In a recent podcast interview about narcissistic abuse, Evan Rachel Wood said that Marilyn Manson described in his autobiography how the Brian Warner part of him was dead and whatever he had become was now his true self. Her purpose was to show that Manson completely abandoned his humanity and truly came to embody a disassociated narcissistic monster. But is this what his autobiography actually said or even implied? No, of course not. He says something along those lines, but she completely twists it to make a point that fits her narrative rather than the actual facts. What Manson actually describes in his autobiography is that he went through a personal apocalypse. He writes: "When I first conceived of Antichrist Superstar , I set out to create an apocalypse. But I didn’t realize it was going to be a personal one. As a child, I had been a weakling, a worm, a follower, a small shadow trying to find a place in an infinite world of light. In the end, in order to find that place...
In a recent podcast interview about narcissistic abuse, Evan Rachel Wood said that Marilyn Manson described in his autobiography how the Brian Warner part of him was dead and whatever he had become was now his true self. Her purpose was to show that Manson completely abandoned his humanity and truly came to embody a disassociated narcissistic monster. But is this what his autobiography actually said or even implied? No, of course not. He says something along those lines, but she completely twists it to make a point that fits her narrative rather than the actual facts.
What Manson actually describes in his autobiography is that he went through a personal apocalypse. He writes:
These words come near the end of his autobiography and are meant to usher in the new era of Marilyn Manson with the release of Mechanical Animals, which is all about this experience of a rush of new feelings and the new humanity he discovered within himself.
I recall reading Manson's autobiography a second time around the year 2000 after I read a series of books by Aleister Crowley, and I noticed certain things that struck me in a way I had not noticed before. In regards to this specific passage, certain words popped out at me, such as "infinite world of light," "sacrifice my humanity," "shed," "purge," "more human," "seven months." It almost sounded like a ritual, and part of this ritual included a path towards sobriety.
At the time I likened what Manson described in this passage to the infamous 1899–1900 Boleskine Retreat of Aleister Crowley, which involved a highly specialized, intense occult undertaking where a 23-year-old Crowley attempted to perform the Abramelin Operation — a rigorous 6-month ritual of ceremonial magic that included total isolation. The ultimate goal was to establish contact with his "Holy Guardian Angel" to receive divine wisdom and ultimate spiritual power, though he failed his attempt. It seemed to me as if Manson was saying that even though Crowley fell short of his 6-month spiritual journey, he himself emerged enlightened after 7-months.
What is interesting is that Manson talks about his more recent path to sobriety in a similar way - as a cosmic occult ritual. This became very evident to us with the release of the song and music video for "As Sick As The Secrets Within." It would therefore be interesting to see how this song and video could play into the ritual system of Aleister Crowley, and perhaps it may help us understand what Manson is trying to present to us.
Death and Resurrection According to Aleister Crowley
What Manson actually describes in his autobiography is that he went through a personal apocalypse. He writes:
"When I first conceived of Antichrist Superstar, I set out to create an apocalypse. But I didn’t realize it was going to be a personal one. As a child, I had been a weakling, a worm, a follower, a small shadow trying to find a place in an infinite world of light. In the end, in order to find that place, I had to sacrifice my humanity—if you could even call such an insecure, guilt-ridden existence humanity. I had to shed my skin, purge my emotions and experience every extreme: I had to keep throwing myself onto the swords until I didn’t feel a thing.
But in trying everything, all I had discovered was that I didn’t need any of it. From that point, there was nowhere to go but to the grave—or to become more human. After seven stressful months of working (or not working) on the album and dealing with Missi, I had begun to emerge from that soulless cocoon of nonfeeling. As the drugs drained out of my system, humanity—tears, love, hate, self-respect, guilt—was rushing back to me, but not in the same way that I remembered it. My weaknesses had become my strengths, my ugliness had become beauty, my apathy to the world had become a desire to save it. I had become a paradox. Now, more than any other point in my life, I began to believe in myself."
These words come near the end of his autobiography and are meant to usher in the new era of Marilyn Manson with the release of Mechanical Animals, which is all about this experience of a rush of new feelings and the new humanity he discovered within himself.
I recall reading Manson's autobiography a second time around the year 2000 after I read a series of books by Aleister Crowley, and I noticed certain things that struck me in a way I had not noticed before. In regards to this specific passage, certain words popped out at me, such as "infinite world of light," "sacrifice my humanity," "shed," "purge," "more human," "seven months." It almost sounded like a ritual, and part of this ritual included a path towards sobriety.
At the time I likened what Manson described in this passage to the infamous 1899–1900 Boleskine Retreat of Aleister Crowley, which involved a highly specialized, intense occult undertaking where a 23-year-old Crowley attempted to perform the Abramelin Operation — a rigorous 6-month ritual of ceremonial magic that included total isolation. The ultimate goal was to establish contact with his "Holy Guardian Angel" to receive divine wisdom and ultimate spiritual power, though he failed his attempt. It seemed to me as if Manson was saying that even though Crowley fell short of his 6-month spiritual journey, he himself emerged enlightened after 7-months.
What is interesting is that Manson talks about his more recent path to sobriety in a similar way - as a cosmic occult ritual. This became very evident to us with the release of the song and music video for "As Sick As The Secrets Within." It would therefore be interesting to see how this song and video could play into the ritual system of Aleister Crowley, and perhaps it may help us understand what Manson is trying to present to us.
Death and Resurrection According to Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley, as a student of alchemy and the occult, wrote and spoke extensively about dying to one's old self and rising again in an exalted form. In fact, this concept of ritual death and spiritual rebirth is the absolute core of his entire system of Magick. Crowley taught that you must strip away your ego, your personality, your desires, and your past. He described this process as shedding your blood into the "Chalice of Babalon." You must literally destroy your old identity. If successful, the old self dies completely, and the magician is reborn into an exalted, divine state as a "Babe of the Abyss." They no longer function as a flawed, limited human ego but as a pure, cosmic entity aligned with the universe.
Crowley did not view the "old self" as who we actually are. He believed the personality we present to the world is a false mask. Through rituals like the Abramelin Operation, a person contacts their Holy Guardian Angel, which he defined as the "Silent Self" or the true, divine core of a person. By "dying" to the distractions and illusions of the mundane ego, a practitioner steps into their exalted form, discovering their True Will — their absolute, uncorrupted purpose for existing in the universe.
The Chalice of Babalon
The Chalice of Babalon (also called the Holy Graal or Cup of Babalon) is one of the most sacred symbols in Aleister Crowley’s spiritual philosophy of Thelema. It represents the ultimate receptacle for spiritual transformation, where a practitioner’s entire human identity is destroyed so they can be reborn as a divine being.
In Crowley's system, Babalon is the supreme feminine deity, representing the Great Mother, universal energy, and sacred passion. Her Chalice is not a physical object, but a cosmic metaphor for the womb of Babalon. Everything that enters it is dissolved, purified, and gestated into something divine. The cup contains the "blood of the saints." In Crowley's terminology, "saints" are the masters of magic who have successfully surrendered their egos. To cross the spiritual wasteland known as The Abyss and achieve the highest state of enlightenment, a magician must perform a ritual suicide of the ego. Crowley taught that you cannot keep any part of your old identity. You cannot say, "I will give up everything except my love for my family," or "except my favorite memories." You must drain every single drop of your personality, achievements, virtues, and flaws into the Chalice.
In his text Liber Cheth, Crowley describes the instructions for this process: "Thou shalt drain on thy blood into the golden chalice of her fornication. Thou shalt mingle thy life with the universal life. Thou shalt keep not back one drop." Once your blood (your old self) is poured into the Chalice, it is completely mixed and dissolved with the blood of all other masters who came before you. Your individual identity ceases to exist. From this total dissolution, Babalon gestates a new, exalted entity. The magician is reborn out of the Chalice not as a person with a name and a past, but as a Babe of the Abyss. This reborn being is a pure, uncorrupted spiritual seed that eventually grows into a "Master of the Temple" (Magister Templi), acting as a direct vehicle for the divine will of the universe.
Crowley issued a severe warning about this process. If a magician tries to cross the Abyss but holds back even a single drop of their ego out of pride or fear, the ritual fails catastrophically. The withheld blood stagnates and corrupts. Instead of being reborn through the Chalice of Babalon, the magician becomes a "Black Brother." Crowley described Black Brothers as spiritually isolated, narcissistic entities shut up in their own egos, slowly decaying because they refused to surrender themselves to the universal whole.
How Would "As Sick As The Secrets Within" Fit Into This?
Manson has been an open student of Crowley's philosophy for decades (Manson described Crowley as the "First Beast" and himself as the "Third and Final Beast"), and "As Sick As The Secrets Within" can be seen as serving as a visual literalization of shedding the old self to be reborn in an exalted, enlightened, artistic and sober form. By combining Crowleyan occultism with recovery terminology, Manson frames his real-world sobriety not just as a medical rehab choice, but as a spiritual initiation. To survive, he had to let his old, drug-addled, chaotic persona "die" completely so that a healthier, sharper, and "exalted" version of himself could emerge from the ruins. Manson is directly pulling from Crowley's inversion of the Mass: using the framework of a sacred, bloody sacrifice not to worship an external savior, but to ritualistically kill his own toxic past self and initiate his own resurrection.
The lyrics alone read like a poetic script for a Thelemic initiation — specifically the terrifying process of killing the ego to cross the Abyss. Manson brilliantly uses Crowley’s frameworks to turn his real-world sobriety battle into a grand, cosmic ritual. Here is a section-by-section interpretation:
"No longer just my communion": Is Manson referencing Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Liber XV)? In Crowley's Mass, the communion is not a passive prayer; it is an active invocation where the individual merges with the universal divine. It is no longer "just Manson" — the individual ego is fading.
"The worms of the flesh have turned": The "worms of the flesh" represent lower, base human desires, decay, and the physical addictions of the mortal body. They have "turned" (revolted or transformed), signaling the start of a deep internal mutation.
"All the sacrifices I swallow": This is Crowley’s concept of the Eucharist and "God-Eating" (by eating the sacrificed "God," the magician's mortal elements are systematically destroyed and replaced day by day with pure Spirit). Manson is "swallowing" his own past, his mistakes, and his old identity as a sacrificial offering.
"The blood from the cup is so cold": This could directly evoke the Chalice of Babalon. The blood of his old self has been drained into the cup. It is "cold" because the warmth of the living, individual human ego is dead.
"Not so evil as much as it's hungry / bones picked clean": This is a perfect description of Choronzon, the demon of the Abyss in Crowley's system. Choronzon is not a traditional "devil"; he is the personification of chaos, dispersion, and metaphysical emptiness. He is pure, mindless "hunger" that strips away and picks clean everything a person thinks they are.
"I built this cage... Can't remember where I hid the keys": Crowley warned that the human ego is a self-made prison. By indulging in the false comforts of the material world (and addiction), Manson built his own "cage." In a state of spiritual blindness, the keys to enlightenment and the "True Will" were completely lost.
Crowley taught that most humans live in a trap of "false desires" rather than executing their True Will. Manson explicitly traces how a human coping mechanism ("a reason to get by") degenerates into a cyclical addiction ("a need to get high"). Living solely to feed the lower ego's addictions results in "no life at all"—a state of spiritual stagnation that Crowley called the fate of the Black Brother.
"The trick to get out of your skin": This is the core of Crowleyan magick. "Skin" is the ego, the physical persona, and the past. The "trick" is the ritual annihilation of that identity (shedding the ego) so the spirit can step outside its earthly limits.
"You're only as sick as the secrets within": While this is an AA recovery slogan, it fits Crowley's view of the Abyss. To cross the Abyss, you cannot hide anything. If you keep "secrets" (retaining parts of your ego out of pride or shame), your blood stagnates, the ritual fails, and you become spiritually "sick." Complete vulnerability and total surrender are required.
"The beast is calling for us and slowly assuming control": Crowley famously styled himself as To Mega Therion (The Great Beast 666). In Thelema, the Beast is not evil; it represents the untamed, raw, solar-phallic energy of cosmic creation. Manson isn't saying a demon is possessing him; he is saying that by stripping away his human "skin," the cosmic, exalted Beast within is finally taking over his life, steering him toward his True Will.
"Never your taxidermy": Taxidermy is a dead, stuffed skin meant to mimic life. Manson seems to be declaring that his old, theatrical, shock-rock persona was just dead skin. He refuses to be a dead relic of his past.
"I'm sewn into your soul": Having successfully dissolved his ego in the Chalice of Babalon, Manson claims to have achieved the status of a Magister Templi (Master of the Temple). He is no longer just a physical man you can look at; his art and energy have transcended the physical plane and are now permanently woven into the collective unconscious ("sewn into your soul").
Summary of the Metaphor
Manson is here presented as using Crowley’s ultimate spiritual paradox: you must entirely destroy yourself to save yourself. If Manson is framing his sobriety through Crowley's texts, then he is casting his recovery not as a clinical defeat, but as a triumphant occult initiation. He emptied his toxic, addicted ego into the Chalice, crossed his personal Abyss, and allowed the "Beast" — his sharpest, most authentic creative self — to take control.
Conclusion
I don't know to what extent Marilyn Manson had these things in mind when writing "As Sick As The Secrets Within," but I think it is worth putting out there to contemplate the possible similarities and influences. And certainly Crowley was not his only influence. I won't analyze the music video here to keep it short, but you can see how these concepts can play their role if you apply them to what you see there as well. Ultimately my goal here was to respond to what Evan Rachel Wood said and show how badly she twists what Manson says to fit her narrative and rewrites what his intentions are when he says certain things. Unfortunately her simplifications are just easier to understand for simple minded people, while Manson is communicating on a whole other level. Hopefully this brief explanation will help simplify what Manson was really trying to say not only in his autobiography but throughout his career till this day, though this is through my own interpretation, and it is not the only possible interpretation. Much more can be said.
Crowley did not view the "old self" as who we actually are. He believed the personality we present to the world is a false mask. Through rituals like the Abramelin Operation, a person contacts their Holy Guardian Angel, which he defined as the "Silent Self" or the true, divine core of a person. By "dying" to the distractions and illusions of the mundane ego, a practitioner steps into their exalted form, discovering their True Will — their absolute, uncorrupted purpose for existing in the universe.
The Chalice of Babalon
The Chalice of Babalon (also called the Holy Graal or Cup of Babalon) is one of the most sacred symbols in Aleister Crowley’s spiritual philosophy of Thelema. It represents the ultimate receptacle for spiritual transformation, where a practitioner’s entire human identity is destroyed so they can be reborn as a divine being.
In Crowley's system, Babalon is the supreme feminine deity, representing the Great Mother, universal energy, and sacred passion. Her Chalice is not a physical object, but a cosmic metaphor for the womb of Babalon. Everything that enters it is dissolved, purified, and gestated into something divine. The cup contains the "blood of the saints." In Crowley's terminology, "saints" are the masters of magic who have successfully surrendered their egos. To cross the spiritual wasteland known as The Abyss and achieve the highest state of enlightenment, a magician must perform a ritual suicide of the ego. Crowley taught that you cannot keep any part of your old identity. You cannot say, "I will give up everything except my love for my family," or "except my favorite memories." You must drain every single drop of your personality, achievements, virtues, and flaws into the Chalice.
In his text Liber Cheth, Crowley describes the instructions for this process: "Thou shalt drain on thy blood into the golden chalice of her fornication. Thou shalt mingle thy life with the universal life. Thou shalt keep not back one drop." Once your blood (your old self) is poured into the Chalice, it is completely mixed and dissolved with the blood of all other masters who came before you. Your individual identity ceases to exist. From this total dissolution, Babalon gestates a new, exalted entity. The magician is reborn out of the Chalice not as a person with a name and a past, but as a Babe of the Abyss. This reborn being is a pure, uncorrupted spiritual seed that eventually grows into a "Master of the Temple" (Magister Templi), acting as a direct vehicle for the divine will of the universe.
Crowley issued a severe warning about this process. If a magician tries to cross the Abyss but holds back even a single drop of their ego out of pride or fear, the ritual fails catastrophically. The withheld blood stagnates and corrupts. Instead of being reborn through the Chalice of Babalon, the magician becomes a "Black Brother." Crowley described Black Brothers as spiritually isolated, narcissistic entities shut up in their own egos, slowly decaying because they refused to surrender themselves to the universal whole.
How Would "As Sick As The Secrets Within" Fit Into This?
Manson has been an open student of Crowley's philosophy for decades (Manson described Crowley as the "First Beast" and himself as the "Third and Final Beast"), and "As Sick As The Secrets Within" can be seen as serving as a visual literalization of shedding the old self to be reborn in an exalted, enlightened, artistic and sober form. By combining Crowleyan occultism with recovery terminology, Manson frames his real-world sobriety not just as a medical rehab choice, but as a spiritual initiation. To survive, he had to let his old, drug-addled, chaotic persona "die" completely so that a healthier, sharper, and "exalted" version of himself could emerge from the ruins. Manson is directly pulling from Crowley's inversion of the Mass: using the framework of a sacred, bloody sacrifice not to worship an external savior, but to ritualistically kill his own toxic past self and initiate his own resurrection.
The lyrics alone read like a poetic script for a Thelemic initiation — specifically the terrifying process of killing the ego to cross the Abyss. Manson brilliantly uses Crowley’s frameworks to turn his real-world sobriety battle into a grand, cosmic ritual. Here is a section-by-section interpretation:
"No longer just my communion": Is Manson referencing Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Liber XV)? In Crowley's Mass, the communion is not a passive prayer; it is an active invocation where the individual merges with the universal divine. It is no longer "just Manson" — the individual ego is fading.
"The worms of the flesh have turned": The "worms of the flesh" represent lower, base human desires, decay, and the physical addictions of the mortal body. They have "turned" (revolted or transformed), signaling the start of a deep internal mutation.
"All the sacrifices I swallow": This is Crowley’s concept of the Eucharist and "God-Eating" (by eating the sacrificed "God," the magician's mortal elements are systematically destroyed and replaced day by day with pure Spirit). Manson is "swallowing" his own past, his mistakes, and his old identity as a sacrificial offering.
"The blood from the cup is so cold": This could directly evoke the Chalice of Babalon. The blood of his old self has been drained into the cup. It is "cold" because the warmth of the living, individual human ego is dead.
"Not so evil as much as it's hungry / bones picked clean": This is a perfect description of Choronzon, the demon of the Abyss in Crowley's system. Choronzon is not a traditional "devil"; he is the personification of chaos, dispersion, and metaphysical emptiness. He is pure, mindless "hunger" that strips away and picks clean everything a person thinks they are.
"I built this cage... Can't remember where I hid the keys": Crowley warned that the human ego is a self-made prison. By indulging in the false comforts of the material world (and addiction), Manson built his own "cage." In a state of spiritual blindness, the keys to enlightenment and the "True Will" were completely lost.
Crowley taught that most humans live in a trap of "false desires" rather than executing their True Will. Manson explicitly traces how a human coping mechanism ("a reason to get by") degenerates into a cyclical addiction ("a need to get high"). Living solely to feed the lower ego's addictions results in "no life at all"—a state of spiritual stagnation that Crowley called the fate of the Black Brother.
"The trick to get out of your skin": This is the core of Crowleyan magick. "Skin" is the ego, the physical persona, and the past. The "trick" is the ritual annihilation of that identity (shedding the ego) so the spirit can step outside its earthly limits.
"You're only as sick as the secrets within": While this is an AA recovery slogan, it fits Crowley's view of the Abyss. To cross the Abyss, you cannot hide anything. If you keep "secrets" (retaining parts of your ego out of pride or shame), your blood stagnates, the ritual fails, and you become spiritually "sick." Complete vulnerability and total surrender are required.
"The beast is calling for us and slowly assuming control": Crowley famously styled himself as To Mega Therion (The Great Beast 666). In Thelema, the Beast is not evil; it represents the untamed, raw, solar-phallic energy of cosmic creation. Manson isn't saying a demon is possessing him; he is saying that by stripping away his human "skin," the cosmic, exalted Beast within is finally taking over his life, steering him toward his True Will.
"Never your taxidermy": Taxidermy is a dead, stuffed skin meant to mimic life. Manson seems to be declaring that his old, theatrical, shock-rock persona was just dead skin. He refuses to be a dead relic of his past.
"I'm sewn into your soul": Having successfully dissolved his ego in the Chalice of Babalon, Manson claims to have achieved the status of a Magister Templi (Master of the Temple). He is no longer just a physical man you can look at; his art and energy have transcended the physical plane and are now permanently woven into the collective unconscious ("sewn into your soul").
Summary of the Metaphor
Manson is here presented as using Crowley’s ultimate spiritual paradox: you must entirely destroy yourself to save yourself. If Manson is framing his sobriety through Crowley's texts, then he is casting his recovery not as a clinical defeat, but as a triumphant occult initiation. He emptied his toxic, addicted ego into the Chalice, crossed his personal Abyss, and allowed the "Beast" — his sharpest, most authentic creative self — to take control.
Conclusion
I don't know to what extent Marilyn Manson had these things in mind when writing "As Sick As The Secrets Within," but I think it is worth putting out there to contemplate the possible similarities and influences. And certainly Crowley was not his only influence. I won't analyze the music video here to keep it short, but you can see how these concepts can play their role if you apply them to what you see there as well. Ultimately my goal here was to respond to what Evan Rachel Wood said and show how badly she twists what Manson says to fit her narrative and rewrites what his intentions are when he says certain things. Unfortunately her simplifications are just easier to understand for simple minded people, while Manson is communicating on a whole other level. Hopefully this brief explanation will help simplify what Manson was really trying to say not only in his autobiography but throughout his career till this day, though this is through my own interpretation, and it is not the only possible interpretation. Much more can be said.