The Process Church of the Final Judgment

[joeblow]

http://tracker.umunu.com/index.php?page ... 6de1d8e02b

Process Church of the Final Judgment combo

This torrent consists of a 519 page PDF file containing the most comprehensive collection of Process Church of the Final Judgment documents available on the web.

The Process believed in Four Great Gods of the Universe: Christ, Satan, Lucifer, and Jehovah. They believed that to attain freedom and self realization a person had to explore each of these archetypes within his or her self.

   

http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/do ... index.html

the process church of the final judgment
by Nick Mamatas (mailto:nillo@agoron.com">nillo@agoron.com) - July 28, 2002
   
The Process Church of Tthe Final Judgment holds a special place in occult lore. Supposedly borne of disaffected Scientologists and later accused of being the inspiration for both the Manson family and the Son Of Sam shootings, the Church faded from view in the 1970s. Now however it is back where it belongs, on the World Wide Web alongside every other crazy religion.

The Process Church combined community activism with a peculiar set of beliefs: Jehovah, Christ, Satan and Lucifer were not enemies, but all equal parts of Creation. These four personalities were all venerated, though only the 'good guys' were truly worshipped at first. Like many cults that formed in the late 1960s, the Processeans depended on both youthful enthusiasm and cultish practices of separation, unquestioned beliefs that they were the chosen ones, and an apocalyptic worldview. The Church's use of Scientology 'techniques' in order to determine the subconscious drives of members (drives personified by the four archetypes), and its misuse of Alfred Adler's view of the subconscious, helped keep members in line while 'The Teacher' Robert DeGrimston and 'The Oracle' Mary Anne Maclean waited for the end of the world. The world didn't end, but the 1960s did, with the Manson murders. Manson was originally associated with the Process by several writers (he contributed a meditation on Death to a Process newsletter), most notably in The Family: The Manson Group And Its Aftermath (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1971), a book about Manson written by Ed Sanders, and now available in a revised form as The Family: The Story Of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (New York: Panther, 1973).

By the early 1970s, the group was beginning to collapse in on itself. DeGrimston's increasing fascination with group sex, a neo-military social hierarchy and the increasing importance of Satan in his writings, alienated many unsuspecting Processeans, and Satan really made fundraising difficult as well. Predictably, it was DeGrimston's exploration of Satanic/Luciferian archetypes which attracted the most interest from critics, although Processean philosophy was closer to the Jesus Freak phenomena than neo-religious Satanic institutions like the Church of Satan or Temple of Set. The best scholarly study of this period is Satan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult by William Sims Bainbridge (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1978).

DeGrimston was ousted and a new group arose from the ashes. The Founders kept going until the late 1970s, but were little more than a newsletter. The David Berkowitz slayings of 1977 didn't help the splinter group, as both the Process and a supposed Satanic fringe group were implicated in the murders. This worldview was widely promoted by Maury Terry's The Ultimate Evil: The Truth About the Cult Murders: Son of Sam & Beyond (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999), a sensationalistic book written at the height of the Satanic Ritual Abuse rumour panic in 1987, and later released in a revised edition. Terry was succesfully sued by the Solar Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) for being erroneously linked to David Berkowitz and Charles Manson.

There is no evidence that The Process had anything to do with David Berkowitz or the Son Of Sam murders, outside of Berkowitz's own confused and contradictory testimony.

Today, the Church is back, as the largely secular Society Of Processeans. Interest in the group has been bouyed by magician Genesis P-Orridge's sampling of DeGrimston in the Psychic TV classic track 'Smile", which enabled Processean aesthetics to subtly infiltrate the Industrial subculture. The Society Of Processeans group is secular (having swept Satan under the rug), but still quotes DeGrimston liberally. Their projects include Safe Houses for battered women and Retrieval Networks which solicit donations from official nonprofits. This may sound good at first, but some hallmarks of a cult are isolating vulnerable people from the world at large, and depending on the "comfort of strangers."



    

The Society of Processeans
The Internet is so vast that, no matter how silly or discredited an idea or belief, supporters of that idea or belief will be found. Hallelujah. The Society Of Processeans is back, and online. Their beliefs haven't changed, but their way of expressing them sure have. Instead of howling "Humanity is the devil!" now the Processeans explain that they are interested in the unity of the opposites. Like humanity. And the devil.

The Process
A very good history of the cult, with a special emphasis on Process' unique brand of psychotherapy and its religious rituals. The Process' use of the P-Scope, a device not unlike the Scientologist E-Meter, managed to get the church on Scientology's list of Suppressive Persons. SPs have been targeted by Scientologists for harassment, protests and invasions of privacy.

The Process: Church of the Final Judgment
A good page that lists, then critiques, accusations that Processeans have faced. The page contends that Processeans visited Charles Manson in his prison cell and discovered that he had never been a member, but should we expect them to honest if Manson had whipped out a wrinkled, faded membership card? The section on Berkowitz is better.

Process Archives
Available as Adobe Acrobat PDF files, this site contains a number of Process and Founders newsletters as well as the text of 'Exit' by Robert De Grimston. Like the literature of many cults, Process material is more interesting than it is readable, and De Grimston was especially bad. The site makes for good research material. If this stuff starts making sense to you, watch out!

Satan on War
A transcript of Robert DeGrimston's pamphlet, which he 'recorded' rather than wrote. Not surprisingly, Satan comes off looking like a bit of a creep. Long story short: he likes war, and hates the victims of war. This text formed the basis of the evocative track 'Smile', recorded by lysergic rave icons Psychic TV, and spoken by the enigmatic magician Genesis P-Orridge. One wonders if the modern Process Church would hand out this pamphlet at their abused woman shelters.

Suppressive Persons And Suppressive Groups
A 1992 Scientology list of Suppressive Persons and Suppressive Groups. SPs and SGs are targeted with nuisance lawsuits, protests, dirt digging by private eyes and other fun stuff like that. Almost all the groups listed are splits from or variations of the Church Of Scientology, and the Process Church is included.

The O. J. Simpson Affair: More And Better Conspiracies
Could the Process have been responsible for the murder of Nicole Simpson? This malignant meme is again prominent in underground occult literature, the same writers claim that Charles Manson and the 'Ordo Templi Orientis' (OTO) wanted to start a race war. Both are connected to Process in some way, according to books by Ed Sanders and Maury Terry, which were heavily cut due to subsequent legal action. Manson's followers killed Sharon Tate and tried to make it seem as though the Black Panthers did it (Manson wasn't physically present at the Tate/La Bianca murders; 'Helter Skelter' refers to a Confusion enveloping contemporary technocratic society, not a race-war, which was a worldview promoted by state prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi), even though the Panthers were too busy feeding school children in Oakland. There were also rumours circulating in the occult underground that the OTO projected 'psychic energy' at Watts to start race riots. And Marcia Clark has some connection to Scientology, another Process link. Plus, Philip Taylor Kramer, the bassist for 'Iron Butterfly', insisted that 'they' rather than OJ, committed the Simpson murder just before disappearing. We will all have to join OJ in the hunt for the real killers, as who knows what really happened?

Holy War Now!
Did you know that Tony Alamo is the most widely read preacher on the planet? That he sold more records than Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and The Ramones combined? Okay, how about this: "Today, the sinister Catholic Bill Clinton rules our country with a Satanic fist, linked with the sodomites, feminists, Vatican, Process Church of the Final Judgment (PCFJ, or simply Process), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Cult Awareness Network (CAN), Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Jewish-controlled media, the Mafia-run, proto-legal gambling, drug and prostitution rings, the Jesuit cult eradication syndicate of anti-Christian propaganda infiltration, and the Son of SAM/Satanic Cathedral of Greater New York." I was surprised too. Well, back to being a baby-eating psychopath. Or, this page may be a complete hoax. Fnord.

The Watchman Fellowship's 1998-99 Index of Cults and Religions
A rather sedate version of a neo-Inquisition index. The Watchman Fellowship examines the beliefs of others and, if they don't match the Fellowship's own views, places them on this cult index. In addition to the Process, the Watchman Fellowship lists the religion of 'radical feminism' and the Presbyterian Church Of Elvis The Divine.

Son of Sam! Exposes His Connection To Satanic Church Of Sacrifice!
A confused mish mash of pseudo-facts, WORD GAMES and right-wing conspiracy RANTING by someone with a stuck CAPS LOCK key. Did you know that David Berkowitz's apartment number reveals his connection to EL, the Old Testament god of sacrifice? Neither did I! Neither did EL, I bet.

[joeblow]

http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/S ... rocess.htm

CALLING ALL FORMER PROCESSEANS

The Process and other cults are often "sponsored" by intelligence groups because it is an easy way to study human behavior under mind-control conditions and to find individuals who can be further programmed to commit acts of violence, mayhem and assassinations who can later be blamed as "lone-nuts" committing these horrible and un-explainable deeds for no other reason than a grudge or temporary insanity. Patsies like Oswald, Sirhan-Sirhan, Manson, the Columbine shooters and so many more could be mentioned here....So cults serve three or more functions, they can be studied by the "right" people for human compliance to mind control paragems, cause fear and havoc in society, and serve as a recruiting ground for advanced programming victims who can be turned into assassins.

[joeblow]

From: "Madalyn" <........@hotmail.com>
    To: mailto:discoverer73@hotmail.com">discoverer73@hotmail.com
    Subject: The Process..
    Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 14:17:57 -0700
    Hello,
    I have visited your website and believe I am/or have been on a similar quest. I too, have been in search of The Process for quite sometime. They are "rebuilding..", as you know..... for quite sometime now. I was wondering if you have discovered any new information on how to contact them? I have inquired all over the place, to no avail. If they are re-forming, somebody must know something? The only "positive" response I have received stated, "perhaps when the time is right, they'll find you." If you have found any current contact information for them, I would appreciate it if you might share it with me.
    Thank you very much for your time and consideration,
    Madalyn
     

Hi Madalyn,

thank you for your inquiry about The Process. Unfortunately I can not be of much help to you since I have not dealt with any Process related matters for quite some time. My experiences with people who claimed to have been former members have been quite discouraging to say the least. Much disinformation and paranoia as well as secrecy have lead me to believe that there is definitely something "unholy" going on with The Process. What I mean is, that there seems to be an underground Satanic circuit made up of some former Processeans and other elements, who don't want to bring attention to the former Process under any circumstances. This, of course, also has to do with the "Animal Sanctuary" in Utah which harbors the original group who caused the schism in 1974 under the leadership of DeGrimston's former wife Mary Anne. They are supposedly doing a remarkable job with homeless animals and apparently make a fortune in donations and don't want to see the re-birth of The Process under any circumstances. Since their operation deals with millions, you can easily understand their reluctance to have The Process re-appear. But there is also another angle, as I understand it, which deals with "bigger and better things", like what is described in the book "The Ultimate Evil." My reason for coming to this conclusion is based on what I dealt with over the internet relating to such a desperate effort from some former Processeans to mislead, lie and deceive anybody interested in a re-birth of The Process. For all I know, you too (sorry for thinking the possibility) could be one of "them" who want to find out what is going on with the attempt to re-organize. You see, I hope, what I mean in regards to paranoia and distrust. When I started out with this project I had no idea where it would lead and no suspicion at all about the truth as speculated by Maury Terry the author of "The Ultimate Evil." Well, I was naive....And now I know better. Something is definitely wrong with the people of the former Process. Some are of course innocent and know very little, but there is an element of them whom I wouldn't trust at all, to say the least. So, any advice I can give you is to just forget about them as something which started out beautiful but turned ugly eventually, very ugly indeed. P. Orrige (don't know if I spelled his name right) has much of former Process material in his group or cult. I can't remember their name...but if you "google" his name you'll find more material on it.

Sorry to disappoint you,

Holger

[joeblow]

http://web.archive.org/web/200411300346 ... cess.shtml

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

"Death-worshipping church" or apocalyptic prophets? GARY LACHMAN investigates the Process Church of the Final Judgement, a Sixties movement with a far-reaching influence.



Accused of being a "black-caped, black-garbed, death-worshipping church" with ranks of mindless "hooded snuffoids," they believed they were visionaries warning of the coming apocalypse. In the wake of the shootings at Columbine and with cult activity on the increase, this could have been ripped from the mainstream headlines throughout 1999. But at the end of the hippie dream, these were the charges levelled at one of the most controversial cults of the Sixties: the Process Church.

In 1963, two people met at the L Ron Hubbard Institute of Scientology on Fitzroy Street, London. They were both studying to be 'auditors'. Based on his earlier system of Dianetics, 'auditing' was Hubbard's method of discovering and eliminating 'engrams,' the psychic residue from past traumas. The aim of auditing was to become 'clear,' to wipe the psychic slate clean and become, in effect, a kind of superman, no longer enthralled to neurotic fears and hang-ups.



Robert DeGrimston Moore (left) and Mary Ann McClean were both fascinated by auditing and soon grew proficient. Although they came from considerably different backgrounds, both were enthusiastic Scientologists. Born in Shanghai in 1935, Robert had served in the military as a cavalry officer, for awhile stationed in Malaya. He had a middle class upbringing, and had studied as an architect. He boasted an IQ of 163 and claimed to have been a member of MENSA. Tall, handsome, dreamy and charismatic, Robert was passive and emotionally dependent. A perfect match, it turned out, for Mary Ann.

Born in Glasgow in 1931, Mary Ann had a different sort of life. Her father left before she was born; not long after, her mother abandoned her. She was raised by relatives in an atmosphere of poverty and neglect. Attractive, driven and ambitious, by the early 1950s she had emigrated to the States; it's a good chance she paid her way through prostitution. For a time she was married to the US boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson. In the early 1960s, Mary Ann left Sugar Ray and moved to London. The split must have been profitable: she took a lease on an expensive flat and set up a high class call-girl service. She entertained some top flight customers, and had connections with the Profumo scandal. Manipulative, demanding and volatile, she knew how to exploit emotional needs and fostered dependence in those around her. She was attracted to Robert's intelligence and charm. She knew she could use both, and she did.

Robert D e GrimstonIt was soon clear they were too intelligent and wilful to remain Hubbard's followers. Robert (left) and Mary Ann had ideas of their own, and tested these successfully on some clients. Security on Fitzroy Street was high; when Mary Ann discovered her session rooms were bugged, she and Robert left. Mary Ann, who was sensitive to appearances, convinced Robert to drop Moore, which she thought sounded too common, and to adopt DeGrimston. They married soon after, and in 1964 they set up their own system.

They were both interested in the work of Alfred Adler, a Freudian who had broken away to develop his own ideas. Adler, who developed the idea of the inferiority complex, believed that people were driven by what he called 'secret goals,' hidden agendas that gave rise to compulsions and neuroses. The idea was to discover these goals and make them conscious. Putting Adler and Hubbard together, Robert and Mary Ann created a new system – Compulsions Analysis.

When they tried the new therapy on some friends, the results were encouraging. The circle grew, with the initial people who had undergone 'the process,' as it began to be called, initiating others – all paying considerable fees to the DeGrimstons. Most of the early clients came from Robert's set. Mary Ann's friends tended to be from the shady side, but Robert moved among the bright lights of English youth. Young professionals – architects, artists, scientists, economists – formed the first core of the DeGrimstons' following.

They took an office on Wigmore Street. Strange things began to happen. The group, which now numbered around 30, began to feel various 'group mind' effects. They also began to feel set apart from the rest of society. Like many 'alternative' groups in the Sixties, Compulsions Analysis moved from self-help to a kind of spiritual quest, as those that had gone through 'the process' began to regard the rest of society as a kind of bad dream. The DeGrimstons began to feel that what they had created was something more than a new therapy. They looked around for a new name, and decided on something that must have seemed obvious. In 1965, Compulsions Analysis, a derivative of Scientology, became the Process Church of the Final Judgement.

Mary Ann and Robert felt inspired. Divine powers were guiding them. When a member came into an inheritance, they convinced him to take out a lease on a mansion in Balfour Place in Mayfair and donate it to the Process. They also convinced him to decorate the place lavishly, even putting a brass plate on the door, featuring the new Process symbol Robert had designed. Four Ps joined in a kind of mandalic wheel, the symbol had an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika .

But they were not long for Mayfair. The divine hand was pressing them on. Robert and Mary Ann began to yearn for some retreat from a world they increasingly regarded with disgust. In June, 1966, the DeGrimstons and a group of about 30 'Processeans' – as they called themselves – left for Nassau. They were accompanied by the six Alsatian dogs the DeGrimstons had recently acquired – another suggestion from the divine powers. (Further suggestions included an $80,000 yacht and first class journeys to Turkey and Asia for the DeGrimstons.) Later, members emulating the leaders would acquire these dogs too.

After three months they left Nassau, still in search of their sanctuary. In Mexico City a group mind session suggested they hire a rickety bus and follow the Yucatan coast. Near Sisal they came upon a spot they had envisioned in their meditations. Xtul, a place of ruins, was near the beach, hugged by coconut palms; pronounced 'Shtul' the word meant 'terminus' or 'end' in Mayan. For the Process, however, it was only the beginning.

It was like paradise. Living on fruit and fish, swimming, making love, having group encounters – like many people in the Sixties, the Process had 'gone back to nature'; they had escaped the rat race and were finding themselves. They wrote songs, chants, and poems about Xtul; everyone there would remember the time for the rest of their life, as if they had gone back to Eden. It had a profound effect on Robert, who began to identify with Jesus Christ.

But then disaster hit. A hurricane pummelled the group for three days. 200 mph (322 kph) winds in absolute darkness. Their shelters were flattened. It was as if demonic forces had been unleashed; yet miraculously the group survived. Local villages were devastated, but the Process emerged from the upheaval unharmed but not unchanged, Degrimston knew. It had been their rite of passage. The true nature of the universe had been revealed to him.

They had met the twin Gods of love and violence. At Xtul, he had begun to receive inspired teachings, what he called The Xtul Dialogues, communications from the god forces that ruled existence. He called them Jehovah, Satan and Lucifer. And now they had a mission: to return to London and preach the word of their imminent apocalyptic unification. For Christ and Satan, it was time to come together.

They returned to London filled with a sense of purpose. Their return, however, wasn't a total triumph. While at Xtul, the parents of some underaged Processeans sent a solicitor to retrieve their children. In paradise, the solicitor encountered a bikini-clad Mary Ann DeGrimston, fawned on by ragged and underfed Processeans; he made a note of her long, silver-polished fingernails, and talked to the press. The Sunday Telegraph ran a negative story on the "Mind Benders of Mayfair." The 'alternative' press wasn't too keen on them either; a highly critical article appeared in the counterculture gazette, Oz. But the DeGrimstons weren't detered. Back at Balfour Place they opened a 24-hour coffee bar called Satan's Cave.



The group had made a sudden shift. They began to wear black capes and black turtle necks, and to sport shiny silver crosses. They also wore badges featuring the sinister Goat of Mendes, the devil headed demon of the witches' sabbath. The Process symbol too was prominent. Divine intervention continued. They set up a lecture hall and bookshop, and an Alpha Room, where they held their Sabbath Assemblies. (Novelist Robert Irwin, whose Satan Wants Me is set against the backdrop of occult 1960s London, recalls some deflowered virgins at Process gatherings, but doubts if there were any virgins in London then.) A movie theatre ran films dominated by destruction and violence. They gave classes in telepathy, self-expression and communication, and got on their soap-box in Hyde Park to preach the apocalypse trip. Processeans hit the streets asking for donations. Mary Ann was a fanatical anti-vivisectionist; cult members were told to say the money was going to 'animal welfare,' although most of it landed in the DeGrimstons' pocket.

Robert's vision convinced him that people were divided into four types, based on the four god forces. Each was an extreme, and the idea was to discover which path suited you and to follow it whole-heartedly.Jehovans were disciplined, authoritarian, ascetic puritans (Mary Ann was a classic example). Satanists were dedicated to violence, chaos and lust. Lucifereans were self-indulgent sensualists (the most popular type in the 1960s, I'd imagine). Christ, as unifier of all three, was the symbol of the new man to emerge after the coming destruction. All the rest were what DeGrimston called 'The Greys,' the great mass of lukewarm mediocrities, who take the safe path of compromise and conformity. John Grey "hides, even from himself, his own intensity of feeling" and "has wrapped himself in a cocoon of compromise and mediocrity." People like him would burn in the purging fires of the last days – which, according to DeGrimston, were soon approaching.

Along with inspired works like The Gods On War, Humanity is The Devil and As It Is – written during his time in Turkey, and which provided the cult with their catchphrase "As it is, so be it" – the main organ of Process theology was their glossy magazine,The Process. Sporting blaring red, purple and black psychedelic graphics, the editorial policy favoured Hitler, Satan and gore. "Humanity is doomed" was the brief. The Tide of the End had come. "The Earth is prepared for the ultimate devastation...The scene is set."

This they hawked on the streets of Swinging London, hitting the King's Road, marching into places like the Indica Bookshop, run by Peter Asher (the brother of Paul McCartney's girlfriend, Jane Asher), Sixties chronicler Barry Miles and John Dunbar, husband of pop chanteuse Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull even appeared in an issue of The Process devoted to death; she later backed away, claiming: "There was something almost like fascism about the Process..." In the "Fear" issue, McCartney revealed that he had no "fear of the world ending or anything like that," but did fear fear itself. Jane Asher, however, admitted that she used to be afraid of the end of the world, but has since "learned not to think about it." An issue dedicated to "Freedom of Expression," had Mick Jagger on the cover. The editors wisely assumed that Mick's mug would sell more issues than Satan's, although there would be more sympathy for the Devil later on.



As the cult grew, the DeGrimstons withdrew further from the outer world, occupying a zone of secrecy and exclusion, penetrated only by the oldest members. They called themselves The Omega (see symbol, left); apparently they had fused into a single, psychic entity. Robert, whose long hair, beard and dreamy expression made him look increasingly like Christ, could still be seen at lectures, where his charismatic voice preached the approaching conflagration. Mary Ann was rarely seen by lower ranking members; the hierarchical system of neophytes, initiates, priests and 'Brothers' was strictly enforced, and the secret rituals of the Omega were a matter of some speculation among new devotees.

For an unprepared initiate to encounter Mary Ann was a devastating experience. Totalitarian, Mary Ann kept an iron rule, imposing a strict sexual abstinence on new members, although the Omega themselves apparantly got up to some tricks. Luciferean Robert advised to "release the fiend that lies within you"; he had several ideas about how to go about that, some of which may have included bestiality.

By 1968 the cult had spread to the States, establishing churches in New York, Boston, New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They also canvased Europe; in Germany they sent representatives to the neo-Nazi NPD.

Always in search of intensity, Nazi chic attracted them. In Haight-Ashbury they visited the offices of the San Francisco Oracle, hoping to bring the underground newspaper over to the cause. The Oracle was too busy hyping the coming Age of Aquarius to give Satan much time. They paid a visit to the Black Pope, Anton LaVey, head of the Church of Satan, but he had no use for them either.

They set up a church at 407 Cole Street. Their neighbour at 636 Cole was someone who would cause them a lot of grief in a year or so. His name was Charles Manson, soon to become the head of the Family responsible for the gruesome Tate-Labianca murders in August of 1969. At that time, Charlie was still an ex-con petty thief, strumming a guitar among the debris of the flower children, languishing amidst the ruins of the Summer of Love. By the end of the decade he was one of the most famous people alive, a cause célèbre in the counter-culture, Satan incarnate for the Establishment. For the Process he spelled doom.

In 1971, Ed Sanders, singer/songwriter with the Fugs and chronicler of New York's East Village hippie scene, published The Family, a history of Charles Manson and his cult. Like many of the Woodstock Generation, Sanders was appalled at what had happened to the hippie dream.



The innocence of the mid-1960s had given way to bad drugs, maniacal gurus and violence. The Rolling Stones disastrous concert at Altamont, in which Hells Angels terrorised the crowd and murdered at least one person, had sounded a death knell. The Tate-Labianca killings were the final blow. How did "All You Need Is Love" give birth to slaughtered innocents and "Helter Skelter"? Sanders' answer? The Process.In some of the most sensational hippie prose, Sanders claimed that the Process more or less taught Charlie everything he knew. Sanders made connections. Both Charlie and the DeGrimstons were into Scientology. In 1968 Charlie sent Family member Bruce Davis to visit Process headquarters in London; while there Davis, too, had a brief stint with Scientology. Two Processeans visited Manson in jail; Manson later contributed a stream-of-unconsciousness rant for the Process "Death" issue, calling death "total awareness, closing the circle, bringing the soul to now." DeGrimston wrote of Satan and Christ coming together; to those in the know, that was just another name for Charlie.

The Process was keen on the Nazis. Manson carved a swastika in his forehead that bore a resemblance to the Process insignia. Both Charlie and Robert were big on fear. For Charlie "feeling the fear" meant "total awareness," for DeGrimston only after we do "that which we are afraid to do," can we be saved. Processeans wore black capes and the Family dressed in black when it creepy-crawled. The Process saw biker gangs like the Hells Angels as the shock troops of the coming Armageddon. Manson too tried to ingratiate himself with a bunch of different cycle gangs, like the Straight Satans, Satan Slaves, and Jokers Out of Hell. 'In' members of the Process refered to themselves as the Family. Most tellingly, both preached an imminent cataclysm.

Suggestive enough. But Sanders didn't stop there. Processeans were "hooded snuffoids," and formed a "black-caped, black-garbed, death- worshipping church." The DeGrimstons were the head of "an English occult society dedicated to observing and aiding the end of the world by stirring up murder, violence and chaos and dedicated to the proposition that they, the Process, shall survive as the chosen people." With little evidence Sanders linked the Process to outright sinister cults like Jean Brayton's renegade Solar Lodge of the OTO – a pirate offshoot of Aleister Crowley's occult organisation. He also alludes to a series of weird ritual mutilations and animal sacrifices he claims were committed in the Santa Cruz Mountains by a group called the Four Pi.

Needless to say, the Process wasn't very happy with the book. They lodged a $1,500,000 libel suit against Sanders, and his publishers, and a $1,250,000 suit against a series of magazine articles on the same theme Sanders had written. Dutton, Sanders' publisher, eventually settled out of court, extracting all reference to the Process in later editions, and adding a disclaimer written by Process members. But the damage had been done.

In 1968, the House of Commons enacted policy to restrict the growth of Scientology. The Process was hit by this when American recruits weren't allowed into England, immigration officials figuring that one cult is as bad as another. DeGrimston sent his flock to the continent. This began the Mark 10 trip, its name taken from the Gospel. Processeans were to abandon their churches and roam from city to city, embracing whatever the gods sent. Hood in hand, DeGrimstons' Satanic warriors threw themselves on the mercy of a public who were already being tapped for donations by a collection of other cults. (It brought in some income and got rid of church rents.) After Manson, soliciting Processeans were asked: "Are you devil worshippers?" Public interest dropped. Satan was hot stuff in '68, when Rosemary's Baby was a box office hit. Post-Manson it smelled bad.



A massive and ultimately disastrous facelift was in store. The Process made strenuous efforts to shed their satanic skins, losing their black capes and inverse pentagrams, and adopting first a grey leisure suit – shades of John Grey – and then a blue get-up, reminescent of late hippie hot tub wear. They took to community service, desperate to show a post-Sixties world that they were love, peace and charity folk after all. They had some success. In Boston, where they were well established, they broadcast on local station WBZ, doing interviews with rock folk like Chicago, the Beach Boys (a Manson link, as Charlie's Angels lived with drummer Dennis Wilson for a spell), Dr John the Night Tripper, and the aptly named Blood, Sweat and Tears. But the end was in sight. Xtul was just a memory and the DeGrimstons' greed grew to include Mount Chi, a secret mansion in Westchester County, New York, where the Omega enjoyed their exclusive pastimes. The Process magazine dropped the blood and guts and now pleaded for 'love.' Past glories were behind them.

In a frantic bid to stay afloat, the Process threw itself into the grab bag of early Seventies pop occultism, offering classes on astrology, ESP, Tarot and astral travelling. But by then the market was glutted. The end came when the Omega split. Robert, who had been plagued by sexual inhibitions throughout his life – engrams missed in his initial auditing – told Mary Ann he wanted a nubile young female Processean to join their bed. Jehovan Mary Ann refused. Fission started. After a few other incarnations, the council of high ranking Processeans decided that the problems started with Robert's visions. A struggle ensued. In the end, DeGrimston and his gods were ousted, his name and work stricken from the Process records. Mary Ann, sticking close to Jehovah, carried on, renaming the cult the Foundation Church.

DeGrimston shuffled on for a spell, starting up small groups of followers in different cities, but these didn't amount to much. Broken, defeated, abandoned by Mary Ann, the final end came in 1975. Crossing Boston Common with a few dedicated believers and his current paramour, DeGrimston suddenly stopped and told his loyal few "We're just going to leave you now, okay?," and walked with his partner across the Common, into the land of Grey. Last reports were that he found work with an American telephone company.

Mary Ann kept the Church going for a time, but then she too dropped out of sight. It was rumoured that in the late 1970s she started an occult bookshop in Toledo, Ohio, under the name Circe, but this hasn't been corroborated. In any case, it's clear that by that time they had both had enough of the process.

Gary Lachman has written for Mojo and Gnosis magazines, amongst others.