no they, they and them are we and us. We and us are not at all. We died a thousand years ago. There is only God, and God is not a religion. God is a bug, ‘cause if the bugs don’t survive, we don’t survive, and the bugs are smarter than we are. I discovered that in solitary confinement, living with a cockroach for fifteen years. I found out that guy was ten times more intelligent than I, and he could count the stars, and I couldn’t even begin to think about counting the stars. That’s how smart that bug was. He was a Pharaoh at one time, a scarab, and he was on a ring on the Pharaoh’s finger. The Pharaoh could see in his mind, and he could see in the Pharaoh’s mind, because the Pharaoh was God, and still is God. There is no death, there never was death. Death is love’s breath. If you’re dead, you’re alive. Alive is dead. There is only one, and you’re breathing it, and not only are you breathing it, you’re destroying it. You’re destroying it as fast as you can, because you won’t destroy the people, if you don’t destroy the people you’re going to destroy everything, because people are destroying everything. I don’t think you are really here, I think you’re trying to find it, but I don’t think you found it yet. When you find it you gotta get right here, right now, that’s all there is. Now take a breath, are you breathing? That’s what we’re working for, right there.
The Self
I don’t think it’s normal, it’s normal to have a self. Ifyou don’t have a self then you don’t have any problems, but you become everything around you. In other words, if you’re out in the woods or you’re up in a cabin like that, somewhere like that, and you don’t have no external self programming…like TV or radio or friends, or you know something like that, you just automatically pick up everything. You know where the dogs [are] at all the time. You know where the birds are. Everything becomes a part of you, man. When everything becomes a part of you, you become a part of everything. You really wake up the God that’s inside of you.
Do you know how much we’re brainwashed? I don’t think you do. You know if I put you in cell 51 and I give you a TV for a year, then I take you out of that cell and put you in a cell without a TV…youll have withdrawal symptoms. Television is a narcotic. It’s worse than speed. In other words, you go dangerously in jeopardy of losing your life with withdrawals of TV, and same thing with radio. Back on radio we had these guys who would lay up in their cells for ten, fifteen years, listening to the radio. You take that radio away from them, they get dangerous. They really get dangerous.
More Fear
What makes it real, you know? Kill a thousand people. Still doesn’t mean it’s real. It’s only real in fear. Does fear make it real? And what’s the difference between fear and love, man
. How you going to say, well, I love you but I don’t fear you. When you become totally fearless you realize. I see an old man lying in a bed and every time the cops would come in and scare him, so I said, “Old man, what you got to be afraid of them cops for?” He said, “You got to show them fear, boy, or they’ll kill you.” I said, “Well, you don’t have to be afraid. Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ?” He said, “I am Jesus Christ, you stupid fuckin’ juvenile.” He said, “I’m not showing them my fear, I’m showing them their fear.” And I found out that night that’s what’s real. Ifyou don’t show somebody fear, they don’t know how to be afraid. They drive right on over everything you say, man, so you got to show them a little fear. And here’s another one. Because he realizes people ain’t no good and they’ll use it against you. You show them kindness and they’ll take it as weakness. You show them decency and honor and they’ll think they tricked you. They’ll come back and foreclose, take your money, and leave you on the street corner waiting for a bus that doesn’t run there no more.
Charles Manson Now Page 18