A Serpent in the Garden of the Lamb
We were mistaken when we allowed the media to suggest to us
That the armed defiance of the Branch Davidians
Was simply one more expression of the rather crude racism
Which is all too common in East Texas
Apr 13, 1993
In 1984, a ninth-grade dropout by the name of Vernon Howell joined a small sect that was pastored by an eccentric old man named Benjamin Roden, and his wife, Lois. At one time Vernon had been a conventional Seventh-day Adventist, but had been expelled by his home congregation. He’d also acquired a capacity to use a loaded gun to force an issue.
Apparently, Lois Roden adopted Vernon Howell as her little Lamb of God. This aroused a predictable reaction from her son George, who now found himself cast into the stereotypical role of the unprodigal and unappreciated son. Eventually, George ended up being committed, because he had murdered a man whom he mistook for an agent of his adopted brother.
This willingness of the Branch Davidian leaders to brandish weapons during confrontations should have us asking some questions, and apparently did raise a few eyebrows among the FBI. This type of behavior might be perfectly normal in Waco, but 7th Day Adventists are generally known to lean towards the pacifist end of the Christian spectrum. Yes, there are 7th Day Adventists who serve in the military, but during the years of the draft, it was common for Adventists to apply for non-combatant status.
It was while they were doing their stints of alternative service that groups like the Mennonites and Amish first became introduced to drugs. Soldiers were often used in medical experiments, and conscientious objectors even more so. What isn’t realized about Timothy Leary, is that he simply spilled the beans on research that was already in high gear. After everyone knew what to expect from an LSD trip, it wasn’t quite so useful for mind control as it had been before.
Contrary to the impression that has been given by the Apollonian press, the Branch Davidians were not the crew of scroungy racist rednecks who might have been observed at the Aryan Nations encampment of Hayden Lake, Idaho. Their Christian ethos was a multicultural one, and some of the people who died in the inferno on April 19 had college educations. On the other hand, these Branch Davidians were even more determined than the Amish to separate themselves from Babylon, and, unlike the Amish, were ready to defend that separation through the acquisition of modern military equipment.
It is here that we should focus our investigation, if we want to ask what kind of mind control techniques went into the hostile takeover of the Branch Davidian Compound, and the subsequent catastrophe that took place on the Old Mt. Carmel real estate. The older Branch Davidians had not wanted to contribute their resources to militaristic imperialism, but they otherwise had been pretty well accepted within the community. After the Vernon Howell takeover, the new Branch Davidians became, knowingly or not, part of the gun laundering syndicate of East Texas. Whose interests were being served?
We may wonder how much of the eccentricity of the dogma of David Koresh derived from the entrepreneurial opportunism of a clever boy who had discovered that one can get away with anything if one can get oneself accepted as a prophet, and how much of his attitude had been conditioned by the anthropological strangeness that had been observed, at least from the period in which the Branch Davidians had been led by the Rodens, and probably even before.
Above all, we must account for the way in which the Branch Davidians became transformed from fairly normal 7th Day Adventists, who share with the Anabaptists a pious aversion towards organized violence and who, in times of war, will shoulder their weapons, if at all, only with the greatest reluctance, as proof that they are patriotic citizens. By contrast, the Branch Davidians not only spoke of their 2nd Amendment rights with the accents of America Firsters, but suffered no angst on account of their willingness to gain the cash that they needed for co-existence with Babylon by vigorously participating in the small arms trade which flourishes in East Texas.
We may wonder, particularly, what experiences the Branch Davidians had suffered, at the hands of the Selective Service System of the World War II years and after. Conscientious objectors from larger congregations were used as guinea pigs. Since a drug has no moral consciousness of its own, we may consider that the reputation of LSD as a “Peace Drug” must have developed as a result of observation of the drug’s effects on conscientious objectors who knew quite well that Babylon was messing with their minds.
Larger congregations had the resources to nurse their returning young men back to sanity, and in doing so, created much of the groundwork for the present-day veterans’ support system. The Branch Davidians may not have been so fortunate. It is likely that the same social pressures which had been used to convert them from pacifists to gun-toting Texans also left other scars. One of these traumatic artifacts may have involved the use of the same mind-altering drugs which had effected the original transformation, to provide occasional experiences of communal ecstasy.
How Minds May Be Bent
It is threatening to think that there are techniques by which minds can be bent and manipulated – but mind control has been with us ever since Canaan started playing dirty tricks and blaming his grandfather. If we want peace, we must develop a sociology which will enable us to heal the effects of the terrorism, intoxications, and deceptions through which the Corsican Method exerts its discipline over the minds of the people. Otherwise, abusers will continue to leverage politics and religion, driving whole nations to genocidal folly. A sociological study of the Branch Davidian phenomenon should produce insight and data useful for those who wish to combat, not only political terrorism, but also the spiritual abusiveness which produces terrorism.
The biggest obstacle to such a study lies in what seems to have been a compulsion on the part of everyone involved to destroy as much of the data as they could, even if that meant burning the children alive. Perhaps David Koresh really believed that he could teleport himself and his followers to another universe. But there is also a very good likelihood that the reason the ATF and the FBI had so much trouble getting their stories straight, was because the events in Waco were giving everybody a chance to see, just what Circular Intelligence can do to the society that puts its faith in Intelligence.
What we do know, is that there had been a time when the Branch Davidians had been pacifists. The writings of Ellen G. White are decidedly pacifistic. Many Adventist practices, including adult baptism and the emphasis on “God-Grown food” place Adventism in context as an effort to revive the old Anabaptist tradition through appeal to modern science and modern Biblical scholarship. The split that produced the Branch Davidians seems to have come because the Adventist General Conference felt that the Bible study group called “The Shepherd’s Rod” was wandering from rational piety, into dangerous mysteries which were becoming a personality cult.
Nevertheless, the issue that finalized the administrative split was the need of the followers of the Shepherd’s Rod for a Church which would maintain their status as conscientious objectors. The Adventists would do this for Adventists in good standing, but – given the prejudice against pacifism which prevailed during the Century of Total Warfare, is is not surprising they were not willing to stick their necks our for a group that they felt had gone off the deep end.
Therefore the followers of the “dis-fellowshipped” Victor Houteff began calling themselves “Davidian Adventists,” so they could register as an independent Church with the United States Government. The whole point was to maintain their status as conscientious objectors. What Revelation from On High convinced a later generation of Branch Davidians to turn from their pacifist ways and become gun dealers? And just whose interest did that revelation serve?
However much their skins had been thickened by hot winds blowing from the Sonora Desert, the Davidian Adventists of this period still clung to the opinion that, under the New Covenant, warfare was an abomination. The Branch Davidians were not monsters, and their nervous systems were not that much different than ours. We would do well, to consider the story of Hostile Takeover that some Branch Davidian survivors would tell us, as a parable of what happens when terror, hate, and the lust to be recognized as mystics, amalgamate to produce a brew of spiritual wormwood. One third of the sea shall change to wormwood, and those who are intoxicated by wormwood find it far easier to follow a gun-toting Guru, than to stake their money on faith in the God of Justice.
From the beginning, many of these Branch Davidian holdouts were convinced that Vernon Howell had come as an enemy agent. They thought he was probably from the Adventist General Conference, but the general drift of the subsequent tale makes that doubtful. Vernon Howell was a damaged kid with a high IQ, who made up for occasional moments of traumatic paralysis by coming up with visions which explained the scriptures. There were plenty of places in that damaged brain, where a full set of operational commands could have been hidden – but how many government agencies had that sort of technology, back in the early ‘80'
In the Garden of the Lamb
In the Garden of Lois Roden, Vernon Howell became more and more the beloved Lamb of God who could do anything and have anything, and her son George Roden became the Bad Boy. Eventually, the Bad Boy drove Vernon Howell and his followers out from Zion. They had to take refuge in Palestine, but soon returned with better armaments and won the day. Eventually, poor old George Roden got hauled off to a mental hospital.
It’s difficult to know if Vernon Howell learned anything about commune management from the likes of Rajneesh. His theory and practice were far more in line with those of conservative Christians, and for the most part simply exaggerated the shadowy aspect that is to be found in many Bible-Belting congregations. If anything, he may have absorbed a great deal of influence from groups which have splintered administratively from the Mormons, because they refuse to admit that the Federal Government has the right to prohibit polygamy.
In the beginning, involvement with drugs was listed as one of the reasons for obtaining a warrant against the Branch Davidian Compound. It is argued that this was either to buy the support of the DEA, or because when drugs were involved, the search and seizure requirements were simplified. Of course, there is another possibility. It is possible that the DEA was consulted, and that it may have considered that to pursue the methamphetamine angle would be – just too embarrassing.
Why? Because by this time the War On Drugs had become a replacement for Gunboat Diplomacy in Latin America. The halo had begun to burn off, but the policy remained an indispensable cover for various operations intended to impede the Latin left. The liberally oriented churches, which had demonstrated a strong inclination towards pacifism during the Vietnam War, were being kept under control by preachers who insisted that abortion, drugs, and homosexuality were the only moral issues worth raising a fuss about. So long as federal action was being taken on grounds of gun running and abuse of children, these liberal churches would see David Koresh as a bad boy who deserved a spanking for perverting the teachings of Jesus. Bringing in the issue of drugs might have shown an unglamorous spotlight on the actual socio-political effects of the Moral Crusade of the Times.
According to the perspective of cosmic consciousness that was taught by Rajneesh, even a person like Vernon has some element of the divine within his soul. As Rajneesh meditated for the benefit of all sentient beings, he surely would have tried to send some ray of light to Mr. Howell. But it seems that the enlightenment that Vernon Howell would accept, was the awareness that folks in the Bible Belt would put up with almost any sort of nonsense, so long as the perpetrator could convince them that it was Christian.
Where Is Peace Now?
To say that only one man has the right to procreate, and that all of the women in the world rightfully belong to that one man? This is a different ethic than the one that was taught by Rajneesh. But then of course, our feminists will say that Mr. Howell simply had a more advanced case of an all-too-familiar social disease.
The original Flower Children of the Peace-and-Love movement had attempted to combine an ideal of free love with an ethic of Moravian non-violence. Many of the creators of this movement had in fact grown up as the grandchildren of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Unfortunately, by the time of Rajneesh, this non-violence was becoming wearied.
The friction between the devotees of Rajneesh and the more conservative members of the Antelope community bears a distinct parallel to the militancy which has developed between the Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors. In both cases, a more educated and more cosmopolitan population found themselves confronting the conservative prejudices of populations who were willing to sell them land, but unwilling to allow them to cast their post-holocaust insights into the earth and cultivate their own squash plants.. In both cases, the confrontation with a prejudiced conservatism enabled the excessively strident voices to attain positions of leadership. The crystallization of this militant defensive structure in turn precipitated an internal reaction — a feeling that the original spiritual ideals were being betrayed. In the case of “The City of Rajneesh”, the founder himself appears to have come out to denounce the excess of the militant hardline.
The “Ranch Apocalypse” in Waco Texas did not suffer this anguish of conscience. When Vernon Howell changed his name to David Koresh he adopted as his model, not the pacifistic Anabaptist creed, but the secular survivalism which had developed as the conservative defense against the Peace-and-Love movement of the ‘60's. The commune that David Koresh had gathered together in Waco was in fact, following the same old Hell’s Angel mentality which had been unleashed on a search-and-destroy mission, to wipe out the Peace-and-Love movement.
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