Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment by Timothy Wyllie (Feral House $24.99) provides a curious history of one of the minor cults that flourished on the fringes of the counterculture. That said, The Process has remained very visible to this day, thanks in part to claims it was the hidden ‘evil’ force behind both the Tate-LaBianca and the Son of Sam slayings. Wyllie insists that these claims, as well as salacious stories about Process founder Mary Ann MacLean having been married to American boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson and playing a role in the Profumo Affair, are false. All the available evidence would suggest Wyllie is correct on these matters, and while this adds to the credibility of his tale, it will probably do little for the sales of his book.
The book is a personal account of Wyllie’s time with The Process and the story he tells is more convincing than the portraits of the group found in books such as The Ultimate Evil by Maury Terry and the first edition of The Family by Ed Saunders, but it is also far more banal. Therefore, if you want to read sensationalist and ultimately fictionalised accounts of Satanic killing sprees, you’ll have to look elsewhere. There is plenty of that online, and a web search will also locate many Process writings and graphics.
The history of The Process is essentially this: in 1963 two former Scientologists Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston established a therapy business in Wigmore Street, London. Mary Ann MacLean was a former prostitute who grew up in poverty in Glasgow, while Robert de Grimston was from an upper class family and had served as an officer in the British army before becoming an architecture student and then dropping out three years into these studies. Wyllie first met de Grimston in 1959 when they both enrolled on the architectural course at Regent Street Polytechnic (renamed Polytechnic of Central London in 1970, with a further name change to University of Westminster in 1992). In 1963 McLean and de Grimston began using Wyllie as a guinea pig to test and develop techniques they’d learnt as Scientologists, adapting them to their own purposes.
Wyllie’s circle of student friends provided the initial recruits to what was then called Compulsions Analysis. In Wyllie’s account, those involved with MacLean and de Grimson recognised a sense of spirituality in their activities and the name of the group was therefore changed to The Process in 1965. My own impression is there was nothing spiritual about MacLean and essentially she conned the group into becoming her disciples and funding the luxury life-style she and de Grimston craved. Even from Wyllie’s rather misty-eyed account, it is apparent MacLean was a hard-bitten hustler who’d mastered the con game when she was working as a high class London hooker throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.
While Process acolytes panhandled for money and lived in abject poverty, the group rented properties it could barely afford in an attempt to trick the outside world into believing they possessed wealth and power. De Grimston and MacLean were the only Process members to live in style. While de Grimston provided the theology, MacLean was the real power running this cynical money-grabbing hierarchy. Over the years the group expanded and at various times had chapters in Rome, Paris, New Orleans, San Francisco, Munich, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Miami. Chapters were sometimes moved from one city to another, and the membership never seems to have stretched beyond the very low hundreds, although The Process claimed to have tens of thousands of members.
Process theology was based on the unification of opposites, and a reading of the Bible that took Christ’s injunction to ‘love thy enemy’ to mean love Satan. Much of this gnostic garbage was confected in group sessions and then written up by de Grimston, and even Wyllie admits it didn’t read well on the printed page. After an Idris Shah book fell on his head in a Notting Hill bookshop, Wyllie convinced himself that de Grimston and MacLean were disguised Sufi masters, and like other members of the cult was also prone to viewing the latter as a human incarnation of the Goddess! The original core of The Process consisted chiefly of over-privileged and privately educated brats, and it seems to me that much remains to be written about how an upper-class upbringing renders individuals peculiarly susceptible to the brainwashing techniques of religious cults.
The Process fell apart when de Grimston and MacLean ended their marital relationship in 1974. De Grimston attempted to revitalise The Process without success. MacLean led the disciples who stuck with her into The Foundation, which adopted increasingly conventional Christian doctrines before reinventing itself as a secular animal charity called Best Friends. MacLean died in 2005, de Grimston is still alive.
Wyllie’s account of his 15 years with The Process is supplemented by the stories of various other members. The most shocking thing to come out of this is the criminal neglect of children whose parents belonged to the cult. The overall impression I’m left with is that life in The Process was very dull, and you had to be deluded to join it in the first place. The Process memoirs gathered together here also show that those conned by guru-figures are very slow to give up their illusions, and will often attempt to off-set the fact they were ripped-off with the desultory claim they enjoyed some kind of spiritual adventure in ‘the process’.
In addition to these memoirs, this book also contains a selection of unimpressive texts by de Grimston, and a very silly essay by Genesis P. Orridge about how he modelled Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth on The Process. The image section in this tome is rather more interesting, since it illustrates the strong design sense and corporate-style marketing of The Process as a self-consciously totalitarian cult. From Wyllie’s account of the group it is clear why The Process chose to project itself as a totalitarian ‘elite’:
“Mary Ann (cult leader Mary Ann MacLean) never made any apologies, for instance, about having considerable sympathy and respect for the Nazi regime. Doubtless it suited her authoritarian personality. A story I have heard her relate more than once is of her as a small girl of nine or ten, who found herself leaving her physical body and being transported into Hitler’s bunker during World War II. There she would slip around the table in her astral form whispering into the generals’ ears. Whether she ever claimed to observe der Fuehrer’s legendary rages, I don’t recall, but if she had I can only imagine she would have egged him on in his carpet-biting frenzies.” (Page 56).
Elsewhere Wyllie recalls:
“Michael and I stopped in to visit George Lincoln Rockwell, the ‘American Nazi’, out of allegiance to Mary Ann’s interest in extreme ideologies…. Rockwell sat in the only armchair… He looked younger than I thought he was going to be, with a buzz-cut and a surprisingly open, pleasant, face, marred now by a fixed scowl that didn’t leave him while we were there… He had a military bearing but was clearly a frightened man… Later I found out that Lincoln Rockwell was killed in August of 1967 by a disgruntled ex-member of his party and only days after our visit. I should add that Michael is the scion of a wealthy Jewish family and I can only imagine that Mary Ann instructed him to visit Rockwell as a way of testing his mettle…” (Pages 80-81).
Elsewhere in his narrative Wyllie tells tales of counterculture figures like Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman and Simon Vinkenoog, assisting The Process. He also writes about a few of the celebrities the group attempted to shake down for donations; they range from Miles Davis to Salvador Dali. Sadly, he has nothing to say about Funkadelic frontman George Clinton, who okayed the reproduction of Process material on the art work to a couple of his albums. Mostly this is a book about the internal dynamics of The Process and as such it makes for curious but nonetheless extremely depressing reading; it appears that most of the ‘former’ cult members contributing to it are still deluded about their experiences years after the group broke up.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by J. R “Bob” Dobbs on 2009-05-31 13:57:48 +0000
Repent, quit your job, slack off!
Comment by Michael K on 2009-05-31 14:42:51 +0000
Religion is the opium of the masses. I said it first when I fell through a wormhole into the nineteenth-century and this guy with a long beard overheard me and used the line. Plagiarism, it’s a groove sensation baby!
Comment by Paul McCartney on 2009-05-31 15:33:57 +0000
I always thought The Process were a very amatuer outfit when you compared them to something like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation. There’s no comparison really, Maharishi had global reach and impact, whereas Robert de Grimson and Mary Ann MacLean merely attracted a few idiots.
Comment by The Real Tessie on 2009-05-31 17:14:01 +0000
I am, in fact, the reincarnation of Mary Ann MacLean – note my miraculous appearance on MySpace immediately after her death!
Comment by Jorgon Nash on 2009-05-31 17:36:49 +0000
Am I really going to be the first person to point out the similarities between Robert de Grimston and Guy Debord? Compare, for example, the infamous SI tract about are you a genius, to the appeal for money in the Mindbending issue of The Process: “Got a fortune you don’t know what to do with? Got more money than you know how to spend? Want to invest in the ‘End of the World’? THE PROCESS, so they say, is adept at helping people to dissipate their fortunes. Give everything you have to THE PROCESS and you’ll never regret it, not in the next world, nor in what is left of this one. Bullion to be sent carriage paid. Cheques to be made payable to THE PROCESS and sent to 2 Balfour Place, Mayfiar, W1.”
Comment by George Clinton on 2009-05-31 17:36:56 +0000
Maggot brains!
Comment by Darius James on 2009-05-31 17:47:25 +0000
The Funkadelic/Clinton connection with the Process Church of Final Judgement has been a long time fascination with me. It was because of DeGrimston’s linear notes in those early Funkedelic albums that lead to my first contact with the ‘occult underground’ in the form of a blonde 14 yr. old with lovely pear-shaped breasts when I was 15. At the time, I manned the phones on the midnight shift of a hippie-run emergency help-line in New Haven. This service also offered an emergency crashpad in commune; you know, the kind with the fifty lbs. bags of brown rice mixed in with rat pellets. There was even a psychedelic school bus parked out in front. It was funded by the State of Connecticut and Yale’s Dept. of Psychiatry. This was 1970, when Dr. Jose Delgado was head of Yale’s Dept. of Psychiatriy, so I suspect this “community” effort in mental health was also a C.I.A. mind control experiment. Anyway, this young chick shows up at the crashpad in hysteria, babbling some shit about being a witch, green and yellow energies and the Process Church of Final Judgement. Apparently, she had met its members somewhere. It wasn’t clear what happened exactly but she did end up giving everyone in the commune the clap.
From that point on, I penetrated deeper and deeper into the “occult world” over the years. I know everybody from O.T.O. ritualists to cat-gobbling Satanists (what few realize is that the Church of Satan literally began life as a prank to frighten hippies out of a high end San Francisco neighborhood. Needless to say, the prank back fired).
In any case, years later, I had an oppurtunity to interview Pedro Bell for Vibe magazine. Pedro (a.k.a. Reverend Mayhem in the Church of the Subgenius; which I recently realized was a ‘gateway’ religion to a lot of occult groups) was hired by Clinton to produce his peculiar brand of “scartoons” and text for Funkedelic’s album covers and linear notes when it came out of after the Tate/Labianca murders that Manson was involved with the Process Church.
Rumor has it the murders were a result of an unpaid coke debt to a wing of the Process Church. And given Clinton’s legendary consumption of this nostril-rotting substance, its no surprise he might want to disassociate himself from the group.
As I understand it from my talks with producer Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins and Reverend Mayhem, Clinton was attracted to the Process for a few reasons. The Luciferian branch of the church were great fans of Funkedelic and would frequently show up at their gigs, swirling around the dance floor in their hooded robes. They were also known for their orgies (at which Clinton, apparently, was an eager participant). It has also been said “America Eats Its Young” was financed by the Toronto branch of the Process Church. The best and simpliest explaination I’ve heard is this—when Clinton saw members of the Process handing out food to people in poor black communities, he is supposed to have said it was the first time in his life he had even seen white people try and help blacks. I don’t know any of this for sure. This is what I have been able to piece together from the numerous stories I’ve heard. When I approached Clinton with my questions about his involvement with the church, essentially he told me to fuck off. However, when my article on Pedro finally appeared, he proudly waved the issue about during an interveiw on B.E.T. (Black Entertainment Television). Go figure.
Comment by Alex Sanders on 2009-05-31 17:55:03 +0000
Having followed the left-hand path myself for a while, I can assure your readers it is dangerous. Much better to stick with Wicca and white magic!
Comment by Andy Roberts on 2009-05-31 18:05:33 +0000
I’m working on an article, for Fortean Times, on the Process’ time in London, Stewart. Now awaiting the papers from the Charity Commission, to whom they applied for charitable status. The general view of interviewees such as Dave Tomlin, John Michell etc was that they were a bunch of twats and about as frightning as a joss stick. There’s a great photo floating round on the net of Mary Tyler Moore being accosted in sleepy London town by a bearded processian!
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-05-31 19:51:18 +0000
I love The Process’s slogans and attires.
Comment by Hassan-i Sabbah on 2009-05-31 20:01:15 +0000
Everything is true, nothing is permitted.
Comment by Daniel Dunglas Home on 2009-05-31 20:40:11 +0000
Robert de Grimston was a complete fraud, he didn’t even know how to raise the dead!
Comment by Adam Weishaupt on 2009-05-31 20:57:59 +0000
I suspect that neither Robert de Grimston nor his consort Mary Ann MacLean understood the proper organisation of a secret society. Likewise they seem to have known nothing of the anti-gravity devices that enabled me to so impress those I initiated into the Illuminati.
Comment by Darius James on 2009-05-31 20:59:58 +0000
In Tantra, the shakti is the battery that energizes and initiates. It is the shakti, or woman, who, through sexual congress, enables the illumination of the higher consciousness. Tradtionally, in preliminary Tantric ritual, the woman sits on the left; thus, “the left-hand path” (or path of woman). It is nothing more than that. In the erotically charged, trance-like state of Tantric congress, the idea is to reconcile the illusionary polarities of male and female, intergrating these energies into one’s psyche. The only thing black about it is the skin color of the Kalimat. As I suggested before, Satanist of the headbanger garden variety got it wrong. And, oh yeah, before I forget, in our post-racial Obama world, FUCK WHITEY!!!
Comment by Darius James on 2009-05-31 21:01:42 +0000
AND HIS MAGIC!!!!
Comment by Isidore Isou on 2009-05-31 21:17:41 +0000
In recent years cracks in the establishment have appeared in the face of the discoveries of quantum physics, of black holes, dark matter and dark energy. The Royal Society have tried to shore up their defences of Newtonian theories of light and gravity in a variety of ways, most notaby in the quest for the singularity exemplified by CERN. They have found some more successful and malleable than others. Their attempts to manipulate and to assassinate Steven Hawkings is worth mentioning here – and his resistance through channelling the spirit of Galileo. They have recently found Berners-Lee more malleable material.
XIII
Moving on, it is no coincidence that at the same time the G8 start to recolonise Africa and offer plans for the eradication of poverty. They are in reality, plotting the eradication of the working class ie those people who are ‘poor’. This is done through the synthesis of the ruling class of the proletariat and the aristocracy in the body of the bourgeoisie. While religion and godhead was seen as represented through the aristocracy, through a supreme ruler or king, in the bourgeoisie this process is internalised. Therefore the centrality of the bourgeois subject is superimposed over the centrality of the sun. Hence the Light of the World comes to stand in for celestial bodies which spin round in the bourgeois mind. The dome of the human head as a receptacle for light and of consciousness therefore orients human consciousness as located in the mind – the 3rd eye or pineal gland – the so-called seat of consciousness. This is the source of the division of mind and body – humanity is reduced to the human mind. European culture exemplifies this by its world view in locating Europe as centred and north, with USA to the left and Russia to the right. All the neo-colonies are laid out below it just as the human body has become denigrated to socalled intelligence.
XIV
The African, Caribbean and Pacific/European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly (ACP-EU) has grown out of the trade agreements of the European Development Fund (EDF) established at the Treaty of Rome (1957). It was organised in order to retain influence and economic domination over these colonies, as the colonial power of European governments became weaker after the revolutionary drive towards independence of colonies in the mid 20th century. The Yaoundé Convention of 1963 was a neo-colonial convention which enshrined the new form of globalised colonialism. One of its noted innovations was the recognition of national sovereignty to the ACP countries. Thus the notion of sovereignty is extended from the European powers, as enshrined in Europe under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, onto the new neo-colonial states. This date is part of the peak period of the age of messianic divinity and exemplifies the era of the creation of capitalism as a global force.
Comment by Mikhail Bakunin on 2009-05-31 21:18:53 +0000
XCV
Anarchism is the other of government and it is needed just as much as it needs this other. In drawing together the lives of people resisting the government into one point (of 0 dimensions on a 2D plane ) all those using this construction “anarchism”, effectively collaborate in the psychopathic geometry of the bourgeoisie. In believing their own propaganda the praxis of the anarchists of the “black block” confining resistance to Europe, in supposed opposition to European power, in providing a radical other to bourgeoisie government, configures its other as “white” and consolidates white power in relation to the church just as much as to the state (i.e. it draws on European myths of black magic, darkness as satanic and irrational opposed to whiteness as purity, light as divine / reason, enlightenment and fairness.) And despite the left wing of Anarchism’s perceived or superficial opposition to the right wing anarchists such as the National Anarchists etc, given that the state apparatus includes church and international capital, anarcho-nationalism and anarcho-capitalism is essential to anarchist coherence (or integralism) just as much as the anti-religious construction of the life stylist and individualist archetype of the “ANARCH”. The anarch is the sovereign individual and is the manifestation of psychopathic geometry on the body of the human being, i.e. the creation of the psychopath. Here the person is situgraphically reduced to 0-dimensions – a single point. However, these problems are not unique to anarchism. Other political, cultural or Art groups also suffer from this decoherence. The cult of the individual within Totalitarian Art for example serves much the same purpose.
Comment by knjlhnlb on 2009-05-31 21:28:06 +0000
maybe alex is part of the wikka workers…
http://thehighgatevampire.blogspot.com/2009/02/eleven.html
Comment by Darius James on 2009-05-31 21:57:17 +0000
“…While religion and godhead was seen as represented through the aristocracy, through a supreme ruler or king, in the bourgeoisie this process is internalised. Therefore the centrality of the bourgeois subject is superimposed over the centrality of the sun. Hence the Light of the World comes to stand in for celestial bodies which spin round in the bourgeois mind. The dome of the human head as a receptacle for light and of consciousness therefore orients human consciousness as located in the mind – the 3rd eye or pineal gland – the so-called seat of consciousness.”
Fuck “plagiarism”! I’m going to outright steal this shit!
Comment by knjlhnlb on 2009-05-31 22:12:18 +0000
its all yours bro
antisystemic.org/SW/TheEndOfTheAgeOfDivinity-Enkutatach409.pdf
Comment by Darius James on 2009-05-31 22:39:25 +0000
Thanks. This is the perfect fly to put into my own ointment.
Comment by Michael K on 2009-06-01 00:09:22 +0000
At last Home-Boy, a blog that is rockin’! I’ll have me a pinch of that old voodoo too if you don’t mind sah!
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 00:23:09 +0000
We missed you, Isidore.
You are fuckin right, Mikhail. At last you dropped your shameful hipocrisy!
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 00:45:26 +0000
El anarquismo es el otro del gobierno y se le necesita tanto como él mismo necesita a su otro. Al arrastrar las vidas de gente que resiste al gobierno a un punto (de 0 dimensiones en un plano 2D) todos aquellos que usan este constructo “anarquismo”, colaboran efectivamente en la geometría psicopática de la burguesía. Al creerse su propia propaganda, la praxis de los anarquistas del “black block”, confinados a Europa, en una supuesta oposición al poder Europeo, proveen de un otro radical al gobierno burgués y configuran a su otro como “blanco”, consolidando un poder blanco en relación tanto a la iglesia como al gobierno (es decir, bebe de los mitos europeos de magia negra, oscuridad como irracional y satánica en oposición a la blancura como pureza, luz como lo divino/la razón, Ilustración y honradez) Y a pesar de la oposición percibida o superficial de la facción izquierdista del Anarquismo a los anarquistas de derecha, tales como los Nacional Anarquistas, y otros, dado que el aparato de estado incluye a la iglesia y al capital internacional, el anarco-nacionalismo y el anarco-capitalismo es esencial para la coherencia anarquista (o integralismo) en la misma medida que la construcción anti-religiosa del arquetipo estilista de vida e individualista del “ANARCA”. El anarca es el individuo soberano y es la manifestación de la geometría psicopática en el cuerpo del ser humano, esto es, la creación del psicópata. Aquí, la persona es situgráficamente reducida a las 0 dimensiones, un sólo punto. No obstante, estos problemas no son únicos al anarquismo. Otros grupos políticos, culturales o de Arte también sufren de esta decoherencia. El culto al individuo dentro del Arte Totalitario, por ejemplo, también sirve mucho al mismo propósito.
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 01:12:54 +0000
Now that you put that link, knjlhnlb, I remembered that the Belle de Jour article I read time ago, linking it to some dear blogger of ours, was on Uncarved, not on Buzzwords.
When I say Mikhail, by the way, I say YOU Mikhail, the former Young Hegelian rusky aristocrat and professional intriguer, and not you, “Mikhail”, the radical librarian with a special love for kaballah.
Hey, Darius, I already stolen it, and published on my humble blog, but in addition, distorted it a bit with the joys of translation.
This allegedly mind-blowing mumbo-jumbo is in fact blowing the minds of some very unfunny “anarchists” I unfortunately met recently!
Thanks, “Mikhail”!
Comment by knjlhnlb on 2009-06-01 05:52:38 +0000
“poor” bakunin! he needed a psychic workers union after all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Anti-semitism
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-01 08:10:00 +0000
Mr. Home, you mentioned Gen P’s contribution to the book — Thank God the end of the 70’s/early 80’s did away with all such nonsense once and for all ( hopefully ).
People like Gen.P really wasted a lot of impressionable people’s time I think, with all that Manson/pagan/quasi fascist/post Beat/Post Dada shtick he had going.
The end of Punk rock in the late 70’s really left a lot of ( well intentioned, gullible, often bright ) people fairly open to such time wasting nonsense in my view.
I don’t mind Gen’s voice in some tracks, and I do like the “sub Hawkwind” vibe of some of the tracks — but most of Gen’s music is pretty humdrum I’d say.
And I repeat, I do think he wasted a lot of people’s time and energy, and I know of a few quite intelligent but vulnerable people who used Gen’s shtick as an excuse for some cathartic release , whilst in truth, they’d have been better off seeking release or “wisdom” elesewhere.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-01 10:07:29 +0000
Tenebrous — that sums up Gen.P I’d say.
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 10:52:36 +0000
knjlhnlb: I’m going to sink myself in the translation to spanish of that wiki, that I never read before, even if I knew those facts from scattered sources. The wiki pretty much sums it up very well.
The other day, (Friday) I was at the launch of the book “ANARCHISM” at the local Le Monde Diplomatique library. I was there just to disrupt that crap, and had the disgrace of seeing and hearing “young anarchists” with beards yelling that the only true anarchism was anarcho-communism and reclaiming Prince Mikhail as their only Leader!
Then I dropped some situ bullshit and everybody hated me.
Great!
PS: I was once at an old public library, I think it was 1998, and discovered this really old book, pre anarchisms -pop culture fad, that was about Bakuni’s life, and it ended with the letters this wanker wrote to some royalty capo, listing his past “crimes”, naming names and asking for forgiveness and stuff… somebody got more info on that?
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-01 12:03:16 +0000
Rick, the subject matter of your PS is dealt with in passing on the same Wiki page, under the heading ‘Nationalism’:
“The publication of his Confession of 1851, written while a prisoner of the Tsar in the Peter-Paul fortress, was used to attack Bakunin because in it he asked the Emperor for forgiveness for his sins and begged him to place himself at the head of the slavs as both redeemer and father.”
And Howling Wiz – tenebrous is good, but being me i always think of P-orridge as ‘lumpy’….
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 13:27:32 +0000
Yeah! I have to admit that I’m not always on “Close Reading” at 7:30 am when I run out of instant coffee!
Thanks a lot, Stewart!
I still remember fading passages of it on my mind. Would like to read the original text again.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-01 16:14:21 +0000
Rick, you might also pick out some similar stuff from my text Anarchist Integralism, a lot is in the footnotes:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ai.htm
And the footnotes which you can click thru to:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/aif.htm
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 16:40:44 +0000
I read that a lot ago, when it was at the old site, but I’m going to save it again, just in case.
What I also want is the complete Early Works in my hard drive!
Demand the Impossible!
Comment by Situationist Worker on 2009-06-01 18:10:34 +0000
Very glad to see comrades finding The End useful. “Exegesis of the Six Fold Path to Corporeality” still needs work though – particularly in adding African, American, Asian and other nonEuro working/sub/under class praxis in developing hyper/tri/dimensional proletarian praxis that breaks out of the spectacular forcefield… we are currently working with communist sufis in pakistan and also communist kastom magic from the pacific but any other references especially magico-marxist stuff comrades can suggest or indeed re/write into the text please let us know info@antisystemic.org
Comment by knalsknc on 2009-06-01 19:25:46 +0000
hey that anti systemic library action looks like a groove sensation comrade! i remember finding a book called Dali by Dali in a library i was working in once with the following quote:
“I have always been an anarchist and a monarchist at the same time. Let us not forget that two founders of anarchism were Prince Kropotkin and the princely Bakunin. I am, and have always been, against the bourgeoisie. The true cultural revolution would be the reestablishment of monarchistic hierarchies.”
this site also lists the old paedophile Hakim Bey as an Anarcho-Monarchist … http://headwideopen.blogspot.com/2006/05/unjustly-overlooked-ideologies.html
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-01 20:10:48 +0000
Comrades, wellcome to the contradictory and dialectical pleasures of the Reformed Third Position!
Comment by knalsknc on 2009-06-01 21:08:37 +0000
are there national anarchists active in chile then?
Comment by Carlitos El Nahual de Tres Puntas on 2009-06-02 02:01:53 +0000
Not that I know.
I wouldn’t count me on that tent, either. After trying Pinochetism, anti-pinochetism, punk, anarchism, anarcho-punk, atheism, marxism, liberalism, surrealism, budhism, satanism, situationism, DIY terrorism, neoism, muralism, and all kind of retro and avant-gardisms, I would say that, even if I WANT TO BELIEVE with all my heart, I just can’t do it.
What I definetely don’t like is stupid people who believes that “another world is possible”.*
Finally, I’ll stay a very informed Active Nihilist. And will use ANYTHING on my reach to annoy stupid people, also known as suckers, and destroy their passive nihilist beliefs.
🙂
*That is not against anybody on this “forum”, ok?
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-02 02:22:55 +0000
Blimey!
Comment by Michael Roth on 2009-06-02 05:44:38 +0000
Toot toot!
Comment by Christopher Nosnibor on 2009-06-02 08:40:38 +0000
What a bunch of cults…
Comment by Lord Satan Himself live from Chelsea, west London on 2009-06-04 23:45:17 +0000
DeGrimston’s exhortation to his adherents to test themselves in “the fires of
intensity” led Processeans to experiment with all imaginable excesses as a
medium of self-transformation. They formed alliances with groups at the
furthest edges of left-wing and right-wing political extremism, the Hell’s
Angels and other notoriously violent biker clubs; everything and anything, so
long as it evaded and baffled the safe, linear thinking of the Grey Forces. At
a time when pacifist protest against the Vietnam conflict was at its height,
DeGrimston contrarily praised the Satanic virtues of War. Far from courting
the elusive respectability and social acceptance desperately desired (and
almost never won) by most new religions, the Process often went out of its
way to invite deliberate disrepute. Again, we observe the left-hand path
method of maintaining a calculated pariah outcast status, much like
Gurdjieff’s knavish striving to remain malamal (blame-worthy). To this end, the Process very consciously played up its image as a “dangerous cult.” To a
London magazine which had published a negative report on the group, this
sarcastic letter was sent to the editor:
“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.
Comment by Christopher Nosnibor on 2009-06-05 18:22:45 +0000
While on a jaunt to Stirling recently I had some time to kill in Edinburgh between trains. The pubs were yet to open so I took a stroll, although couldn’t go too far from the station as my luggage was a little weighty.
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.
Comment by Adam Parfrey on 2009-06-19 19:57:15 +0000
Darius, thanks for leaving all those unsubstantiated rumors about Process Church’s unalloyed wickedness. Big coke dealers? That’s new to me, and I’ve spent years interviewing more than a dozen ex-members at all levels of the group.
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?
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-19 20:09:30 +0000
Hey Adam, I think you might be missing a lot of humour and jokes in the comments. Besides, most of us – excluding Michael K of course, who is into Scientology – really dig communism! As the publisher of The Process book I think you can feel proud of the discussion you kicked off here.
Comment by danger.fellini on 2009-06-24 20:11:34 +0000
Hi Stewart,
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
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-24 21:04:20 +0000
Hey Fred, you sum it up nicely. I was very aware of TOPY members being used as babysitters in London and Brighton. The sleight-of-hand Old Lumpy used was hilarious. Gen addressing TOPY member: “Will you do something for Thee Temple”. TOPY member: “Yes”. Gen: “Right, you’re babysitting the kids tonight, be round at 7pm sharp, Me and Paula are going out.”
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!
Comment by danger.fellini on 2009-06-25 00:26:20 +0000
“Old Lumpy” !!! That is hilarious. Nobody likes to have LUMPS in their P-Orridge !
Comment by danger.fellini on 2009-06-25 03:33:38 +0000
Here’s a couple of little photo souvenirs for you.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredex23/3659159942/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredex23/3278093910/
Comment by bonnie daves on 2009-11-29 05:23:59 +0000
The PC of the FJ was a truely satanic cult in 1972-73, Minot, ND. Some cult members raised German Sheherds, both for sacrifice and to sell to military people the they hoped to ‘bring into their fold’. One of the members worked at a hospital as an orderly. A woman that had a child there had her keys stolen by him. Five weeks later, the man went into the womans home and smothered her son, leaving her asleep. Then, weeks after that, found her new home and left blood (from breaking a window to get in) on her bed and underclothes he found in a drawer. I pray, to the true Lord, that this dog has already recieved the slaughter he deserves. Maybe even ending like Niki Catsaurus, but with minutes of awareness before death.