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Best Friends and The Process by skepticaltheurgist on Mon 22 Aug 2005 09:49 AM EDT | Permanent Link | Cosmos

In March 2004, the Rocky Mountain

News outed the people running Best

Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab,

Utah, as The Process in its latest

incarnation. The Cone of Silence had

been raised, and the Best Friends

management felt the need to 'fess up.

A few days later, they added a section to

its website, mostly written by Michael

Mountain and giving their own version of

the past. This is still (as of August 2005)

available at http://www.bestfriends.org/

aboutus/oldhistory/intro.htm.

Reading it, I had a strange sense of deja

vu, from around 1969. In that year, the

Sunday Times in England picked up the

story of how in the late 1940s L. Ron

Hubbard, before starting Dianetics and

Scientology, had been involved, magically

and financially, with the rocket fuel

scientist and noted Thelemite, Jack

Parsons. The newspaper had learned

how, after some ritual workings to create

a magical Moonchild, Hubbard took off

with Parsons' girlfriend, a boat they'd all

invested in, and a bunch of cash. It was

classic Fleet Street muckraking at its

salacious best.

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itsdonna - Fri 01 Dec 2006 04:49 PM EST

Grand Spook - Fri 01 Dec 2006 02:57 AM EST

skepticaltheurgist - Wed 29 Nov 2006 09:52 PM EST

andanotherthing - Wed 29 Nov 2006 06:08 PM EST

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Nitroluna

Press Day cartoon by Karimzadeh

Ahmad Batebi

Press Day in Iran

Scientology's response was a glorious

farrago of a letter to the Sunday Times

that began: "Hubbard broke up black

magic in America..." Ron, it turned out

(according to the Church of Scientology,

and quoted in Russell Miller's Bare Faced

Messiah) had been sent in by the U.S.

government to smash up this dangerous

ring of occultists with which Parsons was

involved. Naturally, he succeeded

magnificently. A stolen girlfriend? No,

not at all. "Hubbard rescued a girl they

were using."

In sum, the facts were all covered off. It

was only the truth that was missing in

action.

I recall Michael Mountain (Father Aaron

as he was in the 1970s) as a charming

man who was often irreverent, and fun to

be around. The Best Friends account of

the early days shows he still has the

ability to charm, even if, as with the C of

$ story about Hubbard, the truth and the

facts have some distance between them.

It might be unfair to critique details

almost 40 years after the events

happened, but I feel otherwise. When

someone publishes 8,000 words of well-

spun baloney, a theurgically (and

otherwise) skeptical person like myself

can't resist teasing it a little.

The primary fiction is that The Process

consisted of a bunch of 1960s counter-

cultural seekers, consensually choosing a

bohemian, back-to-nature lifestyle. No-

one who left England for the Bahamas in

1966, then went on to the Yucatan and

Xtul was arguing about it, but the cult-

like nature of the group is carefully

erased in Mountain's description. Does












Marjane Satrapi

Home

anyone recall the alliterative headlines in

the British press about "The

Mindbenders of Mayfair"? Only me, it

seems. But then, back before I joined, I

collected all this coverage religiously.

And while Robert De Grimston is airily

dismissed as "the so-called 'Teacher' of

The Process, who had written a number

of books and was becoming well known

in academic and theological circles," his

wife Mary-Ann (see Mary-Ann's photo

and Moon Unseen, from June 2005)

remains "She Who Must Not Be Named".

The Goddess of The Process, its core, is

unmentioned in its own published

history.

And so it goes on. What, us spread

Robert's teachings all over Europe and

North America? All of us wear the Cross

and the Goat of Mendez on our chests or

collars? Go out every day and sell those

books by the "so-called Teacher"? Musta

been some other guys, or some other so-

called Teacher.

Even when I was in The Process (1970-

72), the legends around Xtul, "The Place

of Miracles" were being embroidered. An

abandoned salt factory became a Mayan

ruin, for example. Away from their

civilised backgrounds, but living still in a

soup of heightened consciousness, people

had let their inner barriers drop and

insights, synchronistic happenings and

visions came in plenty. The primal

presences or psychological realities called

the Gods of The Process made themselves

felt.

Beyond that blanket statement, or

something like it, I doubt anyone today

could give a fair account of the weeks and

months spent at Xtul. The three ex-





members whom I've interviewed all give

varying stories.

Mountain's account adds a fresh spin. As

the group came to Xtul, he says, they

encountered an old man who "just smiled

and said, 'Es para vosotros,' ('It is for

you.') And he waved good-bye and

continued on down the trail."

Neat - except, as anyone who's learned

Spanish finds out, "vosotros" as a second-

person plural form is today used nowhere

in Latin America, only in Spain itself.

Later, the same man appeared, Mountain

says, as The Process were all pulling out.

"'You are leaving,' he said. 'But one day

there will be another place for you. It is a

beach without an ocean. And the sand is

all red. And there are animals. Muchos

animales.' "For someone who had never

seen red rock canyons and the pink sands

that go with them, it was a fair enough

description of Angel Canyon, the future

home, 20 years later, of Best Friends

Animal Society."

Not bad. I just can't find anyone who was

at Xtul but left the group who remembers

a thing about that 'prophecy'. Zip - or

rather, nada.

Mountain's aim, it seems, and that of the

other members who wrote this story, is to

make it plain that everything before

caring for animals was just prologue, or a

youthful exuberance. There was, he

notes, a Christian ministry phase of

helping other people, as indeed there was

- after a Christ-and-Satan phase of that,

plus a neo-Jewish one, neither of which is

mentioned. Animal welfare was the

direction in which things were guided.



"The animals were beginning to take

over! For many of us, they'd always really

been our passion. And when a few of us

got together one evening at the ranch to

talk about what next and where next, we

were all feeling that it was time to devote

ourselves to that true passion."

I can't say this is wholly false. Brits (the

remaining core leadership group is

mostly British) are famously dotty about

dogs and animals generally, and She Who

Must Not Be Named always had strong

feelings about cruelty to animals. What

decent human doesn't? But to claim

animal welfare was the central concern in

that first crazy decade spent as The

Process? Or for The Foundation during

much of the second? Back then, the End

of the World and redemption therefrom

overrode all other ideological messages,

even if anti-vivisection was a cause we

intermittently embraced.

As noted elsewhere on this blog, I had a

remarkable experience out of it all,

though the group's most austerely head-

messing phase was over when I joined.

I'm not the only ex-member with mixed

but still fond memories of the

community, the sense of inner calm and

purpose, and the humour we brought to it

all. It's impossible to tell today from the

teachings available on-line, but The

Process could be fun, and very funny. You

needed to accept the premise of the joke -

humanity's utter absurdity - but that

done, a lot of things about life came to

seem less tragic. Perhaps the absence of

such candid detachment about the past is

what saddens me here.

Best Friends, clearly, is a well-run

operation, however much its location



miles from any cities compromises its

mission. It's an honest endeavour even if

it does support the aging remnant of a

failed cult. We all gotta live, and the BF

operation pulls its own weight.

The roots of my own main beef date back

to a visit four years ago, when I briefly

reconnected with some of the people I'd

known three decades before. What I

found was that it was all just like

Mountain's story would later turn out to

be. The "P word" was not mentioned at

all, and almost nobody would share any

personal stories or opinions unless they

involved saving or helping animals.

Had anyone learned anything spiritually?

Well, everyone was much happier now

than before. What did people feel it was

all about, that wild Gnosticism, that

fervent preaching about an End that

never came? Well, it had been a long

journey for everyone. What wisdom had

they all learned? We need to be less cruel

to animals. And so on.

I drove out of that beautiful Utah canyon

frustrated at feeling stonewalled, with my

conception of shallowness permanently

redefined. I've not been back. Other ex-

Processeans do visit and maintain

friendships, but I couldn't be bothered to

go again.

Do they, under their neo-Romulan

cloaking device, yet have some kind of

wisdom, the way we did, or felt we did, 30

years ago? They won't say in Angel

Canyon. All who stayed surrendered their

personal histories for a distorted

collective one.

From Scientology, The Process borrowed

the idea that all life consists of games,



played as parts of larger collective games,

and all ultimately part of a cosmic Game

of the Gods. A personal game might be: I

am always ill; or, I will make $15-million

in real-estate then find my kids hate me;

or I will struggle for human rights.

Regardless of the circumstances or

activities involved, they're all about

gaining knowledge; about experiencing

all things that are possible to experience.

In visiting Kanab, after an hour, I could

almost say "Yes, I remember you" in

exactly the same, affect-less manner

everyone I met used. I had three different

people apologise to me spontaneously for

what had been done to me in the past - all

of them in a slightly beaten-dog tone, and

using the same sequence of words. I'd

gone in high anticipation, and without

any grievance or hurt to air, but I came

away with one.

It was all supposed to be about accepting

our own reality in its fullness, and thus

open to God. The modus operandi today

has become a sweet, well-intended

deception that seems to have lost what

spiritual truth or honesty was once

present. Best Friends is, as any ex-

member can see, not a rejection of the

structure of The Process or The

Foundation, but a continuation. The

sadness I feel is that while the externals

have changed, the core game is the same

as it ever was: a bunch of people believing

they are an Elect of some kind, grouped

around an aging avatar, very aware of

human motivations yet hopelesly blind

about their own. Saving animals is the

latest version of this, and a nice one, but

at bottom, it's just another game.

The animals, I've heard it said, are a

major comfort for the dozen or so



remaining Processeans (most people at

Kanab were never involved in the original

group). Animals' natural dignity and

unaffected joy are easily superior to the

human animal's meaner nature. For

someone who has spent 40 years tied to a

cult, that must be reassuring. Personally,

I'm grateful, regardless of whatever

regrets and disappointments I've

accumulated, that I can tell my own story,

and don't have to follow a cultic party line

nor distort my own memories to comply

with one.

I wish the Kanabians were able to do that.

Instead, they still feel compelled to diss

their former associate, Robert, like

Stalinists dumping on Trostky, and to

pretend that so many years of their

earlier lives were a mere bohemian

misadventure. It shows that, rather than

seeing and accepting those years clearly,

and truly moving on, they are endlessly

perpetuating them.

Oh well. The dogs and cats, at least,

clearly appreciate it. Give 'em that.

Keywords: Kanab, history, Friends, Best

Posted to: The Process

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skepticaltheurgist :: Obituary - Mary-Ann


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Obituary - Mary-Ann by skepticaltheurgist on Wed 30 Nov 2005 04:05 PM EST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Mary-Ann De Peyer died on November 14,

2005. She had reportedly been in a comatose

state for two years prior to her death.

She was best known as Mary-Ann De

Grimston, when she was the co-founder and

the primary driving force behind The Process

- Church of the Final Judgement. After her

husband, Robert De Grimston, was ousted in

1974, and she and Robert divorced, she

continued as the effective, though concealed,

leader of the group, which for some years was

called The Foundation Faith of God.

During the past two decades, she was known

as Mary-Ann De Peyer after her marriage to

Gabriel De Peyer, who appears to have taken

on the mantle of spiritual direction of the

inner group at the Best Friends animal

sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is the

ultimate successor to The Process (www.

bestfriends.org), although most of its staff

and supporters have no connection with its

earlier forms or original belief system.

See other posts in the thread on The Process

for more information on her and her life.

Keywords: MaryAnn, obituary, Mary, Ann

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Re: Obituary - Mary-Annby Anonymous on Sun 12 Feb 2006 01:03 PM EST | Permanent Link

Re: Obituary - Mary-Ann by "GrandSpookofLowerBohemia" on Sat 11 Feb 2006 07:47 AM EST | IP: 67.5.149.47 Hecate's Obituary: The Undead Do Not Die Hecate lives!

Yes, Hecate lives and has sent her legions to collect her hell hounds, as the paper registry of her previous incorporation lay rotting in a dirty lake that once was New Orleans.Yes, senior members of the Process Church have together returned to the world stage to do the work of Hecate.Yes, they have been doing the work of Hecate for many years now. I was able to observe them just after Katrina, as they appeared in Louisiana, so deeply engaged and giddy about their new assignment, that with total indifference they stepped over the supine bodies of humans pleading for assistance and then with the quickness of a fast moving storm, collected all the abandoned and lost animals and disappeared into the darkness of a decimated city. Yes, Hecate lives! LONG LIVE HECATE! Leland Cole "Grand Spook of Lower Bohemia" William S Burroughs 1989

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Re: Re: Obituary - Mary-Annby John on Tue 07 Nov 2006 02:05 PM EST | Permanent Link

OK. That was an interesting response to the obituary of Mary-Ann... Stepping over the bodies of people? Um, I don't think so... Anyway... Sometimes I hoped that there would be some kind of reconcilliation













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between MA and everyone... Thanks for the posts... John / Albany

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Re: Re: Re: Obituary - Mary-Annby Grand Spook on Fri 01 Dec 2006 01:38 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Grand Spook Replies Dear John of Albany, I think you have forgotten something. The writer Alan W.Watts once said ,that the human brain has a device known as the "forgetery"- a device so powerful that it can reconstruct memory, or even fully eliminate it. So then, let us both remember the way things really were. 'If we are part of humanity, identified with humanity, in sympathy with humanity, we are doomed. If we attempt to save humanity from its doom, we shall fail, because humanity has chosen its doom and has shown its unwillingness to reverse its choice.Our only valid course of action is to detach from humanity, climb out of the quagmire of its lies, its hypocrisy, its blind desire for its own destruction, find our own truth and create our own destiny."Robert De Grimston So John of Albany, 'step over human bodies' indeed! That is exactly what happened and why not, for the way things were remain the way things are. Humanity is the devil! LONG LIVE HECATE & HER ANIMALS

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skepticaltheurgist :: The Process' Satan


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The Process' Satan by skepticaltheurgist on Mon 30 Jan 2006 09:13 AM EST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Satan, The Process taught, was the receiver

of transcendent souls and corrupted bodies.

He represented the extremes: the desire to

rise above all flesh, all mental strife, and

become a free soul, a pure spirit, a master of

space and time; or to sink down into an

oblivion of drugs, alcohol, or downright

madness to escape the pain of living in a

bewildering, chaotic and often loveless

world.

It was the special insight of The Process to

identify Satan as the Love of God. Not the

healing, accepting love of the Processean

Christ, but a pure love that transcended all

human need, fear or resistance. At least, that

was the theory as far as the Upper End of

Satan was concerned.

My own firm belief is that The Process never

came to terms with its Satan. Its failure in

this regard is, I suspect, the reason it has

attracted such ferociously negative publicity

as a 'Satanic' group. What it could not

accept, despite its articulate protests to the

contrary, it had thrown back in its face.

The Gods of The Process emerged primarily

at Xtul, the Yucatan site where the group's

theology arose from its existing post-

Scientology gnosticism in 1966. Jehovah, the

Old Testament God of Battles, came in quite

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soon, reflecting in part the demanding

harshness of the back-to-nature lifestyle.

Jehovah's complement Lucifer followed,

perhaps reflecting the tropical lushness of

the place, as well as a reaction to the hungry

struggle to survive in Xtul. Hurricane Inez,

mosquitoes, lousy diet and the exaggeration

of personal psychological dilemmas in the

spiritually charged atmosphere of the group

mind, all conspired to underline the

presence of Jehovah, and thus the necessity

for Lucifer's balance of.

Satan was a difficult kettle of fire. The group

didn't even admit to his existence publicly

until a year later. This was, I suspect, not so

much that it was trying to conceal him, as

that it didn't have a handle on what its Satan

was about.

The Process had begun as Compulsions

Analysis, an alternative psychotherapy

offered to early 1960s London, at a time

when huge social change was brewing. This

was largely the pre-psychedelic, pre-Sgt.

Pepper, pre-hippie era, but the forces that

broke out later in the Summer of Love were

gathering. Other leaders might have steered

The Process onto a more mystical road, but

Mary-Ann was not a contemplative, and

Robert was an architect, a man to whom

structures were a way of life. They stayed

with a psychotherapeutic model for years,

and thus maintained a bias towards the

mind and ideas.

In Processean theology, Jehovah is the half

of the mind, both cosmically and in each of

us, that carries images of the soul. He

demands sacrifice, work, struggle,

persistence. Lucifer is the opposite, and

encompasses all the mind 's images of the

body. He requires beauty, liberation, sensual

fulfilment. The urges each of these two

represent are not actual spirituality or

physicality, not transcendence or gross













physicality per se, but the ideas, the

conception, of each.

Until the end of 1969, the presence and

character of Jehovah were predominant. The

Process was severe in image, dignified in an

almost sinister way, and altogether projected

a darkly charismatic austerity around itself.

It refused the idea of compromise, even

though its official and private perspectives

shifted constantly.

Jehovah's dominance though, was tacit.

Nobody admitted Jehovah was in charge

until a 'Game change' was sensed at the end

of 1969 when a bunch of people, mostly

young Americans, suddenly joined the group

in London. The Process worked in response

to signs, or at least Mary-Ann's

interpretation of events-as-signs, and from

then until the whole thing collapsed in

spring 1974, Lucifer was the officially

dominant God. And so the group expanded,

striving to grow far more than it could. We

did all kinds of social work, we all smiled a

lot, and we burned through quite a bit of

cash as well as burning out more than a few

of our members, myself included.

Satan's Game was officially scheduled to

start later, around 1977. Revisionists say he

came in early and was the force behind the

1974 Schism, but that is, I'd argue, a way of

putting a theological face on a down and

dirty slug-fest between the two divorcing

founders.

The truth is, The Process never did accept

Satan, because it couldn't. Its basic

paradigm was of the mind and its structures.

The Processean Satan, by nature, was too

volatile to be contained within Mary-Ann's

need for a tight organisation, or Robert's

visionary theorising.

In BI 19, Robert laid out the basic scheme of



The Process' theology. It derived in part

from mediumistics, the system of working

with levels within ourselves, each of which

had a specific identity and character. These

identities coincided (Robert and Mary-Ann

insisted) with a fourfold format

corresponding to a soul, a Jehovah-mind

personality, a Lucifer-mind personality and

the mundane consciousness, which was

identified as the physical, outer self. There

were also other entities within us, but these

were the primary elements.

Satan, in BI 19, was the God of the primal

spark of being, which Robert (contrary to

other thinkers and writers, like St. John of

the Cross) called the soul. On both the

macro-level and the personal level, this soul

created a body so that it could play a Game;

or at least have something with which to

hold a dialogue. Both the body and the soul

were viewed as being different 'ends' of

Satan.

The problem was, the soul is perpetually

antagonistic to the body. The soul wants

purity and at the least a clear view of the

Ultimate, while the body wants to eat, drink

and party. The soul in fact wants to get rid of

the body, as the body wants to be rid of the

soul. In the context of the times, a Jim

Morrison or a Jimi Hendrix or a Janis Joplin

overdosing was doing something Satanic:

but was it a soul trying to ditch its limiting

body, or a body trying to lose its restrictive

soul? Or both at once?

Anyway, to buffer this primal antagonism,

the being comprising this sublime Satan-

soul and profane Satan-body created an

interface, the mind. One half contained the

urges and imagery of the soul (Jehovah), the

other the urges and imagery of the body

(Lucifer).

The Process had a selection of ways to



address this mental universe and the

dichotomies it produced. But it had almost

no purely spiritual techniques beyond

simple meditation on a set theme, the

mediumistics exercises mentioned above

and a lot of work done with various forms of

telepathy and psychic empathising. It had

little in the way or ritual and ceremony, nor

any formal forms of invocation and

evocation.

Interaction with life moment-by-moment

was seen as enough of a spiritual

methodology, rather in a Zen or Chasidic

fashion, and this worked to a certain extent.

Our going out onto the street with

magazines every day was our main and

ongoing encounter with God, where we

learned about who we were from the

encounters we had, good and bad, and

discovered how to communicate our

particular spiritual light to those open to

listen and receive it.

But that still left us with a conceptual or

mental spiritual vision. We had our intense

moments, our occasionally vibrant contact

with each other and outsiders, and we had a

vision of what we hoped would come to pass.

But there was no method available to break

through a certain ceiling of thought and

ideation to a mystical perspective. In fact,

Mary-Ann feared such experiences in her

followers because they could lead them away

from dependence on her and the Processean

cultic structure. And our Christ-in-waiting,

Robert, couldn't be outflanked by anyone

having visionary ecstasies or realisations of

Oneness beyond his own idealised

explanations.

So, while we preached the Unity of Christ

and Satan ad nauseam (at least, I was

personally near nausea towards the end), we

simply weren't at a point where the reality of

those two Beings, let alone their Unity, could



be grasped. We came close at times, but

mystical illumination is not a game of near

misses. Combine that, as noted above, with

Mary-Ann's trepidation around independent

spiritual growth in others, and the problem

becomes clear. We couldn't have a fully

realised Christ, and we weren't about to

explore the significance of a realised Satan.

That would have involved too much personal

experimentation and an increase in private

freedoms. For a tight little cult, it would

been collective suicide, whatever protests we

uttered to the contrary.

Few outsiders saw the problem, since our

overall performance was pretty cool. But

increasingly, our growing number of critics,

who were tired of being pestered on the

streets, began picking at our weak spot.

When Ed Sanders (see post Ed Sanders)

decided we had influenced Charles Manson

and his followers, he created a lie that still

seems plausible to people today. Our Satan

was not redeemed and united with our

Christ, but latent and indigestible within the

cult that professed to have the lowdown on

the Great Lord S. The irony was that, not

only did we have nothing to do with Charlie

and his murderous mayhem, but that

despite a few tentative moves towards

addressing the Lower-End Satanic side of

sex behind closed doors, The Process was

unable to express or release Satan to any

significant degree.

Or, to put it in specifically Processean terms,

we couldn't realise the Upper End of Satan,

and remained without the fulfilling power of

Love. We were a would-be

psychotherapeutic organisation, and as such

essentially bound within our Jehovah-

Lucifer mindset, even if we were talking

about Christ and Satan. Like other people

with an apparently nice, rounded view of the

universe, we were in fact stuck inside an



angular box we'd created.

Christ, of course, was the Unifier in the

Processean system, and as such the

necessary means of bringing the two ends of

Satan back together. But Christ in The

Process was also problematic.

The Gods were seen as distinct, but they

were best known through those whose God-

patterns they informed. People were born

with their patterns - there was no conscious

choice, or philosophically based decision

involved, despite some writers' statements to

the contrary. All of us came into the world

with dominant attributes from either Satan

or Christ (the 'ex-mind' parts of our pattern)

and from either Jehovah or Lucifer (the

mind-based parts). Our Christians were seen

as unifiers, but also, among a group of other

characteristics, felt weak, with a sense of

hollowness inside. The Christian tended to

lean on the intellect, the emotion-starved

'martyred body of Christ'. The very need to

balance and to unify, to be a conciliator,

often disarmed the Christian when faced

with the generally greater emotional effects

of the Satanist. The situation was not viewed

as hopeless - its resolution in the Unity of

Christ and Satan was our core assertion to

the world - but while this Unity was taken as

being present on both a very fundamental

level and more or less within The Process

itself, it was acknowledged to be lacking

from 'the world'.

The same problem, then, was present with

Christ as with Satan. We had a

psychologically based praxis that just

couldn't stretch far enough to embrace its

own theory. We were perpetually in a

feedback loop, waiting for the intrusion of

grace to trigger the final ending of the

human nightmare and the New Beginning.

Except even grace was a suspect notion,

because we were a structured cult that could



only accept such things passing from the

leadership through to the masses. A Catholic

perspective, for example, where saints are

seen as holier than most bishops or Popes,

was not possible.

So, eventually, it all blew up. Satan, the

power of separation, succeeded in the wrong

way, and The Process splintered into Mary-

Ann's core group, which became initially The

Foundation and, finally the leadership of

Best Friends; and a number of Processean

revival groups that never did more than talk,

quote Robert, and hold very occasional

ceremonies. I would also include in the

splintering a bunch of misconceptions about

the entire business that won 't ever go away,

because The Process was not just its

membership and our beliefs, but the effects

we created and finally disowned.

There was, in The Processean Satan, a drive,

a sense of transcendence. When we became

Acolytes, the first step in belonging, we were

given an exercise in spiritual contact

wherein it was explained to us that Satan

drew out fear as Christ drew out guilt. We

should thus confess our sins to Christ, and

our fears to Satan. I personally found this

exercise, simple as it was, one of the most

affecting experiences The Process offered

me, and the Satanic portion was what did

this. For a few minutes each time, I stepped

beyond my own fear.

At the end of the channelled Processean text

Satan on War, Satan says:

I am the epitome of both death and life. I

am the body in the depths of dark

depravity, and I am the soul in the heights

of sublime spiritual ecstasy. The legions of

the damned are of Me, as is the great

company of archangels. And when the

bonds of matter hold Me no more, then shall

I and My people, My Army, My legions, all



My followers, rise from the depths of the

blackness of the Pit and transcend the stars.

I am the body and the soul of man. Whilst

the Fiend of the body is enslaved by the

fearful mind, the soul is imprisoned. Only

when the Fiend is released can the soul be

free.

I still find this provocative even today,

despite Satan's very English choice of words

like 'whilst', and an occasional clunking

cliche. (The whole text can be found at

URLURLURLURL) Yet The Process

understood that this perspective was only

one part of the truth, one aspect of the

possibilities, and that a supernal balance

was necessary. What it failed to understand,

I think, was that the fear and mistrust it

inspired in so many people was a direct

reflection of its own repressed doubt of its

ability to direct or contain that Fiend.

It simply never found the means to voyage to

the Star of its own vision.

*****************************

The concept of the Unity of Christ and Satan

was, in the end, just that - a concept. Yet it is

essentially familiar territory to many

gnostics, tantrics, Qabalists, Dzogchen

practitioners and others. For myself, looking

at it all nearly four decades later, I'm still

seeking the inner - and outer - reconciliation

that would be the realisation of that Unity.

Thelema was something that put me off for a

very long time, because it seemed too

Satanic, in the specifically Processean sense

of the term. And some Thelemites I've met

confirm that impression. "I have crushed an

Universe; and nought remains," says Ra-

Hoor-Khuit in verse 72 of Chapter III of the

Book of the Law. I've met Thelemites who

find that expression exhilarating enough on



the most superficial terms that they make no

effort to look deeper into its significances.

There is another verse in the same chapter,

verse 35, that speaks of "The half of the word

Heru-ra-ha, called Hoor-paar-kraat and Ra-

Hoor-Khut." Like much of the Book, this is a

highly concise expression, in this case of a

spiritual formula that contains both a

receptive (Hoor-paar-kraat) and dynamic

(Ra-Hoor-Khut) aspect to the "visible object

of worship" mentioned in verse 22.

Robert and Mary-Ann doubtless read the

Book of the Law at some point. Robert

especially looked into all sorts of spiritual

material; though I seriously doubt he

understood much of this text. He spoke a lot

about significance and symbols, but I

wonder how much he truly grasped of

spiritual symbolism and its many levels.

It would be a gross over-simplification to say

that the Book of the Law is 'about' the same

notion as the Unity of Christ and Satan. It is

a compendium of wisdom that, in my view,

goes far beyond what The Process could or

did say and teach. But I believe that The

Process was, quite unconsciously, one of

very many efforts that have attempted to

realise what the Book announced: a new

Aeon that is based around a liberating

spiritual awakening, and a remaking of the

world we have known.

The Process blew it, of course. Thelema

began as just such a cult, built around the

person of Aleister Crowley, but it has grown

into something far healthier - a movement -

which inevitably develops its own checks

and balances. By its own lights, it is

essentially compelled to assist every questor

in his or her Grail-quest, and there are

clearly Thelemites around who have attained

to realisations about which The Process

could only fantasise.



But I remain grateful that I did spend those

few years in or around the mind-world of

Jehovah+Lucifer; and that I was granted a

few hints of the realm that Christ+Satan

might offer. I respect those who find that

whole set-up bizarre or merely inept, for I

sometimes agree; but I believe that if we are

going to take a sorrowful mis-step, as I did,

it might as well be a big enough one to be

truly educational.

"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy;

that all the sorrows are but as shadows;

they pass & are done; but there is that

which remains." (Book of the Law, II, v. 9).

Keywords: Satan, Process, Lucifer, Jehovah, Christ


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Muddied streams by skepticaltheurgist on Tue 29 Jan 2008 04:17 PM EST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

The Process was an ephemeral fringe

movement that, largely because of a couple

of seedy authors’ conspiratorial

speculations about Charles Manson and

his group, has had a second life as an

internet punchbag. It was started using a

bunch of practices derived from

Scientology, along with concepts of Alfred

Adler taken from his theories on the

inferiority complex. Over time, it absorbed

inputs from various gnosticisms and

schools of enlightenment, to create a

system that was rich in explication and

psychological insight, and rather poor, I

feel, in realised spirituality. Old-timers tell

me Adler’s ideas were very prominent in

the early days. I accept this, while finding

far more of Scientology’s approach in its

worldview than that of Adler’s variant form

of Freud’s thinking. Both groups though,

had, as a key assumption, the notion that

by illuminating the knots in the mind, a

form of illumination could be achieved.

The Process spoke rather vaguely of

detachment from the mind as its goal for

the individual, and avoided the heavily

stratified systems of grading Hubbard

preferred for Scientology. It also better

accepted that we have ups and downs, and

no stable state of mind is lasting. Over

time, it developed its mythos of universal

existence being a laboratory or theatre for

a cosmic Game being played between its

four Gods. This compares with Hubbard’s

space opera featuring Xenu the evil cosmic

mastermind traumatising us all in a

volcano and through nuclear explosions.

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This blog seeks to examine the various kinds of changes happening in our world as the 'Thelemic current,' the immense change initiated in 1904, gradually transforms human consciousness, individually and collectively.

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Page 1 of 5skepticaltheurgist :: Muddied streams

2/5/2008http://skepticaltheurgist.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/1/29/3494259.html

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Skeptical Theurgist may be contacted at: [email protected]

The Processean view, while simplistic and

often over-rationalised, still strikes me as

psychologically more viable than

Hubbard’s Flash Gordon-esque fantasies.

Books such as Russell Miller’s biography

Bare-Faced Messiah or Jon Atack’s rather

better A Piece of Blue Sky have kept alive

the story of how Jack Parsons, Aleister

Crowley’s scientist-follower in California,

worked briefly with Hubbard on a

Thelemic magical enterprise in the 1940s.

Both books, tediously, perpetuate the idea

that Crowley was “a black magician” (why,

precisely?) who saw himself as the

AntiChrist, rather than recognising his

perspective was fundamentally post-

Christian. Similarly, the name Babalon, a

spelling deriving from Crowley’s work with

the Enochian magical system, is muddled

with the Babylon of Revelations. Atack

even says Babalon is the same thing as the

Beast, presumably having misinterpreted

the Thelemic formula, Babalon and the

Beast conjoined.

Whatever. The workings took place, and

while Hubbard left with some of Parsons’

cash as well as his girlfriend, he also took

with him a much enhanced understanding

of magical and hermetic philosophy.

Although he later protested Scientology

has affinities with eastern religions, it is at

odds with these in key ways. For example,

it rejects what Hubbard called “join

nirvana,” seeing Buddhist and Yogic forms

of enlightenment as sinkings into

unconsciousness.

“We are Scientologists,” he wrote in April

1963. “We won't fall into the abyss. And we

won't join Nirvana. We have meters and a

map. We know the rules and the way.”

The reference to the abyss is also

intriguing, since crossing (not falling into)

the Abyss is a key stage in Qabalistic

practice, akin to attaining enlightenment.

Dualistic thinking fundamentally changes

in someone reaching that point.

From hermeticism, Hubbard adapted the

four classical elements into matter (earth)

energy (fire), space (air) and time (water),

the four forming the acronym MEST, a



term used to describe material existence.

Perhaps more important, he took the

concept of the Knowledge and

Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,

whereby everyday or material

consciousness is stilled and vastly

expanded by emerging spiritual awareness,

and equated it to a state he called Clear.

The subsequent grades of Operating

Thetan, of which eight are formally

marketed in Scientology, parallel the

notion of the sub-grades of adeptship and

the supernal grades in the hermetic

systems.

Traditional gnostic systems see souls as

having been enticed or tempted, or simply

falling into, material existence. Thelema is

less pessimistic, regarding existence rather

as an ecstatic plunge into the world of

form. The 24th verse of Chapter Two of its

primary text, the Book of the Law, says:

Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there

are also of my friends who be hermits. Now

think not to find them in the forest or on

the mountain; but in beds of purple,

caressed by magnificent beasts of women

with large limbs, and fire and light in their

eyes, and masses of flaming hair about

them; there shall ye find them.

But both Scientology and The Process

viewed our initial participation in

incarnate existence as a deliberate choice,

a searching for a huge game to play.

Significantly, given the two groups’ need to

control their members, neither

organisation opted for mystical ecstasy as

its summum bonum preferring a more

world-focused perspective. The Process

saw humanity’s game as winding down

towards a catastrophic climax, while

Scientology sees us as caught in a mesh of

implanted or acquired lies from which we

must struggle to rescue ourselves.

What the two cults took in common was an

attitude of focused determination. Where

Crowley spoke of ‘energised enthusiasm,’

Hubbard insisted on the virtues of

certainty as a condition of mind; The

Process adopted a Scientology usage,

‘intention,’ as in telling someone out

raising cash on the street, “Put some



intention into it.” All three derive, by direct

or devious routes, from the Thelemic

concept of True Will, the essential vitality

and raison d’etre that operates in and

through each of us.

Thus, if you watch a Scientology

spokesperson on TV, you will see an

attitude of crisp affirmation. Tom Cruise,

for example, never expresses doubt; being

in a condition of doubt is a serious failing

in Scientology.

Similarly, in The Process, we learned not to

be affected by challenges or hostile

questioning, seeing this as a means of

channeling our positive message. We also

used the Scientology expression, “Don’t

become the effect of someone,” so that we

didn’t “go into agreement” with a critic

such as a born-again Christian (or a

Scientologist) we met while out selling

literature. Though, while we would have

denied it fiercely, we were not being true to

ourselves, but to a collective attitude and

collective consciousness.

While I have nostalgic moments about The

Process, increasingly I see it as less than

wonderful, even if it never did the harm

Scientology has. The Anonymous online

attacks this past weekend were a protest

against Scientology’s penchant for stifling

all its critics, where The Process adopted

the principle of “resist not evil” toward its

own foes.

But I have to acknowledge that both

movements tried to embody the quest for

self-realisation and expression of the

individual True Will. Where the postulant

to a Thelemic order goes through a process

of magically triggered experiences that

slowly tease out various personality traits

for inspection, people in Scientology and in

The Process were put through a form of

psychotherapy to accomplish the same

end.

While for many years I accepted the

mainstream view of Aleister Crowley as

dysfunctionality incarnate, I finally

realised that in The Process I’d

encountered an ember of the torch he lit.

Despite its tendency to enmesh itself in its



own verbalisations, and ignore serious

spiritual questing, The Process did rectify

some of the wrong turns the Thelemic

impulse took in Hubbard’s slippery hands.

It was unconsciously recognising my old

affiliation in Thelema that led me past my

own reluctance to engage Crowley, and

recognise his maddening but inescapable

genius. Whatever the failings of these two

bastard children of his life’s work, I’m not

the only person who has found them to

indicate, at least, a source of water from a

far purer spring.

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