kaos

People must be made to realise that this is not a two-sided fight, Prudes vs Cool Guys, or
Leftists vs Daring Intellectuals Dabbling In The Fascist Camp. I’ve said it afore and I’ll
say it agin: my brand of Chaos is utterly opposed to these slime-mound serial-murder
buffs & mutilation artists.
Michael Staley’s essay “The Babalon Working/Belovèd of Babalon” was included in
the expanded and revised edition of 1990, under the title “Sorcerer of Apocalypse: John
Whiteside Parsons”, thus exposing 55,000 readers to his total misconception of Parsons’
Babalon Working. Apocalypse Culture II came out in 2000, despite Parfrey’s fear that the
Internet had overtaken him in the grossness stakes since the first volume. Parfrey caters
mostly for the type of people who collect crime-scene photos and some of the choicer
forensic science manuals and whose idea of self-discovery is a session of tentative
coprophilia or sexual congress with a vacuum cleaner. Parfrey may complain about not
being taken seriously by the mainstream and believe himself to be on a blacklist in that
not one of Feral House’s books has ever been reviewed in the New York Times despite
having over 50 books out and the Ed Wood film to its credit, but the plain truth is that
even in the underground publishing scene he has always been at the shallow surface
glamour end. Parfrey is personally interested in the occult, but only at the glitzy level.
Before Sex and Rockets his main contribution to occult publishing was to ensure that all
of Anton LaVey’s works remained in print. LaVey was a friend of Parfrey’s and Apocalypse
Culture II contains a selection of pathetic letters people wrote to the pop Satanist. Stephen
Lemons’ interview with Parfrey on salon.com contains this amusing thumbnail sketch:
Sept 20, 2000 | LOS ANGELES—Plump, suave and swathed in black, Adam Parfrey
stands before me flipping through a gruesome stack of color photos depicting headless
torsos, severed limbs and various bodies sliced and diced like mincemeat. Could be a
Jeffrey Dahmer wet dream or the Hannibal Lecter cookbook—take your pick. Suddenly,
a small frown appears on Parfrey’s face.
“I don’t like the way this red looks here,” he tuts. “Oh, here’s an article we translated
from Spanish titled ‘Hacking Mom.’ Seems the man attacked his mom with a machete.
Macheteo a su madre.”
Only Adam Parfrey could do a coffee-table book on hideous deaths in popular Mexican
culture.
One thing that emerges from the Parfrey/Chevalier correspondence is that Adam
Parfrey says he personally heard the home movies rumour from Harold Chambers,
who knew Jack Parsons and a couple of the investigators at the time. In other words,
Carter’s source was Parfrey, and yet this is something that emerges solely in the
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