Charles Manson: Methods To The Madness

On the morning of August 9, 1969, three LAPD officers arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive (Bugliosi 7). The scene that awaited them was horrendous. In the driveway, in a parked car, the body of Steven Parent was found. He was shot four times and stabbed once. Laying about eighteen or twenty feet past the front door of the house, Voytek Frykowski had been shot twice, beaten over the head with a blunt object thirteen times, and stabbed fifty-one times. Also discovered on the lawn was coffee heiress Abigail Folger, stabbed twenty-eight times. Inside the home, in the living room, were the bodies of Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate. Sebring, a hair stylist, had been stabbed seven times and shot once, dying of exsanguination. Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her death, was stabbed sixteen times in the chest and back (Fillmer par. 2).

The following evening, in a seemingly unrelated crime, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were discovered in their home at 3301 Waverly Drive. Rosemary was found face down in her bedroom, a lamp cord wound around her neck, in a pool of blood; she had been stabbed forty-one times. Her husband, Leno, had a pillow case over his head, a lamp cord tied around his neck, his hands tied behind his back with a leather thong, and an ivory-handled, bi-tined carving fork in his stomach; he had been stabbed multiple times and had the word “WAR” carved in his flesh (Bugliosi 55-56). The murderers were members of a group led by Charles Manson called the Manson Family. These people were completely controlled by Manson. He had them convinced that they were the chosen ones and that they were only carrying out the orders of a man they thought was Jesus Christ incarnate (Watson par. 3).

They were willing to risk death and imprisonment to satisfy this man. Manson used borrowed ideas from prosperous cults of the 1960’s to achieve a complete control over his followers. In June of 1960, Charles Manson was sent to prison for forgery, mail theft, and pimping (Bugliosi 192-193). There, he became involved with a cult called Scientology (195). Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard (“Cult” par. 45). It teaches that each human has a soul called a “thetan.” Scientologists believe that, many years ago, the thetan was “god-like” and that people fell from divinity and forgot their origins. People were then trapped on Earth in “delusions of mortality (“Scientology” par. 12).” Hubbard claimed that he had found the spiritual way to finding the true way to man. He said that one must work through many levels of self knowledge and knowledge of past lives to “awaken the primordial deity” until divinity is once again achieved (“Cult” par. 45). The highest level of awareness in Scientology is called “theta clear.”

Manson claims to have reached theta clear while in prison. He supposedly achieved this through many “auditing sessions,” the method that Scientologists use to teach awareness, taught by his cell mate, Lanier Rayner (Bugliosi 195-196). Most likely, he picked up many of his methods of mind control from these sessions, along with ideas such as karma and reincarnation (635). The Process Church of the Final Judgment, labeled a Satanist cult by the media, was founded in 1963 by Robert DeGrimston, a former Scientologist. The basis of this religion was the book of Matthew of the New Testament, and it began as a mixture of Zoroastrianism and Scientology. The name “The Process” refers to the “changes necessary to avoid the end of the world with its associated judgment.” Processeans worship Jehovah, Lucifer, and Satan (“Process” par.17). Even though The Process fervently denies that Charles Manson was ever a member, many ideas from his philosophy parallel Process concepts.

Both Manson and The Process taught of a violent and unavoidable Armageddon in which all but the few chosen ones would be destroyed, and both thought that motorcycle gangs would be the “troops of the last days.” One Process pamphlet described the second coming of Christ as: “ ‘Through Love, Christ and Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together for the End: Christ to Judge, Satan to execute the Judgment.’ ” Manson believed that, when Christ returned, it would be the establishment that “went up on the cross (Bugliosi 637).” Manson and The Process shared ideas on fear also; they preached that fear was the same thing as awareness, and that the more fear one had, the more awareness and therefore more love one had (320). There were so many similarities between Manson’s philosophy and The Process that even if he was never a member, The Process must have been a great influence on Charles Manson (638-639). A great many other ideas of Manson’s came from the Beatles and the Bible.