An excerpt from Dave McGowan’s wonderful book, “Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder” :
Chapter 12
Satan’s Family Tree
“The Devil can get into people and cause them to do things they
wouldn’t do otherwise.”
—Herbert Mullin, speaking to a Bible study class
In New York City in 1875, Madame Helena Petrovina Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society, an occult-based group that survives to this day and that supplied much of the ideology of Hitler’s Third Reich. Over the course of the next decade-and-a-half, Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine,
two literary works that have proven to be hugely influential with many succeeding generations of modern Satanists and white supremacists. As author Peter Levenda has written, Blavatsky “popularized the notion of a spiritual struggle between various ‘races,’ and of the inherent superiority of the ‘Aryan’ race, hypothetically the latest in the line of spiritual evolution.”
This belief in Aryan supremacy was echoed by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who during the same timeframe posited the existence of an ‘Aryan Superman’ and advocated racial
genocide. Nietzsche’s work was also liberally borrowed from by the architects of Nazi Germany.
One of Blavatsky’s most devout followers was instrumental in introducing to Western Europe the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This notorious document, which more-or-less accurately identified the existence of an ultra-secret cabal bent on global domination and the subjugation of the world’s people, identified
this game-plan as a grand Jewish conspiracy, thereby fueling the rabid anti-Semitism that served to stabilize the fascist states of Europe. Blavatsky also wrote of the importance of ancient alphabets, particularly what are referred to as ‘runes.’ Many of these runes would later show up prominently in the symbolism
of the Nazi Party, including the SS lightning bolts and the swastika, which had been identified by Blavatsky as having supreme occult significance.
With the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, Blavatsky was essentially being passed the torch by Abbe Alphonse-Louis Constant, who died that same year. Better known in occult circles as Eliphas Levi, Constant was a French magician, author, and former priest who wrote a series of highly influential books
from 1855 to 1865: Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, The History of Magic, and The Key of the Great Mysteries.
One of Levi’s disciples was General Albert Pike, chief of intelligence for the Confederate Army and the highest-ranking
Freemason in North America. In 1867, Pike incorporated Levi’s ideas into the constitution that he drafted for an overtly racist, occult-based secret society that he and an alliance of Confederate generals and intelligence operatives created following the American Civil War: the Ku Klux Klan. Levi’s ideas would later find favor with the occult practitioners who engineered the rise of Nazi Germany.
1875 was also the year that a certain Edward Alexander Crowley was born. Edward, better known as Aleister (or by the grandiose label that he chose for himself, ‘The Great Beast 666’), was without question the most influential occultist of the twentieth century. He was also an asset of British military intelligence, just
as Albert Pike was an American intelligence operative, and just as Karl Kellner, Franz Hartmann and Theodore Reuss had close ties to German intelligence entities.
Hartmann, Reuss and Kellner were the primary architects of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a secret society formed in Germany around 1895 that claims to be in a direct line of descent from the Knights Templar, which some researchers believe to be the granddaddy of all the occult-based, secret Masonic societies.
Whether or not there is any factual basis for that belief remains an open question, and one that is far beyond the scope of this book.
What is known is that the OTO was directly linked to Blavatsky through Hartmann, a Theosophist and close associate of the Madame. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD), founded by Theosophist William Westcott in 1888, was closely allied with Blavatsky’s group as well. It was in the OGD, which he joined in 1898, that Aleister Crowley first attained occult celebrity status.
He created his own occult order, which he named the Astrum Argentium (Silver Star), in 1907 and began publishing its newsletter, The Equinox, a couple years later. In 1912, he forged a close association with Theodore Reuss, who introduced him to the OTO and appointed Crowley to head the order’s UK chapter. That same year, Crowley penned an OTO Manifesto that included a list
of those he claimed to be past ‘Grand Masters’ of the lodge. On that list were composer Richard Wagner and an associate of his, Friedrich Nietzsche, whose published works included The Antichrist.
In 1919, Crowley declared that every non-member of the occult order should be treated as a savage. Around that same time, he became known for his published works of pro-German and pro-Nazi propaganda, which he continued to produce through both World Wars. While living in the U.S., Crowley wrote for two pro-fascist rags: The Fatherland and The Internationalist.
Around 1920, Crowley moved to Sicily where he founded the Thelema Abbey, a site that quickly became known for conducting satanic rites—complete with animal sacrifices, bestiality, and blood drinking. The abbey also gained notoriety for being fraught with death and disease. Crowley’s own infant child died there, as did others. At the time, Crowley was openly accused of infanticide, and he never denied the charges. To the contrary, Crowley openly and rather flamboyantly revelled in his depravity. In Diary of a Dope Fiend (Crowley was a life-long abuser of drugs of all types), he wrote that: “I have driven myself to delight in dirty and disgusting
debauches, and to devour human excrement and human flesh.”
Those close to Crowley had the rather disturbing habit of dropping dead under unusual circumstances. As Gary Valentine Lachman has written, “A study of Crowley’s life and that of his disciples shows that many of them ended up mad, destitute or prematurely dead; occasionally all three.” From early in his life,
Crowley developed an unsavory reputation for killing his mountain climbing partners, a number of whom failed to make it home from their joint expeditions.
In his native England, he was widely rumored to routinely sacrifice children and dump their mutilated remains in the Thames River. In one notable incident, Crowley and an assistant entered a locked room to perform a ritual; the assistant did not make it out alive. Immediately following that escapade, Crowley reportedly
spent four months in a mental hospital.
Crowley’s offspring did not fare much better than his climbing partners did. In addition to the child that died at Thelema Abbey, a young daughter of his died in 1906, and some reports claim that a son died as well, in a separate incident.
The Great Beast himself died on December 1, 1947. He was at the time the worldwide head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, having been named by Reuss as his successor in 1923 and confirmed in 1924 (though some reports hold that Crowley appointed himself to the leadership position, as early as 1922). With his passing, a new generation of occult superstars stood ready to take the torch, each
of them devoted to spreading the word of the Great Beast: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
One of these disciples was Gerald Gardner, who replaced Crowley as the UK’s most famous occultist. Gardner was born in 1884 into an affluent family in the UK, and he served for a time as a British customs agent. He was also the head of his own OTO lodge and a close associate of Crowley. Before his death, Crowley
helped Gardner craft new rituals for what would become known as ‘Wicca.’ In 1949, two years after his mentor’s death, Gardner penned High Magic’s Aid. He followed that with Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) and the movement was off and running.
More recently, Sir Laurence Gardner—Gerald’s son—penned a couple of books that attempt to justify genocide and Aryan supremacy. Laurence Gardner also serves as the Presidential Attaché to the European Council of Princes, an entity that has admitted to receiving funding from the Central Intelligence Agency.
One of the senior Gardner’s early recruits was Alexander Saunders, who was raised by a grandmother who was well versed in the black arts. As a child, Saunders was shipped off for a time to live with, and be ‘trained’ by, Crowley himself.
By the late 1960s, Saunders was a national celebrity in his native UK, having anointed himself the “King of the Witches.” During the filming of “Eye of the Devil” in 1967, Saunders claimed to have initiated the film’s star, Manson victim Sharon Tate, into witchcraft. His followers are said to practice Alexandrian Witchcraft, while followers of Gardner practice Gardnerian Witchcraft; both owe
much to the teachings of Aleister Crowley.
Saunders’ counterpart in America was the equally flamboyant Anton Szandar LaVey, who achieved minor celebrity status in the 1960s and 1970s as the clown prince of Satanism. LaVey’s profile was first raised by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who frequently provided free publicity. Cosmopolitan, Life,
Look, McCalls, and the Phil Donahue and Johnny Carson shows also helped to steer recruits LaVey’s way.
LaVey claimed to have a lengthy and very colorful résumé. He had worked, he said, as a lion tamer with the Clyde Beatty Circus and as a fortune-teller and astrologer in a carnival. He had worked with an uncle in Las Vegas who was a close associate of Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, both of whom he had met. He
had studied criminology and worked as a crime scene photographer for the San Francisco Police Department, who consulted with him on “nut cases.” He had been a professional hypnotist, organist and ‘ghostbuster.’ He had been a paramour
and Svengali of a young and then-unknown Marilyn Monroe. It is unclear how much of this résumé is accurate. Following LaVey’s death, his daughter claimed that his entire life story was a fabrication, which would hardly be surprising if LaVey was, as he appears to have been, an intelligence operative.
Together with Crowley-inspired filmmaker Kenneth Anger, LaVey organized the Magick Circle in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. By 1966, the group had evolved into the Church of Satan. From its inception, LaVey’s group included an inordinate number of police, military and intelligence personnel. One of these
was Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, who left LaVey’s circle in 1975 to found his own overtly satanic order, the Temple of Set.
Before his departure, Aquino had been the highest-ranking member of the Church of Satan other than LaVey. He had joined the Church of Satan upon his return from Vietnam, where he served as a psychological warfare specialist, which very likely means that he served as part of the Phoenix Program. Aquino returned from Vietnam with a Bronze Star, an Air Medal and an Army Commendation Medal. The Colonel, who reportedly began
reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1981, is not the only intelligence asset in the Temple of Set; according to a police intelligence report cited by Carl Raschke in 1990, at least two of Aquino’s top lieutenants at that time were intelligence
operatives as well.
Although Aquino denies it, his group embraces an unabashedly fascistic ideology. The reading list that he provides to his followers includes a number of pro-Nazi books, including Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf; Aquino advises members to
look therein “for the discussions concerning the selection of leaders, control of the masses, and the justification for human social organization.”
Aquino’s admiration for the Third Reich was also illustrated by his visit to Wewelsberg Castle to perform a satanic ‘working.’ During the reign of the Nazi Party, Wewelsberg had
been lavishly restored by Heinrich Himmler to serve as the headquarters of the Black Order of the SS; as such, it is considered sacred ground by some modern Satanists. Aquino has been known to claim that he is the son of an SS officer, although at other times he has claimed that he is a ‘homunculus’ magically created
by the ‘Babalon Working’ performed by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard.
After the Temple was incorporated in the state of California as a non-profit church, Aquino’s group quickly received both state and federal recognition, as well as tax-exempt status. The Temple’s members like to boast of being the only satanic church to hold such credentials.
There have been claims made that, like Aquino, LaVey also had a fondness for the Third Reich. Some reports hold that LaVey secretly forged an alliance with the National Renaissance Party, an overtly racist, neo-Nazi organization.17 Such claims are not difficult to believe, given that LaVey’s writings reveal an ideology that can best be characterized as fascism cloaked in quasi-religious dogma. His best-known work, The Satanic Bible, contains a dedication to Karl Haushofer, one of the occult architects of the Third Reich. According to some reports, Haushofer dictated virtually verbatim an entire chapter of Mein Kampf, although legend holds that the tome was dictated to Rudolf Hess by an imprisoned Adolph Hitler. Hess was, it should probably be noted, a member of the Thule Gesellschaft (a powerful occult society behind the rise of fascism) and had been a student and protégé of Haushofer at the University of Munich.
17 According to some reports, Bobby Beausoleil, who was associated with both the Church of Satan and Charlie Manson, played a key role in forging a prison alliance between the Manson Family and the Aryan Brotherhood. Other reports have linked
Manson to the Nazi Lowriders, another neo-Nazi prison gang.
LaVey’s prolific writings are filled with pro-police and pro-authoritarian propaganda, unabashed elitism, and calls for the destruction of the weak by the strong18—calls that echo Crowley’s writings in Book of the Law: “We have nothing with the outcast and unfit; let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak; this is
the law of the strong.”
The Church of Satan’s promotional literature has proudly
proclaimed the Church of Satan to be “an eclectic body that traces its origins to many sources…[including] the ritual magic of Aleister Crowley and the Black Order of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.” Readers are reminded that the Black Order was the elite branch of the Schutzstaffel (SS) that was primarily responsible for engineering countless crimes against humanity during the reign of the Reich.
In The Black Flame, an official publication of the Church of Satan, LaVey once wrote: “If a neo-fascist look—or outlook—makes for men who look like men and women who look like women, I am all for it.” He also offered the following observation: “There is nothing inherently wrong with fascism, given the nature and needs of the average citizen…Now it’s not so much a case of avoiding fascism, but of replacing a screwed-up, disjointed, fragmented and stupefying kind of fascism with one that is more sensible and truly progressive.”
Peter Gilmore, a ranking member of the Church of Satan, has described modern Satanism as practiced by LaVey’s group as “a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over
injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years.” Gilmore has also advocated the institution of “an American Schutzstaffel.”
The Temple of Set is only one of several groups that have been spawned from LaVey’s inner circle. Another is the Werewolf Order, co-founded by LaVey’s daughter Zeena and Manson-admirer Nikolas Schreck. That particular spin-off was patterned directly after the so-called Werewolf Corps (Nazi terrorist cells created
in post-war Germany to thwart attempts at denazification). Zeena LaVey and Nikolas Schreck are also notable for hosting, along with publisher Adam Parfrey, a public gathering on August 8, 1988 that was organized to celebrate the anniversary of the slaughter of Sharon Tate by the Manson Family.19
18 LaVey also publicly endorsed the practice of cannibalism. At a seminar that he dubbed “On Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice,” LaVey once served guests the amputated thigh of an unidentified young woman. The main course had reportedly been donated by a Berkeley physician.
19 Nikolas Schreck is also notable for his noticeable lack of a left ear, which he sliced off in a VanGogh-like move intended to symbolize his allegiance to Satan.
The 8/8/88 celebration was notable for another reason as well: it was held just one day after the 100th anniversary of the first Jack the Ripper slaying on August 7, 1888.
Another disciple of Crowley, and an occult superstar in his own right, was rocket-fuel scientist Jack Parsons. In 1939, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge of the OTO in Pasadena, California, where he also helped found the prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Agape was the only OTO lodge in the States at that time, though there was an active lodge in Vancouver started by Charles Stansfield Jones. In 1942, Parsons took the ‘magickal’ name of “Frater 210” and assumed leadership of the Pasadena lodge, with the blessings of Crowley.
Parsons led the branch of the German-based, pro-Nazi order throughout the war years, while at the same time working on highly classified military projects purportedly aimed at defeating the European fascist powers. One of his early recruits, and most avid disciples, had just served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific and was the son of a naval commander. Calling himself “Frater H,” he claimed at various times to work for the Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI, and the Office of Naval
Intelligence. In truth, he may very well have worked for all of them.
Frater H, perhaps better known as L. Ron Hubbard, soon became Parson’s right-hand-man. In 1946, the two ‘adepts’ performed an allegedly important ritual that they dubbed the ‘Babalon Working.’
Two years later, following the death of mentor Crowley, Parsons took the oath of the antichrist and took on an elaborate new name: Belarion Armiluss Al Dajjal Antichrist. His Pasadena mansion served as the lodge’s temple. Leadership of the OTO had, for the time being, been passed by Crowley into the hands of Karl
Germer, a former Nazi spy. Hubbard, meanwhile, parted ways with Parsons and by 1950 had launched the Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation in New Jersey.
In May 1950, Astounding Science Fiction, a pulp magazine, introduced Dianetics as a purportedly new science. Within weeks, Hubbard’s book had hit the bestseller lists. In 1952, he moved his operation to Phoenix and renamed it the Hubbard Association of Scientologists. In June of that same year, just two days short of the summer solstice, Parsons allegedly blew himself up while at
work in his private home lab. When informed of her son’s death, his mother promptly committed ‘suicide.’ Rumors surrounding Parson’s death named L. Ron Hubbard, Howard Hughes and Randolph Hearst as possible suspects.
In 1953, the Church of Scientology was formally incorporated in Los Angeles. The group grew quickly over the succeeding years, particularly in the late 1960s—when membership quadrupled with the addition of such members as Charles Manson. By 1967, Hubbard’s empire included command of a fleet of ships. Though the Church of Scientology has worked hard to gloss over its occult
roots, its founder’s own son—L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.—has been quoted as saying:
“Hitler was involved in the same black magic and the same occult practices that my father was. The identical ones…[my father] thought of himself as the Beast 666 incarnate…when Crowley died in 1947 my father then decided that he should wear the cloak of the beast.” There seems to have been a lot of that going
around.
L. Ron, Jr. has also said that the “one super-secret sentence that Scientology is built on is: ‘Do as thou wilt.’”
In the early 1960s, two ranking members of the Church of Scientology—Robert Moore and Mary Anne MacLean, better known as the DeGrimstons—split off from London’s Hubbard Institute to form the Process Church of the Final Judgment20—a group whose official logo is a modified swastika and whose literature included glowing tributes to Nazism, Satan, gore and necrophilia. The
group’s bookstore reportedly stocked titles on topics such as Hitler, organized crime, hypnosis, brainwashing, and the occult.
Moore, a former cavalry officer and the grandson of a British vicar, and MacLean, a one-time prostitute who was connected to the Profumo scandal and who reportedly believes that she is the reincarnation of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels, first left London with their followers just after the summer solstice of 1966, arriving first in Nassau and then in Xtul, Mexico. They were soon back in London. By 1967, they had arrived in the States, first setting up shop in New Orleans’ French Quarter, where the organization was formally incorporated with the assistance of a former lawyer for the Catholic Church. In March 1968, the group moved their base of operations to San Francisco, taking up residence not far from
LaVey’s Church of Satan and various other occult groups, including a branch of the OTO.
Recruiters for the group had been in the Bay area since the 1967 ‘Summer of Love,’ signing on such members as ‘Brother Ely,’ a member of the Gypsy Jokers biker gang whose home/Process Church temple was located just two blocks away from the home of the Manson Family. From its inception, the Process made no effort to hide its infatuation with death, destruction and cultural
terrorism. In the essay Jehovah on War, Moore commanded his followers: “THOU SHALT KILL.” Another essay that appeared in the official Process publication urged readers to experience the pleasures of grave robbing and necrophilia. A rant in the “Death” issue was penned by a recent transplant to the Bay area by the name of Charles Manson.
20 A February 2004 report from Denver’s Rocky Mountain News revealed that the Process Church is alive and well today after a series of name changes (Lou Kilzer “Friends Find Their Calling,” February 28, 2004). The group first became The Foundation—
Church of the Millennium, then The Foundation Faith of God, then the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and finally the Best Friends Animal Society, which has its headquarters on a compound in the Utah desert. The group, which still includes many original members, is now known to rub shoulders with various Hollywood celebrities.
Also by 1967, the Process had already spawned at least one spin-off, probably from the group’s inner circle, reportedly known as ‘The Omega.’ The spin-off has been variously referred to as the ‘Four-P Movement,’ the ‘Four Pi’ cult, or the ‘Chingon’ cult. The group’s logo is a stylized swastika composed of four ‘P’s. Its
members are said to share a fascination with Nazi racist doctrines. Author Michael Newton has written: “If law-enforcement pokesmen are correct, the cult is also deeply involved in white slavery, child pornography, and the international narcotics trade.”
The first branch of the cult was organized in Northern California, and is said to have held its early gatherings in the Santa Cruz Mountains, adjacent to that boiling cauldron of satanic activity known as San Francisco. From this primordial stew would arise, in the late sixties, the Manson Family.
Much of Manson’s ideology was taken directly from the teachings of the Process Church, with whom Charlie was closely connected, as alluded to by Bugliosi in Helter Skelter and greatly elaborated on by Ed Sanders in The Family and Maury Terry in The Ultimate Evil. Manson was exposed to the Process as early as the spring of 1967 at San Francisco’s infamous ‘Devil House,’ and he later claimed to have met the leaders of the Process at the Polanski home, which he is known to have visited before the killings. Manson was also linked to: the Church of Satan; the Solar Lodge of the OTO, which operated from a ranch near Blythe and a cult-owned house near the University of Southern California campus; the Church of Scientology (Charlie declared himself to be a ‘Theta Clear’ after 150 hours of ‘auditing’ while in prison); a particularly bizarre group known as the Kirké Order of the Dog Blood; and a number of occult-oriented biker gangs, including the Straight Satans (who once attended a Ku Klux Klan rally in the San
Fernando Valley), the Satan Slaves, the Gypsy Jokers, the Jokers Out of Hell, and the Coffin Makers.
Terry’s evidence indicates that the Family was itself a satanic cult—specifically a faction of the Process-spawned Four Pi cult and a sister group to both the New York chapter said to be responsible for the Son of Sam slayings and the Santa Cruz/San Francisco faction that may have been responsible for the ‘Zodiac’ murders.
The Manson Family, appropriately enough, was also deeply involved in drug trafficking, just as Henry Lee Lucas claimed his cult to be. It is not likely a coincidence that Henry’s partner, Ottis Toole, was known to have paid visits to the New Orleans headquarters of the Process Church.
With all that in mind, we now turn our attention to the San Francisco/Santa Cruz area and the explosion of violent murders that belched forth from that cauldron beginning in the late 1960s.
“Satan is a Fascist”
—Title of an April 1972 article by
Donald Nugent in The Month that referred
to the “unholy trinity of Adolph Hitler,
Charles Manson…and Anton LaVey.”
“In as much as Fascism stands for an embracing of the Natural
Order and a rejection of ‘anything goes’ attitudes that have hindered our society, particularly since the 1960’s, then Fascists we
are.”
—Church of Satan Magister Peter Gilmore,
in The Black Flame, Vol. 4/No. 1&2