AIR | TREES | WATER | ANIMALS |

Nikolas and Charles, April 4, 1988

An excerpt from Nikolas Schreck’s “The Manson File – Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman”, taken from Chapter Six- The Revolutionary… Hermetic Politics, Countercultural Confusion, and Radical Ecology
(Used with permission)

Nikolas Schreck
On
ATWA

“”It isn’t generally recalled that Manson’s arrest in Death Valley in October of ’69 was unrelated to the Tate/LaBianca murders. He was originally apprehended for his part in setting a Park Service road vehicle on fire. Manson later admitted to carrying out this arson against state property, claiming that he wanted to stop the Death Valley rangers from “tearing up the land” and “destroying the water and destroying the animals and the deserts”. Manson has described that every time he was released from prison, he would notice that more damage to the environment had been caused while he was inside. Manson has said that he and others at the Spahn and Barker ranches carried out other acts of pro-ecology sabotage, but this incident is the only one of these actions that was documented. It was in this spirit that Fromme and Good began their militant campaign to further the cause of what Manson was now calling ATWA – an acronym for Air, Trees, Water and Animals, At War, and All The Way Alive. Long before scientists’ warnings about the threat to the survival of life presented by global warming and pollution became common knowledge, Manson pioneered an extreme return-to-nature lifestyle. Manson’s ATWA is not a political theory to read about or debate. It’s a way of life that must be enacted in deeds rather than words. Bearing many similarities to the better-known Earth First!, the Deep Ecology movement, and Europe’s Green political parties, ATWA proposes that mankind’s blind and self-destructive greed and obsession with “the money mind” has led the species to the brink of self-extinction. Through the corporate despoliation of natural resources for maximum profit, Manson argues, a state of ecological emergency has been brought about. If radical measures are not taken, the complete destruction of life on earth is guaranteed. Those who have brought about this state of catastrophe, Manson stated, are the “big money benders and lenders that are selling the next generation of children out.” He advocates the complete cessation of the automobile industry and its accomplice in eco-side, the oil industry, as a necessary step: “Our air is dying. We’ve got to stop the fossil fuel, if we don’t stop that oil consumption there’s nothing of us left.” As an alternative, Manson recommends returning to the horse as a means of transportation. Manson considers the gravity of the ecological crisis so dangerous that he proposes that only what he specifically terms a “One World government and a One World court” whose resources are completely dedicated to the reseeding and regreening of the poisoned earth at all costs can possibly effect the necessary change. Mankind, he believes, has a spiritual obligation to become a servant to the earth, rather than an exploiter of its resources. For this to happen, a new understanding of man’s subordinate position in the natural world must be reclaimed. ATWA rejects the arrogant anthropocentric secular humanism that has led to this situation since the Enlightenment. Manson confronts the basic underpinnings of “rational” and profane liberalism with a pantheistic and pagan recognition of the holiness and interconnectedness of all of nature. He recommends adopting a vegetarian diet, and actively working against experimentation on animals, the whaling industry, and all other human exploitation of the animal kingdom. Manson’s belief in reincarnation and karma informs his pro-animal stance, as does his shamanic practice of communion with totem animals. ATWA goes against the grain of the modern world by repudiating the computerized, digital, mechanized robot system mankind has been enslaved by and urging a return to a life deeply bound with the natural world. Fromme and Good, who were co-creators of this developing ecological evangelism, became soldiers on the front line of Manson’s “holy revolution against pollution.” Most of the political extremists of left and right who’ve been drawn to Manson have tended to reduce his revolutionary creed to strictly rational political goals, selectively ignoring the fact that Mansonian metapolitics is indivisible from his spiritual understanding. Manson continually stresses that ATWA begins in changing thought, and bringing one’s own inner being into balance. Without first undertaking the work of this internal revolution, Manson has maintained, any attempt at external revolution will only “reflect the confusion of old reruns of programming they got everything fucked up in the first place… How can you go into a new thought world if you drag in the old one with you in your mind?” That ATWA is essentially a religious movement rooted in the transformation of mind was also emphasized in Manson’s statement that “I won’t sell my soul 4 it’s for ATWA. That’s the only way life on earth can be alive. The will of God is life. Get in God’s will or die. Die can be done in the mind’s thought pattern and new life can be brought in focus.” Obviously, this clearly stated theistic basis of ATWA would make it anathema to those violently irreligious “Satanists” and other secular atheists who ignorantly claim allegiance to Manson, but this fine point seems lost on them.””

And I should add here that I urge anyone who is TRULY searching for what this books title illustrates- to separate the “myth and reality” of Charles Manson, an “outlaw shaman”-
to purchase a copy of this piece of work, a collection of close to 25 years research and insight, thoroughly debunking much of the regurgitated nonsense that has spewed from too many writers, journalists, polished news anchors and publishers for over four decades. This is a thoroughly honest and intelligent perspective that is now available to ALL who TRULY wish to know the ALL, and thereby end ALL the “sourcing” and “citing” of the above mentioned vomiting of fabricated hearsay and patch work postulations that have already aided enough in further perpetuating the vast surplus of party line ignorance and misinformation. Thanks to Nikolas for being the one to finally put the proper context to print.
X- Haze