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Manson on Meaning
Shit, when you find yourself agreeing with esoteric points made by Charles Manson in a prison interview, you can be pretty sure you’re out on the fringe:
Tempt me not. Do you remember the story about Jesus on the hill? You know, the devil takes Him to the edge of this cliff, [Charlie leans over the table as if precariously on the edge of the Void] and he says to Him, “If you’re God, prove it by jumping off the edge.” And Jesus says, “There ain’t nothing to prove, man.” When you doubt,
your mind is in two parts. It’s divided against itself. See, Christ is saying, “Past, get behind me.” The Devil is in the past. The Devil is the past. What he is saying is, “Don’t think. He who thinks is lost, because if you have to think about something, to doubt it, you’re lost already.”My philosophy is: Don’t think. I don’t believe in the mind that you think with and scheme with. I don’t believe in words.
IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN WORDS, WHY DO YOU USE SO MANY OF THEM?
Words are symbols. All I’m doing is jumbling the symbols in your brain. Everything is symbolic. Symbols are just connections in your brain. Even your body is a symbol.
Too bad the interviewer moves onto another topic at that point (the Beatles and the Book of Revelation), cause I would have loved to see where he was going with that… Anyway, he goes on to all that stuff about the Black Man overthrowing the establishment etc. I wonder if in some way he didn’t mean that literally though. Like what if he meant the “Black Man” as some kind of weird alchemical reference? I mean, not to give undue credit to a racist murderer, but still… he’s obviously operating on a lot of different levels.
- Manson vs. Jesus
- Manson’s Helter Skelter Apocalypse
- Super Villains & Super Heroes
- 9/11 Is Meaningless
- Charles Manson’s Life
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June 30th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
He probably meant both. It’s really bizarre, but a lot of these guys double-identify their symbols. It’s like the Rennes treasure crowd- they see the obvious spiritual symbols, they have an understanding of the language being used, but they’re still looking for piles of cash or jesus genes. They know the semantics of the joke but they don’t “get” the punchline, which is sublime- but to them, worthless, because they believe they’ve processed it.
June 30th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I think he’s got it. Gnosis doesn’t have much to do with perceived moral fiber.
They know the semantics of the joke but they don’t “get” the punchline, which is sublime- but to them, worthless, because they believe they’ve processed it.
Are you saying you think he’s faking it?
June 30th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Aww dude. you totally already used my favorite manson thing. that whole jesus coyote in the desert thing is priceless. I was totally going to do a whole manson riff soon, and now i need a new centerpiece for it.
but it’s not like manson is short on pithy sayings.
June 30th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
I don’t why you’re being so derisive; I thought the coyote thing was pretty excellent.
June 30th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
No, I think he knows there’s a joke and therefore believes he has the punchline.
June 30th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
but you don’t think he’s actually experiencing it?
June 30th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
Depends…what’s “it?”
June 30th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
gnosis/enlightenment/whatever
*that* thing.
why? what were you talking about?
June 30th, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Cosmic Charlie man… you gots to give the guy props, he like some loveable whacked out wise old gandfather with the mysteries of the univere stuck between his ears - but you really have to get into a completely differnt semantic and semiotic headspace to even behin to grok what the guys sayin - i put him up there with Reich and Blake as some sort of mad prophet raging at the lions in the wilderness and bouncing on Kali’s clitoris like a Milky Way trampoline.
If I were ruler of the universe he’d be sitting on a poch right now smokin a corn cob pipe and the sun set, playing fetch with his dog, not rotting away in some crummy prison. Poor fucker.
July 1st, 2005 at 12:15 am
i don’t think charlie knows shit, even if he thinks he does. i think he’s really confused about most everything.
July 1st, 2005 at 12:23 am
he doesn’t seem mind prison life much.
July 1st, 2005 at 12:57 am
Well, frankly, no, he hasn’t got it.; He’d never let go of being the great and powerful charlie…but he sure gets off on people thinkiong he knows something.
And no, of course he doesn’t mond prison..he’s treated like a celebrity, always has worshipful fans and visitors, free food, and all the attention he could ever want.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:17 am
Well, frankly, no, he hasn’t got it.; He’d never let go of being the great and powerful charlie…but he sure gets off on people thinkiong he knows something.
And no, of course he doesn’t mond prison..he’s treated like a celebrity, always has worshipful fans and visitors, free food, and all the attention he could ever want.
you could say that about any guru who gained some popularity, were they all deluded too?
July 1st, 2005 at 5:13 am
Quite a few, yes. It’s one of the hazards of the trade. Charlie’s simply enchanted with Charlie..I doubt any other humans exist in his view.
July 1st, 2005 at 9:26 am
charlie went through some serious initiation before he got to the point where he was feeding acid and dmt to his disciples. if you reed tex watson`s testimony at the murder trial you will see that he went through some serious cult initiation stuff, on the level of gurdjieff. i remember a crazy biker once riffing off about the writing of led zeppelin as a way to enlightenment”even the name of the band, let ze people in…..” he was ready to begin his fellowship , i believe.
charlie was mimicking stuff he had seen pulled on him. maybe by priests in the reform schools where he grew up. certainly abuse begets abuse.
if charlie wasn`t so hostile to the establishment the maybe tates would have been friends who sponsored his church and we`d be discussing his theosophy in a different light.
July 1st, 2005 at 11:26 am
call me paranoid, but let’s not forget the MIND CONTROL issue. lsd, cia, mkultra, scientology, process church — i’m not jumping to conclusions, but i do think those are some interesting question marks.
i don’t think it’s fair to say he hasn’t “got it”. who has? two or three people in the past 5000 years? the rest of us are just running around in the dark, trying to decode all this confusing/scary/awesome shit. it seems to me that’s exactly what he’s doing, to the best of his ability — trying to understand his universe. he’s a seeker, and he happens to be a traumatized one. i think some of the loopier elements of his ideologies might very well come from a need to compensate emotionally/psychologically for all the shit he’s been through.
it’s almost impossible to know what really went down, but it seems like he may have received some serious “grooming” (to put it gently) prior to the murders. let’s not forget that there are some real fucked up cowards working behind the scenes, and they LOVE the maleable, ignorant, splintered souls who they can employ to do their dirty work. if you put the whole thing into a broader, more “paranoid” social/political context, it starts to look pretty fucking suspicious.
i think he was ripe for the picking, and they picked him.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:29 pm
[…] Charlie’s Angels The American Meaning of Charles Manson A post over at Tim’s blog examing Charles Manson’s stance on language […]
July 1st, 2005 at 1:56 pm
i dunno; i’ve read up a lot on charlie, and i tend to think he was pretty guilty of using seriously manipulative mind control tricks of his own. he’s an enigmatic character, to be sure, but for every awesome coyote crucified statement, you can find about a dozen utterly absurd or racist or downright evil statements as well. he was a *master* manipulator, way way way too into the ultraviolence and sexual domination trip for my tastes. he probably got a raw deal, but imho he was no boddhisatva. i’ve known plenty of guys like charlie, who get into the guru thing and can spin out two-dollar profundities at a mile a minute. you can find some absolutely awesome and insightful quotes from jim jones, too. more often than not, they’re psychic vampires who can’t deal with their own manipulative powers. charlie’s a sad case, but he ain’t in my personal pantheon.
as to whether he was enlightened, or attained ‘gnosis,’ well, all i can say is it’s possible to have ‘it’ and then lose ‘it’ or abuse ‘it,’ too.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:20 pm
david yeh at edge of grace had a good post the other day that kind of relates:
The Spirituality of Nonviolence: On Not Becoming What We Hate
July 1st, 2005 at 4:27 pm
who`s to say what form gnosis comes in? maybe it automatically leads to crucifixion. maybe charlie was groomed. maybe jim jones too. spiritual practice aside, there are objective ways to induce trance states that seem spiritual. not all congregations form in church.
and elvis keeps appearing, arisen from the dead. is he a messiah? my step-brother used to have a shrine to elvis in his bedroom. statues, velvet pictures, albums, photos and other mementos. it was a hallowed place. a place of worship.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Bwaahahahaha I have revenge now! Bask in the Manson goodness!!
July 1st, 2005 at 5:08 pm
Albion: I’ll check it out. You know that Philip K. Dick quote right: “To fight the Empire is to become infected by it’s madness”
July 1st, 2005 at 8:58 pm
It’s not about fair- he hasn’t. Charlie’s just one of dozens who, when confronted with thneir inner Choronzon, lost to the dragon.
July 1st, 2005 at 10:45 pm
Manson is obviously sharp. But he is also an archetype that really only exists as a symbol. We know nothing of him without the attendant myth.
Manson=Terrorism. All things at all times to all people.
July 2nd, 2005 at 12:46 am
to me charles manson symbolised the death of the love generation,the final vilification of the hippy. so too was ira ienhorn, when they found the body of his girlfriend in a trunk on his balcony.
if in the postulate, manson=terrorism, who is the agency behind the acts? or did manson act alone with his group?
July 2nd, 2005 at 1:14 am
Haeresis, I’m sure I’m not the only one interested in a little more on this whole Choronzon thing…
July 2nd, 2005 at 2:00 am
I don’t know whether Manson’s original impetus is all that an important avenue of discovery anymore. Just as perhaps conspiracy theories behind the assassination of JFK obscures much more than it reveals. There are now so many layers of bullshit and campaigns to remarket the symbols that the symbols themselves are intrinsically useless. Look at that old question Geraldo Rivera posed to Manson that rev max brings up in another thread:
The well to understanding Manson’s predilection to guruism has been irretrievably poisoned. I think uncovering why Manson did what he did and is who he is is a dead end. That his evil has stayed current within a system that is many times in magnitude more evil, speaks more about Manson being a convenient receptacle more than what caused it. We can learn far more about the evil of Manson and whoever it is he followed by exploring the reasons Manson had any zealous followers at all.
July 2nd, 2005 at 2:09 am
Oh and also alstair, good point. You could very well be right that Manson signified the death of the “hippy generation”. Tim’s right, this is a can o’ worms. Which is probably why the can of them exists at all.
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:28 am
Why must the love generation be dead? Who killed it? Why can’t we find a way to have the love generation transcend the expectations of such a concept? Perhaps the “love generation” was none of the above. Maybe it was only another random lesson from which we can glean transcendent.
In my opinion there is a deep and logical empathy that exists just under the surface of modern western culture. It’s existence will only be hastened by the coming collapse of the extant economic structure. We will see if the install of Humanity 1.0 was a true install by how quickly the anti-viral institution quarantines the binary actors of Humanity 1.0. I have no idea how far you can take that analogy any more than the time to act is pretty much about now. Have you consulted the code that makes you tick recently? Your libraries have been hacked and are being referenced by the archons as we speak. They know more about you than you do about yourself.
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:29 am
*Maybe it was only another random lesson from which we can glean transcendent progress.*
July 2nd, 2005 at 12:14 pm
the innocence of the love generation is now packaged comfortably by the gap. volkswagen brought out the new bug with plastic flowers on the dash………no need to have to bother getting your own. besides, you don`t have time to pick flowers. you good little robot. you are an ant in a giant concrete hill, busy making something as yet invisible.
the love generation, or whatever that was that we recognise as such, was dangerous because it threatened the advancement of the construction of whatever it is we are busily building. we are so panicked to build it that we are screaming outloud in our sleep in order to keep the pedal pressed to the floor each day.
July 5th, 2005 at 3:14 am
“Too bad the interviewer moves onto another topic at that point (the Beatles and the Book of Revelation), cause I would have loved to see where he was going with that… Anyway, he goes on to all that stuff about the Black Man overthrowing the establishment etc. I wonder if in some way he didn’t mean that literally though. Like what if he meant the “Black Man” as some kind of weird alchemical reference?”
mebbe “weird” but certainly well-documented, as the alchemical tomes teem with “nigredo” references, and jung filled lots o leaves with musings on sol niger etc
but Chuckles refers here specifically to what inhabits the air-sublunar, that the animal-eye can’t see
in the Rolling Stone/Manson interview, Family member “Clem” leads the reporter to his Man, pointedly communicating about the sun sending out “spirals” (sol niger, the night-journeying “king” — the sun’s dark rays travelling backwards and underground from west to east)
Clem calls it “a hole in all dimensions” and the same “symbolism” is found in ancient iconography, especially on cylinder seals and lithics
Chuckles is a modern Set, amogst other thangs . . . an Extrusion of the goddess, “brought to life” in a frankenstinian/faustian sense by the “zeitgeist of the times”
he’s the maternal brother who performed (and performs still) blood initiations/propitiations/fertility rites for the matriarchal Tribe (uh . . . that’d be US, It Takes A Village!!)
:O)
also from the RS interview, Manson sums his attitude towards the father, masculinity, egoic consciousness, etc.:
“Ego is the man, the male image. [His face tenses, his eyes dart
and threaten. He clenches his fist, bangs it on the table. He gets
completely behind it, acting it out, the veins standing out in his
neck.] Ego is the phallic symbol, the helmet, the gun. The man
behind the gun, the mind behind the man behind the gun. My philosophy is that ego is the thinking mind. The mind you scheme with, make war with. They shoved all the love in the back, hid it away. Ego is like, “I’m going to war with my ego stick.”
and he thinks he’s Jeezus!! LOL!! — uh, wasn’t he the guy who yammered on Constantly about Brotherhood, the Father, and the Kingdom of Heaven??
sounds like he wasn’t quite so down on Daddy as pore lil’ Chuckie
like the Zodiac, Chuckles is a Manifestation of the Devouring Goddess — the son-servant of the re-arising goddess and the new matriarchate
and like their ancient predecessors, for all their intellect and occult knowledge, Zodie and Chuckles always remain man/sons — they never quite make it to manhood itself, and praps never will — mebbe that’s the inner cauldron that drives their inferiority and rage . . .
February 25th, 2006 at 11:31 am
[…] gger/6522/103/1600/mansonineup.jpg”> That bastard Tim Boucher, has set off a flurry of Manson talk, so now I have to get some of the leftover scraps, before there’ […]
December 19th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
[…] A post over at Tim’s blog examines Charles Manson’s stance on language. A lot of discussion back and forth over whether Charlie got “it” and what “it” is. The author of the below (i.e., “The American Meaning of Charles Manson“) speaks to these issues in a way that resonated powerfully for me: “…the point is not simply that Manson is speaking metaphorically. He is doing that, but he is also saying that everything is a metaphor, that our very lives, our bodies, our surroundings, are metaphor; that we live in an illusion if we think this material reality is real. Like Emerson and the earlier romantics, he is a philosophical idealist. He believes that what is ultimately real is not matter but consciousness. This whole thing we call reality, or the universe, is an illusion, a dream. What we call God is the dreamer. And our bodies are no more real than are the strange beings that flit through our dreams at night. The whole world is a thought, and each person’s perceptions are but a series of thought within the framework of the larger thought… […]