Charles Manson’s MK-Ultra Madness: From Chaos to Apocalypse, Pt 2
By Guest Writer Nathaniel Allison
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV
In a letter written to Ed Sanders, Manson spoke about attending a party at Roman Polanski’s with Process Church founder’s Robert DeGrimston & Mary Ann MacLean. Both Manson and DeGrimston frequented the Esalen Institute. Kathy DeGrimston claimed to be the reincarnation of Nazi Joseph Goebbels and the goddess Hecate. Manson claimed that he and DeGrimston “are one and the same.” He appeared in “Death Issue” of Process Magazine. They had a “headquarters” on 407 Cole St. just doors down, Manson stayed at 636 Cole St.
Nikolas Schreck’s book The Manson File, talks about Sharon Tate possibly being invoked in similar dark magic. He also shows newspaper clippings of investigators describing that she was mixing hallucinogenics with sadistic sexual practices. Others have suggested she was involved with The Process Church.
O’Neill neglected referencing the Process Church, and any of their connections to Manson in his book Chaos.
DAYS OF RAGE FOR YEARS
The Process Church has links with Manson, the Son of Sam murders, and The Weather Underground.
An extremist “domestic terrorist group,” The Weather Underground’s rhetoric said they were inspired into violence by the Vietnam War and Civil Rights, but they were more into violence for the sake of violence. In reality they were more inspired by things like the Manson murders. They practiced the type of violence The Process Church preached. As Bernardine Dohrn famously said “Dig it! First they killed those pigs. Then they ate dinner in the same room with them. Then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild! Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson.” Famously calling it “The Year of the Fork.” That was the seed of thought that led to their terror campaign of bombings across the US. They referred to the Manson Family as “urban guerillas.” Their fellow revolutionary, the Yippie Jerry Rubin called Manson the “greatest of revolutionaries against the bourgeois.”
In The Ultimate Evil, author Maury Terry contended that Sam of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, was a member of “The Children” a splinter group of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, which—although officially disbanded over 30 years ago—continues to operate secretly in the U.S. In a segment of A&E’s Investigative Reports: ’’Son of Sam Speaks: The Untold Story”, Berkowitz identified The Process Church as the unifying force tying together various Satanic cults.
The Process Church rebranded as Best Friends Animal Society. Just happens to be where Joe Biden got his violent German Shepherds.
The serial killer Henry Lee Lucas said he was a part of Satanic cult known as the Hand of Death. He described the cult as being involved in contract killings and Satanic rituals. He was recruited in the early 1970s. The cult was involved with snuff films, murder-for-hire, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and prostitution. Serial Killer Ottis Elwood Toole also claimed to be a member. There may have been overlap with this shadowy group and The Matamoros cult – led by Satanist Adolfo Constanzo – known for drug trafficking and Palo Mayombe influenced human sacrifices, notably the 1989 murder of Mark Kilroy. These Narcosatanist’s had ties with the Gulf Cartel, one of the oldest organized crime groups in the country.
MANSON’S APOCALYPTIC MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
“Mr. and Mrs. America – you are wrong. I am not the King of the Jews nor am I a hippie cult leader. I am what you have made of me and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society… whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: In my mind’s eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.”
–Charles Manson
From district attorney Vincent Bugliosi’s prosecution of Charles Manson, and his publication of Helter Skelter – Charlie has been portrayed as an Occult Messiah. Acting as Sherlock Holmes against Charlie’s magical powers. He’s been accused of propagandizing the occultism to sell his book. Many will say Manson was just a beatnik criminal who the establishment propped up as a scapegoat; including Manson himself. In the censored portion of Manson’s interview at San Quentin with Charlie Rose on Nightwatch, he’s asked about this apocalyptic race war he’s manifesting, and if there’s racism in his soul . His reply: “Sure. Hell yes, all the way down the line. Hell, yes. Hell yes, but it wasn’t what the D.A. said. When Manson was talking about a holy war between light and dark, he wasn’t talking about skin color, it was more cosmic, more about a manichaean duality. The “book” that was thrown at him was of the magical Grimoire kind. Manson was cosplaying a character from something like Sir James Frazer’s book The Golden Bough – playing the crucified Serpent in the Carnival of Life & Death. Another Jack The Ripper style mystery play. It’s the game of Truth or Consequences.
The Manson Family is a microcosm of behavioral control; with the use of drugs, isolation, sleep deprivation, communal sex, and occult preaching. It’s like America’s Phoenix Program, used in vietnam, finally lands on American soil.
Manson bridges the world of occultism and behavioral control. He identifies with the Gnostic god, Abaraxas, who he calls “the supreme power of being in whom light and darkness are both united and transcended.” Egyptian Gnostics referred to this God as the ruler of Heaven, slightly inferior to the Supreme God.
He believed he was a conduit for cosmic forces. He even released music from prison under the alias AKA Abraxas. The Processian philosophy melds well with the figure of Abraxas – The god of 365 Heavens. In the family’s Black Bus, Crowlyite Bobby Beausoleil initiated Manson as a reincarnation of renaissance magician Giordano Burno. Manson has mentioned powers from beyond like “Count Bruno” haven “taken over” his body.
All the world’s a stage, and Manson, or Man’s Son, played the role of “The Obscene Christ” mimicking both Jesus and the Devil. He took the wretched creatures of the earth and made them his Family. The notorious biker gang The Straight Satan’s knighted Manson awarded him a sword that reportedly had mystical significance. He used his ceremonial sword to slice off Gary Hinman’s ear – the first official Manson victim. A sword traditionally symbolizes qualities of justice, fortitude, and mercy. Inversions like that were based on Crowleyian ideas of will and chaos. He immersed himself in satanic symbolism. One of his closest Family members, Susan Atkins, notoriously danced topless for LaVey’s Church of Satan.
On this Pilgrimage of Death, The Family roamed from California’s Spahn Ranch in the Santa Susana mountains, through Devil’s Canyon and the Garden of the Gods. On their trip to Nevada’s Death Valley, they explored The Devil’s Hole – a reputed entrance to the underworld, a bottomless Pit. Traveling to places like Devil’s Cornfield, Anvil Spring, and the Lotus Mine are all symbolically relevant to this story on this Journey of the Dead.
The Manson story is one of Fertility & Death – full of rituals that would make the HellFire Club blush. Manson was known to run around the ranch telling everyone he’s the Devil and his family are witches – while they maintained he was Christ. There were orgiastic rites at “The Fountain of The World” in the Santa Susana mountains. This location inspired the Manson Family to have a ceremony where they hung Manson from a cross, in a mock crucifixion followed by a sex-magick orgy. They even had a member play Mother Mary at the feet of this obscene Christ. The rituals were held on the Hill of Martyrdom just on the outskirts of The Family’s residence at the Spahn Ranch. He saw within this rock formation a giant skull; an inverted Golgotha. The location was shown in the December 1969 Life Magazine story, that did a pictorial layout of The Family sitting beneath the rock formation
AS THE WORLD SPINS
“When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won
That will be ere the set of sun”
-Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 1
Joe Rogan interviewed Peter Thiel in Aug of ‘24. They spoke on the role of drugs in society, and Joe asked the technocrat about Tom O’Neill’s book Chaos, and Thiel said the most interesting part was on MK-Ultra. When Joe starts talking about how cults are more alive today than ever, and asks about the possibility of MK-Ultra style projects still being utilized against the American public, Thiel uncomfortably underlined it as, “I don’t think the CIA is doing anything quite like MK-Ultra anymore.” Thiel has an intense interest in cults and religions and how they can restructure society. He believes that all civilizations are founded on scapegoats and sacrifices – it’s why Thiel embraces the Antichrist pretending to be more Christian than Christ, but in a perverted way that justifies violence against his enemies. Jessica Taylor, a former research fellow at one of Thiel’s funded Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), wrote a blog about her time at MIRI and how it led to a psychotic breakdown, comparing the experience to being in a cult. She claims “there were at least three other psychiatric institutionalizations by people in the social circle immediate to MIRI.”
In a Jan 2025 article from the San Francisco Chronicle, radical cult leader Jack Amadeus “Ziz” LaSota leads a band of computer wiz-kids and devout vegans. They were also killers – linked to at least six killings all across the US. Before becoming a cult leader, she worked at Google, had an apprenticeship with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). Fellow researcher at MIRI, Jessica Taylor told the SF Chronicle that “Ziz theory is combining these things like rationalism, timeless decision theory, transgender related ideas, brain hemispheres and left-anarchism.” The cult of “Zizians” eventually separated from the Berkeley subculture.
One of their core beliefs was that AI will destroy humanity if left unchecked. In 2019, Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies found them in the woods in black robes and Guy Fawkes masks from the dystopian film “V for Vendetta. They began distributing fliers against MIRI and CFAR – warning of a rapidly oncoming global catastrophic threat. Not long after LaSota attempted to fake her own death, she supposedly fell overboard a boat into the bay of San Mateo. The brutal killings began weeks later. Ziz was later found by police, in a hotel room, playing dead on the floor. She appeared at an Allegheny County District Court on Feb. 18, and said “I haven’t done anything wrong, I shouldn’t be here.” Then began raving and ranting, interrupting the judge about the need for vegan food.
I wonder how Artificial Intelligence will be used for MKULTRA-style behavioral modification programs. One thing I can guarantee… it’ll be more efficient.
Reading List
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties – Tom O’Neill
The Family: Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion – Ed Sanders
Sinister Forces trilogy – Peter Levenda
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream – Dave McGowan
Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder – Dave McGowan
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD – Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain
The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman – Nikolas Schreck
Taming The Beast: Charles Manson Life Behind Bars – Edward George.
Mason in His Own Words – Nuel Emmons
The Myth of Helter Skelter – Susan Atkins
Now Is The Only Thing That’s Real – Neil Sanders
Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare by Michael A Hoffman
Stalking The Great Whore – James Shelby Downard
Ultimate Evil – Terry Maury
Violence and New Religious Movements – James R. Lewis
In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America – Thomas Robbins
The New Religious Consciousness edited by Charles Y. Glock
The Shadow Over Santa Susana:– Adam Gorightly
Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory – Louis Jolyon West
CIA Doctors – Colin A. Ross,
Operation Mind Control: The CIA’s Plot Against America – Walter Bowart
Search for the Manchurian Candidate by John Marks
Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters – Frances Stonor Saunders
Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
The Phoenix Program – Douglas Valentine
Drugs as Weapons Against US – John Potash
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford
A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson – H.P. Albarelli Jr.
Franklin Cover-up – John DeCamp
