I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

DeGrimston contrarily praised the Satanic virtues of War. Far from courting
the elusive respectability and social acceptance desperately desired (and
almost never won) by most new religions, the Process often went out of its
way to invite deliberate disrepute. Again, we observe the left-hand path
method of maintaining a calculated pariah outcast status, much like
Gurdjieff's knavish striving to remain malamal (blame-worthy). To this end,
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the Process very consciously played up its image as a "dangerous cult." To a
London magazine which had published a negative report on the group, this
sarcastic letter was sent to the editor:
"Dear Sir...
The Process combines the worst aspects of both Nazi Germany and
Communist China. Our methods hear a striking resemblance to the
techniques of brainwashing and we incorporate all the components of an
authoritative regime. In fact, we are the most authoritative authoritarian,
Nazi, Communist, brainwashing organisation in the business. Members of the
Process are both anarchist and fascist, dangerous megalomaniacs and
brainwashed zombies (on alternative days) ... One thing surprises us. Your
two sleazy would-be exposers managed to invent so much other rubbish
about us, but no sex? No orgies? No perversions? Not one sex maniac
amongst the lot of us? Or would this make us too acceptable to your
readers?"
The intrinsic irony of the Process stance, as typified by the above letter,
invariably went right over the heads of those against whom it was aimed.
The Process expanded its war against the Grey Forces, spreading out
from its posh headquarters in London's chic Mayfair district to several major
cities in the United States. The Satanic and Luciferian side of the Process
trinity attracted by far the most attention, and Processeans dressed in
flamboyant black cloaks and medallions bearing the symbol of the Goat of
Mendes soon became a familiar sight in the counterculture communities that
sprouted up like so many psilocybin mushrooms in the late 1960s. Soup
kitchens, a radio show, a Lucifer-themed coffee house, and the omnipresent
Process magazine sold on the streets; all spread the Processean evangel to its
mostly young constituency. After settling on the harsher name, Process
Church of the Final Judgement, the DeGrimstons became increasingly
autocratic, leaving behind the more experimental mode in which they had
begun. Robert DeGrimston now styled himself as the archetype of Christ the
Emissary, and his image and personality became the glue holding the Church
together, much as the messianic figure of L. Ron Hubbard had dominated
Scientology, from which the DeGrimstons had learned so much. Mary Anne
DeGrimston, ex-prostitute, made for an ideal Mary Magdalene for the cult.
Robert DeGrimston's portrayal of Christ from a Process magazine in
1968 – which can probably also be read as a self-portrait – is in keeping with
our earlier description of Jesus as a left-hand path inspirer of insubordination:
"Christ is an outsider. Christ will always be an outsider ... He is a rebel, a
non-conformer, a protestor, a disturber of the peace, a thorn in the flesh of the
self-righteous and self-satisfied, a despiser of the accepted norm, a wanderer
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of the wastes, an outcast, a destroyer of accepted values and a caster aside of
convention." Although it is unlikely that he was aware of his work,
DeGrimston also mirrors Jack Parsons' Gnostic view of Jesus. The
DeGrimston concept of Satan and Lucifer as distinctly separate entities who
will preside with Christ over a coming new age is also reminiscent of the sexmagical
theology of Naglowska's Golden Arrow and Gregorius's Fraternitas
Saturni, both of which presented a similar Satanic Gnosticism replete with an
Aeonic concept.
After the arrest of Charles Manson in 1969, and the subsequent
media exposure of his claimed identity with Christ and Satan, the Process