Manson claimed that children were more aware than adults, because they were naturally afraid. But animals were even more aware than people, he said, because they always lived at Now. The coyote was the most aware creature there was, Manson maintained, because he was completely paranoid. Being frightened of everything, he missed nothing.
Charlie was always “selling fear,” Watkins continued. He
I would learn, from talking to other Family members, that Manson would seek out each individual’s greatest fear—not so the person could confront and eliminate it, but so he could re-emphasize it. It was like a magic button, which he could push at will to control that person.
“Whatever you do,” Watkins advised me, as had both Crockett and Poston, “don’t ever let Charlie know you are afraid of him.” One day at Spahn, without warning or provocation, Manson had jumped on Watkins and started strangling him. At first Paul resisted, but then, gasping for breath, he suddenly gave up, stopped resisting. “It was really weird,” Watkins said. “The instant I stopped fearing him, his hands flew off my throat and he jumped back as if he’d been attacked by an unseen force.”
“Then it’s like the barking dog,” I commented. “If you show fear, it will attack; if you don’t it won’t?”
“Exactly.
Paul Watkins was inherently more independent than Brooks Poston, much less the follower type. Yet he too had remained with the Family for a long period. Other than the girls, was there some reason why he stayed?
“I thought Charlie was Christ,” he told me, not blinking an eye.
Both Watkins and Poston had severed the umbilical linking them to Manson. But both admitted to me that they still weren’t completely free of him, that even now they would sometimes lapse back into a state where they could feel Manson’s vibrations.
It was Paul Watkins who finally supplied the missing link in Manson’s motive for the murders. Yet, if I hadn’t talked to Jakobson and Poston, I might have missed its importance, for it was from all three, Gregg, Brooks, and Paul, that I obtained the keys to understanding (1) Charles Manson’s unique interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and (2) his decidedly curious and complex attitude toward the English musical group the Beatles.
Several persons had told me Manson was fond of quoting from the Bible, particularly the ninth chapter of Revelation. Once Charlie had handed Jakobson a Bible, already open to the chapter, and, while he read it, supplied his own interpretation of the verses. With only one exception, which will be noted, what Gregg told me tallied with what I later heard from Poston and Watkins.
The “four angels” were the Beatles, whom Manson considered “leaders, spokesmen, prophets,” according to Gregg. The line “And he opened the bottomless pit…And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power…” was still another reference to the English group, Gregg said. Locusts—Beatles—one and the same. “Their faces were as the faces of men,” yet “they had hair as the hair of women.” An obvious reference to the long-haired musicians. Out of the mouths of the four angels “issued fire and brimstone.” Gregg: “This referred to the spoken words, the lyrics of the Beatles’ songs, the power that came out of their mouths.”
Their “breastplates of fire,” Poston added, were their electric guitars. Their shapes “like unto horses prepared unto battle” were the dune buggies. The “horsemen who numbered two hundred thousand thousand,” and who would roam the earth spreading destruction, were the motorcyclists.
“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.” I wondered about that seal on the forehead. How did Manson interpret that? I asked Jakobson.
“It was all subjective,” Gregg replied. “He said there would be a mark on people.” Charlie had never told him exactly what the mark would be, only that he, Charlie, “would be able to tell, he would know,” and that “the mark would designate whether they were with him or against him.” With Charlie, it was either one or the other, Gregg said; “there was no middle road.”
One verse spoke of worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze. Manson said that referred to the material worship of the establishment: of automobiles, houses, money.
Q. “Directing your attention to Verse 15, which reads: ‘And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.’ Did he say what that meant?”
A. “He said that those were the people who would die in Helter Skelter…one third of mankind…the white race.”
I now knew I was on the right track.
Only on one point did Jakobson’s recollection of Manson’s interpretation differ from that of the others. The first verse of Revelation 9 refers to a fifth angel; the chapter ends, however, referring to only four. Originally there were five Beatles, Gregg explained, one of whom, Stuart Sutcliffe, had died in Germany in 1962.
Poston and Watkins—who, unlike Jakobson, were members of the Family—interpreted this much differently. Verse I reads: “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”
To members of the Family the identity of that fifth angel, the ruler of the bottomless pit, was never in doubt. It was Charlie.
Verse II reads: “And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.”
The king also had a Latin name, which, though it appears in the Catholic Douay Version, was inadvertently omitted by the translators of the King James version. It was Exterminans.
Exterminans, t/n Charles Manson.
As far as Jakobson, Watkins, and Poston knew, Manson placed no special meaning on the last verse of Revelation 9. But I found myself thinking of it often in the months ahead:
“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”
“The important thing to remember about Revelation 9,” Gregg told me, “is that Charlie believed this was happening
According to Jakobson, Manson believed “the Beatles were spokesmen. They were speaking to Charlie, through their songs, letting him know from across the ocean that this is what was going to go down. He believed this firmly…He considered their songs prophecy, especially the songs in the so-called White Album…He told me that many, many times.”
Watkins and Poston also said that Manson and the Family were convinced that the Beatles were speaking to Charlie through their music. For example, in the song “I Will” are the lines: “And when at last I find you/Your song will fill the air/Sing it loud so I can hear you/Make it easy to be near you…” Charlie interpreted this to mean the Beatles wanted him to make an album, Poston and Watkins said. Charlie told them that the Beatles were looking for JC and he was the JC they were looking for. He also told them that the Beatles knew that Christ had returned to earth again and that he was living somewhere in Los Angeles.
“How in the world did he come up with that?” I asked them.
In the White Album is a song called “Honey Pie,” a lyric of which reads: “Oh honey pie my position is tragic/Come and show me the magic/Of your Hollywood song.” A later lyric goes: “Oh honey pie you are driving me frantic/Sail across the Atlantic/To be where you belong.”
Charlie, of course, wanted
