The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [64]
November 21, Leon begins another long letter, which he finishes on December 20. It is addressed to his Yeti people and opens with his thanks for their visit to him when he was thirteen years old and near death because the “Old Witch” had put arsenic into his food and drink. His foster father, who had previously been a white dove, becomes a rat in this letter: “Some people started calling me a ‘rat’ not differentiating my human soul from the fact that my human body is a part evolution conception through the seed of our foster father a ‘Righteous idealed Jeriboa rat.”’ He associates the Yeti people with royalty, England, and tremendous power. “Our beloved couple royal Yeti light brother and sister, I mean Sir Prince Charles the commoner and his foster sister wife Madam Princess Anne, of England, as I read in the paper that they let off some healthy instinctive steam typical of Yeti blood and wrecked part of Bukingham palace. As for me I know that—that—healthy—instinctive steam shall be brought out of me during your Olympic festivities—lifting and shot put throwing, of mountain boulder rocks.”
This is the last we are to hear of Leon’s English light brother and sister. The delusion does not come up again. Neither does the idea that the Yeti people have royal blood. The Yeti delusion itself, however, persists for many months. Leon elaborates on the Yeti.
The Yeti people are accustomed to eating raw rat meat and their body hair has a lustrous sheen “because of the organic gelatin plastic substance in rodent fur and bones. Our heavenly Father certainly has packed a lot of organic energy heat into the body of the rodent rat. I understand why our home town is located in the high cool mountains.”
What do the Yeti people stand for? “I am heartily sorry for speaking against and deploring our ‘Righteous idealed Tribal Law’; I now say it is the best ‘Law’ because it is a hundred per cent plus in favor of the Ten Commandments of God Who is Spirit without a beginning, without an end.”
Who are the enemies of the Yeti people? Leon’s answer—Joseph Cassel.
Also undergoing change is Leon’s attitude toward his mother. The same projection mechanism that enabled him to explain away his sickness as due to “duping” now enables him to explain away his mother’s behavior on the same grounds. He now finds excuses for her rejection of him—she was sick and under the influence of duping. “The Old Witch when she was a girl dented the top of her head when her head hit a rock while diving in a pond, and after that she suffered severe migraine headaches and climax of it epilepsy at various times. She dupingly infused such against me as a boy and I thought such came from my head.”
Moreover, Leon now has three mothers: “The Old Witch has been, is disowned and replaced by Dr. Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth and by-through my Righteous idealed Yeti mother.”
November 23. Today, Leon announces in the letter he began on November 21, is his wedding day. His bride is the “righteous idealed Yeti woman,” and on his honeymoon, “instead of sowing ‘wild oats’ I sowed good idealed seed that shall grow up a credit, leaders for the four quarters of the world of righteous idealed society.”
November 24. Leon says that he will marry the Blessed Virgin Mary if her husband dies.
November 27. More changes. Leon fertilizes “without direct contact.” This is called “quasi-spirit sexual intercourse.” Leon’s main foster father is still a white dove and the jerboa rat is an assistant foster father, thereby accounting for the fact that Leon has many of the characteristics of the jerboa rat.
December 2. Leon explains how he came to look like a rat: “The Old Witch asked me when I was nine-and-a-half years old, ‘Do you want to become like me?’ I said, ‘Yes, I want to be like you.’ She said, ‘Go up