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Then there was Old Lumpy’s “I’ve copyrighted the psychic cross and I’ll get my lawyers onto you if you persist in using it…” routine. This one didn’t work so well, because an older hand would let those threatened – like the US TOPY activists after Old Lumpy got pissed off with them for not following orders – know that Genesis was talking bollocks as usual and that there was no copyright on the psychic cross. Old Lumpy not only couldn’t control his fan club cum cult, he ended up destroying it and any belief the members once had in his bullshit. Oh well, at least he’s a source of amusing anecdotes. And actually I know a number of ex-TOPY people who are really great guys.

While obviously very confused, Timothy Wyllie comes across in the book like the nice guy you say you found him to be. But I’d have liked a chapter dedicated to George Clinton, now there’s not just a fab musician but also a showman!

Great review of the Book. I met Timothy Wyllie in 1989 while I was a musical member of Psychic TV. He seemed like a nice guy still coming to terms with having left a genuine cult. We spoke about George Clinton and the dominatrix mentality.

Gen’s TOPY essay inclusion is naturally mythologically self serving and exposes Gen for the incompetent cult leader he wishes he could be. As far as I recall nobody had to turn over all their money and belongings to join TOPY. Since myself and the majority of the members of the band had nothing really to do with TOPY except tolerating their inane chatter and trying to help them think for themselves they did come in handy when baby sitters were needed.

Now that Gen has chosen his pandrogyny surgical self this only seems to show that the only parrallel between The Process and TOPY is that Gen is a wannabee Mary Anne MacLean with hideous plastic surgery, who wishes he could have had the financial power over his followers that afforded the kind of lifestyle Mary Anne and Robert enjoyed. An address in Hackney is a lot different than Mayfair.

telepathic regards,
fred.giannelli

Orgies? Well, there were a few in-group orgies, but outsiders couldn’t get a taste of them. And they were primarily celibate. See Timothy Wyllie’s book for salacious details.

Commenters here seem to view the world through a dissatisfied and sourpuss lens. What do you like? Anything?

On my wanders, I saw the strangest and most disconcerting sights of my fortnight’s travelling – a woman wearing a face-mask like it’s Mexico city, and a table set out in the street offering passers-by a ‘free stress test.’ the trestle is covered in copies of books by L. Ron Hubbard, primarily Dianetics, which has to be an even weightier tome than Rowling’s last Potter installment. And people are taking this test! Sitting there, clutching the ‘cans’ that connect the subject to the e-meter and being asked by the robotic, Stepfordian girls running the stall why they think they react in such a way to this and that. Now, god-botherers and ‘gouranga’ merchants are bad enough, but you know things are seriously fucked when the Scientologists – young ones at that – take to the streets and insidiously play on the stressed-out mode of living we are surely all experiencing most acutely in the techno-age and in the middle of a recession as a way of peddling their warped (not to mention money-taking) cult to unsuspecting buffoons, most of whom won’t have a clue who Hubbard is. This actually served to increase my level of stress, so I walked on by as quickly as I could.

“Dear Sir…
The Process combines the worst aspects of both Nazi Germany and
Communist China. Our methods hear a striking resemblance to the
techniques of brainwashing and we incorporate all the components of an
authoritative regime. In fact, we are the most authoritative authoritarian,
Nazi, Communist, brainwashing organisation in the business. Members of the
Process are both anarchist and fascist, dangerous megalomaniacs and
brainwashed zombies (on alternative days) … One thing surprises us. Your
two sleazy would-be exposers managed to invent so much other rubbish
about us, but no sex? No orgies? No perversions? Not one sex maniac
amongst the lot of us? Or would this make us too acceptable to your
readers?”

The intrinsic irony of the Process stance, as typified by the above letter,
invariably went right over the heads of those against whom it was aimed.
The Process expanded its war against the Grey Forces, spreading out
from its posh headquarters in London’s chic Mayfair district to several major
cities in the United States. The Satanic and Luciferian side of the Process
trinity attracted by far the most attention, and Processeans dressed in
flamboyant black cloaks and medallions bearing the symbol of the Goat of
Mendes soon became a familiar sight in the counterculture communities that
sprouted up like so many psilocybin mushrooms in the late 1960s. Soup
kitchens, a radio show, a Lucifer-themed coffee house, and the omnipresent
Process magazine sold on the streets; all spread the Processean evangel to its
mostly young constituency. After settling on the harsher name, Process
Church of the Final Judgement, the DeGrimstons became increasingly
autocratic, leaving behind the more experimental mode in which they had
begun. Robert DeGrimston now styled himself as the archetype of Christ the
Emissary, and his image and personality became the glue holding the Church
together, much as the messianic figure of L. Ron Hubbard had dominated
Scientology, from which the DeGrimstons had learned so much. Mary Anne
DeGrimston, ex-prostitute, made for an ideal Mary Magdalene for the cult.