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

Manson, Charles 161
Charles Manson being escorted from the courtroom, 1971 (Bettmann/Corbis)
and evil was a central tenet. To conservative
Christians, of course, the Process was a demonic
religion, on par with the Church of Satan.
Other connections were indirect. Prominent
Family member Susan Atkins, for instance, was
associated with organized Satanism. She was
apparently a topless dancer for a nightclub act,
Witches’ Workshop, organized by Anton LaVey,
founder of the Church of Satan. She was also said
to have been a member of the Temple of Set, a
Church of Satan schism. Atkins later converted to
Christianity. Thus her claims of links to organized
Satanism in her autobiography, Child of Satan,
Child of God (1977), may have been embellished.
Even more indirect was the fact that Sharon
Tate’s husband, Roman Polanski, directed
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)—the most prominent
devil-related horror movie of the 1960s. The fact
that it had been a box office hit the year before
the murders fueled media commentary that
brought together the film and the murders—
despite the lack of any real link between them.
LaVey’s claim that he had personally appeared as
Satan in the movie provided yet another thin
connection. A more recent, but even more
tenuous connection is that the musician Marilyn
Manson, whose stage name is a combination of
Marilyn (Monroe) and (Charles) Manson, is a
member of the Church of Satan.
The Manson Family’s vague association with
Satanism was revived in the 1980s and 1990s as
part of the Satanic ritual abuse scare because it
provided concrete evidence for the claim that real
Satanic groups existed that were involved in ritualistic
murder. For instance, in an essay on the
history of Satanist religions that appeared in a
volume on Satanic ritual abuse in the early 1990s,
the author claimed that “the first of the contemporary
exposés of the workings of a self-styled
Satanic cult was that of the Manson Family”
(Katchen 1992, 16). Interestingly, the second
“exposé” mentioned by this same author is
Michelle Remembers (1980), a book all serious
researchers regard as being more of a novel than
a documentary. This kind of careless analysis has
been rather typical of writers who have