#“Angel Dust never claimed to be a religious man

[shadebloopnik]

Basically they're both silly freaks in their own unique ways, pls dont put them in lil neat boxes, bc these two are hot messes and we love them like that-

Me : well maybe it's not that bad?

Me : looking for radioapple art and immediately get hit with big buff Alastor and tiny shorter than in canon Lucifer, Lucifer in a dress getting fucked by Alastor, Lucifer in a dress getting fucked by big buff Alastor, Lucifer who look like 5 yo and 'suave sugar daddy' Alastor who holds him and each with thousands of likes and absolutely zero of anything else than that

Me : nope 🙃😔

Save me Vox/Al artists, save me

Man, I love Vox/Alastor art so much.

I just love the Vox/Alastor ship as a whole, be it one-sided, mutual, or anything in between, and a lot of it stems from Alastor still feeling like he's Alastor.

I mean, I think people make Alastor a little more cruel and heartless towards Vox sometimes, but overall he still feels like himself. He gets to be dangerous and manipulative and he gets to be silly and whimsical. It's perfect.

Adding a cut right here because this post got WAY longer than I anticipated ⬇️

I think with RadioApple, when it comes to Alastor, people lean too much into this:

And not enough into this:

It feels like his fun, sassy, and whimsical side gets stripped away and he's turned into a stereotypically tall, dark and menacing love interest.

Where's his flamboyancy? His razzamatazz! As Susan would say, "Where's the showmanship? Where's the pizzaz? Fucking mediocre."

If I'm reading a fic or looking at art and I can't imagine their Alastor doing one of his girly-pop wrist flicks -

- then I can't keep going. His girly-pop vibes are too important to me.

Of course, when it comes to tone in both fics and art, sometimes fun and whimsical aren't what the artist is going for. But even outside of NSFW art and stories, so often Alastor just feels...bland. He feels too stiff. Too much like a suave, old fashioned, smooth talking gentleman, and not enough like a fun, silly, and sassy little freak who loves trolling people.

And with Lucifer if feels like they lean too much into this:

And not enough of this:

I feel like any, if not all, of Lucifer's flaws are brushed aside so often and so easily.

He feels softened and watered down. Like he's either a sad & awkward UwU boi all the time, or he's the most flamboyant, seductive little minx there is. And to be fair, he is both a very sad boi and a seductive little minx.

But rarely does he ever come across as powerful to me. A lot of the time he feels too normal. Or too sad and naive. Literally, like he could be any other sinner if I didn't already know he was the kind of Hell. And that's so funny to me because we've seen him openly and extravagantly display his powers multiple times in the show--not to the extent that he did in the finale--but he was definitely flaunting all the things he could do, make, or summon for Charlie during his musical-battle with Alastor. He was 100% showing off how powerful he is.

Not only that, but, honestly, Lucifer feels too open and sincere because that man is judgmental as fuck.

Going back to the "Dad Beat Dad" episode, there are multiple examples of him being a self-righteous little shit: 1) he was incredibly critical of Charlie's hotel the moment he stepped inside, even if he tried, and failed, to cover it, 2) he didn't even try to hide his disgust for Alastor's bar, which he didn't even know was incorporated by Alastor (who he hadn't even met him yet) and could've been incorporated by Charlie or Vaggie, for all he knew, 3) he wasn't taking Charlie's hotel or her plan for redemption seriously from the start, he didn't even have his mind open to the possibility, he wasn't there to hear about her plans he was only there to see her, and 3) when the hotel was attacked by the loan sharks, instead of making them go away or preventing the hotel from being damaged - which he could have very easily done with no amount of effort - he hung back and smugly reiterated that he was right and sinners can't be redeemed and Charlie should just give up on her goals/dreams because it's just not possible so there's no point in trying.

Like, Charlie was very clearly in distress over her hotel being attacked and destroyed, but he was too busy boasting about how he'd been "proven" right to see that.

He's very easy to anger and his ego is so easily bruised. Alastor got under his skin immediately and effortlessly - though I also believe that's on part that Lucifer doesn't have a high opinions of sinners anyway - and Lucifer 100% escalated the conversation/argument he had with Alastor during their first meeting.

See the whole scene of him referring to Alastor as a "has-been" and insulting the name he'd given the hotel, especially when you take into consideration that until Alastor said that he named the hotel, Lucifer thought it was Charlie who came up with it.

And I'm not going to say that Alastor was an innocent, picked on little baby in that scene, he was 100% riling up Lucifer from the start, but also, like...Alastor's lines weren't outright antagonist like Lucifer's were. They were more subtle, slightly needling and passive aggressive, but nothing that could really be taken as a insult.

This is literally the dialogue, word for word, of their very first interaction:

Lucifer: What in the unholy Hell is that?!

Alastor: Just some of the renovations we had done. Adds a bit if color, don't you think?

Lucifer: And you are?

Alastor: Alastor, pleasure to be meeting you, Sir, quite a pleasure. It's nice to finally put a face to the name. You are much shorter in real life.

Lucifer: Who is this? Who is this now - are you the bellhop?

Alastor: Ah-ha, no! I am the host of the hotel. You might've heard of me from my radio broadcast.

Lucifer: Hmm, nope! I guess that's why Charlie called it the "has-been" hotel, hahaha!"

Alastor: Ha ha ha, it was actually my idea.

Lucifer: Ha ha, well it's not very clever.

Alastor: Ha ha, fuck you.

Like. That's their first interaction. And if you go back and actually pay attention to facial expressions and body languages, this was the first time he's seen Alastor, and Lucifer was immediately disdainful.

I went back and screenshotted Lucifer's face, right after Alastor's first line (which was a relatively innocent in and of itself and didn't even sound that antagonist), and:

That's a lot of disesteem for someone he literally just met. At most, you could argue that it was Alastor's smirk or tone that set him off ⬇️:

But even that is such a small thing to get upset over.

I'd say the only time Alastor really started getting openly hostile towards Lucifer was when he wiped his hand after shaking Lucifer's cane (which Lucifer didn't even see as he was too busy fixing his hat) and commenting on Lucifer's height (as a shortie myself, can confirm, that'll get on the nerves very fast).

My point is, Lucifer was immediately unfriendly towards Alastor and escalated the situation just as quickly, if not quicker, than Alastor did. Alastor implied that Lucifer might know of his radio broadcast, and Lucifer jumped right to calling him a "has-been." He doesn't even know him. This is their very first meeting. He was judgy and dismissive of Alastor at first sight, and, let's be honest, he kind of threw the first punch with that "has-been" line. Alastor said Lucifer was shorter than expected, but it's not like he laughed, pointed at him and called him a undercooked little chicken nugget. I'm sure a lot of demons/sinners who've never seen Lucifer would also assume he would be taller and more menacing at first glance, and I doubt this is the first time someone was surprised with his height (still not cool, Alastor. We vertically challenged folk have feelings too).

But Lucifer was prejudice from the start and antagonized Alastor just as quickly, and way more openly, than Alastor did to him. And don't get me wrong, this isn't me saying that's a bad thing on Lucifer's part! This isn't me criticizing or scorning him for it. I think it speaks so much of him as a character!

Cause we've seen the soft and tender moments he has with Charlie. We know how much he loves and cares for her. But he's also egotistical, antagonistic, and judgmental as hell, and that's what makes him such a fun character to write about. He's awkward yet showy, smug yet caring, depressed yet prideful. And by god, this man will show off his power without hesitation. He knows he's hot shit. He knows he's the strongest person in all of Hell. He knows he's the top dog and he can do whatever he wants - even if he has no love or interest in interacting within the Pride Ring (as far as we've been shown).

He's got a lot of multi-facets to him and I adore it, and that's why I get so annoyed when all of that is stripped away and he's turned into this soft little sunshine UwU boi who's just a sad, sweet lil lamb who's done no wrong.

No! He has done many wrongs! There's a reason he and Charlie were estranged and I don't think it was Lilith's fault - or, at least, I don't think it was all her fault (I have many thoughts about Lucifer and Lilith's divorce, okay)

I didn't mean for this to turn into a full-blown character analysist post LOL but alas I tend to get carried away. This was all to say, I really enjoy RadioStatic because Alastor typically gets to keep his sadistic and whimsical side, and I appreciate that. His silliness means a lot a to me, and if he comes off as too stiff or formal, it takes me out of a story.

Lucifer's flaws and sheer power also mean a lot to me, and I wish there were more fics and fan-art that showed that. If Lucifer reads too much like a normal, every-day person, I lose interest. I like the idea of people getting used to him, and getting comfortable around his presence, only to get a sudden and overwhelming reminder that he is, in fact, an ancient and immortal being with immense power that their brains wouldn't even be able to comprehend.

I have so many headcanons about Lucifer as a fallen angel and how his habits and lifestyle developed over the thousands upon thousands of years he's been in Hell. Habits he's adopted that unconsciously help him duplicate the mannerisms and behavior of sinners and demons, but also those small, indistinct tells that are quick and subtle reminder that he could destroy everyone in Pentagram City with ease if he decided to; and also, those times if you were to look closely and really pay attention, you get the faint, unsettling feeling that there is something very un-human about him. A subtle, unnerving shiver down your spine as your instincts yell at you that this person is not a person at all, he's just passing off as one.

That shit gets me. Give me ancient, eldritch Lucifer and I'll love you forever.

I am sorry Anon, I did not mean for this response to get so big 😅 You gave me a paragraph and I gave you a novel. But yeah, save me RadioStatic artists, save me 🙏 I rarely have to worry about Alastor turning into a big, buff alpha man or a soft little UwU when he's with Vox, and I appreciate that.

Edit: Adding a screenshot of my tags here because apparently I wrote down too many and it cut off the character tags.

[inuhalfdemon]

okay so imagine and hear me out. Lucifer and human angel dust. He prayed to Lucifer to feel the love of a man because there was a mob hit/threat out on his life and given the time period angel dust (Real name Anthony since he's still alive) was in the closet and never even got to kiss a man and suddenly Lucifer himself is there and instead of just fucking him he flips the script and worships Anthony like he is the most beautiful angel in existence (Like people claim lucifer is) but its with kisses and words of affection. After all he prayed for the love of a man not the lust of one. they can still fuck though you just have to build up to it.

-Crack Rodent

Ok...damn. This may have got out of hand.

Rating = Explicit (tw; blood, violence, dying/death, religious blasphemy, M/M sexual content, frotting...sinful fluff...I think? Fuck, who knows anymore. 😅

Word Count: 2,546 Words

Some Prayers Are Answered

Anthony hit the front doors to the cathedral, stumbling full-tilt. Clawing at the damp wood of the door in the dark - fingernails scraping slivers from the surface of it as he jerked at the handle in blind panic. He shoved his good shoulder heavily into the gap – dragging it open. The bottom corner of the door wailed against the floor; but he stepped from out of the drenching rain that was pouring down on him from outside and slammed his back into it – forcing the heavy door closed behind him.

Gasping, he stumbled into the corridor and shuffled past the rows and rows of empty church pews. His clothes were soaked from the downpour and he was leaving trails of drippings behind him; rain water wetting the floor with the falling of droplets – droplets of his own blood falling with it.

Anthony gripped at his shoulder; tilting his head. He pulled his hand away and saw that his palm was painted vibrantly red.

“Ah, ffffuck.” Anthony shook his head, stumbling forward and catching his foot on the steps that began leading up to the altar of the cathedral. He collapsed there; still gasping – shaking from the cold and wet of the rain – the shock of what just happened.

They had been so stupid. A mob hit…of course. Everyone had wondered where his brother had ended up. Anthony had bet all his dollars on the guy finally skipping town, but…no. Now here he was; shot in the fucking shoulder, bleeding out all over these fucking steps leading up to the fucking altar…and for what? One last snort of cocaine?

Fucking typical.

Anthony groaned, moving to stand himself up but his head was spinning – he felt too dizzy.

If he had known...drugs weren’t what he had gone for.

Anthony was in his 30’s, known that he was gay since he was 14 and never once had he let himself actually be loved by a man – he never even kissed one. If it had to be one more thing…

God, The Father; His Son; or the Holy Spirit…Lucifer, The Devil Himself…Anthony would pray to anyone in that moment that would hear it.

“Anthony?”

Anthony lifted his head, seeing that the candles nearest to the altar now were lit and this part of the cathedral was now bathed in a warm and fiery glow.

He was dressed as a man; a man of the church – a catholic priest of all things – but, Anthony knew him as something…more.

He was more beautiful than anyone Anthony ever imagined anyone could be; with platinum locks and bright yellow eyes…he was as handsome as The Devil…

“Anthony…you are dying, but your prayers have been heard.”

Anthony stared back at him; clutching at his shoulder and swallowing dryly. “I-I never said anythin’…”

“Some of the loudest prayers are uttered unspoken, Anthony.” He told him, approaching Anthony now. He offered the young man his hand and Anthony readily took it; feeling himself being pulled from off of the stairs that led up to the alter and brought to stand beside it.

“Who-who are ya?” Anthony asked; though he already – somehow – knew.

“You know who I am.” He told Anthony softly. “And, you may know me as: Lucifer.” He gently removed Anthony’s hand from the wound at his shoulder; pressing an open palm into the bleeding injury with firmness.

Shivering, Anthony flinched – expecting there to be pain but, there was none.

A strange, sucking sensation – something being pulled from him – and then Lucifer was withdrawing his hand, fingers curled into a loose fist. Uncurling his fingers; Lucifer showed him the remains of a small piece of lead…of a bullet, removed from where it had been violently embedded inside his body.

“The bullet ricocheted and was stopped by bone. It fragmented, and a piece of it has nicked one of your arteries and another has lodged itself into a lung. Your body is doing what it can, to form clots - to stop the bleeding - but, you are also suffering from the severe shock and the loss of blood you have sustained already…you cannot be saved, Anthony.”

“I know.” Anthony shivered.

“I could stay here…with you…keep you comfortable and even answer your unspoken prayer or, I could leav-“

“Stay.” Anthony told him. “Please, just…stay.”

“Your body is already giving out, is already shutting down. You won’t feel it, Anthony. You may not even notice it; and I am here.” Lucifer’s hand found his face; the palm cupping against Anthony’s cheek as Anthony was nodding – showing that he understood – but, the tears were coming now: not from the pain or the panic he had felt – but, from the unknowing.

Lucifer’s hand slid so that his thumb was brushing tears away from Anthony’s cheek.

“You have…the most beautiful eyes, Anthony…I can see you in those eyes.”

“Wha-What?” Anthony was caught off guard before Lucifer was tilting his face; golden eyes rimmed with a thin ring of vibrant red focused intently on him as he leaned in closer.

“I’ve…never seen such eyes.” Lucifer breathed and Anthony felt the warmth of it touching his skin.

I can’t feel myself dying but, I can feel…so much more. He realized.

“May I kiss you, Anthony?” The devil asked him, softly.

Anthony tilted his face more; waiting for Lucifer to do it – waiting for the passionate crushing of lips to lips that he saw so often in the movies or of horny couples making out and “sucking face”.

But, Lucifer hadn’t moved – still waiting for an answer.

“Yes.” Anthony breathed and when Lucifer finally kissed him; their meeting of lips was something more warm, more gentle, and softer than Anthony was imagining.

Anthony felt himself stutter in places; uncertain of the movements he should be doing or when they were supposed to stop but, Lucifer’s lips were firm and they were sure, guiding Anthony through it until he was so shaky and out-of-breath, he was certain that this tightness in his chest that he was feeling was from his lung slowly filling up with his own internal bleeding.

“It’s ok.” Lucifer told him; and he was holding him close. “We’ve got more time.”

Getting his breath back, and steadying himself, Anthony initiated the next kiss. Lucifer’s firmness became more slack, giving Anthony room to experiment and explore the movement and feeling of their mouths. Becoming braver, Anthony flicked his tongue against Lucifer’s lips, drawing a smirk from him. Smiling, Lucifer parted them for him, sliding his tongue forward and then he began guiding Anthony into a whole new kind of a lesson.

Gasping, Anthony pulled his face away – dragging air into his lungs and feeling Lucifer’s hands in his hair; Lucifer’s lips trailing all along the line of his jaw and his teeth pressing into the swell of his neck. Anthony shivered; feeling a pleasant sensation of goosebumps skittering across his arms, at the base of his skull and diving down his neck.

“You have…done so much, haven’t you, Anthony?”  Lucifer’s words sent wafts of heated breath against his sensitive skin.

Lucifer’s lips trailed further down; pressing to the slick skin that stretched tightly over the point of a collar bone that jutted out from underneath his soaked-through shirt.

Anthony closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing, waiting for the list of his sins to be repeated back to him in low tones of conviction.

“Such loyalty, such devotion. You sacrificed so much for others - for your family; and never knowing the feeling of having someone to call your own…someone to want you, to love you, to worship you…” Lucifer’s words died away softly, and his lips and teeth firmly suctioned to Anthony’s skin, nearly eliciting a moan from him.

“Heh…I am no angel.” Anthony swallowed; his heart was galloping in his chest.

“But, you are…” Lucifer pulled his face away from the bruising mark that he had made, sliding his hands away from the young man’s hair.

 “Anthony.” Lucifer’s molten yellow and red eyes bore back into his own.

“You are glorious, to my eyes.” 

The sting of white-hot tears touched his eyes and though the reaction should have embarrassed him, Anthony could not bring himself to turn away.

“I want to see you…all of you.” Anthony told him.

“Of course.” Lucifer stepped back and the clothes he was wearing evaporated from him, almost like the smoke from a blown-out candle.

Anthony’s jaw tensed and his eyes grew wide at how utterly perfect Lucifer was; and when Anthony saw Lucifer’s open and apparent arousal, he blushed a deep scarlet red.

I look nothing like that…I’m all sinew and bones.

“I’d very much like to see you – as well, Anthony.” Lucifer told him.

Anthony shook his head, “No, you wouldn’t…I’m –“

Lucifer swept forward and pulled Anthony to him again; roughly – hungrily – kissing him as he pressed himself close.

Lucifer sharply bit at Anthony's lip, abruptly pulling away and cupping Anthony's face within the palms of both hands. 

"You don't think you deserve it, do you, Anthony? To be desired..." Lucifer ground himself into Anthony's crotch and Anthony's breath rushed out of him in a gasp. "To be...loved." Lucifer slid his hands back into Anthony's hair, his fingers curling into wet, wavy locks and tugging so that Anthony's chin was tilted up. 

"But, you do, Anthony...you deserve it and so much more." Lucifer released his right hand from Anthony's hair, gliding it so that the backs of his fingers dragged softly along the damp skin of Anthony's jaw, and continually sliding them down to the shallow inlet at the base of Anthony's throat. Lucifer's fingers touched him; and Anthony felt trails of fire - trails of heat engulfing each and every nerve ending that was set alight to burn and smolder beneath his skin - and the shiver that ran through him then was of nothing but pure pleasure. 

"Let me show you...just how deserving you are." Lucifer's fingers dragged to Anthony's fully mended wound site; sliding underneath the collar of his shirt and stoking hot, scolding embers that flared brilliantly across his chest. 

Anthony's body was simmering in a cold sweat; and he was having trouble forming thoughts or even finding enough air to breathe. There was an immediate and urgent response from him happening down below and it was all he could do to resist pressing his hips into Lucifer's and rut - with and into - him until he was all but senseless. 

Anthony swallowed - his throat feeling both very tight and dry. "This...this isn't real? Is it?" 

"Does it have to be?" Lucifer asked him, looking back at Anthony with heavy-lidded eyes. The red that ringed the glowing gold had expanded and turned Lucifer's retinas into a blazing sunset. "I can promise you, it will feel the same." 

Anthony let out a shaking breath, and he felt himself press into - against - Lucifer...felt his body - this body - crying out and demanding something more. 

"You are very nearly gone now, Anthony...but, you know it don't you. You never really made it into this church. You managed to escape from the hit, but you collapsed outside this building and are now slowly bleeding out into the dirty street gutter, choking on a bloody froth. Soon, you will pass...but, I am here to see you through it....if you still want me to." 

"What if...it's already too late?"

"There is still time." 

Lucifer held him, his hand still tight in Anthony's hair, his full arousal pressing into Anthony's own covered and straining cock. 

Anthony closed his eyes; building tears threatening to seep between his lashes before he thrust himself forward – and his mouth was desperately crushing into Lucifer’s.

Lucifer let go of Anthony’s hair, both hands clutching for Anthony’s jacket as he quickly worked to shove the heavy wet thing off and cast it aside. Anthony’s own hands clawed and pawed at Lucifer’s arms and chest; trying to grip and feel as much of him as he possibly could. Lucifer huffed exasperatedly, pushing Anthony’s hands away - just for a moment - so that he could peel Anthony’s sodden shirt up and over his head. With the shirt joining the jacket, Anthony’s hands were on Lucifer again before both men’s bare chests came together and suddenly Anthony was consumed with an internal heat like he had never knew.

Strong arms held and pulled Anthony into Lucifer’s passionate embrace; Lucifer’s tongue slid across his own, thrusting itself in and out of his mouth in delicious torment. Anthony moaned into Lucifer’s mouth and both were grinding against each other; both of their erections stroking each other in tandem; despite Anthony’s wet jeans.   

Gasping, Anthony leaned his face away – breathing heavy and hands fumbling for the zipper of his jeans. Lucifer left him to it, resting his own hands on Anthony’s waist and trailing kisses all the way down until he was kneeling and Anthony was kicking and pulling the last of his clothing off from around his ankles. Lucifer pulled Anthony with him; Lucifer laying himself so that he was stretched out on his back along the floor beside the altar and Anthony falling him down willingly.

Mouths and hands explored each other; Lucifer’s with firm confidence and Anthony’s with a clumsy eagerness. Slotted together, Lucifer and Anthony’s hips rolled and jutted – finding just the right angle and rhythm that brought them both pleasure.

“How do we…? How do I…?” Anthony suddenly wondered between pants.

“Just do what feels good.” Lucifer’s voice grated low in this throat; and his head and neck bent back in a wave of satisfaction.

“What would you…ah…” Anthony suddenly lost his train of thought; shuddering with a breathy and needful gasp and Lucifer began chuckling beneath him.

“You are asking what I might like?” Lucifer clarified.

“Yes…” Lucifer jutted his pelvis and Anthony groaned at the sensation. “I mean did you want to…do I need to move or turn around?”

“I do not wish to desecrate you, Anthony.”  

“I-I….ah, fuck…” Anthony was trembling; the tension building in him had already become too much.

“It’s alright, Anthony.”

Anthony was shaking his head. “I can’t- Oh, fuck, I’m going to-.”

“Then, come.” Lucifer told him, rocking his hips steadily so that his curved cock was sliding into Anthony’s at just the right angle – striking directly into that sweet bundle of nerves that lied underneath.

Everything tightened before Anthony was spilling out; cum spurting from the slot of his tip and spilling onto Lucifer.

Before Anthony could feel embarrassed; Lucifer had stilled his thrusting, pulling Anthony into him and holding him close. Anthony was sweating, shaking, feeling tired, and almost drifting lost into a warm and floating fog. Lucifer drug his hands and fingers through Anthony’s sweat-soaked hair, his face and nose nuzzling encouragingly into Anthony’s cheek. Anthony’s chest was rising and falling with heavy pants.

He had nearly caught his breath when a coolness passed through him; shuddering up his spine and lifting the air from his lungs. Lucifer’s grip tightened; keeping him steady.

“You felt it, then.”

“Yes.”  

“Then, you know that you are gone.”

“Yes.”

“Are you alright?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“I can stay with you…if you’d like. There is still time.”

“How much time?”

“As much time as you will ever need.”

[makaylajadewrites]

Salvation

this is a terrible drabble inspired by a not so sfw conversation I had with @tobias-hankel in our lovely groupchat. I hope you enjoy what little it has to offer.

Rating: M

Pairing: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid

Tags: Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Vague Descriptions of Sex, Bad Poetic Prose, Probably Blasphemy and/or Sacrilege

Summary: As Spencer accepted the gift that was his holy communion, the dark hand of his God raked through his curls, blessing him with silent, unspoken salvation. How could he ever want for more, when Derek was all he ever needed?

Read on AO3 here

--

Salvation.

Spencer had never been a religious man. Growing up, religion was taught as a historical perspective rather than a way of life. He was taught the Bible, informed heavily of Christianity, simply because it was the most practiced religion in America, but it had not become a forced belief system as it had for many other young children. Spencer was raised in an exploratory fashion; his father never had much of a care for religion and his mother had taught him the definition of agnosticism when he was only four.

As he grew, consuming knowledge from the expanding universe around him, he began to identify with that very term. He could express the most difficult equations of Collatz Conjecture and explain the chemical reactions involving the transfer of electric charge across the electrified interface between electronic and ionic conductors in electrochemistry. But one thing that could never be understood on the plane of human reason was the existence nor nonexistence of a God or higher entity. Despite all that a man as brilliant as Spencer knew, one thing he could never hope to grasp was the concept of faith.

Faith was subjective. It simply could not exist without an individual’s decision to make it be, meaning that religion itself was based on the very philosophy of believing in the unknown, particularly that which could never be known. And as many times as Spencer pondered the often introspective nature of religion, he found that there was no resonance within him for a belief system that was built upon the sense of the hopelessness of human beings. How diminishing it was, to fear the possibility of inadequacy.

His work brought him into the depths of the darkest parts of humanity. He had seen the works of evil, the Christian ideal of Satan in the flesh, but never once did he attribute it to religious misguidings. Mental instability was the true enemy, but on more than one occasion he heard others place the blame on a lack of faith. But with or without faith, in clearheadedness or insanity, all people contained evil inside of them.

Except for one.

Derek Morgan was a force to be reckoned with. His eyes held tumultuous storms of long harvested trauma, but the weight of his smile could bring a man to his knees. Spencer felt reverence towards the man ever since they first met, and ultimately, he was blinded by it. But he knew that Derek’s lingering gaze meant more than just an act of friendliness, because no man could face another and shower him with compliments of his beauty without feeling the slightest sense of desire.

They fell into place eventually. To Spencer, it seemed to be a miracle that Derek had become his. Science could not prove the very bindings of their beings, and for the very first time, Spencer placed his faith in the unseen. His devotion for Derek became a leading part of his life, but unlike the disparaging tones of god-centered faiths, he felt immaculate.

As their lips joined in holy matrimony, their hands slid together as two pieces of matched creation, and Spencer moaned a hymn deep in his throat. Blasphemy ran through his veins, but the sheer grace that fell upon him in times like these kept his doubts in the darkest recesses of his mind. How could he ever think that Derek didn’t love him? No matter if he turned away, like a shepherd guides his sheep, Derek would bring him back to the welcoming embrace of his loving arms.

Spencer smiled at Derek, sliding down to his knees on the floor in front of him. He knelt before him, and if he didn’t believe in God before he did now, because before him was a deity of a man whose praises he would sing for the rest of his life. He hooked his slender fingers into the waistband of Derek’s boxers, and as he slid them down his dark, muscular thighs, the sight that beheld him was far holier than any heaven he could envision. With much passion, Spencer took his Christ into his mouth and he sacrificed himself entirely to the will of his God.

The groan above him sounded like the voice of an angel, and as Spencer accepted the gift that was his holy communion, the dark hand of his God raked through his curls, blessing him with silent, unspoken salvation. How could he ever want for more, when Derek was all he ever needed?

Derek grew close, and as he reached his tender deliverance, Spencer was baptized with the essence of his Lord. He was showered with soft spoken praises, and soon enough, he was guided onto the bed and worshipped thoroughly, the love of his God washing over him in bountiful waves of pleasure. The breath that passed his lips was inspired by his love alone, and as Derek parted the sea of his legs, his fingers coated in holy water played him like a harp.

Spencer was blessed with the lips of his God, pressing upon the tender skin of his breast. Derek smoothed his hands down the curve of his sides and ribs, and from the dust he was materialized. Those lips traveled up to his own mouth to deliver unto him the breath of life, and as Derek entered him, he bathed in salvation. He moaned the psalms, whispering creeds for his Lord and welcoming him into his soul.

He spoke in tongues as the Holy Spirit came over him. Within him, Derek plucked the forbidden fruit, and Spencer’s back lifted off of the bed as the serpent claimed his holy soul.

For just a brief moment in the afterglow of prayer, Spencer felt a sense of doubt wash over him, but as Derek’s lips met his once more and words of love soaked into his skin, that doubt quickly dissipated.

If this is what it meant to be a sinner, Spencer didn’t ever want to be holy again.

Tags: @tobias-hankel @suburban--gothic @altsvu @willowrose99 @sparklinspence @hag4fagmegstiel @pete-is-fanatic @ssa-sarahsunshine @spencers-renaissance @garcias-bitch @katytheinspiredworkaholic @dralexreid @oliverbrnch @softhairedhotch @foggyblues-ralvez @codeandcreativity@scorpio-hotch @ssa-natalya-reid @goobzoop

[thisaccisdead]

give up on a miracle - sanders sides au - chp. 1

pairing(s): as of now, romantic nicomas and platonic everyone else

warnings: lots of religious stuff

summary: patton, virgil, logan, and janus are angels in charge of answering prayers. when they find out the earth is scheduled to be destroyed in a week, their only hope for saving it is to set up two humans: thomas sanders and nico flores.

word count: 3.5k

notes: this is a based off of miracle workers but not an exact au, idk it’ll be fun, you don’t have to have seen the show, you just have to like silly angel shenanigans 

Please, God, let this somehow work out.

Thomas didn’t ask for miracles too often. Well—that was a lie, he probably prayed for some inconsequential thing everyday, but he rarely meant it the way he meant this one. The man at the mall felt like fate. He was beautiful, and according to his backpack he was gay, and he was just a few tables down, and... Thomas should have just said hi as soon as he had noticed him, but he had psyched himself out. Like always.

Usually that would be the end of the story, but as Thomas was headed for the exit, the man was there too. In front of him. Speaking to him.

Thomas was too caught off guard to process the first half of what he said—though he did register being given back his abhorrent carrot snack—and when he tuned back in, all he caught was:

“Uh, it’s okay! It’s probably a bit too nosy for me to ask anyway.”

“Uh, yeah! Super nosy! What’s wrong with you, man?” was the sentence that came out of Thomas’s mouth in response. He blamed his lips for coming up with it, because he knew his mind couldn’t have been involved.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” the man smiled apologetically at him, and even that small, sheepish smile was so radiant… yeah, Thomas was mentally beating the shit out of himself. “Well, have a good night!”

So, now the fate-given man was headed somewhere else, and Thomas was about to lose him—probably forever—if he didn’t act. So, obvious answer: he had to act. But he just… couldn’t. Not without a sign at least.

Not without a push.

When no push came, Thomas told himself it wouldn’t have led anywhere anyway. He continued about his day, with only the slightest added weight in his chest.

•••

“Aw, Virge, we have to do something about this one!”

Virgil looked up from his own paperwork to see the prayer Patton had pulled up.

“‘Please, God, let this somehow work out,’” he read out dryly. “Hm, not very specific.”

“Oh, but you didn’t—c’mon, look—“ Patton waved his hand to replay the video of the scene. The figures popped up on the screen, and Patton was reminded all over again of the dopey, flustered expression of the human, Thomas, as he failed so miserably at talking to his mall crush. It was such a silly, hopeful wish—Patton’s favorite kind—and he couldn’t bear to see it go unanswered.

His fellow angel did not share this opinion, evidentially. “Nope. Nuh-uh. No way,” Virgil said, “Love prayers are stupid as shit, hardest of all, never work out. If this whole department’s getting shut down, I’d rather spend my last week answering achievable prayers.”

Patton frowned. His brown-dappled wings drooped as his excitement wavered. “Is that right, though?” he asked, “Should we really stick to… what? Finding lost wallets? Delivering extra sandwiches? Like we’ve done every year of this job? If this is all ending, I wanna finally do something that matters, Virge.”

Virgil looked betrayed. “Lost wallets do matter, Patton. Maybe they don’t end droughts, or heal hearts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. If people wish for it, it matters to them. I always thought you agreed with me on that.”

Patton bit his lip. He did agree with Virgil, on some level, and on any other day he would have considered his words more carefully. But with the prayer department set to close down this very week, he had lost some of his filter. Maybe his ideas were far-fetched, but when he had joined the Department of Answered Prayers he had been hoping to do exactly that--end droughts, heal hearts.

“Virgil’s right,” chimed in Logan. Their manager made his way over, and took Patton’s tablet from his hands. He swiped upwards on the prayer, officially dismissing it as ‘impossible.’ “There is no need to feel bad, Patton. It’s not our fault humans mainly ask for impossible things. If they want impossible, they need God, and God doesn’t have that kind of time. If they want an extra sandwich… we can pull a few strings.”

Logan nodded approvingly to where Virgil was coding breezes on his tablet, screen open to a view of a rural town avenue. He was carefully, cautiously, innocuously blowing leaves into piles one-by-one. This process eventually cleared the front yard of a small house, just in time for a kind-eyed, middle-aged man to come home and cheer at the sight of the finished chore. He even did a stupid little dance to himself, and Patton saw the smallest smile tug at Virgil’s lips.

“I agree with Patton,” came a voice from over by the mini fridge. Janus was doing what he did best: sipping at the canned wine he wasn’t meant to have, not doing any work, and giving his opinion on everything anyway. “Let’s do something interesting. It’s not like it matters at this point.”

“What do you mean?” Patton squinted at him.

“Cuz the prayer department’s getting shut down, duh, what else have we been talking about?” Virgil answered.

“No,” Janus said, “Well—yes, but… you know why we’re getting shut down, right?”

Patton and Virgil tilted their heads at him, and Logan looked away. A smile appeared on Janus’s face, but not one of joy. One that had an edge, a venom in it. “Logan… you didn’t tell them?”

“It would only upset them,” the management angel replied, still not meeting Janus’s eyes.

“Yeah, because they’ll not be upset at all when they see Earth randomly explode in a few days,” Janus deadpanned.

“What?!” Patton and Virgil exclaimed in simultaneous dismay.

Logan glared at Janus. “Are you happy? Now we have to deal with this for the next week.”

“Earth can’t explode yet,” Virgil said matter-of-factly, “that’s not right. Right?”

Patton nodded emphatically. “We should’ve gotten at least a century’s notice! Or had it on a public schedule somewhere!”

“Yeah, God has to call it off. At least for now,” Virgil agreed.

“You want God to stop it?” Janus said with a laugh. “He didn’t even remember it was happening; it was His PA who told the management staff.”

“Yes, it was,” Logan narrowed his eyes at Janus. “How did you find out about it anyway?”

Janus opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Virgil cut in, “God’s not gonna do anything about it?”

“It’s been in His plan. Why would He need to change it?” Logan asked rhetorically, adjusting his large, round-framed glasses as he did so. It was a movement he made often when he was being a know-it-all.

“How’s Earth gonna die?” Patton asked, looking at the floor, still in denial. He had lived his life on Earth, he had been a human—they all had, before they died and became angels. It had been so long since he’d been alive, he couldn’t quite remember the feeling of it. The memory was blurred around the edges, but it still seeped warmth, like dough burning into bread over a fire. Now, the only connection he had to that sensation were the humans--the chance to watch them, how they lived such utterly flawed, full lives. He recalled Thomas’s hopeful expression.

“Asteroid,” Logan replied. He didn’t need to check his files to give the answer, his ink-blue wings stiff behind him--and that was when Patton knew, despite his cold, indifferent attitude, this news was weighing on him too.

“Like the dinosaurs. Well, bigger. But still unoriginal of Him,” Janus scoffed, checking his nails—well, more like checking his gloves, which seemed unnecessary. Something mournful crossed his face for a moment, but Patton couldn’t place what. “The dinosaurs were sad too.”

“You lived in the 19th century. You weren’t around for dinosaurs,” Logan stated, brow furrowed in confusion. Janus ignored him.

“An asteroid? He could prevent that so easily! Earth deserves to at least live to its natural end,” Patton said. He glanced to Virgil, hoping for backup, but his coworker seemed most focused on biting his black-polished nails into dust.

“Well, isn’t it the natural end if it was in His plan?” Logan asked, once again, rhetorically. He also adjusted his glasses again. Patton liked to think of himself as particularly nice, even for an angel, but he wouldn’t have minded seeing those glasses broken in that moment.

“I’m more interested in your claim that Earth doesn’t ‘deserve’ to end,” Janus smiled at Patton. It was a slippery kind of smile, one that he couldn’t grasp the intentions of. “Overall, it’s a dumpster fire of a planet, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, 99% of the prayers are literally impossible for angels to answer at this point.”

“Yeah, well, I know some angels who are too busy with their shitty wine to even try—“ Virgil began to complain, turning on Janus, but Patton was too busy having a revelation to pay much attention to it.

“That’s it!” Patton exclaimed, jumping up from his seat with a grin.

“Please, be more specific, Patton,” Logan sighed. “Define ‘it.’”

Patton was, once again, too busy to pay attention to this. He made for the doorway with haste, only tossing over his shoulder: “I’m going to meet God!”

•••

Logan, Janus, and Virgil made it to God’s office before Patton did. He wasn’t the best with maps, so sue him. The trio was waiting in the grand hallway for him, and he was thankful that they had decided to back him up, despite the fact they had no idea what he was doing. Even though the coworkers bickered their fair share, you couldn’t work as the only 4 angels in a crumbling department without a certain bond forming.

Patton gave them a grateful smile as he strolled past them and right up to the secretary’s desk. The secretary, who was… not present? He checked the name plaque. Engraved in the gold of it was: Mrs. Snuffles, but the ‘u’ had been scratched out and written over so that it was Mrs. Sniffles. Before Patton could even begin to be perplexed by this, a large orange tabby hopped up from the floor, where she had been hidden, and onto the desk.

The cat looked him in the eye, with a surprising amount of purpose, and meowed.

“Hello?” Patton asked, dumbfounded. “...Mrs. Sni—Snuffles?”

She meowed again, this time with an undercurrent of what Patton could only assume was impatience.

“I—“ Patton looked back at the group behind him, but they just shrugged. They were following his lead. That couldn’t be good. “We would like to schedule a meeting with God, please.”

Mrs. Snuffles trotted over to a stack of papers, and pushed the top one aside with a swipe of her paw. She looked up from it after a moment, and then jumped down from the table, going up to the gilded, arched doorway at the end of the hall. She started meowing loudly, and soon an angel with cardinal-red wings and a matching red suit jacket stepped out. He looked down at Mrs. Snuffles, then up at Patton.

“I’m terribly sorry, but God is not available right now. He’s very busy,” the angel explained with a polite smile, the kind that was trained and not felt, “and he will be until Earth explodes. Thank you, goodbye.”

“Oh,” Patton said dumbly. He maybe should have expected that.

Mrs. Snuffles hissed at the angel, and he sighed. “You really think they want to talk to Him?”

“We do!” Patton interjected.

“You think you do,” the angel replied, an undercurrent of bitterness to his tone.

“Same difference, right?” Patton said, giving the other a hopeful smile.

“Just let us in, Princey,” Virgil’s annoyed voice came from behind. “Don’t be an ass. At least not more of one than usual.”

Patton looked between the two of them. “You know each other?”

‘Princey’ gave Virgil a deadpan glare. “Fine. You want a meeting with God? Be my guest.” He stepped aside from the doorway, gesturing to it with a sarcastic flourish.

When no one else made a move, Virgil grumbled and pushed past Patton. The rest of the group followed. When they got to the door, Patton paused and turned to the red-winged man. “Princey—“

“Roman,” he corrected.

“Roman,” Patton repeated. He pointed at the cat curiously, “Mrs. ‘Sniffles’?”

Roman blushed. “I was allergic when I was alive.”

A resounding reply of “Me too!” went through the group, and they all turned to each other in mild surprise.

“It’s how I died!” Patton added cheerily.

“Huh,” Roman replied with a puzzled frown. He cleared his throat. “Well, good luck.”

“Thank you!” Patton said. He looked down at Mrs. Snuffles as well, “Thank you, too.”

She gave him a final, curt meow, and rubbed up to his legs, pushing his feet against the door. He laughed, turned to the others waiting for him, and they nodded. Roman opened the door, and gestured them in.

Patton didn’t know what he had expected God’s office to look like, but it was decidedly not what he found upon entering that door. He had expected something resembling the grand hallway leading up to it: golden statues, velvet carpet, ivory columns. And, sure, that seemed to be the basis of the office; it was everything that was added on that was surprising. The bookshelves were stacked exclusively with trashy magazines, the walls were covered in posters of boy bands and movie stars, and a side-room had been renovated into what appeared to be a personal Starbucks. Finally, in the center of it all, sitting on the sofa and watching TV, was:

“...God?” Patton asked unsurely.

The man--(should Patton call Him that?)--eyed the group from behind a pair of sunglasses. He didn’t bother to turn the TV off as He casually greeted, “Hey, babes! What’s up?”

“Um,” Patton glanced at his friends for help, but they were clearly just as lost as him. Well, not Janus; Janus seemed unbothered. This provided Patton some sense of comfort, enough for him to continue, “We wanted to ask about--”

“Hold that thought, hun,” God held up a finger. “Roman!”

Roman walked in, almost reluctantly, at the call. “Yes?”

“Be a peach and mute the TV, would you?” God asked, throwing His PA the remote. Roman caught it as if with practice, and pressed the mute button with a wry expression.

“Thanks, love you!” God said, then turned back to Patton. “What were we talking about?”

“Well--”

God tried to sip the frappe in His drink-holder, only to find it empty, and He interrupted again to say, “Roman, coffee alert! Mama needs His caffeine!”

Roman bit his lip, presumably to stop himself from letting out a sigh. When he walked to the Starbucks corner, he seemed to purposefully avoid eye contact with the group. Patton glanced at his friends, and found Virgil suppressing an amused grin, and Janus not bothering to suppress his.

“We wanted to ask about the end of the world,” Patton finally said.

God’s brow furrowed slightly. “End of the world? Oh! OH, that is coming up, isn’t it? When’s that again, Ro?”

Roman, from behind the coffee maker, replied, “7 and a half days.”

“Oo, fun!” God gasped, “That’s so soon! I totally forgot that was so soon, isn’t that crazy?”

“So crazy,” Roman agreed dryly, handing Him a new venti frappe.

“Right,” Patton said, almost at a loss, “So, you… want the world to end?”

God shrugged, using one finger to play with his coffee straw as he spoke. “It was in my plan, wasn’t it? Plus, I mean, y’know… Earth’s really, like, ‘ew’ right now, right? Like, sure, I COULD save it, and then I’d let the humans keep doing their little thing, but I don’t want that; they’re mostly messes. I wanna make… I dunno a new place with, like, more Idris Elba’s.”

“And you’re willing to kill the real Idris Elba for that?” Janus cut in. God looked him up and down critically, before asking,

“Hey, do I know you from something?”

“No,” Janus replied quickly, “Certainly not from Eden, and even if I was there, I wasn’t the snake. I’m a real angel, hush.”

Patton turned to him in confusion, but God just shrugged again, and said, “K, whatever. Anyway, yeah, what’d you gals wanna know about Earth again?”

“Um, we wanted you to, maybe… not… blow it up?” Patton asked.

“Hmm,” God hummed, “Thanks, but no thanks! Earth is gross, I’m just so over it, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Patton replied without thinking, unable to hide the frustration in his voice anymore, “If Earth’s messed up, all the more reason to be there for your children, and not just kill everything. It’s wrong.”

There was a ‘thunk’ against the floor, and Patton looked to see that Roman had dropped the old coffee cup he had been carrying to the trash. Logan and Virgil were staring at Patton with equally stricken expressions, and Janus’s face was unreadable. He suddenly realized what he had said. He then realized how many angels had fallen for saying much less.

God stood up slowly. He approached Patton until He was uncomfortably close.

 “Awe,” He pouted, “babe, I know it’ll be sad, but how am I supposed to change it now? It’s in the plan, hun. I’m sure you understand.” He patted his cheek once condescendingly--a touch that carried the pleasant warmth of a sunbeam--before He stepped back and took a long sip of His coffee. Patton didn’t break eye contact the whole time.

“I have an idea,” Patton said in a newly sunny tone--the type of overly kind, conversational tone that should be feared-- “How about a bet?”

“Are you for real?” God gaped at the continued insolence, somewhere between disbelief and delight. In the end, delight--or at least novelty--won. “Deal with the Devil is out, deal with God is in; OK, I’m into it!”

“You say it’s too hard to save Earth now? Impossible, even?” Patton asked challengingly. He heard a quiet gasp of realization from Logan, and when he glanced behind himself, he noticed Janus was smiling, as if impressed. This gave him enough confidence to continue, “Impossible, like it would be impossible for a few random angels to answer an unanswerable prayer?”

“Sweetie, I don’t know what you’re saying, but I love the way you’re saying it,” God waved His hand appreciatively.

Patton took Logan’s tablet from his hands. He scrolled to find the ‘Discarded Prayers: Impossible’ file. He held it out to God for proof as he concluded, “If we can answer one of these prayers before the end of the world, surely you can stop it from ending.”

“THAT’S your plan?! Pat, we can’t complete the possible prayers half the time,” Virgil exclaimed. He buried his face in his hands. “Earth’s dead.”

God, however, let out a dreamy sigh, holding one hand against His chest. Patton wasn’t sure if he was meant to feel like the ambitious hero or the prize dog at a pet show. “You know, I should say no…” God bit his lip with the same expression a suburban mother might have when she was about to cheat on her juice cleanse, “...but I never could resist a little twist! Ok, shake on it!”

God extended His hand, and Patton took it without hesitation.

“I, God, proclaim: Earth will not be destroyed next week if, and only if, an impossible prayer is answered.” As He spoke, His palm began to glow white, such that Patton had to look away for fear of being blinded. If God’s touch had been a sunbeam previously, it was now the whole sun, and Patton almost cried out from the burning heat. Technically, he didn’t have skin in the same way he did when he was alive, but he swore he felt it melting off in that grip.

Yet when God pulled away, there was no extra light in the room, no damage to his hand.

God smiled innocently. “Ok! Cute! So, what prayer you gonna choose?”

Huh. Patton hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe Virgil’s concern wasn’t so unwarranted. He looked down at the tablet he was still holding. His eyes scanned past several prayers that were beyond impossible--fix capitalism, no more YouTube ads, fix global warming, no more incels--until his eyes caught on just the thing. An unabashed grin overtook Patton’s face in realization,

“Oh, I know exactly what prayer we’re doing.”

•••

“Well, have a good night!”

Nico turned his back on the cute mall man after he said it, and he had to push down the urge to glance back a final time. He tried not to believe in true love—it was at best unlikely, and at worst an extremely problematic trope—but he was a writer, and a daydreamer, and when he spotted the man a few tables down at the food court… he just knew.

Ok, he didn’t know, there was no way to know that kind of thing—but he did want. He did hope. And he did, in a move that was unprecedented for him, pray:

Please, if anyone’s up there: I know it’s silly, but I want this so badly. And I know it’s basically impossible at this point but, maybe… if we meet again... let this somehow work out?

[be-ca-lm]

Bad religious trauma night last night. I cried And made demands at a fake god again. I dared him to come down here and fight me like a man. Wrestle me like Jacob let me break my teeth against the force of his goodness and wrath. Let me break my knuckles against your all knowingness and vengeance. Leave me bruised and limping but LEAVE ME. I will flail like Jacob wrestled the angel until you give me a blessing. Give me the blessing of wiping my mind from the knowledge of you, the fear and the control. Or wipe my mind from my doubts and logic and make me your empty headed slave with no hint of something more existing that would tempt me away so I could rest.

They used to say god of the bible is different than the pantheon of obviously made up Gods like the Greeks and romans, they were so petty and human like and spiteful. What god disguises himself as an angel and goes around wrestling his chosen patriarch in the dust like some kinda wwe special just to test them? The same god that claims to be sovereign and infinitely powerful? That's the pettiest ass shit I've ever heard of.

In the juxtaposition of these two lines of thought, I thrash on my bed and cry hot tears of frustration. I am so much freer than I was but I am still fighting to become fully liberated from these toxic nightmares and mental games. I suppose it's time for therapy again. The trauma settled in to parts of my brain I would never have seen coming.

[shadedrose01]

Tw: vent, homophobia, bullying, religious trauma, villain!harley, hurt/no comfort, unhappy ending

Harley breathes. Blinks. Stares deep into the glowing purple hue of the suit, laying on the table in front of him. Grips the table harder.

Trust no one.

His mother had told him that when he was young, with her hands soapy from washing the dishes, her eyes red rimmed and burning with a fire Harley could only assume was from the pits of Hell, from Satan himself. "Trust only leads to pain and suffering, you hear that, Harley? Trust no one."

And at the time, he hadn't understood. He had been coloring in this random paint by numbers coloring sheet, with marks passing through the lines and marker scribbled everywhere. He had thought it was a masterpiece, when in reality it was a mess. He hadn't understood why. He hadn't even known what trust truly was.

He should've listened.

He should've listened when his dad walked out one day, mumbling under his breath burning of alcohol that he was going to get scratchers. When Harley had sat by the door, and stared out the window for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, waiting for someone who would never return. For someone who never thought twice.

He should've listened when Tony Stark showed up in his garage, an Iron Man suit in toe, scratched and worn and ruined just like him, and said words and had a burning hatred for a father long gone just like him. When he had swept him off his feet, made him think that maybe they had something, that they were connected. Made him think that he'd come back.

He should've listened when his friends that he'd had since kindergarten, since childhood found out he was gay by sneaking onto his phone while he wasn't looking and going through his search history at the ripe age of 14 years old. When they had snickered and taunted and teased, when they had thrown and kicked and punched.

He should've listened when one of them had told their parents, and had their parents tell his mom. When she had glanced at him with such a strong wave of disgust and disapproval that it had shaken Harley to his core, made the first thought of disappearing for good appear into his mind. When she had given him a long speech about the righteousness of God, about his glory and power, about how this wasn't what he wanted, about how this was wrong, about how they had to make him better. When Harley had murmured that it was a mistake, and that he'd never do it again.

He should've listened when he did do it again, when he had screamed and wailed and cried himself to sleep, begging God to make him better, to cleanse him of this filth, to make him a better man. When God ignored his cries, and left him completely and utterly alone.

He should've listened, when half of the world disappeared, when he had felt an agony roar all over his body and had faded from existence. When, in the blink of an eye, he had reappeared, but everything he had known was gone. His mother, murdered by a car empty without a driver, the driver having faded just like him. His sister, now his age, living with the same man that had left them years and years and years ago, claiming to have changed, claiming to be different. When the man mocked him behind his back, whenever his sister didn't notice, until he couldn't deal with it anymore and left. When his sister didn't even notice, and never called or texted him again.

He should've listened when Peter Parker showed up, begging him to listen, to understand that he wasn't a murderer and hadn't done anything wrong while he pointed a loaded gun to his head, on the verge of pulling the trigger for reasons unknown even to him. When he stayed, for months, and had become such a light in harleys life, angelic and soft, harsh yet kind, sharp yet beautiful. He was the sun to Harleys icirus, and he warmed Harley down to the bone until he forgot how much he hated himself, how only days, weeks, months before he had wanted to put the same gun to his own head and pull the trigger. When he had taught Harley to love himself, to feel loved for once in his life, only to leave, claiming with tears pooling in his eyes that he had to save the world. That he was the only one who could. When he stepped out the door, with one last, pitying glance back. The same way Tony had. The same way his father had.

He should've listened when he had found the files on Tony's glasses, on EDITHs system, listed under the name of The Young Avengers Initiative. Listened to his gut that warned him this was a bad idea, even as he stole a suit and went to find each individual person, claiming himself as Iron Lad even as the lie felt like poison corroding his teeth. When he had finally, finally felt like he had a friend group, a family, a home... only for them to grow closer to each other than they ever did to him. Only for them to start hanging out without him, and growing closer and closer. Only for them to back stab him, to turn their backs on him as soon as they got the chance. To kick him out of the same group he had created. Because he was "reckless". Because he was "too powerful."

He screams, then, smashing his fist down into the arc reactor, again and again and again, watching it grow from a crack, to a break, to a shatter, and continuing on and on until its dust, until his fingers are purple and blood is dripping onto the ground, until his hand is throbbing and screeching in pain. But he doesn't feel it. Can't feel anything, anymore.

He should've listened. And now, finally, he will.

He glances up, sniffles. Wipes away the tears pouring down his cheeks, replacing it with blood.

He'll show them reckless.

He'll show them powerful.

He'll make them, and everyone, regret ever crossing his path.

With blood slipping between his fingers and seeping from the knives dug deep into his back, Harley breathes.

And his true destiny begins.

[marginalgloss]

the republic of heaven

Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.

At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  

Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 

To call the novel ‘optimistic’ might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 

It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   

Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 

So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  

The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.

It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  

This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  

The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 

What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 

But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   

The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 

At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago. 

[jujuoh]

I never actually posted the little story behind the demon/priest flareshipping thing did I? I was just gonna type out something short and quick but the details got away from me. tl;dr seto becomes a priest to look for mokuba, summons atem for help and accidentally summons yugi too. the nun garbs are easier to hide the horns, tails, and wings under while they help him.

It’s like, not quite modern day, just far enough ago that travelling from Japan to Europe would generally be done by boat and land bc there were no planes. 

circa 1875 CE, Japan, Meiji Restoration

Seto and Mokuba still get sent to an orphanage, and Mokuba gets adopted by a visiting Englishman without Seto, who tells him to go with and that he promises to find him, because it would be a better life than staying in the orphanage. 

Seto almost ages out of the system when some travelling missionaries happen to come through town, but secretly they’re actually demon hunters/exorcists on a mission (though of course every country has their own ways of dealing with demons, sometimes if the demons are foreign, they need foreign magic to help stop them. In this instance, a coastal city in Japan was having issues with Scottish kelpies of all things. Wherever they went, they teamed up with the local demon hunters as well). The group stopped by the orphanage both to keep up appearances but also scout for talent, and catch wind of a really smart, stubborn kid named Seto who sounds like a perfect apprentice. 

Seto agrees to go with them because they can promise to take him to Europe where he can search for his little brother. He finds out later about the demon hunter thing but doesn’t believe them, until he watches them do their job - unless a demon wants to be seen, it can’t be, unless you force-reveal or see it with magic of some sort. The power (both magical and influential), the control, and the ability to help people (though he won’t admit it) attracts him and he eagerly begins learning. Though he tends to feel like if the person is a douchebag they deserve their demon problem (his guardians try to teach it out of him to varying degrees of success)

It takes ages to get to Europe, and they do missions (from angels, messages from the vatican, towns they pass where there are problems they can solve, a few memorable times from other demons), and teach him along the way - surprisingly about many different religions, not just catholicism, as well as many different languages which he picks up quickly. The lessons about different demons and magic and curses were the most interesting: different places in the world have different supernatural beings, matching up with the different religious stories and mythology, and so of course they needed different magicks and tactics to defeat, release, or otherwise overcome. They attempted regular schooling too but Seto was already at or above their levels, so instead they taught him everything they knew. They taught him how to sew and weave, how to shoe a horse, fix a boat, cook, clean, among various other things.

circa 1880 CE, Europe, second industrial revolution

Thus, the whole trip takes quite a while. Seto is twenty by the time they actually make it to Europe, and while the time taken frustrates him, he knows it was safer and cheaper to do it this way, rather than try to get the money by himself and travel alone. That, and all the magic he would’ve never known.

Once he’s there, he travels along with them for a bit, trying to find leads to the family that has his little brother, but once they need to be sent out to different countries and continents again, he begins to travel alone. Sometimes he spends up to nearly a few months in one place, taking care of a big problem.

On his own, Seto learns that demons themselves are much more complex than he was originally taught - in terms of individuality, motivations, social hierarchy, and ven morality. He meets demons better than most people, and people worse than most demons. Some spirits are just mischievous, and people lie about how much damage they’ve done. He ends up capturing demons sometimes in order to study or interview them before banishing them or letting them go. He rarely actually destroys any unless they’re particularly bad. He also gets closer to some of the angelic messengers, and decides all angels are mildly to viciously annoying, especially the one named Joseph and his friend Tristan. 

Eventually he gets frustrated with his total lack of progress and commits a taboo - he summons a demon himself. The book of spells he borrows from a local boy - Japanese like himself but raised here in England. He has white hair and claims to be a psychic, the ghost of his little sister following him around the occultish store, stocked by things his father brings back from travels that can’t go into the museum. Seto knows better by now than to doubt him.

He accidentally summons two. He refuses to place the blame on himself for not calculating things perfectly, and calls it a fluke of magic.

circa 1300 BCE, Egypt, middle New Kingdom

Atem had been a prince in Egypt, destined to be a greater pharaoh (and a greater man) than his father, but his traitorous uncle killed him on the eve of his coronation, just after the mourning period for his father was over. The magic interacted with his own, and with the artifact he wore, and with whatever divine influence the gods deemed to throw his way, and instead of going through the trails of the afterlife to enter the duat and be reborn again, he became a being of shadows and magic itself. Little did the uncle know that he would fall and be torn down by another boy wanting revenge just the next day.

It took Atem a long time to come to terms with what happened, and even longer to learn how to use and control his powers. By the time he could return to his home, too much time had gone by. Everywhere he went people spoke as the sea people spoke, foreign rulers by the name of Ptolemy sat on the throne, temples and statues were decimated or else reclaimed by these others in place of their original deities. Everyone and everything he’d known and loved were long gone. Upset, he travelled the worlds above and below. As is his nature, when he found something unjust, he did his best to set things right. As is his new nature, he judged by luring the accused into games to test their hearts.

He stays mostly solitary for nearly 3000 years - not entirely by his own choice, but by circumstance. He’s old and powerful and appeared out of nowhere, and other beings of all kinds are wary of him. Until he comes upon a sweet, hurting boy named Yugi who asks to be his friend.

circa 1820 CE, Japan, near the end of the Edo period

Yugi is very smart, and very small, and very nice. His niceness often gets taken advantage of, and his size makes it easy to pick on him. If he fought back, maybe they’d leave him alone, but he hates hurting anyone. His grandfather, a merchant, always tries to convince Yugi to stand up for himself. Yugi doesn’t listen. He gets sadder and more reclusive by the year, until he barely looks anyone in the eyes anymore, even his own mother as she helps bandage him up from the latest “game” that horrible group of older kids “played” with him.

In an effort to cheer up his grandson, Sugoroku gives him a golden puzzle from a far away land. He’d been hoping to make big money off it, but they were well-enough off as is, and his grandson’s happiness mattered more than some extra coins in his pocket. He’d known the puzzle was difficult, but it takes even Yugi years to complete it. Years of suffering, and growing, and learning. His grandfather worries. Yugi is of course interested in taking over Sugoroku’s business, and already assists him greatly, but without being able to stand up for himself the boy will have trouble in the world. He worries as well about revealing the truth to Yugi - the truth that Sugoroku is himself a demon, and so his son, and so is Yugi, though to a much lesser extent since Yugi’s mother is human.

When Yugi completes the puzzle, it immediately summons a disoriented and shocked Atem to his side. Cue screaming and yelling from both of them, a rather hilarious scene of Yugi chucking the puzzle at Atem’s head reflexively before hiding behind an upturned table. Atem, freaked out by what just happened, also takes cover behind a screen. He’d never been summoned like THAT before, it felt completely different to a summoning circle or a prayer or anything else, and certainly never by someone who immediately started screaming at him. 

Tentatively, after the dust settles, Yugi peeks out from behind the table. Atem hears him shifting and peaks out as well. More silence. Yugi tries to come to terms that he’s summoned what appears to be a demon. Atem tries to come to terms with how cute the screaming young man is. Yugi clears his throat and offers a shaky greeting. Atem falls in love.

Eventually they end up in the middle of the cleaned up room, sitting on the floor, having a somewhat stilted conversation. Atem fiddles with the puzzle - what was once his magical artifact - sitting on his lap. There had been no contract, no promise, no injustice to either force or encourage Atem to stay, but he couldn’t find it in himself to leave. By the time it was dark outside, the two of them were laughing together, munching on the snacks Yugi had made while preparing dinner for his grandfather and mother, who were on their way back home from a day trip to the big markets. The knife Yugi’s using to chop the vegetables slips and slices open the base of his thumb, and while it’s not deep the pain surprises him. Atem automatically reaches out to gasp the injured appendage. This is the first time they’ve touched.

The sheer power released by Atem touching Yugi’s hand awakened Yugi’s latent demonic side, and it takes Atem a while to calm him down. The new little horns, and long ears, and wings, and tail... it was a lot to take in. Sugoroku and Ayame come home to find a delicious dinner and two demons waiting for them. It doesn’t bother them nearly as much as Yugi thought, and he finally learns the truth from his sheepish grandfather. Ayame is annoyed he’d stopped from from trying to tell him sooner, because now look what happened, you silly old man.

Atem, regardless of his feelings, didn’t want to tie the young demon down to such an old and feared one like himself, and intended to leave as soon as he knew Yugi was in good hands. But, he can’t just let Sugoroku teach him - even for a demon, he was quite old in body while Atem remained young (another thing people found terrifying, for just how much power did Atem have to appear naturally young after 3000 years?), so he stayed and helped train Yugi. Yugi did everything he could to impress Atem, not even realising his own feelings for a good while; once he did, he redoubled his efforts and became even more mischievous and flirty. Eventually, Atem couldn’t take it any longer and confessed, and they were bonded.

Seto was only trying to summon an ancient demon by the name of Atem, a solver of puzzles and bringer of justice, both to help him look for Mokuba using demonic magic and to possibly learn from him. Seto also gets Atem’s equally tiny boyfriend, Yugi, who is not even nearly ancient but quite older than Seto, a fact that irks him greatly as they’re both shorter than he was at age 12.

But, they’re both so, so clever. And so, so... hard to resist. He wants to hate it, wants to believe they’re magically influencing him somehow, but he’s too confident in his abilities to believe it.

Seto enters a joint contract with them (though Yugi was willing to help even without one, but it has it’s benefits). Together, they hunt down particularly nasty pests and find major leads to Mokuba. And fall in love, of course. 

[bbreferencearchive]

Final Words

Documentary Film (for Reelz network)

Title: Charles Manson: The Final Words

Written by: James Buddy Day

Produced by Pyramid Productions, Calgary, Canada

 FINAL EDIT SCRIPT, September 9th 2017

EXT. CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON – DAY

 AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have a collect call from ‘Charles’ an inmate in California State Prison, Corcoran, CA, to accept say or dial 5 now. BEEP. 

CHARLES MANSON

Hello.

CHARLES MANSON

They’re still sending me naked pictures of Sharon Tate all stabbed up saying “There’s blood on your hands” and “you did this and you did that.” There’s a lot of ways of crucifying somebody without hanging them on a cross --

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.  

CHARLES MANSON

You being a producer it’s like, you kind of got get in the heads of everybody. Have you ever trusted anyone? 

PRODUCER  

Have you? 

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what I’m doing in here.

(laughs)

NARRATOR  

This began a year ago when Charles Manson, a man thought to be the embodiment of evil, started calling. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you can find a way to get me a cell phone where I can use it and call. (yeah). Let me get in the game and you can find a way where we can do what you want to do. But as soon as you get there you’re gonna have 15,000 people who are covering up what they’ve already been stealing and doing. 

NARRATOR  

What do you say to one of the most infamous mass murderers of all time when given the chance? We asked for his story in his own words.   

CHARLES MANSON

I don’t give a fuck about telling my story. My story has already been all over the world, 1,000 times, 1,000 times. You are for you, right. Right on, as long as we understand that, this is not based on friendship, not based on brotherhood, it’s based on guns and knives, it’s based on revolution and war, politics and governments. Survival. 

NARRATOR  

Though decades have passed since his conviction, the obsessive interest has never waned. Manson, of all people, appreciates his notoriety.

CHARLES MANSON

I’m the most famous human being not only that is alive, but the most famous human being that ever lived. And, I’m not even dead yet. – What do you think the fuck is going to happen when I die?

STEPHEN KAY

The problem is Manson is famous. The kids nowadays, they don’t look behind to see what it is he did.

 BLACK.

BOARD – THE CRIMES OF CHARLES MANSON  

NARRATOR  

In the late sixties, Charles Manson was convicted for the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. He was sentenced to death for all of them. When the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in nineteen seventy-two his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

The reality of it is, beyond the bullshit, is on death row. I’ve already done that been there. The people that haven’t done it and haven’t been there, they don’t understand it, you know, they have no respect for it. I got respect man.

NARRATOR  

Manson’s murder spree took place in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine. It was the peak of the Vietnam war, and a time of civil unrest. It’s said that Charles Manson was the leader of a cult called The Manson Family. They lived outside of society indulging in a constant stream of drugs and sex.  

CHARLES MANSON

We went where nobody had ever went before, not thinking about it, it just, it just happened man. I wasn’t nobody’s leader.

CHARLES MANSON (CONT’D)

All I was doing was fucking everybody I could. The sexual revolution everybody was doing I, was just getting my share that’s all.

NARRATOR  

The first murder took place in July of nineteen sixty-nine. Manson was convicted of ordering three of his disciples to kill an associate in a plot to extort money. After they stabbed the victim to death Manson’s followers wrote on the walls in his blood.

NARRATOR  

A month later the murders escalated.  The official account from the Los Angeles District Attorney is this; Charles Manson sent out more cult members to an isolated house in Beverly Hills with orders to kill everyone inside. It was the home of a beautiful and pregnant movie star named Sharon Tate who was spending the evening with friends.

PHIL KAUFMAN

 (Lived with Manson Family)

How could they drive up to that house, get out and know what their gonna do, nobody was going to leave that house alive. It boggles the mind. He says alright go out and do this and then you’re all in the car together going ok we’re going to do it, nobody says, man should we be doing this? Is Charlie right? They did what they did.

 NARRATOR  

At Charles Manson’s trial the prosecution stated:

 “On the evening of August, the eighth, nineteen sixty-nine, Charles Manson sent his robots out on a mission of murder. There is no evidence that he actually personally killed any of the victims in this case”. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you had to get up and hunt and kill your food every day, you’d be a hell of a warrior man.

NARRATOR

Before they left one of the killers wrote on a door, this time using Sharon Tate’s blood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

They wanted to - shock - the public

NEWS FOOTAGE(OS)

In a scene described by investigators as reminiscent of a weird religious ritual, five persons including actress Sharon Tate were found dead. Among the other victims we’re Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring. One officer summed up the murders when he said “In all my years I have never seen anything like this before”.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. He said they think Jay and Sharon have just been murdered. I remember just sinking down, I was standing next to the sink and I just sank down to the floor, like I’m melting, I’m melting just, I was stunned. I was shocked, I was in hysterics.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

When the murders took place, people were buying Gatling guns. The whole town bought guns they we’re frightened to death for months.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

But for someone to hang up the phone on their boyfriend and the next morning hear that he’s been brutally murdered with three of his friends, it’s horrifying.

NARRATOR

Manson’s crime spree wasn’t finished. The day after the murder of Sharon Tate and others, Charles Manson took members of his group out again. This time they went to the home to an affluent couple named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Allegedly, Manson ordered three of his followers to butcher the couple, leaving more messages written in blood.  

CHARLES MANSON

They never lied about me. all the broads said is “I THINK he said go in there and kill those people”. Well she can think a pink elephant, that’s hear-say.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

It’s like a horror movie, like those movies where you wonder who’s going to be next.

CHARLES MANSON

People will put the bad mouth on somebody, for all kinds of psychological reasons. Jealousy is a big reason people maneuver.

NARRATOR

When Charles Manson and his family were arrested, and charged, it became the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

The fright in the town was so gigantic and he looked like the devil sitting in court. That trial was like a circus. I mean it was insanity. 

NARRATOR

During in the trial, Manson carved an "X" in his forehead, which he later turned it into a swastika and shaved off all his hair. He says to symbolize his desire to be discarded from society. His followers all did the same.

CHARLES MANSON

They don’t realize that the X on their heads means the head is gone, man. You know, they still think that person’s there because they got a head, you dig? But I took the head. I got it on my belt.  

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

Every time I went to court, everyday they’d be out there singing ‘Charlie, Charlie’ with the swastikas on their head, shaving their hair. You know that’s not normal, you know looney tunes right there.

NARRATOR

For half a century, Charles Manson’s bizarre behavior has continued, and speculation over his unspeakable crimes has only intensified. But the question has always remained, how did Charles Manson get these people to kill for him?

BLACK.

BOARD – HELTER SKELTER  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what that stupid -fuckin’ district attorney did, convicted me for the fuckin’ ‘Helter Skelter’ thing that he was thinking. And it took me 40 years to figure out what a cult was.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson the topic of Helter Skelter comes up and frequently, and Manson’s answer is always the same. He maintains that Helter Skelter was invented by the prosecution. The Manson Family’s prosecutions were led by Vincent Bugliosi who wrote the book Helter Skelter which became the best-selling true crime book of all time. According to Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, was the name Charles Manson gave to his own bizarre philosophy which he derived from the name of a Beatles Song. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

One of their favorite things to do is they would sit around on acid and listen to the Beatles White album. They determined that what the Beatles were doing is they were sending messages to blacks to rise up and start a revolution.

NARRATOR

Manson allegedly convinced his followers that he foresaw the race war prophesized by the Beatles and told them they needed to slaughter white affluent victims to further inspire the black revolution.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Helter Skelter, a social uprising between the blacks and the whites. The start of a race war. The apocalyptic end, if you will. Charlie and the family will hide underground. They will be the remaining ones left.

NARRATOR

The prosecution claimed that Charles Manson and his followers planned to hide in a secret cave located in Death Valley and wait out the war. When the dust settled, they would emerge and Charles Manson believed he would rebuild of the world.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

To say that it was an unusual motive is an understatement. But I can tell you that was the motive. 

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

Nothing could have been more horrendous than what happened that night to innocent people who didn’t even know their murderers.  And the reasons that this maniac orchestrated this whole thing was just looney tunes.  

CHARLES MANSON

I mean goddamn, this is not what I wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what I wanted.

NARRATOR

Manson insists that he’s been misjudged. He says Helter Skelter is a myth and that the true story behind the murders is one that remains untold.

CHARLES MANSON

And I’ve been deep in thought for almost 40 years, thinking what the hell does all this mean, how does that work? And the stuff that I’ve come up with, it’s just unbelievable, it’s fucking totally unbelievable.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson, the most famous mind controlling mass murderer of all time, you have to be careful not to take him at his word. But after months of conversations, questions began to emerge.

CHARLES MANSON

The precious point is that the Helter Skelter that the DA made into what he was doing was wrong basically, when they lose control, they don’t admit that they lost control. They just lost face and they make another movie, like you’re doing. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

People who have looked into the case, beyond just a superficial level of reading of Helter Skelter, don’t believe any of that stuff. In fact, most of the media do believe he was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, and the whole thing. 

NARRATOR

We spoke with authors, researchers and people who know Manson directly. Charles Manson personally put us in contact with people who know him, others we found on our own. We sought to speak to anyone who was there when the crimes took place, all to unravel what actual happened.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Back in 1969, we didn’t have access to the police reports, we didn’t have access to autopsy or the FBI files so we’re more inclined to believe the official narrative.

CHARLES MANSON

You’ll find out man. Have a good day, brother man.

BLACK.

BOARD – A CONVERSATION WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

AUTOMATED RECORDING

This is Global Tel Link you have a pre-paid call from ‘Bobby’ an inmate at the California medical Facility, Vacaville California, this call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Hello.

BOARD – BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL, SERVING LIFE SENTENCE FOR FIRST “MANSON FAMILY” MURDER

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil was the first person arrested and accused of being member of the Manson Family. He’s been in prison since nineteen sixty-nine.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It is extremely important that people understand what happened. We don’t want the same things to happen again we have to understand them and we can’t understand them in the context of Vincent Bugliosi’s little horror story. He did more to victimize Sharon Tate than Charlie Manson ever did.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s the same regurgitated Helter Skelter nonsense. That is so far away from the truth. I don’t care, I won’t say that, I will never, to get a parole, say that what Bugliosi said was true. Never…I’d rather die in prison than get out on a lie.

Part of it was the times and the desperation that had set in, in 1969. The events got out of hand. A lot of his attitudes and beliefs that he had been engendered while he was in prison became expressed. And again, I’m not defending him, he was a sociopath for sure. Not genetic, but something that had been developed - you know his compassion and empathy had been beaten out of him by the system that he grew up, in which was the juvenile justice and criminal justice system. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s told many people many stories about his childhood but certain aspects of his upbringing are irrefutable. His birth certificate from nineteen thirty-four identifies his mother as Kathleen Maddox. A fifteen-year-old single mother who struggled with alcoholism and was often arrested. 

CHARLES MANSON

My mother and my uncle did time. She was a throw away. 

NARRATOR

Sometime around nineteen forty-four, When Kathleen couldn’t care for her son or when she was arrested, Manson began what would become a lifetime in prison. Michael Channels has known Manson personally for twenty-five years and has quite possibly spent more time face-to-face with him than anyone else. 

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

If there is a “Charlie Manson”, Charlie Manson was probably created the first time he went into those boys homes. That kid went through some hell in there, and some of the things that he told me. He would never admit to being raped by men or anything like that. That’s just one thing he just don’t do, he don’t.

CHARLES MANSON

In Boys Town, you’re a juvenile. You go in when you’re ten years old and you play ping pong and if someone beats you, you gotta give the table up to them unless you want to fight ‘em. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everything is about fight. If you don’t fight they’ll fuck you in the ass.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He’ll tell you about being taken down in the basement and put on the table and they make him get naked and then beat him with a strap. That’ll turn you into something that your starting to think ok…

CHARLES MANSON

They’ll take everything you got. And you’re raised up like that. So, you learn how to box and you learn how to fight. And then some guy gets a dagger or a knife or an ice pick and it’s a different kind of fight. You graduate and you grow up.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

That puts you in a whole different mindset. It’s about life or death where’s he’s at.

CHARLES MANSON

I’d only been outside a couple years when I caught this case here. You figure that if you get locked up in reform school when your nine years old and you don’t get out until your twenty, in your brain you’re still nine years old on the outside. Can you see that?

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He don’t trust nobody. He doesn’t even trust me. As long as I’ve known him as a pen pal, visited him in jail, talked to him all the telephone for some twenty-five years now. He doesn’t trust me as far he can spit.

CHARLES MANSON

Anybody that helps me is helping themselves, and I don’t get much help because their ‘aint nobody there. You see it. So, it’s like, everybody that’s using me, they’re not helping me, they’re just riding on me. 

NARRATOR

Police records reflect that by the time Charles Manson was twenty-four years-old, he’d been arrested more than thirty times. Among his numerous offenses he’d been caught driving stolen cars across state lines, broken his probation, escaped from a federal prison, was convicted of check forgery, mail theft and even pimping.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

The first time I visited him and he walked out of the back, prison was just radiating off of him. He’s from prison. He’s not from your world and my normal world out here.

NARRATOR

Those like George Stimson who’ve spent time visiting Charles Manson in person insist that his view of the world is defined by his life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

Prison is a mind. The mind is prison. That’s why they haven’t been able to break me because there’s no such thing. They’re in a fantasy. They don’t have a reality. Had I not done 22 years in prison before I got arrested this time, I would not have survived. The only reason I survived is, I’ve been through everything in prison ever since I was nine years old.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s hard to understand. I mean, unless you really kind of have an understating of how things operate in prison and how selfish people tend to think when they’re in that environment.

NARRATOR

Leading up to the summer of nineteen sixty-seven, Charles Manson was in Los Angeles serving time for check forgery in a federal prison called Terminal Island

BLACK.

BOARD – TERMINAL ISLAND PRISON

NARRATOR

Two years before the murder spree Phil Kaufman was arrested trying to smuggle Marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico. He ended up in prison alongside Charles Manson.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

I got arrested in Tucson, Arizona. I got to terminal Island. I had just gone through the A&O, admission and orientation, before I was allowed out in the yard. There’s this guy with a guitar. Being in prison you gotta be careful who you associate with, and Charlie was a good guy to hang out with because he did give a fuck and he played music.

NARRATOR

Phil Kaufman knew Manson on the inside before anyone ever associated the name “Charles Manson” with the devil incarnate. Kaufman recalls the man he called “Charlie” as a laid-back inmate fully comfortable in prison life, to the point that he was completely unwilling to reform.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

If you get five years in a federal penitentiary and they don’t give you any incentive, you’ll just do five years and your uncontrollable. But when you’re sentenced they give you good time so a five-year sentence may be only forty months… But Charlie didn’t do that, he did all the time. He didn’t program. You know he got five years, Charlie did five years.

NARRATOR

According to prison records Charles Manson has received countless reprimands. He once described a prison confrontation in the sixties when a common punishment was for the guards to have the inmates ‘give in’ by putting their “nose to the wall”.

CHARLES MANSON

We fought for 48 days and 48 nights trying to make me put my nose on the wall. I told him “I ain’t putting my goddamn nose on that wall, fuck you”. And they’d come in and rush me and throw me up against the wall, like it or not. Then I’d slide down the wall. Next day they’d come, say, “Get up against the wall”. I’d say “No way”. Here we go again. Yeah, they can beat me but that can’t eat me.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

He was playing his guitar and so a guard comes up to him and said “Manson, you ‘aint never gonna get outta here”, and Charlie just kept playing his guitar and said “outta where man”, and just kept going.

CHARLES MANSON

I was a federal prisoner, DEAD, I got out of Terminal Island. Can you understand that? You know it’s like, I had played that game and won every pocket.

NARRATOR

Manson’s release paperwork from Terminal Island is dated March twenty first, nineteen sixty-seven. Vietnam was at the forefront of the American consciousness and a large segment of the male population was either at school or war. Many of the women left behind were embracing what would become known as the summer of love.   

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

There was a lot of runaways at the time and a lot of people disenchanted with the status quo and they were easy marks, especially up in San Francisco.

The acid you know the pot and everything, they we’re looking for love and Charlie was selling it whole sale.

NARRATOR

This is when it’s been reported that Charles Manson formed a cult called The Manson Family. How did he transition from a chronic petty criminal to a psychotic villain capable of mind control? Until this point in his life, he’d never been charged with a violent crime and no one had ever described him as a guru or spiritual leader so something had to change in the summer of nineteen sixty-seven.

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON FAMILY 

CHARLES MANSON

You see in they call it. In prison, they call it a run. When I get out of prison I run until I’m back in prison again.

NARRATOR

According to Manson, right after prison he spent the first year going back and forth between Haight Ashbury in San Francisco and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. 

CHARLES MANSON

I went to ‘Frisco and I was talking to this supposedly great holy guy. You dig? And he’s telling me when you can sit and be comfortable and at peace with yourself that you’re just in harmony, you dig? Now check this out. I figured a lot of things out. I figured this out. I figured it would be easier not to understand anything and keep your mind open and never make your mind up about nothing.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s mix of sixties culture and prison jargon attracted young women. Communes were abundant in California in nineteen sixty-seven. This is when Manson met the first two members of what would become known as the “Manson Family”; Mary Brunner who later gave birth to his child, and Lynette Fromme better known as “Squeaky”.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Remember these weren’t ordinary people. And I get upset with the historians that refer to this group as hippies. They weren’t hippies. Hippies were flower children, they believed in “Make love, not war.” The Family referred to themselves as ‘Slippies.’ They said they were going to slip under the awareness of society. They were very violent. It was a religious cult.

NARRATOR

At trial the prosecution stated the family was nothing more than a closely-knit band of vagabond robots who were slavishly obedient to one man and one man only, their master, their leader, their god Charles Manson. One member of the group was Catherine Gillies. She adopted the nickname “Capistrano” or “Cappi” for short after fell in with Manson in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight.

CAPPI

I mean none of that shit was real, ok. We we’re trying to step out of society is what we we’re trying to do. We didn’t have stabbing practice on Saturday and hang Charlie from a cross on Sunday. I mean none of those things are real. We didn’t call ourselves ‘The Manson Family’, okay. That was, that was the press. We called ourselves a family but we meant that because we were brothers and sisters not because we were ‘The Family’ we were ‘A’ family.

NARRATOR

Another member named Sandra Good collaborated on a book with her partner George Stimson in which he talked about life inside the so-called Manson Family.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

A lot of people do that when you’re young and you’re living like a family, but you know, it doesn’t have the connotation that Manson Family does, capital M, capital F.

NARRATOR

This contention appears to be supported by the trial transcripts. In many instances Vincent Bugliosi says clearly that the group called themselves “the family” but no one ever refers to them as “The Manson Family” the label often reported, which according to George Stimson is significant.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

The thought that he was actively recruiting people to set up some kind of organization to carry out his homicidal aims is just ridiculous.

NARRATOR

But the reality is that they did commit homicidal acts, however, according to several individuals who were part of the group, the label THE MANSON FAMILY was only used by the press and not consistent with how they interacted or viewed themselves at that time.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

You know most of them we’re inexperienced with communes prior to joining that one. So, their only experience with communes would have been with Charlie.

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were always free to leave.

CHARLES MANSON

You know it’s weird man, it’s like you see a bunch of people and their coming along in your life and they’re doing what you’ve already done. I noticed this about people when they think I’m a hippie cult leader.

NARRATOR

The group was made up primarily of young women. Contrary to the common picture of Manson being a master manipulator who recruited them and controlled their minds, Bobby Beausoleil related that they came together much differently.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What most people don’t understand is that it wasn’t Charlie’s charisma that attracted more women. It was once he had the two women together, the women attracted the women. Women who like a community of women, and that was the attraction in that group.

NARRATOR

How they came together and viewed themselves genuinely matters because it’s the first part of understanding whether Manson and the others were a hippy commune or a religious cult. The Helter Skelter theory is dependent on Charles Manson being a brainwashing cult leader, but people who were part of the group deny that dynamic. Is there another explanation for their heinous acts other than Manson dictating that they murder on his behalf?

CHARLES MANSON

I never ordered nobody to do anything but other than what the fuck they wanted to do. Do what you want, if you’re with me you’re free like me. I do what I want to do. You do what you want to do. Be careful with this phone call and don’t use it cause any more persecution to my friends, my family. Peace, I gotta go. My phone time’s up.  

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON GIRLS

NARRATOR

The media has characterized the women who participated in the murders as middle-class and virtuous. They’ve been described as girl scouts, or good students, or Sunday school teachers, that Manson transformed into serial killers. Why would young women with good backgrounds leave their homes to live with an ex-convict who just wanted sex and death?  

Leslie Van Houten was nineteen when she met Charles Manson. The following summer she joined two others in the slaughter of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

RICH PFEIFFER

  (Leslie Van Houten’s Lawyer)

The problem people have is how can you go from a homecoming queen to being a Manson follower? Her childhood was really good until her parents got divorced. Back then it was very different than it is now. It was a big social stigma. She ended up with the druggie kids and the less desirables and she ended up doing drugs at that time. She got pregnant. Her parents pretty much pressured her into having an illegal abortion in the home, and they buried the fetus in the back yard, and that’s something she couldn’t get away from. After that the drug use escalated.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

   (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

She was looking for a spiritual leader and she had home already left home and went out on the road. Bobby takes her to meet Charlie. I think it might have bothered him – that she would challenge him, she and Pat were really the only two that would.

NARRATOR

Patricia Krenwinkel, nicknamed Katie, was with Leslie Van Houten the night they killed the LaBiancas. Krenwinkel also participated in the Sharon Tate murders. At parole hearings, she’s described that her sister was a drug addict who died from an overdose at the age of twenty-nine. Before her death she introduced Patricia to drinking, drugs and alcohol. When Krenwinkel met Manson, she was nineteen. She’d left home to live with her heroin addicted sister in Venice, California.

One of the most infamous murders was Susan Atkins who took the nickname Sadie. She brutally murdered Sharon Tate and used her blood to write PIG on a door. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins had a terrible childhood she was abandoned by her parents, she was molested. 

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins was fifteen her mother died from cancer, sending her home life into a spiral. When Atkins met Charles Manson she’d already worked as a topless dancer, been arrested for car theft, stolen property, and was a heavy drug user.

SUSAN ATKINS

I used to think you came down off an acid trip after 12 hours. Every time you drop acid you get a little bit further away from reality.

CHARLES MANSON

Susan’s pretty, she’s me actually. You see me is all there is, there’s nobody but you.

SUSAN ATKINS

I took so much acid that I was what I would term spaced, and it took me many years to, what I would term now, re-enter, and that was just through not having any acid and having to deal with reality every day.  

NARRATOR

If these were not perfect young women, plucked from society and corrupted solely by Charles Manson, did he actually brainwash them or were they working alongside him in a common motive? What was life like inside the so-called family the year leading up to the murders?

BLACK.

BOARD - THE SUMMER OF ’68  

NARRATOR

When you ask Charles Manson about life in the group before the murders, he talks about sex.

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody walked around naked. We’d all get together and just have a big bang man.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

I lived with them for almost a month. He’d say you know everybody has to make love. Love. It’s love, spread the love, you know. It was like sex on demand.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

When you’re inside you have nothing, and all of a sudden he’s out and, you know, he said it was a prisoner’s dream come true.

NARRATOR

Another member of the group was Barbara Hoyt who like many of the others was seventeen when she ran away from home after an argument with her father. 

BARBRA HOYT

I met Squeaky. Sandy was pregnant. Sadie, we talked about the hypocrisies of life.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody’s been able to get women together with each other. They’re jealous creatures, it’s hard to get two women together. And here comes along a nobody from prison who ‘aint even been out of prison long enough to spell his name right. He’s got thirty-five women up and doing whatever, you dig? 

NARRATOR

If Manson had found the dream life of an ex-convict, why would he indoctrinate them to murder people?

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

These murders did not happen because there was not going to be an apocalyptic race war, that’s not why this happened, the victims weren’t chosen at random.

NARRATOR

Brian Davis has spent more than a decade speaking to anyone involved in the events surrounding the murders on his online radio show. From his viewpoint, the key to understanding what happened is Charles “TEX” Watson because he was the person that actually led the murder parties on both nights, and killed more than anyone else.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex was perfect. A solider, a solider who’s in service is righteous and real. There’s no in between.  

NARRATOR

At trial the Vincent Bugliosi said Manson had “total and complete domination over his family including the actual killer Tex Watson”. How did Tex Watson come to be with Manson and perhaps fall under his control?  Brian Davis recounts that in nineteen sixty-seven, Watson left Northern Texas to live with a friend in Los Angeles, finding a part-time job at a Hollywood wig shop. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

I talked with the guy that worked with Tex. He said Tex was an all-American boy. After about a year, Tex started to hang out at parties and smoke marijuana, grew his hair out a little bit and at that point he said Tex started to turn. So, all this was going on leading up before Tex ever met Charlie.

NARRATOR

Tex Watson met Charles Manson when he was invited to a never-ending party that was being held at a Pacific Palisades mansion. The house was owned by the drummer of the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson.

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Charlie crosses over into that because of the girls, Pat and Ella Joe Bailey we’re out hitchhiking and Dennis Wilson picked them up.

NARRATOR

The Beach Boys fifteenth studio album Twenty-Twenty, features a song co-written by Charles Manson called “Never Learn Not to Love”. During that time Manson befriended a record producer through Dennis Wilson named Terry Melcher.

Leslie Van Houten interviewed by LAPD, November 26th, 1969

LAPD: Tell me about Terry Melcher. Remember him?

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: Terry Marshmallow?

LAPD: Mel- Melcher. Terry Melcher.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I call him Terry Marshmallow.

LAPD: Oh, is that what you call him.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I don’t know really. I knew that he said he could get us recorded and that he had known one of the Beach Boys.

NARRATOR

When he met Charles Manson, Terry Melcher lived on Cielo Drive in the same house that was later rented to film director Roman Polanski and his movie star wife Sharon Tate, after Melcher moved out. This is a direct connection between Manson and the Sharon Tate murders. Prosecutors claimed that Manson was an ambitious musician who aspired to be like The Beatles and The Beach Boys, so Dennis Wilson introduced him to Terry Melcher, but Melcher rejected him.  When Manson decided to begin a race war by killing random white people, he chose Terry Melchers house. According to the prosecution the residence was symbolic to Charles Manson and particularly the establishment’s rejection of him. Phil Kaufman worked in the music industry and recorded Charles Manson shortly before the murders took place. This is an audio recording from nineteen seventy made as part of the investigation.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Up to this point he had recorded at various studios, and being as transient as he was, he never stayed around long enough, you know, to consummate a record deal. So, every time he recorded no one could ever release his music because he never signed any contracts. 

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

‘Cause he had a good thing going for him, you know. Money wasn’t even involved in anything. He didn’t have to earn a living, he had girls going out and getting him food, he was having sex, playing his music you know. Life was good for him.

CHARLES MANSON

I could have been a rock and roll star. I could have been a movie star. That’s a slowdown. I don’t want a fuckin’ job. I’d rather have a vine of wine on the beach and be free as a dog looking for a place to sleep under the bridge rather than go to work. I was trying to get away from civilization.

NARRATOR

If Manson wasn’t rejected by the music industry, and Melcher’s house didn’t represent the establishment to him, then what was the real reason for Tex Watson taking three women over to Terry Melcher’s house and killing five people?

We put this question to Charles Manson directly.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex wasn’t wrong, you understand what I’m saying? Tex had to do what he had to do, and he said that. He didn’t say I told him to do a damn thing. They said the girls said it but the girls didn’t say it. She said, “Charlie told me to go do what Tex said.” You know why the District Attorney put the race war on me?

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have thirty seconds remaining.

CHARLES MANSON

You got the whole damn fuckin planet against me.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s answers are not always straightforward, and he denies involvement in the Sharon Tate murders, but the missing factor may be the song Charles Manson contributed to the Beach Boys.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie was told that he would be compensated for the use of the song, and the amount he was told was $5000. Now he didn’t care so much about the money. If you’re in prison and you owe somebody and you give your word and you don’t keep your word, that’s a justification for, you know, being killed. So, he sent Tex to kill Terry. Not a house full of five people. See that’s what’s so critical here. He wasn’t picking a house full of innocent people, he was picking Terry Melcher. The people that were there are the ones that took the brunt of what Tex Watson brought there that night.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson seeking retaliation on Terry Melcher for breaking his word, contradicts the motive laid out by the prosecution because it changes Manson’s intent from starting a race war to vengeance. According to the Helter Skelter Theory, Charles Manson planned to inspire a race war by killing affluent whites, so he sent his follower to Terry Melcher’s house. During the war, Manson would hide with his followers in a secret cave located in Death Valley. Afterwards, they would emerge and Manson would lead the victorious black army.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

When members joined the Family, he was telling them how Adolph Hitler was his hero for what Hitler did to Jews in World War II. He was a follower of Nietzsche. You know, just sick stuff.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

They say Manson wants to have a race war. He wants the black people – they’re going to rise up and kill all the white people. For a supposed person that hates black people why would he now want to be in charge. The story kind of loses me all over the place.

NARRATOR

Some have proposed that the prosecution made-up the Helter Skelter theory in order to more easily convict Charles Manson through a sensational conspiracy narrative. Another theory exists which some believe can explain the murders without the race war motive.      

Brian Davis

I’m not supporting Charlie Manson at all. I’m supporting more of the truth.

NARRATOR

If the prosecution did construct the Helter Skelter Theory, is convicting a man like Charles Manson so essential that any means of achieving it is acceptable?   

Brian Davis

It’s not about proving Charlie innocent. Even if it’s Charlie Manson. The law has to work for everybody.

CHARLES MANSON

This thing is so vast. I don’t know whether you can accept it. 

BLACK.

BOARD – AN ALTERNATE THEORY   

NARRATOR

Another theory proposes that the murders were the culmination of events centered around Charles Manson. Charles Manson had been released from prison and had formed a commune of lost souls. Several months before the murders the group had moved to a farmstead built as a backdrop for western movies and television shows, called Spahn Ranch.

CHARLES MANSON

I never realized it but the reason the ranch was so cool was that nobody ever lied to each other, man. We all got a long with each other, man. Everybody was straight up, there was no bullshit. We had a pretty nice group of people there. 

GRAY WOLF

  (MANSON SUPPORTER)

When I went to the ranch, I felt it was just the most mellow place I’d ever been. There was no ambitions. It’s a lot different than what the media might portray. 

NARRATOR

The ranch was owned by an eighty-year-old blind man named George Spahn, who lived in the main house which was located here. The ranch burned down in nineteen seventy-one but at the time extended along the Santa Susana Pass, isolated by the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley.  

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody at the ranch was one. There was only one moving thing on that ranch, that was George Spahn, the old blind man. George was the boss. You know it’s like the horses ruled the ranch. We all served whatever was capable of service. A slave understands it’s master much more than the master understands the slave. 

BARBRA HOYT

Charlie told Squeaky to take care of George so they could stay at the ranch, and she did. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

She didn’t like having sex with other men. That’s why she got into that for Charlie. She took care of George and that became her thing. She wanted to only have sex with Charlie, and so she put herself in that position where she wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone else. She was a caretaker. 

BARBRA HOYT

She loved him. I think he wanted George to will the ranch to Squeaky. 

NARRATOR

Records reflect that while living at Spahn Ranch Tex Watson was arrested on a drug charge in April of nineteen sixty-nine, three months before the murders. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was business for Tex, you know, he partook and he sold. That’s how he made a lot of his money. You go back before the murders, Tex has got the history for dealing drugs, and making drug deals, you know. That’s what Tex does.

CHARLES MANSON

I said don’t lie on this ranch. Other than that you can do anything you want here. Just don’t hurt nobody. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

This is the connection. This is where it all connects.  

Tex Watson had a dope dealer. Tex Watson describes the drug dealer in his book as a mafia connected guy who owned a vending machine company that he used as a front for his dope business. 

CHARLES MANSON

Episodes like that happen every day in the drug world. 

NARRATOR

On July first, Tex Watson spoke with his vending machine dope dealer who was looking to sell twenty-five kilos of marijuana for two thousand five hundred dollars. Watson didn’t have that kind of money so he called his girlfriend in the city. She introduced him to another drug dealer named Bernard Crowe who was thought to be associated with The Black Panthers political movement. It was then that Watson came up with a scam. He would buy twenty-five kilos from his vending machine dealer for two thousand five hundred dollars, then sell twenty-two kilos to Crowe at a mark-up for two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. That way Watson could buy the drugs from the vending machine dealer, and deliver what he promised to Bernard Crowe, all the while keeping the difference in money and drugs for himself and his girlfriend. To make that work neither of the drug dealers could meet, so Tex Watson planned to have Bernard Crowe pay upfront.

CHARLES MANSON

As the convicts say, if you do all the talking you got to be all the right. Lying’s what gets everything fucked up.

NARRATOR

When the time came, Crowe wouldn’t hand over his money to a hippie he didn’t know, so he kept Tex Watson’s girlfriend as collateral while Watson went to pick up the drugs. When this complication arose, Watson burned them both.  

CHARLES MANSON

He just promised to deal some drugs for them, and took the money and ran. 

CAPPI

What happened was Tex made a deal with him evidently, and then fuckin’ bummed out on the deal. We didn’t get anything out of it, it had nothing to do with us. It was all about Tex, trust me.

NARRATOR  

After that an enraged Bernard Crowe set out to find the man he knew as Charlie Watson. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

When Crowe called the ranch, and asked for Charlie, meaning Charles Watson, TJ got Charlie Manson on the phone because he knew Watson as TEX. And when Crowe said I want my money and I’m coming up to the ranch to burn the place down and rape all the girls there Charlie said no you’re not. I’ll come down and talk to you about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

To deal drugs you gotta be real. That’s underworld. Underworld means anybody can take that away from you and there’s nothing the laws going to do about it. Before the cops catch drug dealers, drug dealers catch drug dealers.

CAPPI

He was worried about us getting killed. We had babies there and all kinds of stuff, and all these young people, okay and they we’re trying to kill us. And that’s why Charlie went to Bernard, to stop him before he killed somebody.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Bernard Crowe had Tex Watson’s girlfriend tied up, and I guess words were exchanged. And Charlie pulled out then gun a shot him.

CHARLES MANSON

Yeah, yeah I shot the Crowe. She said that Bernard was going to kill her. So we went down to help her, and ended up shooting him to help her. 

CAPPI

Bernard Crowe didn’t give him a chance. He had to shoot him or he was going to get shot, and Bernard Crowe just said “You better shoot me now, do it,” you know, and Charlie shot him.

NARRATOR

Bernard Crowe survived this shooting, although as Manson has often detailed, he was unaware of this.

CHARLES MANSON

That’s the difference between the underworld and being righteous with the underworld. In other words you don’t get caught off base or you get tagged out. It’s a simple game.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He saw all the people he was with as children. They were weak they wouldn’t know how to hold their mud. Rather than try to convince them that they should, he just manipulated them to try to make them so complicit in violent crimes that they would not snitch on him. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, Charles Manson’s shooting of Bernard Crowe left him with two problems. First, he had to be sure no one in the commune would talk to the police. Accordingly, he encouraged them to commit violent crimes for the group just like he had done.

CHARLES MANSON

I play cards. My family’s cards. My family are righteous; They can’t get away. They’re dead. Everyone in my family is dead like me. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s second problem was that he believed the Black Panthers would retaliate for the shooting, something he told members of the group.

 BARBRA HOYT

He was very worried about the black panthers attacking the ranch. It went from happy go lucky fun. It got so intense, so fearful. It makes me nervous just to talk about it.

CHARLES MANSON

We were in trouble with everybody that was against us. Anybody that didn’t like us, we didn’t like them. We we’re fighting all the time man.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie, when he had that situation with Crowe and I went out there to hang out, I didn’t know what I had happened. And he told me, he pulled me aside and he said, “Man, you know I don’t have enough guys here, you know. I’m expecting a retaliation from the Black Panthers and I need more guys here”. So, you know, I was a young kid and that sort of appealed to my ego. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody likes everybody else dead. Nobody likes anybody.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard Charlie was recruiting the Straight Satan’s to be guards. 

NARRATOR

To protect the commune and himself from the Black Panthers, Manson enlisted a motorcycle club called the Straight Satans. In this audio recording with the L-A-P-D, the Straight Satans former president, Al Springer, described their arrangement.

AL SPRINGER interview with LAPD 11/69

Charlie says, “Now wait a minute”, he says uh, “maybe I can give you a better thing then you got over there.” I goes “What’s that?” He says, “Move up here. You can have all the girls you want, and all the girls”, he says, “are all yours.” 

NARRATOR

Three days after the Bernard Crowe shooting, Linda Kasabian arrived at Spahn Ranch for the first time. 

BARBRA HOYT

Linda was, she was a nice girl who was looking for, I don’t know if she was looking for Jesus or, um, she was just looking for life, and what was real and what wasn’t. 

CHARLES MANSON

You don’t find too many women who will stand up in any kind of fight. 

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian’s account is critical because she was one of the four directly involved in the Sharon Tate murders. When she was later arrested, Kasabian gave her first statement to her lawyer Gary Fleischman. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I heard her version of it the first night they brought her back.

None of it made any sense that’s the problem. It was nonsensical and that’s where Vince came up with the Helter Skelter theory. But I never heard that theory during the period I was representing her, she didn’t know anything about it. 

NARRATOR

Days after the Bernard Crowe shooting Bobby Beausoleil committed the first murder. The prosecution said that Manson “needed money” but the specifics of this motive were never fully explained. The motive was described as generally related Manson’s preparation for the race war.

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Manson wanted money. He wanted money because he was preparing for the revolution.

NARRATOR

The prosecution contended that Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil, and two women, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, to the home of an acquaintance named Gary Hinman. Their orders were supposedly to retrieve money from Hinman and kill him if he refused. 

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all crap. You don’t have to look it up, you just have to look at it.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Nobody sent me over to recruit Gary to the family. He was as much of the so-called family as I was and I wasn’t a part of the family.

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil contends that in the aftermath of Bernard Crowe shooting, Manson’s arrangement with the biker gang made them a constant presence at the ranch. Two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders, Beausoleil says the Straight Satans were looking for drugs. Beausoleil sold them mescaline he got from his former roommate Gary Hinman. Beausoleil maintains that the day after the drug deal the Straight Satans demanded their money back claiming the drugs were bad.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I don’t really believe you I think they were trying to get the drugs for free. They were playing me for a sucker. There wasn’t any bad drugs or anything like that.

CHARLES MANSON

Beausoleil was a strong individual. Yeah, he was in trouble with the motorcycle gang. And, we were dealing and wheeling underworld man. That’s what motorcycle gangs do, you know. In other words, the strongest survive. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

There is a property report of Gary Hinman. And in that property, report they list homemade scales with white powder. They didn’t test it for it mescaline, so we don’t know if it was or not. To me that’s evidence.

NARRATOR

With the Straight Satans threat looming, Bobby Beausoleil claims he went to Gary Hinman’s house to retrieve the money from the drug deal and return it to the biker gang.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I went there for one thing and that was to collect the money. And ‘cause they asked to come along, Mary had a relationship with Gary, and I don’t know why Susan Atkins asked to come along. I didn’t see any problem going there. I figure it was going to be no problem to get the money back and, you know, and come back and give it to ‘em, and it was going to be done.

NARRATOR

As recalled by Bobby Beausoleil, when Gary Hinman refused to return the money the confrontation escalated. Along with Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, Beausoleil stayed at the house for two days. Beausoleil thought he could reason with Hinman to give up the money. They wrestled over a gun which went off but hit no one. During the confrontation, someone called the Ranch to ask for help. At some point, Bobby Beausoleil gained the upper hand and made Gary Hinman sign over his cars.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

So he had these two old wrecks and they were, I figured between the two of them they were worth maybe a grand. The grand that they were saying I owed them. 

NARRATOR

With the pink slips in hand they prepared to leave. As they were walking out the door Manson unexpectedly rushed in with a sword and cut Gary Hinman across the face.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie had slashed his face and left me with the problem. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, you know, I didn’t know how to get away without getting arrested, unless I killed him.

NARRATOR

After the murder, someone wrote on the walls in Gary Hinman’s blood.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

To be honest with you, I don’t remember a lot that happened immediately after my having killed Gary. That really devastated me. My memories of what happened afterwards have never really been clear.

NARRATOR

A black panther paw print was drawn on the wall along with the words POLITICAL PIGGY.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It was in everyone’s minds. Everyone believed Charlie had killed a black panther, according to what he had told everyone. There was an intent to throw the investigators of the trail.

NARRATOR

From this perspective, Gary Hinman’s murder was directly related to the Bernard Crowe shooting. They staged the crime scene to frame the Black Panthers because they feared retaliation. At the same time, Manson’s intent to make the others complicit had been unexpectedly furthered. This prevented members of the group from telling the police about what Manson had done. According to police records on Wednesday, August sixth, two days before the Sharon Tate murders, Bobby Beausoleil was arrested in one of Gary Hinman’s cars. 

CHARLES MANSON

I was in San Diego when that happened.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard he got arrested for murder. I thought that the police had just made it up. No, I didn’t believe it.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I think it’s important to look at the timing of this. You’re looking at these murders that happened on Cielo and Waverly are like two days later, and it’s very important that they happened then rather than a month later or two weeks earlier. So, that indicates that they we’re a reaction to Bobby’s arrest and the idea of getting him out of prison by committing copycat murders. 

  NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, two days after Bobby Beausoleil was arrested the group planned to commit another murder. This turned out to be the murders of Sharon Tate and those who were at her home on August eighth. The group planned to stage the crime scene to make it appear as if Gary Hinman’s killer was still on the loose. They reasoned this would compel the police to let Bobby Beausoleil go. Charles Manson admitted that this was their thinking.

CHARLES MANSON

He was in prison. He was in the LA county jail when it happened. See we we’re all in a brotherhood. We were all in one family and we were helping the brother. It happened to be Beausoleil. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He told other people he was trying to send a message to me, and others make the police think that they had the wrong person.  

NARRATOR

According to Bobby Beausoleil this is not the entire picture but reaffirms Manson’s deeper motive. Committing a copycat murder to free Beausoleil would make the others complicit, preventing more members of the group from potentially talking to the police about the Bernard Crowe shooting.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Depending on the orientation of whoever he was talking to he would say things that would support some sort of agenda that he had.

NARRATOR

Manson’s agenda comes full circle when you consider that he still harbored a grudge against Terry Melcher for the song Manson had contributed to the Beach Boys. According to the alternate theory, this is why four members of the commune ventured out to Terry Melcher’s house, two days after Bobby Beausoleil’s arrest, on August eighth, nineteen sixty-nine.

BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 8TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE SHARON TATE MURDERS 

BARBRA HOYT

I remember after dinner in the backhouse, and I remember Charlie and Tex talking in the corner, and it was like there was black around them. It was just like evil around them, a black cloud around them.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

There were people at the ranch who owed Charlie favors, and he said you owe me, I’m collecting. Do something to get Bobby outta jail, I don’t care what you do but do it.

CHARLES MANSON

I gave my life to what I thought was a brother. Every time I do that man I always end up on the short end of everything because I’m, I’m stupid. I can’t do school books stuff. I’m a stupid hillbilly is what it boils down to.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I know he told Tex Watson, “You either take care of the problem or get on the road.” Tex Watson could have just left the ranch and there wouldn’t have been any “Tate-Labianca” murders.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex didn’t say that I told him to tell him anything. I told him four or five different ways.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

He don’t tell nobody to do nothing. He don’t tell you to do anything today. He can convince you that that’s your idea, because usually it is your idea.

CHARLES MANSON

You can do what you want to do when you make up your mind and you decide that that’s what you’re going to do.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What they didn’t volunteer to do was something they didn’t understand which was his need to protect himself. He manipulated them.

SUSAN ATKINS  

I remember when we first went in, one of the people said ‘who are you’ and Tex said, ‘I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business”. I don’t think Charles Manson’s mind was in control of Tex’s mind that night. Charlie’s human too, and his mental powers are just as limited, maybe not as limited as other humans, but there was an evil force in control of Tex that night.

BARBRA HOYT

They died so horribly, I don’t know if people really think about how. You just how much they suffered. You know, I think about Sharon Tate and she must have been insane with fear by the time they got to her.

PHIL KAUFMAN

What does it take to have somebody tell you to go and kill people, for what reason? I couldn’t conceive what could allow them to be influenced to go down… They didn’t kill people they butchered people, and these are the people that I’d been sleeping with.

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins used Sharon Tate’s blood to write on a door, it appeared to call back to the murder of Gary Hinman. The police never made this connection. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Sherriff’s homicide was handling the Hinman murders and two of the homicide investigators went to the Tate investigators and said look we have this murder of Gary Hinman, blood on the wall, in Hinman’s blood. So they said, look we think these are connected, the LAPD investigators sent them away said, nah, they’re not connected.

 NARRATOR

The prosecution maintained that the events of that summer were not connected. They claimed that Charles Manson led a religious cult and was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, inspired by the Beatles.

DIRECTOR (OS)

If they’re trying to frame black people, why aren’t they writing “kill white people” or something very obvious?

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Probably because they didn’t think of it. That of course, you know, people would connect blacks because of the Beatles white album, so some black would figure it out and tell somebody, oh ya know (cough), Beatles, this is part of the murders--

DIRECTOR (OS)  

It just seems like a lot of dots to connect.

 BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, SATURDAY - AUGUST 9TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE LABIANCA MURDERS

NARRATOR

If members of the group killed Sharon Tate and others as a copycat murder in order to free Bobby Beausoleil, then why did  they commit more murders the next night?

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

The second night at the LaBianca’s was to cover up for what he had done the first night, which was kill a house full of people. He didn’t realize it was gonna be this big thing that had unfolded up there at the house on Cielo. He didn’t know that Terry Melcher had rented the place out so it basically turned into a fiasco.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was the weekend so, he’s going out the next night because he’s gotta cover up those Tate murders, because that’s going to get out and that’s going to be nasty.

DIRECTOR (VO)

Who did kill those people? 

CHARLES MANSON

The people that told you they killed ‘em. They said on the witness stand, yeah I killed ‘em.

NARRATOR

On the second night, another member of the group became complicit; Nineteen-year-old Leslie Van Houten.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

  (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

Tex was Leslie’s boyfriend, ok, at the time. When Pat is explaining, what happened to Leslie, as I understand it, Pat was shaken by what she’d done but Leslie felt that she had to prove herself now, we’re gonna go out again and this has to be done. She must have been told at that point the line, “We’re doing it for Bobby.”  

NARRATOR

Catherine Gilles, also known as Cappi, recalls seeing Leslie Van Houten get into a car with Patricia Krenwinkel and others.

CAPPI

I had no idea where they were going but Katie and Lulu were the closest people in the universe to me. That girl was my other me and Katie was like our big sister. And they were in the car, and they we’re going somewhere without me, you know, and so I tried to get in the car and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know why. They were protecting me.

NARRATOR

Manson often speaks in riddles. This ensured many members of the group were not aware of what was going on.

CHARLES MANSON

What’s real has different levels. You could go on certain levels of reality, that other people don’t really understand at all. And they call it insanity.

NARRATOR

The group drove to Los Feliz and parked near an intersection on Waverly Drive. Inside the home to the west was an affluent couple who owned a chain of grocery stores, named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

PHIL KAUFMAN

It was a place that they knew. They had been to Harold’s house which is right next door.

NARRATOR

This audio recording from the LA District Attorney shows that the house next door to LaBianca residence was once occupied by a man named Harold True, who knew Manson and the girls.

Harold True interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970:

They called and asked if they could spend the night in the house. And we let them stay the night. At Waverly? Yeah it was a big house, a lot of people stayed there. “Now how did he get your… have your phone number to call?” I don’t know. I guess maybe I gave him a map.

PHIL KAUFMAN

When I skipped the country and the time of my marijuana bust, Harold True gave me his passport. He had never had a passport so I got a passport in Harold’s name. And then when I got out and I went to see Charlie, I took Harold along. Harold was a big old lumpy guy and you know he thought he might get laid.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were camping out with the bus there and living at Harold True’s place, and the neighbours called the cops.  They had to leave there because the neighbours called the cops. And the neighbours were the LaBiancas.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie picked people he had grudges against. He didn’t just pick people at random.

NARRATOR

This adds to the alternate theory that on the second night Manson continued manipulating the others.  It wasn’t because he would rule the world after a race war, instead it was a series of interconnected events. It began with the Bernard Crowe shooting, which led to the Gary Hinman murder and Bobby Beausoliel’s arrest. This culminated in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders. A significant amount of the commune became complicit and Manson’s outstanding grudges were satisfied. There is one additional piece that appears to support this theory, Charles Manson’s actions after the LaBianca murders. According to Tex Watson’s account, summarized from numerous public statements, he and Charles Manson went up to the LaBianca house and broke in through the back door. Manson woke up Leno LaBianca and tied him up. They retrieved Rosemary LaBianca from her bedroom and tied her up, before threatening to kill the couple in the living room. Manson disputes Tex Watson’s version of events.

CHARLES MANSON

What has he told you about me? Everything that’s going to help him, right? You are for you. I am for me. I’m for Charlie. I didn’t kill nobody.

NARRATOR

It’s undisputed that Manson drove to the LaBianca house and that he went into the house for some period of time. According to the trial transcripts, Linda Kasabian is asked; Question, how long after he left the car did he return to the car? Answer, I remember we all lit up cigarettes and we smoked about three-quarters of a Pall Mall cigarette, however long that takes.

The question is, what did Charles Manson do once he left the car?  

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

If you’re looking at three quarters of a cigarette, it’s five minutes. When you’re looking at what Tex says, there’s just not enough time.

NARRATOR

Manson and Tex Watson went up to the house. After a few minutes Manson returned, at which point Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten went into the house. Manson then drove away with the others.

Those in the car claim that while in the house Manson had retrieved Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet which police later found twenty miles away in a gas station bathroom located in Sylmar.  

According to the prosecution Manson conspired to plant the wallet in a black neighbourhood, reasoning a black person would use the credit cards and be connected to the murders. This would help spur the impending race war. But this motive is contradicted by the evidence. Census data from the nineteen seventies shows that Sylmar was not a black neighbourhood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Obviously, he got screwed up. The wallet got planted in the wrong city, I mean there’s no point in planting it in a white area and having a white person use the credit cards. That defeats the whole purpose of blaming the murders on the blacks.

NARRATOR

If framing black people wasn’t Manson’s motive, then what was he trying to achieve in the few minutes that he was in the LaBianca house? And, what was the reason for taking Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet? 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

My theory is, Charlie goes up to the house. Tex Watson says in his book when they get in there Mr. LaBianca says “Hey, what do you all want, you all want money? I can get you money.” Let’s say Charlie did accept the money offer. My Theory is Charlie got the money and then he left, that’s why he left.

 NARRATOR

No one disputes that once Manson left, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten stayed in the house and murdered the LaBiancas.  

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

With Leno LaBianca there was a carving fork protruding out his abdomen and Krenwinkel had written on his abdomen WAR. They found a knife with the handle sticking out of one end the blade traversing his neck, severing a carotid artery and part of the blade sticking out of the other side.

NARRATOR

During the LaBianca murders, all agree that Charles Manson took the rest of the group to Venice. The prosecution insisted that Manson went to Venice to get his followers to commit another murder. Once again, the motive was to frame a black person and fuel the race war. According to trial testimony, Manson allegedly took his followers to the apartment building located here. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The address to that apartment building is, you could literally say a stone’s throw from the Straight Satans clubhouse in Venice. You mean that Straight Satan biker gang that Charlie owed money to? Yeah that biker gang, they were in Venice. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, after Manson shot Bernard Crowe he feared retaliation and enlisted the Straight Satans for protection. Bobby Beausoleil compromised this protection by getting into a conflict with the Straight Satans over a drug deal.  

If Manson took enough money from the LaBianca residence, he could have gone to Venice to settle the debt that Bobby Beausoleil owed the Straight Satan’s from the Gary Hinman drug deal. This would’ve regained their protection from the Black Panthers.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It’s what, 4 in the morning, 3 or 4 in the morning? They didn’t go back to ranch, they went to Venice. That’s how pressing this was for Charlie. They could wait until Monday to do business. I think they went to Venice to pay off the Straight Satans.

CHARLES MANSON

When you’re in the know with somebody that’s in the know. You don’t play games with them. 

BRIAN DAVIS

That next morning Charlie sent Linda Kasabian down to the jail with a message for Bobby Beausoleil, don’t say anything, everything’s cool. Why all of a sudden is everything cool? By Monday before any court proceedings started they get a message to Bobby, everything’s cool, we’ve taken care of everything. Don’t say a word about nothing. We’ll have you out of there soon. 

NARRATOR

By Monday morning seven people were dead but the string of murders was not finished.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The neighboring rancher, he didn’t like the Manson family. So, what was going on then is, they we’re trying to get them off the ranch. 

NARRATOR  

It’s been long speculated that the neighboring rancher may have recruited a ranch hand named Donald “Shorty” Shae to rid Spahn Ranch of the group. Manson believed Shae had tipped off the police leading to a raid.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

You know there was definitely no love lost between Shorty Shae and Charles Manson as far as I can gather. 

NARRATOR

On August sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, twenty-six members of the commune were arrested for suspicion of auto theft. Because of a date error, the search warrant was ruled invalid and all were released. The police had no idea that they were connected to the murders making national news. When they returned to Spahn Ranch, Donald Shae was never seen again.

BARBRA HOYT

I went to sleep in a little trailer. I heard a scream, And then I heard more screaming and it just didn’t end and it was horrific. It was horrible, and it kept going on and on and I recognized Shorty’s voice.

NARRATOR

After Donald Shae’s disappearance, Manson and the commune left Spahn Ranch.  

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Cappi suggested that her grandmother had a place out there in Death Valley, when he was looking for a place to go. They went out there and looked at it. He fell in love with it. And he said this is it. This is it, this is our utopia.

NARRATOR

The land in Death Valley was an isolated mining property owned by Catherine Gilles’ grandmother. After the murders, Charles Manson and the group stayed there until October of nineteen sixty-nine.    

CAPPI

We went to the desert because of me. My favorite place besides the ocean. I was born on the ocean and I lived in the desert, and I love the desert so I offered up the desert.

NARRATOR

Just like authorities had in Los Angeles, Inyo County officers raided the Death Valley ranch on August twelfth, nineteen sixty-nine for suspicion of auto theft.

Twenty-four members of the group we’re arrested and once again police had no idea they were involved in any of the murders. The killers were imprisoned except for Patricia Krenwinkel, who went on both nights, and Tex Watson.  

 GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

After the murders, Pat Krenwinkel went back to Alabama, Tex Watson went back to Texas. Nobody was holding them around. 

NARRATOR

Records show that Linda Kasabian was bailed out by her parents and left California. Before anyone else could arrange for bail, Susan Atkins confessed.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins is the one that broke the case. I mean they didn’t know that it was Charles Manson or Susan Atkins or anything until she blabbed.

PHIL KAUFMAN

That was her, that was very much her. Charlie would have been better killing her and he probably would have gotten away with it a little bit longer.

NARRATOR

While inside the country jail, Susan Atkins told her cellmates that she was involved in the murder of Sharon Tate. One of the first people Atkins confessed to was a call girl named Virginia Graham.  

VIRGINIA GRAHAM

Susan Atkins, she plopped herself down and she sat on the bunk and we started talking, and she presumed to tell me how stupid the police were, and they were dumb. She said to me, “You know those murders up benedict canyon?” She said you know who did it don’t you and I said no, and she said cold as can be “you’re looking her”.  She didn’t say Helter Skelter to me. I found out about, Helter Skelter, later on. But I don’t recall her telling me Helter Skelter.

NARRATOR

Susan Atkins was denied compassionate release in two thousand and eight, and died from brain cancer in prison. However, in nineteen sixty-nine the DA was willing to overlook the brutality of her actions.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

The deal with Susan Atkins, the prosecution was going to let her plead to second degree murder. Sharon was begging for her life. She was being held by Susan Aktins and – she said “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby.”

SUSAN ATKINS

I felt nothing, I felt absolutely nothing for her as she begged for the life of her baby.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor) She said “Look bitch, I don’t care about you or your child. You’re going to die and I don’t feel a thing behind it.” Having Susan Atkins as the witness that wouldn’t have gone over to well with the jury.

NARRATOR  

The prosecutor who was working out the deal was the author of HELTER SKELTER, Vincent Bugliosi.

DANIEL SIMONE

Vincent Bugliosi was an outstanding prosecutor. But if one really we’re to dig much deeper, what emerges is he was a womanizer. He loved attention, he was over-ambitious

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

He had a guy sitting in court that I thought was a reporter but it turned out he was Curt Gentry, who Vince had hired to write a book on the case. He didn’t tell me that he was writing a book during the trial. So, yeah, he didn’t tell anybody it. This was gonna make him rich and famous.

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all underworld solider. Who you think the president is? Where you think his office is, in my cell?

NARRATOR

This is the Helter Skelter theory that was presented to the jury in the Charles Manson trials.

NARRATOR

Manson formed a cult of obedient followers who wanted to drop out of society. Their connection to the Bernard Crowe shooting is unknown as the motive and was not explored by the prosecution.  

Manson wanted to be a rock star and was obsessed with the Beatles. He had also met the Beach Boys.

Through the Beach Boys, Manson came to resent Terry Melcher and considered Melcher’s house a representation of the establishment.

Manson believed the Beatles were predicting a race war through hidden messages in their songs, and he needed money to supplement his preparation.

Because of this, Manson further brainwashed his cult to believe in the race war and ordered them to kill Gary Hinman.

Meanwhile, to start the race war, Manson decided to murder white people and frame black people. He indirectly ordered his followers to kill whoever lived at Terry Melcher’s house.

Manson also chose another house at random and ordered its occupants to be killed.

Manson’s plot was to frame black people by having his followers leave indirect references to the Beatles White Album at the crime scenes. Manson believed that both the police and black people would understand these references, and this would lead into the race war.

Once the race war began, Manson and the family would hide in a secret cave in the desert. After the war, Manson would emerge and become the leader of the victorious black army. At that point he would rebuild the world.  

This is the theory that convicted Charles Manson and others, and gained prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi fame, and a best-selling book.  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what the DA said. Everybody will tell you what they think about me, according to what they want to use me for. All I’m looking for is someone to help me. I’ve always been by myself alone.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Anything on the recordings that you know of whereby he speaks of his philosophy of Helter Skelter, the ruination and damnation of this world? No.

PHIL KAUFMAN

I was really not a friendly witness. I was on parole for one thing, I really didn’t, you know, want to get connected with these people. And this DA comes out to my house and tries to get stuff out of me that wasn’t there.

CHARLES MANSON  

They know how to milk the cow man. And they do it so well the cow don’t even know it.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory is not only sensational, it establishes the elements of murder and conspiracy under California law. To be found guilty, the defendant must agree to commit a crime as well as commit an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

Without proving the Helter Skelter motive there was no evidence whatsoever that Manson wanted these murders to happen. You have to be a party to it, you can’t just know about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

I didn’t break the law because I’ve been in prison all my life and I know the law. I know what conspiracy is. I’m not going to conspire to do something. That’s kind of stupid isn’t it? I’m not a stupid dude. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid.  

NARRATOR

This is the implication of what Manson is saying. It’s not that he wasn’t involved in the events of the summer of sixty-nine. Manson admits to shooting Bernard Crowe, his involvement with drugs, the Straight Satans, and the motive of getting Bobby out of prison. But when it came to the murders he maintains he purposely kept himself at a distance. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I thought it was a horrible case against him. Remember he was not at the scene. He was forty miles away when the murders took place so he was an armchair murderer.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory was how the prosecution demonstrated that Manson was guilty of conspiracy and murder under the requirements of the law. They described a scenario where he ordered the murders without actually saying the words.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

I mean they all knew about Helter Skelter but we didn’t have any evidence from that specific night that Manson said go out and start Helter Skelter. He just said “Go with Tex and do what Tex tells you to do”. 

CHARLES MANSON

They still won’t admit the truth. They had no evidence against me, none. 

NARRATOR

There was no evidence that Manson himself killed anyone. The prosecution said that Manson was guilty under the rule of “vicarious responsibility”. The notion that Manson’s plot to start a race war made him responsible for all the crimes committed to further it.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Remember, Vince is trying to push the agenda that Charlie just came out of nowhere and said, hey, we gotta start a race war -  Bernard Crowe, drug dealing, grand theft auto, none of that has anything to do with this. If Vince introduces anything outside of that it starts to wash away the Helter Skelter theory. Then you have that reasonable doubt creeping in. Well maybe it has something to do with the drug deal? And Vince doesn’t want you going down that road. 

CHARLES MANSON

People don’t want to look at it from the point of view that brings them to something they don’t like. 

NARRATOR

The prosecution used the race war as the basis of their legal argument. If the alternate theory is correct, might they have ignored the true nature of events to gain a conviction? Whatever Manson’s crimes are, do the ends justify the means?

GARY LAWYER  

I think if he had had a competent lawyer, he would of either walked on the trial or walked on appeal because there just wasn’t sufficient testimony to convict him of anything.

NARRATOR

To convict Manson the prosecution’s entire case depended on one of the murderers corroborating their theory. On December second, nineteen sixty-nine, four months after the death of Sharon Tate, the last of the murderers was captured. Linda Kasabian surrendered in New Mexico and returned to California. She immediately met with her attorney Gary Fleischman.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I talked to her and the only conversation I can tell you, I said keep your mouth shut and keep it shut in that jail. Don’t talk to anybody about this ever. I can’t tell you the conversation I had with her but I was lead to believe that the murders up there started long before the Tate-Labianca case. I can’t describe what she told me but it was scary, the whole thing was scary.

NARRATOR  

At that time, Linda Kasabian had few options because Susan Atkins had already turned state’s witness. According to Gary Fleischman, he had Kasabian sabotage Susan Atkins’s testimony to bolster Kasabian’s bargaining position with prosecutors.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I had Linda pass kites to her, in the jail. A kite is a little letter, saying in Charlie talk, Charlie talk being ‘the DA is your lawyer, Charlie is the DA’. And this Atkins was a little nuts, and she then refused to testify. So now they we’re left with Linda, period – and then negotiations started.

First they offered me murder in the second degree, I said no, then they offered me voluntary manslaughter, I said no.

She was technically guilty of first degree murder before and after the fact.

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian was one of the four who participated in the Sharon Tate murders and was with Charles Manson the night of the LaBianca murders. Prior to that, she had only been with the group for about thirty days and had spent little time with Manson himself.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody ratted on me, except, she didn’t rat because she didn’t know anything. What they did was, they got some of the women that didn’t know me. I can’t get in their mind.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

So, we typed up an immunity agreement and the immunity agreement said, Linda Kasabian will receive immunity if she testifies to the truth in the so-called Manson murders. The truth is as follows. I knew exactly what was necessary to convict him, and whether that was true or not it was wasn’t my business to decide. That was Vince’s business. I said Linda if you testify to that you’re going to walk out of that courtroom. 

 NARRATOR

Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles “Tex” Watson and Leslie Van Houten were all charged with murder and conspiracy. Tex Watson was arrested in Texas and faced extradition to California. With Linda Kasabian ready to testify, Watson was not brought back in time for Manson’s trial.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Tex sat out a whole year and watched that trial develop. If he had brought Tex in with him there’s no way he would have got that conviction.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

They wanted to get rid of me. I had gone to Stanford. I was really the only lawyer in the place who knew what the hell was going on. We filed a very detailed motion to get the case out of LA county.

It had like a hundred newspaper clippings and I claimed that the bad publicity was instigated by the prosecutors and that’s enough to get the case dismissed at least on appeal.

That case should have never been tried in Los Angeles county. But when we went to make a deal we withdrew the motion.

CAPPI

You should have seen my face when, when I was sitting in the in with the demure act this whole gold cross that she was fingering, and got up on the stand and said “I’m just an angel sent here from Heaven, to tell the world that Charlie’s the devil not Jesus Christ”.

CHARLES MANSON  

Listen and learn. The courtroom shows our justice. The courtroom is the eye of the social consciousness. You’ve got to go along with the courtroom. Right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m a mass murderer in the courtroom. 

DANIEL SIMONE

In this case, Bugliosi was brilliant. He had no rivals. It came down to who the jurors believed and Manson’s own conduct which was absolutely absurd.

CHARLES MANSON

They think they’re stealing me but all they’re doing is stealing what I’ve left for them to steal. In other words, they’re plagiarizing all my dreams but I left those on the bus stop.

BRIAN DAVIS  

It literally branded Charles Manson the most evil, dangerous man in the world.

CHARLES MANSON

There’s no end to my insanity. My insanity is so much genius I’ve got five heads in one hand.

DANIEL SIMONE

None of the defense attorneys challenged that Linda Kasabian’s testimony remained uncorroborated.

CAPPI

I know how involved she was and I won’t say, but she was definitely involved, yes. 

NARRATOR

When the trial wound to a close, those associated began to fear for their lives. Many changed their names in fear of reprisal.  

CHARLES MANSON  

Live and let live. You don’t let me live, you don’t live. That’s all. If you let me live, you live.

I you don’t let me live then you get your own judgment. Everybody gets to judge themselves. I didn’t want the job, you know.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Charlie went like this to mean, meaning I’m going to cut your throat. And I said to him “Charlie, when you get out of jail I’m going to have a turkey neck and bring you a sharp knife to cut it.” He started laughing.

PHIL KAUFMAN

They came to my house twice to kill me. My neighbor said you know guys have been crawling over your fence.

STEPHEN KAY

One night during the first trial on my way to the parking lot where I had parked, Squeaky and Sandra Good snuck up behind me and said they were going to do to my house what was done at the Tate house. 

NARRATOR

Leslie Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes, went missing during the trial. Many have speculated about his disappearance.

STEPHEN KAY

I remember we broke for the weekend on a Friday afternoon. Manson pointed directly at Ronald Hughes and said, Attorney, I don’t ever want to see you in this courtroom again.” His body was found six months later but it was so badly decomposed that they couldn’t tell the cause of death.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I’ll bet your bottom dollar that he said something that got under Charlie’s skin, and Manson had him killed. I mean, he went up to (something) hot springs, and all of sudden he’s dead. I don’t believe it was an accident.

NARRATOR

After the first trial the Manson Family became infamous. Vincent Bugliosi published HELTER SKELTER the best-selling true crime book of all time. This began decades of movies, books, and TV shows, portraying Charles Manson as the incarnation of evil.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL  

It’s such an insidiously created book - It’s a curse having to live with it.

CHARLES MANSON

The DA fucked up man. Convicted me in the press, didn’t convict me in court. I got my own media.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson and the rest continued on through the courts. They received additional death sentences for the murder of Donald Shea based primarily on the testimony of Barbara Hoyt.

Tex Watson received a separate trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders and was sentenced to death like the others. The following year, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and all of their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

BRIAN DAVIS

The first trial, everybody was brainwashed, Tex was brainwashed, everybody went and killed for Charlie. But when Tex gets to trial he wasn’t brainwashed, he acted on his own.

NARRATOR

In November of nineteen sixty-nine, Bobby Beausoleil was tried for the murder of Gary Hinman. This was before the DA had labelled Charles Manson as the mastermind. Beausoleil’s first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict. There was no mention of Helter Skelter.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

The first trial was just a quiet little trial in Santa Monica, the Jury was hung 8 to 4. I didn’t even testify because the case was really very weak. 

NARRATOR  

In a second trial, which took place after Manson was charged, Bobby Beausoleil was rebranded as a “member of The Manson Family”. He and Susan Atkins were sentenced to death alongside Manson for the murder of Gary Hinman.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

They brought up this race war thing and all of that. It was horrible, man. They did a lot of insidious things.

NARRATOR  

Many of those convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders remain in jail. Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole on numerous occasions but because of her association with Charles Manson her parole has been continually overturned.  

STEPHEN KAY

I don’t think that she deserves to get out. They we’re all lucky that they didn’t suffer the death penalty.

RICH PFIEFFER

I’m going to get her out. The DA is not operating fairly. Just follow the law, that’s all I’m asking.

NARRATOR

Lynette Squeaky Fromme served thirty-five years in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Fromme was paroled in two thousand and nine. Vincent Bugliosi died in two thousand and fifteen. His book HELTER SKELTER has become gospel in terms of information on Charles Manson.

NARRATOR

Manson remains in California State Prison, Corcoran, where he will almost certainly live for the remainder of his life.

CHARLES MANSON  

That’s hard for me to believe that all this time has gone by man.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson is not an innocent man but does it matter how we know that? Should those in power be allowed to construct their own truth in the pursuit of justice?

CHARLES MANSON

I see things as they really are in truth. You got a constitution in the United States, and they read and study it in school but they never really understand the validity of it, and how powerful it really is.

GRAY WOLF

I don’t care who it is, if somebody doesn’t get a fair trial then we’re all in trouble.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Do I think he’s suffered an injustice, not really (laughs), not in my heart of hearts. But as a matter of litigation, yes he did suffer an injustice. Whether morally he suffered an injustice I don’t think so.

NARRATOR

This leaves some to ask, if the prosecution had pursued the alternate theory with its brutal but less sensational elements, would anyone even know who Charles Manson is? And, would he be sitting in jail today? 

MANSON

I believe what I’m told to believe. Don’t you?

THE END

[monkeyandelf]

Notable demons who terrorized the ancient world

Storytellers tell stories of ancient demons that have ravaged humanity since time immemorial. In the Middle Ages, people were so fascinated and frightened by these supernatural entities that entire books were devoted to the list of demonic creatures, the areas of life they influenced and how to protect themselves from them.

Lilith: ancient demon, black deity or sexual goddess?

Lilith, satanic angel. (CC BY-NC 2.0) Lilith is one of the oldest known female spirits in the world. Its roots come from the epic of Gilgamesh and it has also been described in the Bible and the Talmud. Lilith's name comes from the Sumerian word "lilitu", which meant a wind spirit or a female demon. From the beginning of its textual existence, it was linked to Sumerian witchcraft. In the Babylonian Talmud, Lilith was described as a dark spirit with an uncontrollable and dangerous sexuality. She would have fertilized with male sperm to create hundreds of demons. In Jewish tradition, she is a notorious demon, but in some other sources, she appears as the first woman created on Earth. According to legend, God formed Lilith in the same way as he created Adam, except that instead of pure dust, he also used dirt and residue. Lilith was also known in the culture of the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Israelis and the Romans. Later, she migrated to northern Europe. It represented chaos, sexuality and would have cast spells on people. Its legend is also linked to the first vampire stories .

Detail from a modern illustration of Yuki-onna. ( CC BY SA) The legend of Yuki-onna (the snow woman) comes from Japanese legends. She is part of the long list of so-called "yokai" - supernatural creatures known as monsters, demons, spirits or other mythical beings. Yuki-onna is believed to live in places with snow-capped mountains where she feeds on the energy of human life and regular food. It feeds on travelers lost in heavy snowstorms. It draws human life force from the mouths of its victims in its own, freezing them solidly. With ageless white skin that is as cold as ice herself, Yuki-onna would have incredibly deep eyes and beautiful long black or white hair. Although Yuki-onna may fall in love, marry and live among humans, she will never age and her identity will eventually be revealed, therefore most legends say that Yuki-onna chooses to stay near mountain roads and to attack travelers.

Spring Heeled Jack, the uncatchable demon of Victorian England

Spring Heeled Jack as represented by an anonymous artist. ( Public domain ) It is not certain that Spring Heeled Jack was a man or a beast. Witnesses report that he has long, pointed nails that almost looked like claws. His eyes had a crazy look at them that some said was glowing when he was about to strike. Whenever city dwellers attempted to catch him, he easily escaped, running quickly through crowded alleys, jumping over fences and disappearing into the night as if he were a ghost. The Spring Heeled Jack was first seen in 1837 and has continued for decades. In particular, he looked for young women, but the damage he caused affected all kinds of ordinary people. As the story of this creature of darkness spread, its attributes became more demonic. Reports have indicated that he has horns and a pointed goat, that he can jump over roofs and that he can breathe fire. Despite all the terror he caused, Jack did little harm other than reports of ragged clothes, hysteria and heart attacks. In the 1880s, Spring Heeled Jack was overshadowed by a much more lethal villain, Jack the Ripper. The legacy of the jumping devil lives on in popular imagination to this day, most notably in the playful little toy known as Jack-in-the-Box.

Uncovering the true identity of the Jersey Devil

Jersey Devil. (pyro-helfier / Deviant Art ) Jersey Devil’s history places it at the height of puzzling crypto-zoological mysteries. It has confused and fascinated audiences for hundreds of years. The creature is often described as a flying bipedal cryptid with hooves, but there are many conflicting opinions as to its actual appearance. The common description of eyewitnesses is that it looks like a creature resembling a kangaroo, but with the head of a horse, leathery bat wings and long bird legs, claws, hooves, a face hideous and a tail fork. Several people have even said that his body looked like an alligator. It has been reported to move quickly and has often been described as uttering a "blood-chilling cry". Eyewitnesses say he hops around like a bird. It has been called a variety of different nicknames such as flying death, kangaroo horse, flying horse, cowherd and a prehistoric lizard. From January 16 to 23, 1909, the state of New Jersey experienced a major paranormal event, it was seen in person by thousands of people, schools were closed and factories closed temporarily for fear. He is said to have lived in the Barrens of Pines in southern New Jersey and was named official demon of the state in New Jersey in 1939.

Krampus, son of Hel: Punishment of the devil and the Christmas child

Krampus, the Christmas devil. ( CC BY SA 2.0 ) The Krampus tradition is popular in countries like Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The name derives from the German word krampen , which means claw. He has a "mutilated, disturbed face with bloodshot eyes atop a hairy black body. Giant horns wrap around his head, showing his half goat, half demon line. "(Billock, 2015) According to legend, Krampus is the son of the Norse goddess Hel, ruler of Helheim (the Nordic kingdom of the dead). Krampus is a counterpart to other Christmas demons such as the Frenchman Hans Trapp and the Dutchman Zwarte Piet (Black Peter). Along with other pagan traditions, Krampus mingled at Christmas as Christianity spread across Eastern Europe. About 1,500 years ago, Krampus became the counterpart of Saint Nicholas. On the night of December 5 to 6, Saint Nicholas walks around, leaving small gifts in the shoes and boots of children who have behaved well. Just behind, Krampus, which leaves a rod in the skin of naughty children. Krampus carries a bundle of birch sticks with which he strikes especially bad kids. The worst offenders he stuffs in a bag and drags them to his lair where they are likely to be eaten. In the 12th century, the Catholic Church began its work to eradicate this pagan devil. Christians were fairly successful in banishing the Krampus until it reappeared in a consumer crisis of the 19th century.

Incubi and Succubi: overwhelming nightmares and sex-hungry demons

The nightmare ‘(1781) by Johann Heinrich Füssli. ( Public domain) Known by many names around the world and over time, various cultures have spoken of vampire-like demons that feed on human energy and attack their victims at night. Two of the popular names in English for these entities are Incubus and Succubus (plural Incubi and Succubi) - demons who attack their victims by pressing them, often while sexually assaulting them. Incubus is the male form of the demon. The name of this demon comes from the late Latin "Incubo" which means "nightmare" which originates from the Latin word "incubare", to "lie". This description is well suited to what the Incubus does to its victims - it lies (or "crushes") them. They are said to be very difficult to remove once they have chosen a victim. These demons supposedly can change shape, so their appearance differs, although they are often said to resemble humans. It has been said that the Incubi may be particularly physically attractive to their victims. The succubus ("spiritual wife" or "lying under") is the feminine form of an Incubian demon. The accounts of these demons appear in the ancient Akkadian, Sumerian and Greek texts. The princess of demons is called Nahemah. Succubi have often been described as women of exceptional beauty, but sometimes with bats or other wings of flying animals on their backs. As with the Incubi, the Succubi attack their victims at night and would also prefer victims with a religious spirit. The Succubi are looking for sleeping men and are said to be draining their blood, breathing, vital energy and sperm - until the victim can die.

Baphomet? Was the evil demon truly worshiped by the Templars

Tarot card representing Baphomet, detail. ( wimage72 / Fotolia) The first known reference to Baphomet dates back to a letter written by a French crusader in 1098. According to the crusader, the Muslims of the Holy Land called on a certain "Baphometh" before the battle. It is commonly accepted today that this name is a corruption of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. European Christians at the time viewed Islam as the worship of Muhammad, which they viewed as idolatry. The evolution of Baphomet continued in 1307, when the powerful Templars were suppressed in France. Some of the Templars admitted to worshiping an idol, it seems that their accounts were inconsistent. For example, some claimed that the idol was the severed head of St. John the Baptist, while others claimed that it was the statue of a three-faced cat. It was not until 1854 that Baphomet became the goat-headed character we know today. It was Eliphas Levi, a French ceremonial magician, who reinvented Baphomet as a figure he called the "sabbatical goat". Levi’s Baphomet was adopted by the famous occultist, Aleister Crowley. It was Crowley who linked Baphomet to Satan and linked this icon to the idea of ​​suppressed knowledge and secret worship. Thus, in opposition to traditional Christian thought, Crowley argued that Satan was not the enemy of mankind, but his ally.

Were the worshipers of the Egyptian god following a god or a demon?

Seth (Set) Left, and Horus. (Niedlich, S / CC BY SA 2.0 ) Set (Seth) is an ancient Egyptian god depicted with the head of an unknown animal designated by Egyptologists as an "animal Set". The ancient Egyptians believed that Set was the god of chaos, the wilderness, storms and darkness. He was venerated mainly in Upper Egypt from the pre-dynastic period. Originally, he was believed to be a benevolent god who lived in the underworld and was responsible for helping the dead to reach heaven, although he was later considered to be an evil god during the conflict with Horus. The disciples of Horus triumphed over those of Set, thereby demonizing Set. Another theory suggests that Set became associated with the Hyksos invaders who conquered the Nile Delta and, by the time of the second intermediate period, Set had become regarded as a malicious deity. As the god of the desert, Set was also considered the antithesis of everything that represented life. However, it was not entirely bad, in some myths the gods used Set's force and power for good. The best known of these is Set’s role as the defender of Ra’s solar boat. Each night, as the solar boat made its journey through the Underworld, Set fought Apep, the serpent of chaos. Set is often depicted as standing on the prow of the sun boat, and spearing Apep.

The shocking demon who brings the plague and devours babies

Manananggal, mythical creature from the Philippines. ( Public domain ) Rangda embodies power - she is electrifying, dangerous and from another world. She has protruding eyes, large hanging breasts and a long red tongue hanging down her body. Her mouth is full of big teeth and curved fangs; her nails are extended to long pointed claws, and her shaggy mop of gray hair hangs down her back. Rangda's legends include his taste for eating children as well as for causing illness and plague. Although she may have been an ancient goddess, Rangda is now identified as a wicked demonic queen. However, Rangda is also considered a protective force in certain parts of Bali. In the Barong dance, part of the ritual drama that focuses on the ongoing battle between good and evil, Barong represents good and Rangda represents evil. The Barong protects the villages from the plague and malicious magic, while Rangda is the one who inflicts these plagues and these difficulties. Top image: Ancient Demons: Manananggal, mythical creature from the Philippines. ( Public domain ) Krampus, the Christmas devil. ( CC BY SA 2.0 ) Detail from a modern illustration of Yuki-onna. ( CC BY SA) Spring Heeled Jack as represented by an anonymous artist. ( Public domain ) Lilith, satanic angel. (CC BY-NC 2.0) The Jersey Devil. (pyro-helfier / Deviant Art ) Source: ANCIENTORIGINS.NET Read the full article

[leviiism-blog]

BASIC INFORMATION

full name: levi atticus henley pronunciation: lee-vye at-i-cuss meaning: “joined, attached”  /  “from attica”

reason for name: his parents were trying to avoid the “celebrity baby name” trope and just went for something normal sounding that they liked. nickname(s): lee, leevy, atty preferred name(s): levi, most nicknames are ok date of birth: 21 june, 1998 place of birth: los angeles, california age: 19 zodiac sign: gemini gender: cis male preferred pronouns: he/him romantic orientation: bisromantic sexual orientation: bisexual nationality: american ethnicity: white

BACKGROUND

hometown: los angeles, california places lived: la, a few other places for short periods of time social class: upper class education level: high school, currently taking collage classes father: river henley (deceased) mother: alicia henley (deceased) sibling(s): tba, tba, hannah, & daxton birth order: middle child children: none pet(s): none previous relationships: had an on again/off again girlfriend when he was sixteen, had a friends with benefits relationship with the guy playing collins while he was playing rodger in rent in the months leading up to the accident ever been arrested?: no

OCCUPATION & INCOME

primary source of income:  acting jobs secondary source of income: parent’s income describe their workspace: hectic — especially close to opening night — but still somewhat structured happy with their job (or lack of)?: very past job(s): small tv jobs, a range of roles in plays and musicals in la and a few short runs in new york dream job(s): leading role on broadway spender or saver? why?: saver, money got kind of boring the older he’s gotten most valued possession: a stuffed dog that he can’t sleep without (and nobody but his family knows about)

SKILLS & ABILITIES

teamwork: works well in a group, but best if he’s in a leadership position talents: acting, singing shortcomings: terrible dancer languages spoken: english can they drive?: yes change a flat tire?: no ride a bike?: yes swim?: yes play any instruments?: piano sing?: yes tie a tie?: yes

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

face claim: tarjei sandvik moe eye color: green hair color: blonde hair type: loose curls glasses/contacts?: neither dominant hand?: left height: 5′9″ complexion (freckles, scars, skin tone, acne, birth marks): a scar above his left eye from the accident, but he usually keeps it covered with his hair tattoos: none piercings: none allergies: dust and cats health: generally good, he rarely gets sick but when he does he turns into a huge baby best quality: he could charm the pants off just about anyone biggest flaw: sometimes the things he says to charm people come back to bite him in the ass

PSYCHOLOGY

introvert/extrovert: somewhere in the middle, leaning more towards extrovert temperament: choleric mbti: esfj mental conditions/disorders: ptsd (but he denies it up and down) emotional stability: outwardly stoic, inwardly a complete mess fears: being alone addictions: none drug use: occasionally smokes weed alcohol use: none how do they deal with anger?: internalizing it (unless someone’s been picking on his siblings) loss?: pretends nothing happened and he’s Fine sadness?: internalizing it/pretends he’s fine change?: lashing out

MANNERISMS

quirks: bites his nails when he’s anxious hobbies: video games (he’s really good at hearthstone) habits: waking up at the crack of dawn, every single day positive traits: independent, genuine, protective negative traits: impulsive, finicky, restless sense of humor: dry, self-deprecating, sometimes a little dark curse often?: yes

FAVORITES

animal: dogs celebrity: lin-manuel miranda color: blue-grey food: pasta holiday: halloween movie: oliver and company musical artist: modern baseball tv show: adventure time weather: rain

ATTITUDES

most at ease when: at home in his room, or on stage least at ease when: away from things that are familiar for too long worst possible thing that could happen: being totally and completely on his own biggest achievement: winning an ovation award (it’s a SoCal theatre thing) biggest regret: not being more affectionate with his parents most embarrassing moment: wetting the bed at a friend’s house when he was 12 short term goals: getting back some semblance of normal and taking over as the “man” of the family long term goals: one word: broadway how do they see themselves?: never quite good enough how do they believe others see them?: level headed and confident susceptible to peer pressure?: no

BELIEFS & INTELLECT

most sensitive about/vulnerable to: his family happiest memory: watching his mom’s face during his first stage performance and seeing how proud of him she was religious stance:  loosely christian political stance: far left pet peeves: people not being able to take a hint, bad leadership bad habits: losing his temper over stupid things as a result of internalizing all his negative emotions superstitious: yes how do they react to frustrations?: usually throwing something or storming out and slamming a door how do they accept failure?: he doesn’t level of comfort with technology: not the worlds greatest, but give him 5 minutes to play with something and he’ll have it figured out believe in the supernatural: to an extent believe in an afterlife: he hopes there is, but he doesn’t have a definite yes/no belief believe in happy endings: only in stories how do they want to be remembered?: as long as he’s made some kind of mark in the theatre world, he’s happy

RELATIONSHIPS

how do they treat others (politely, rudely, keep at distance, etc)?: kept at a certain distance, until they can gain his trust do they trust people easily or tend to be wary?: wary how often do they see friends and family?: almost every day person most dependent on: himself most important person in their life?: his siblings argue or avoid conflict?: argue thoughts on large groups of people?: loves crowds, thrives on the energy of others main quality they look for in people: his same general interests how do they show affection?: there’s a sort of intangible shift in his attitude. like a different vibe he gives off. he’s not big on direct affection most of the time would they ever consider adopting a child?: he’d be open to it

THIS OR THAT

optimist or pessimist: pessimist leader or follower: leader makes decisions based on emotions or on logic: a combination of both, tries more for logic cautious or daring: daring spontaneous or planner: spontaneous thinker or doer: doer organized or messy: messy worrier or carefree: worrier early bird or night owl: early bird hugs or kisses: depends on the situation/person rural or urban: urban pc or mac: doesn’t care silver or gold: gold dress up or dress down: dress down money or fame: fame doing dishes or doing laundry: laundry sunrise or sunset: sunrise hiking or camping: camping personal chef or personal trainer: chef

[diesxirae]

The Angel in the House of Federico Francione || Drabble

The fire had done its work magnificently. All day it had roared and spread, laying waste to half the street. And at night the ashes were still hot, still glinting, hissing and whispering in their hunger to be wood again. Santino put his hand upon a broken door beam and watched it crumble to coals. A fine layer of ash dusted his face and hair, a mantle of sinister luster. Outside, his faithful flock waited for his verdict. They had burned this decadent temple to heresy in his name after all.

This had once been the dwelling of a man named Federico Francione. He had been a banker, who wasn’t these days?, and a lover of all things arcane. Like a thieving magpie this man had swooped in wherever there was a glimpse of treasure, robbing churches and graves alike. In his house the relics of saints sat next to the ugly visages of pagan gods. He had collected all things holy and profane, and the art, the art! 

Large, color-laden paintings were on every wall, displaying nymphs at play and plump cheering angels. The tapestries had come from places like Marrakesh and Damascus. Santino had spent many nights here, following the begging of his guilty heart, to look upon the the masterly crafted pieces, and to read the books that filled the library. And there it had been that he had found Federico’s death sentence: The names of blood drinkers, black on white, and named for what they were. There were tales of a creature called Benjamin The Devil, who roamed the north of Europe like a ghost, and there was the name of his own child, the vampire Armand who ruled in Paris and had been doing so for the last hundred years. There were the names of Mael, Avicus and Zenobia, of whom he had only met the first and found him a brutish vagabond with no heart or mind for anything but his own petty problems. But these names were not to be written. And if this collector of mysteries understood half of what he claimed to know then he would not have written them. 

So it came to be that Santino had sent his faithful to do the Devil’s work. And the fire had raged. Now he surveyed the damage, the deed done under the banner of their dark lord. All was dead and silent around him and his footfalls didn’t disturb the rubble. Soon this building would collapse. He could hear its dearth rattle in the walls. So Santino hurried on, past blackened canvas and heaps of dust that had once been priceless tomes in old languages he couldn’t read. He stepped on bone splinters that were marked as the fingers of St. Paul but rather looked like animal femurs. All was destroyed, all was ashes. 

His satisfaction was short-lived, only a faint glimmer on the surface of his heart. “Into a place I come where nothing shines,” He murmured softly to the melted mirrors. In the library the flames had devoured most ruthlessly. Not even the murals on the walls had survived the heat. Entire shelves had fallen apart under the weight of the fire. To Santino’s astonishment they revealed the banker’s last secret now; a vault that had been left untouched by the fire, some hidden passage. The vampire sent his followers the silent command to wait and keep mortals from the sight. Then he ducked into the hand-carved tunnel. Among dusty furniture and decaying manuscripts, he found it.

A framed painting leaned against the wall, as if it was only waiting for the perfect spot in the house to showcase it. It was about half as tall as Santino himself and twice that length. The motif was common for what mortals called the ‘renaissance’. Decadent, erotic and flush with color, it depicted an angel. 

He rested upon a bench of clouds, stretched out as if to sunbathe in Heaven’s light, and seemed to look down at the mortal world with indifferent amusement. A pair of great silver wings sprouted from his back, folded and angled as if in a state of playful relaxation, and so detailed that he could count the feathers on them. The creature was nearly naked save the ornamental sash of silk that concealed the sinful aspects of the body. But even in its debauchery, its disrespectful carnality, Santino found himself as if hypnotized.

Never had he seen such clean features before. Again and again, his gaze traced the outline of the man’s cheek, only faintly dusted with the sweetest touch of pink. He studied the contours of his brow and the captivating design of those large brown eyes. Framed with thick lashes, they kept their youthful guise while betraying a wisdom that went beyond mortal comprehension. Santino stepped closer, breathless with feeling. 

The angel was certainly meant to entice, seeming so fragile and lascivious even as he clearly didn’t care for the spectator of the painting. He seemed so awake, so aware, almost as if he was about to smile at Santino’s rapture. And it was there, this hint of a smile, in the corner of his mouth, that mouth, that mouth that seemed so soft and softly mocking. But this was just a painting and the voyeuristic guilt that came over him was only his reason and faith calling him back to order. And yet those eyes, those elegant collarbones, this perfect arch of his spine, the revealed thigh, the detail of it all... 

The quality truly was breathtaking, as if the artist had not painted with a mortal man as his model, as if he had truly seen the face of an angel and in religious fervor, in worship, bound the sight onto these canvas. Just the thick brown locks of the angel’s hair could have put any old master to shame. Everything was so perfectly aligned, Santino wouldn’t believe this painting had been painted by a sound mind to lead the brush. He couldn’t help but follow the lines of his displayed torso, directed by the flawless anatomy, further down to his navel and the slope of his hip and the light that reflected on his marble skin and--

Something behind him cracked and crashed. Santino was mercifully woken from his trance. His head snapped around. It was time to leave.The last strength was leaving the construction. How his heart ached to be leaving this angel behind in the rubble but there was nothing he could do for him. His beauty should be resigned to oblivion. 

Following an impulse, a selfish and petty impulse he could never have explained, he turned to tear a piece of wood out of the nearest frame and held it into the smoldering embers outside the hidden chamber. He held it there until the wood caught fire and a flame sprung up before his eyes. The torch held high, he stepped closer again, staring at the angel who was no angel at all but some sinful fantasy of a drunken artist, long dead. 

Santino put the flame to the angel’s wing and at once the smell of burning textile and oils filled his nose. He tossed the fire into the heap of nearby parchments and was gone before the flames took hold. 

[ahopkins1965]

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Home Verse Of The Day John 1:1

◄ What Does John 1:1 Mean? ►

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1(NASB)

Verse Thoughts

"In the beginning..." is Deity's statement of fact. "In the beginning..."  are words pregnant with meaning that subordinate logic, philosophy, psychology, and science. "In the beginning..." is a concept that astounds both the religious thinker and confounds the pagan theorist. It impacts both the believer's mind and the atheist's imaginings but, "In the beginning, was the WORD, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Before time and space were created and before angelic voices chorused their harmonic, "holy, holy, holy", in heavenly places, was 'The Word'. The Word is forever present throughout the span of eternity past, and 'The Word' is deep within the conscious, personal existence of the justified man. Yet 'The Word' is wholly distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, "for in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." And the Word both received and reciprocated the love of the Father in the Triunity of the Spirit.

A unique relationship and unbreakable unity existed within the eternal Godhead before the uncreated God spoke the created universe into being, and formed man from the dust of the earth in His own image and likeness. The eternal Word was with God in the beginning and through this second Person of the Trinity, all things were created that were made.

By Him all things were made, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, authorities, lords, rulers, and powers. All things were made by Him and all things were made for Him. He was sent by the Father to accomplish salvation in the power of the Spirit. Only God the Son was dressed in human flesh and became the Son of Man - and for this reason, all power has been given to Him to judge the living and the dead.

Each Person of the triune Godhead have their own unique roles to play and their own indigenous responsibilities to fulfil, and yet together they work in perfect harmony, being equal and perfect in every aspect of their Being. The Godhead is a Triunity, that one in essence, yet in three Persons - with one divine nature that is the same is substance - yet co-equal, co-eternal, co-infinite, and consubstantial.

The Lord our God is One, working together in perfect harmony and united in every attribute and function of consummate Deity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work together in perfect union and thrilling harmony, with each other as Members of this eternal, uncreated Tri-Unity. Each stunning attribute is eternal in character - and HOLY is His name.

The Word was not only with God in the beginning but from eternity past the Word was God. The Word not only dwelt with God from before time began, or space and matter existed, but the Word was true God - for the Lord, our God is One Lord and yet presents Himself in Three perfect Persons of the same substance, of identical essence, consubstantial, co-eternal, co-equal, co-infinite - Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of His glory - Hosanna in the highest. 

The Word can never be identified as a god, as certain apostate religions and unbiblical denominations declare, for to consider Him so, would be to deny His claim to eternal divinity and render Him as inferior to the Father. Similarly, God can never be classed as one unity, as unitarianists teach, where the Father is the Son, Who in turn is the Spirit,  nor is God one 'Person' with three different roles, or faces. Every such aberrant teaching that denies the deity of Christ, denigrates His Humanity and opposes the truth and inerrancy of God's Word.

NO, as the Bible records: in the beginning WAS the Word and the Word was WITH God and the Word WAS God.

In the absolute and unique unity of the Godhead, before the foundation of the world and all that was created - is the WORD, Who is identified from all eternity as the only One Who is qualified to become incarnate flesh - Immanuel - God with us - perfect God made fully Man - fully God and perfect Man - the eternal Son Who became the living Word - God the Son, Who was born as the Son of Man. For, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory - as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

My Prayer

Father in heaven, I worship and praise Your holy name for Your wonderful plan of salvation. Thank You for sending Jesus, the Word, Who was with the Father before the world began. He came to earth willingly, in human flesh, so that a sinner such as I may be redeemed by His precious blood. Praise Your name and praise Jesus, in Whose name I pray, AMEN.

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[junketsonasadplanet]

A Field Guide to Journalism

The Fourth Estate - journalism - is a central pillar for modern democracies now that the internet age is no longer a “flash in the pan,” research tool, or means of communication but instead an entire digital alter-ego for a generation. A means and medium of expression; a boundless, dangerous sea new to human experience whose swift movements change our perception of information. More placid waters no longer entice, the slow-moving panopticon of democracy’s policy-making needs to be translated and emphasized against a torrential flood of amusement.

Start by making a Twitter account. No one uses Facebook for news, only fucking boomers use Facebook. “I use the ‘Book,” some fucking boomer is saying while wearing sandals and flipping a burger on the grill, “it’s how I keep in touch with my grand-kids!” A CNN editor rubs their hands together. That’s what they’ll run with, “the ‘Book is how today’s grandparents stay in touch!”

That’s perfect because CNN/FOX/MSNBC - pick your poison they’re basically the same - are competing for the main demographic of long term coma victims and retirement homes leaving the channel on the TV in the day room. “It’s how I keep in touch with my grand-kids!” is echoing under humming fluorescent light to an audience of failing kidneys, lung cancer, and stroke victims who are staring at each other. Imagine knifing two Vietnamese in a tunnel and forty years later you’re getting abused by your Dominican nurse who steals your pocket change and slaps you when you don’t take pills. People don’t hate boomers because they ran the planet and economy into the fucking dust they hate them because they’re pathetic.

We’re still talking about how to find a good news source so hang on. The generation of unbridled wealth and power fucked up everything they touched and are slackjawed now staring at the desert of reality, either that or Facebook. Your grandson OD’d because he mixed Oxy and Everclear? Hit that share button saying you’ve got an angel waiting for you in Heaven. People shit themselves when they mix like that. Imagine an Angel in its gown with shit running down its leg. CNN doing 24/7 coverage of Zuckerberg during the Cambridge Analytica trial in Senate with a well-hidden earbud. Now look concerned. No, little more deeply concerned, avoid some eye contact and unfocus your eyes while staring at the ground. Okay, now start to look determined. Look at the Senate - do not smile - look at each Senator in turn and tell them you are taking action to prevent fake news from spreading on your platform.

Zuckerberg is taking classes on how to look more human/relatable, catastrophically failing. We had to get a remote operator with a Berkeley M.S. in psychology to feed him cues. The dude cannot understand how to express emotion. It’s crazy. We tried showing him shock footage and he got a hard-on. A full blown mast watching a guy get beat to death with bricks.

Zuckerberg cannot convey basic human emotion and gets a boner knowing he employs vast amounts of people whose only job is to screen “offensive content” on Instagram and Facebook. Contractors in Phoenix, Arizona, some in Hollywood, Florida and Austin, Texas who are paying rent watching cartel executions and child porn. Automated systems immediately flag undistorted footage so the uploaders distort it or create new footage. If you’re reading this and waiting to hear about modern journalism then so is a contractor now watching the same footage of someone get their head beat in.

At the Phoenix branch of Facebook, Inc, they have a sign for “Days Since We Saw the Funkytown Execution Video” that never goes to 1. Some ingenious motherfucker will reverse the video or overlay it into an anime AMV and upload to Instagram while tagging every “social influencer” he can. I spoke to him once, he told me the most popular was “Redbone but you’re Mexican” where the Funkytown song in the background as they hack a man’s hands off while injecting him with methamphetamine so he can’t pass out so his stumps try to touch his face while some cartel goon peels the skin off his head is instead replaced by the muffled sound of “Redbone” by Childish Gambino.

Facebook is breeding an ingenious mutt race of some very efficient serial killers, conspiracy theorists, but mostly of people who will claim PTSD and join lawsuits against the Zuck so they can claim peanuts while the tort lawyers bring half a billion home and masturbate on Twitter that they have taken a major stand against a worldwide corporation that they use to try to talk to their grand-kids. No one who is a lawyer or social media influence or Mark Zuckerberg has a soul so they sleep pretty well.

Now, back to Twitter. You may have an account already. Undergo basic SMS verification if not and follow @MaggieNYT.

Don’t read any article she posts or retweets. It’s all the same beltway circlejerk anyways. You, as an elite member of an inner circle, are there for the comments. Most of @MaggieNYT’s followers are caught in a hate cycle of following her and insulting her in comments. You enabled Trump, they shout. Yeah, a liberal Brooklyn Jew is the reason why Donald Trump was elected. The ADL is legislating for hate crime laws protecting Jewish public figures and important journalists, whose Venn diagram is a circle.

Full disclosure: I’m saying this as a Jew. I’m attempting to define how to find #GOODNEWS in a world of #FAKENEWS which is fatally important in order to preserve our democracy. This is an important conversation we must undertake in light of historic persecution of my race. No one likes Haberman but she #PERSISTS despite being a punching bag.

@MaggieNYT’s Twitter is single-handedly the cause for a significant rise in anti-Semitism. You show an average person Henry Kissinger enthusiastically masturbating to child porn while authorizing the overthrow of democracies and the sale of weapons to fascist governments then lock them in a room where their only content is @MaggieNYT’s tweets and see which one wants 2020 to look like 1940 quicker.

The good news is that journalism is being rapidly overtaken by Markov-bots which dissect the salient #BUZZWORDS and generates a publishable text. That’s the future of journalism. Not just Markov chains of seemingly deep insight but they’ll innovate by having attractive women half-naked and bleach blonde narrating the whole thing. That’s the future. Naked News is already a thing, God bless, but pretty soon the whole world will look like Twitter. Nude women talking about viral pandemics and religious insurrection while they lightly press a vibrator between their legs and wink at the camera.

Are you upset by this future? You live in it, but it’s okay to have your opinion. We’ll have a body dysphoric person as part of the Markov chain designed to make you feel better. You can watch a larger women masturbate while she tells you that Hubei is a ghost town. Or a trans-woman, a white/black/latino male, a Muslim. That is how you distinguish #REALNEWS from #FAKENEWS. Maggie has little chance in the oncoming environment which relies on a degree of sex appeal and brevity. Most of her readers are actively imagining how good her lipstick would look on a curb.

It would be a shame if someone activated a ***** **** {redacted} in New York or Los Angeles or Palo Alto. The land would be uninhabitable for a decade at least. You would see a vast steppe land of disintegrating buildings and corpses. How terrible if someone found how easy it was to make […] {redacted, jfc get on track, we’re talking about modern journalism}.

[joannrochaus]

What Mitt Romney’s niece thought of his editorial on Trump

Conflicting values are generating many of today’s headlines.

For instance, Mitt Romney wrote a Washington Post op-ed advocating decorum in the White House and claiming that President Trump “has not risen to the mantle of the office.” His niece, Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairs the Republican National Committee. She responded in a tweet claiming that her uncle’s editorial “feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

In other political news, President Trump and congressional leaders met yesterday afternoon, but the two sides could not reach an agreement to end the partial government shutdown. The president insists on funding for the border wall; Democratic leaders offered a package of bills without such funds. Talks will resume tomorrow.

Our culture is locked in an ongoing conflict between those who value “civil rights” for LGBTQ persons and those who value religious rights for Americans who affirm biblical morality. Pro-choice advocates value the woman’s right to choose; pro-life advocates value the unborn child’s right to life.

We all view life through the prism of our values. Which leads to the question: What does God value most?

“The seventh day still continues”

Each day of creation ends with the refrain, “And there was evening and there was morning” (cf. Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). However, after God created the seventh day and “rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Genesis 2:3), we find no such closing refrain. According to the English Standard Version Study Bible, this fact “prompt[s] many to conclude that the seventh day still continues.”

Across Scripture, God kept working within the universe he created so long ago. He judged sin through the Flood, spoke to Moses in a burning bush, liberated his people from Egyptian bondage, and established the Jewish nation in the Promised Land.

Then the One through whom “all things were created” (Colossians 1:16) entered his creation at Christmas. Now the Holy Spirit continues Jesus’ ministry on earth (John 16:7-14) until the day when “a new heaven and a new earth” replace our fallen world (Revelation 21:1).

All that to say, the Creator is just as present in his creation as when he first spoke the universe into being. Whether we see the Artist in his painting is another matter.

“The sky above proclaims his handiwork”

Frederick Buechner: “There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly.”

Janet and I were walking along a beach recently, marveling at the rhythmic, thunderous sound of the waves crashing ashore. Then I noticed a man walking the other way wearing headphones.

We were at a park over the holidays playing with our wonderful grandchildren when I saw a father reading his cell phone in one hand while pushing his son in a swing with the other.

I believe that David’s years spent as a shepherd in the Judean wilderness conditioned his soul to see God in the universe. Imagine him witnessing a spectacular sunrise as he proclaims, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Or picture him staring into the night sky as he speaks to God about “the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place” (Psalm 8:3).

Every stroke on the canvas of creation was painted by our Father. Of course, if you think the universe happened into existence through random chaos and evolutionary chance, you’re not likely to look for a Creator.

Or, if you’re too busy working for God to spend time with him, you’re likely to miss him as well.

How to bring God “immense joy and satisfaction”

Evangelicals value busyness. Sharing our faith with the lost, teaching the Bible, working at the church, helping people in need. All good things to do.

It’s easy to serve God in the belief that we are doing what he most values. But the unstated reality is that we are doing what people most value.

Work is tangible. It is seen and rewarded by others.

Worship is less so. No one can see your heart but God. The world doesn’t know the price you paid to get up early this morning for time alone with your Father. It doesn’t hear your solitary prayers or commend your interior communion with Jesus.

That’s why it’s easy to love the work of God more than the God of the work.

In forty years of vocational ministry, I’ve been complimented by kind church leaders for various things I did–sermons preached, Bible studies taught, hospital visits, and so on. I’ve never been complimented once for my commitment to personal worship.

However, like any father, our heavenly Father wants a loving relationship with his children before he wants work from us. In fact, he seeks such worship from you and me today (John 4:24).

Craig Denison: “God loves worship. He longs for it. Think of that! You have an opportunity every day, through worship, to satisfy the heart of the one who paints sunsets, breathes life into dust and forms mountains, galaxies, animals, angels and humankind with just the power of his voice. You bring your Creator immense joy and satisfaction when you worship.”

“Make a holy and firm resolve”

In his classic book, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence observes: “If we only knew how much we need the grace and help of God, we would never lose sight of Him, not even for a moment. Believe me; make a holy and firm resolve never voluntarily to withdraw yourself from God’s grace from this time on. Live the rest of your days in God’s holy presence.”

Starting today.

The post What Mitt Romney’s niece thought of his editorial on Trump appeared first on Denison Forum.

source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/mitt-romneys-niece-thought-editorial-trump/ source https://denisonforum.tumblr.com/post/181676342747

[denisonforum]

What Mitt Romney’s niece thought of his editorial on Trump

Conflicting values are generating many of today’s headlines.

For instance, Mitt Romney wrote a Washington Post op-ed advocating decorum in the White House and claiming that President Trump “has not risen to the mantle of the office.” His niece, Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairs the Republican National Committee. She responded in a tweet claiming that her uncle’s editorial “feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

In other political news, President Trump and congressional leaders met yesterday afternoon, but the two sides could not reach an agreement to end the partial government shutdown. The president insists on funding for the border wall; Democratic leaders offered a package of bills without such funds. Talks will resume tomorrow.

Our culture is locked in an ongoing conflict between those who value “civil rights” for LGBTQ persons and those who value religious rights for Americans who affirm biblical morality. Pro-choice advocates value the woman’s right to choose; pro-life advocates value the unborn child’s right to life.

We all view life through the prism of our values. Which leads to the question: What does God value most?

“The seventh day still continues”

Each day of creation ends with the refrain, “And there was evening and there was morning” (cf. Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). However, after God created the seventh day and “rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Genesis 2:3), we find no such closing refrain. According to the English Standard Version Study Bible, this fact “prompt[s] many to conclude that the seventh day still continues.”

Across Scripture, God kept working within the universe he created so long ago. He judged sin through the Flood, spoke to Moses in a burning bush, liberated his people from Egyptian bondage, and established the Jewish nation in the Promised Land.

Then the One through whom “all things were created” (Colossians 1:16) entered his creation at Christmas. Now the Holy Spirit continues Jesus’ ministry on earth (John 16:7-14) until the day when “a new heaven and a new earth” replace our fallen world (Revelation 21:1).

All that to say, the Creator is just as present in his creation as when he first spoke the universe into being. Whether we see the Artist in his painting is another matter.

“The sky above proclaims his handiwork”

Frederick Buechner: “There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly.”

Janet and I were walking along a beach recently, marveling at the rhythmic, thunderous sound of the waves crashing ashore. Then I noticed a man walking the other way wearing headphones.

We were at a park over the holidays playing with our wonderful grandchildren when I saw a father reading his cell phone in one hand while pushing his son in a swing with the other.

I believe that David’s years spent as a shepherd in the Judean wilderness conditioned his soul to see God in the universe. Imagine him witnessing a spectacular sunrise as he proclaims, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Or picture him staring into the night sky as he speaks to God about “the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place” (Psalm 8:3).

Every stroke on the canvas of creation was painted by our Father. Of course, if you think the universe happened into existence through random chaos and evolutionary chance, you’re not likely to look for a Creator.

Or, if you’re too busy working for God to spend time with him, you’re likely to miss him as well.

How to bring God “immense joy and satisfaction”

Evangelicals value busyness. Sharing our faith with the lost, teaching the Bible, working at the church, helping people in need. All good things to do.

It’s easy to serve God in the belief that we are doing what he most values. But the unstated reality is that we are doing what people most value.

Work is tangible. It is seen and rewarded by others.

Worship is less so. No one can see your heart but God. The world doesn’t know the price you paid to get up early this morning for time alone with your Father. It doesn’t hear your solitary prayers or commend your interior communion with Jesus.

That’s why it’s easy to love the work of God more than the God of the work.

In forty years of vocational ministry, I’ve been complimented by kind church leaders for various things I did–sermons preached, Bible studies taught, hospital visits, and so on. I’ve never been complimented once for my commitment to personal worship.

However, like any father, our heavenly Father wants a loving relationship with his children before he wants work from us. In fact, he seeks such worship from you and me today (John 4:24).

Craig Denison: “God loves worship. He longs for it. Think of that! You have an opportunity every day, through worship, to satisfy the heart of the one who paints sunsets, breathes life into dust and forms mountains, galaxies, animals, angels and humankind with just the power of his voice. You bring your Creator immense joy and satisfaction when you worship.”

“Make a holy and firm resolve”

In his classic book, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence observes: “If we only knew how much we need the grace and help of God, we would never lose sight of Him, not even for a moment. Believe me; make a holy and firm resolve never voluntarily to withdraw yourself from God’s grace from this time on. Live the rest of your days in God’s holy presence.”

Starting today.

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source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/mitt-romneys-niece-thought-editorial-trump/