Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

160 Manson, Charles
Its central teaching was a severe dualism
between spirit and matter, soul and body. St.
Augustine, the most influential of the church
fathers, converted to Christianity from Manichaeism,
and some have said that Christianity’s
antagonism toward the flesh was influenced by
Augustine’s former religion. Although this movement
died out during the Western Middle Ages, the
term Manichaeism continued to be used to refer to
any sect or teaching that seemed to overemphasize
the struggle between good and evil.
Mani began preaching his new religion at the
age of twenty-four. He was eventually executed by
orthodox Zoroastrians around the year 276.
Mani’s extreme dualism was similar to certain
strands of Gnosticism, which emphasized the
antagonism between the body and the soul. The
soul was a fallen divine spark from the realm of
light, while the body was the creation of the evil
“god” (a Devil figure) and his associates, the
archons (effectively, demons). Also like Gnosticism,
Mani saw human beings as trapped in a cycle
of reincarnation so that even suicide would not
release one from bondage to the flesh. Manichaeism
preached a rather severe asceticism, especially
with regard to the sexual instinct.
Through ascetic living and following Mani’s
teachings, the elect (perfecti) are able to ascend
directly into the light. Everyone else reincarnates
until they have completely purified themselves.
However, when Christ returns the unrepentant
will be thrown into flames that will engulf the
world for 1,468 years.
See also Archon; Gnosticism; Zoroastrianism
For Further Reading:
Crim, Keith, ed. The Perennial Dictionary of World
Religions. 1981. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
Eliade, Mircea, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion. New
York: Macmillan, 1987.
Turner, Alice K. The History of Hell. New York:
Harcourt Brace & Co., 1993.
Manson, Charles
Charles Willie Manson (b. November 11, 1934)
was the leader of a small group of people—the
media later dubbed it the “Manson Family”—
convicted of a series of highly publicized murders
committed in southern California in 1969. The
court determined that, although he did not kill
anyone himself, his followers committed the
crimes at his behest. The group’s initial victim was
a musician and drug dealer, Gary Hinman. The
Manson Family’s most publicized murders,
however, occurred at actress Sharon Tate’s home
on August 9, 1969. These killings, the so-called
Tate Homicides or Tate Murders, took the lives of
Abigail Folger, Steven Parent, Voiytek Frykowski,
Jay Sebring, and Sharon Tate (as well as her
unborn child). Two days afterward, Leno and
Rosemary LaBianca were murdered at their
homes. The final victim was Donald Shea, a
former stuntman. The trial held the record for
being the longest running trial with a sequestered
jury in California legal history until the O. J.
Simpson trial in 1994. As with the Simpson case,
the Manson trial became a media spectacle.
Although a tiny group, the Manson Family
came to occupy a prominent role in the “anticult”
discourse of the early 1970s. The family’s firstplace
status in anticult literature was not eclipsed
until the People’s Temple mass suicide/murders in
November 1978. Although sociologically quite
different from groups like the Unification Church
and the Hare Krishna Movement, the antisocial
activities of Manson’s group were often referred to
as being typical of what all “cults” were potentially
capable of committing. Manson’s apparent
control over his followers was also regularly
mentioned as a paradigmatic example of “cultic
mind control.”
With respect to Satanism, Manson did not
teach Satanism in any recognizable sense, and his
group was not a “Satanic cult.” But there were a
number of direct and indirect connections
between the Manson Family and diverse manifestations
of contemporaneous Satanism that
prompted various writers to categorize the group
as Satanic. The most prominent feature connecting
Manson with Satanism (beyond their crimes,
which could be characterized as evil) was that his
followers would sometimes refer to Manson as
“Satan.” However, at other times they would also
call Manson “God.” This dichotomy might have
been due to Manson’s brief participation in the
Process Church of the Final Judgment, an unusual
movement for which the reconciliation of good