Love Sex Fear Death: Can It Go Viral?

The Process Church of the Final Judgment was one of the more shadowy cults that sprang up during the 1960s. Much of its notoriety derives from a description by “Ed Bloody Sanders” -- as Timothy Wyllie, the principal author of Love Sex Fear Death, referred to him during the “Sabbath Assembly Ritual and Salon” held at Anthology Film Archives on October 4th to promote the publication of the book  -- of ties between The Process Church and the Manson Family, that Sanders was forced by legal action to remove from the U.S. edition of the book but which later appeared in the U.K. edition. 

The large auditorium in Anthology Film Archives held a sell-out crowd of mostly young hipsters, Goth fanciers, and fringe media types. Adam Parfrey, whose Feral House published Love Sex Fear Death, was the agile Master of Ceremonies for the evening.  The Feral House catalog is jam packed with controversial books on topics ranging from Nazi occultism to CIA mind control operations to sleaze sex paperbacks of the 1960s. Parfrey initially outlined the course of the evening, and then kept the performance on track even while incorporating a slight change in emphasis during the closing question-and-answer session, when a number of former Process Church members chose to speak about their own experiences in the cult.

Following this introduction there was an enactment of The Process Church Sabbath Assembly Ritual, consisting of hymns and recitations invoking Jesus Christ, Satan, Jehovah, and Lucifer. The Sabbath Assembly Band performed the hymns, with vocals anchored by the powerful metal-goddess voice of Jex Thoth. “Sacrifist” Genesis Breyer P-Orridge led the inter-hymnal recitations.  Following this Ritual, Adam Parfrey again took the stage to introduce footage from a documentary about The Process Church that was directed by William Morrison of the band Skinny Puppy. Most of the footage consisted of Timothy Wyllie talking on-screen. Adam Parfrey then introduced Timothy Wyllie, who in the next segment was on stage flipping through a slide show and talking. I found the slide show and recitative far more compelling than the film footage. Timothy is a larger-than-life individual and the framing of the film tended to minimize his gravitas. I would have shot him talking while sitting at his drafting board, and shown more of the graphics he created while he was art director of the Process Church publications, as well as the inimitable, otherworldly art works he has created in recent years.

The closing segment of the evening, which was less planned, consisted of a number of former Process Church members talking about their own largely positive experiences in the cult. The one exception was Malachi McCormack, whose spin on the cult was decidedly more negative. It was interesting that while Timothy Wyllie talked about Mary Ann de Grimston, the cult’s leader, being mauled to death by a pack of dogs at her post-cult animal sanctuary, Malachi McCormack talked about her dying of emphysema. Timothy stressed Mary Ann’s inner circle as a matriarchal cult with Robert de Grimston as a marginalized figure, while Malachi talked about a more dyadic leadership, at least until the latter days of the organization. I would eventually like to see a more scholarly examination of The Process Church. Perhaps Feral House will one day publish this.

Can Love Sex Fear Death go viral? The team promoting the book is filled with alternative world heavyweights. Nonetheless, it remains a long shot. A book tour hitting the most attractive locations is attracting a large audience from among the quite narrow segment of people who would typically be attracted to something like this but it is not breaking out into a wider demographic bandwidth. The wild card is the film. If it attracts a lot of mainstream media attention a larger book tour could possibly snowball the book into becoming a bestseller.

The big question I took away from my reading of the book and attendance at this event is as follows: What was the true nature of the “inner cult” Mary Ann or Mary Ann and Robert de Grimston presided over? My surmise is that it was at least somewhat derivative of the teachings of Aleister Crowley. This suggestion was perhaps triggered by the two young men (early-to-mid 30s), obvious occult lodge types, who were standing behind the crowd waiting to go upstairs into the auditorium, one of whom said to the other: “Ah, there are the sheep being prepared to be led to their slaughter.” I was the only person who heard them. I smiled and said to them: “I’m a friend of Timothy’s.” These two were neither part of the show nor part of the audience, but I think they are somehow connected to the successor of the magical lodge embodied within the The Process Church. That night I had the worst dreams of my entire life, in the course of which I was being tortured and dismembered over a long period of time. A couple of days later a friend pointed out to me that this is the result of my not believing in that particular set of gods.

Hopefully, whatever happens with this book, Timothy Wyllie’s oeuvre -- including also his other books and his painting -- will go viral. He is one of the most important artists and writers of his time.  You can explore his creative world at www.timothywyllie.com.