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All Writing & Content © Nick Kushner Unless Noted Otherwise

(Illustrations forthcoming)

February 14th, Valentine's Day, is undoubtedly the most significant and recurring day within the art of Marilyn Manson. Manson gave the fans a gift virtually each Valentine's Day since 2000. On February 14th, 2000 a cover version of the Charles Manson song 'Sick City' (for more on Manson's parallelism to the plight of Charles Manson read The Lamb Of God .com section) was released via MarilynManson.com. February 14th, 2001 the website This As Valentines Day .com was launched consisting of Marina Oswald on the cover of Time Magazine, the Russian wife of the alleged assassin of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, originally published on February 14th, 1964. Upon clicking on a hidden link on Marina's broach the viewer is taken to a page containing Chapter 10 of Manson's still unreleased novel, Holy Wood, which is the first and only glimpse revealed of the book to this day. February 14th 2002 Manson gave us via his online Journal two videos of his kitten familiar, Lily White, entitled 'I Love You With All Of My Heart' (which depicts Manson's kitten Lily licking a plate of milk with a heart on it) and 'I Will Love You Until I Die' (which depicts Lily sitting on the pelvis of a skeleton which may logically be the same skeleton which Manson spoke of obtaining from an OTO meeting in England in his October 2000 interview by Chuck Palahniuk). And lastly Manson gave us the first real glimpse into The Golden Age Of Grotesque on February 14th, 2003 with the Journal post, 'Valentine's Day Bring Us A New Taste Of Eonism' with the first group photo of the new band and the accompanying video 'The Mechanism Of Desire' documenting the new image on digital celluloid.

Within the story of the Triptych, ADAM KADMON (the first symbolic and idyllic man, autobiographically as Marilyn Manson) who grew up in this world of our's with his idealism and hatred towards the same hypocrisy and superficiality of the establishment which oppressed him set out to create a revolution. But only later to have his revolution sold out and turned into a product to be sold and marketed after inadvertently becoming part of the establishment himself, tempted and bated by its luxuries he became what he grew up hating. Mechanical Animals in a sense is a dual album; half of the songs are sung by Mar1lyn Man5on, innocent, sensitive and affected by the world around him, and the other half being played by the fictitious band Omega & The Mechanical Animals, who's hollow, over-the-top, superficial sex & drug anthems are what the idealism and sensitivity has malformed into. "You cut off all of your fingers, trade them in for dollar bills" while the opposing Mar1lyn Man5on half of the album deals with the internal conflict of this dichotomy of ideals. The revolution has been sold out, the cover of the side of the album played by Omega & The Mechanical Animals illustrates this almost literally. The hollow rock star which ADAM has become now as red prosthetic fingers where hands he carved and crafted his revolution used to be.

The lyrics of all three songs hint at this transformation of what ADAM has become and his realization of it.

Irresponsible Hate Anthem: "I am so All-American I'd sell you suicide, I am totalitarian I've got abortions in my eyes", the morbid culture and fascination of America where death is worshiped and violence is the new religion, "I hate the hater, I'd rape the raper, I am the animal who will not be himself", a self contradiction with no ideals lefts of his own.

I Want To Disappear: "Look at me now, I got no religion. Look at me now, I'm so vacant. Look at me now, I was a virgin, Grew up to be whore", the realization of hollowness and corruption, "Yesterday, man, I was a nihilist, now today I'm just too fucking bored", the idealism and revolution fallen to the wayside and replaced by sex, drugs and television.

Born Again: "This art is weak in its pretty, pretty frame", the hollowness of Omega; "I'm a monkey with a misspelled name", Mar1lyn Man5on; "I'm someone else, I'm someone new, I'm someone stupid just like you.... I'll be born again", the foreshadowing of the transformation into The Antichrist Svperstar.

So in short, February 14th, 1997 represents the day, performance and point in time (the convergence and three dimensional connection of the Triptych), the point of realization that the revolution began which was set out to change the world was marginalized into another product by trading idealism for gratification, the realization that ADAM became the hypocrisy which he set out to overthrow when he was young and ambitious. If we look at exactly what Valentine's Day is also, the choice of date in which this point of hypocritical realization occurs makes perfect sense.

Valentine's Day is the day of love & couples and a Hallmark capitalist favourite. The day of the holiday itself was chosen to be celebrated because, like ALL Christian holidays, it was chosen as an adaptation from the dates of pagan celebratory rites in order to convert and spread Christianity throughout the world. Even Christmas, for example, was merely chosen to be celebrated at the end of December to coincide with the Winter solstice, one of the most important pagan and astrological dates of the year. Valentine's Day though coincides with the Roman holiday on the 15th of February, the Feast of Lupercalia. On the eve of this feast (ie - the day before), in honour of the Februata Juno, the Roman goddess of sex and fertility, the Roman boys would pick a piece of paper with the name of a girl whom which would accompany him during the celebration the following day in hopes to eventually fall in love and marry, thus beginning the tradition of exchanges notes we today call Valentines.

So in essence the celebration of the holiday as we know it today is merely a hypocritical farce; pagan rites enveloped and overshadowed by the ominous spread of Christianity. Anton LaVey, whom Manson was a close allie of spoke of this type of Christian bastardization of pagan holidays so it would fit the rubric of its own existence.

The day is named after St. Valentine, a priest who was martyred (beaten then beheaded) in 270 AD by the Roman emperor Cladius II. The reason he was beheaded specifically was because he continued to marry couples in the Christian tradition despite Claudius' decree against it, this was before Rome was converted. This is another very hypocritical and dichotomous aspect of this holiday. He was killed because he aided other is obtaining love, so we celebrate his death as the holiday of love. This is not in the least an uncommon practice for the Catholic Church to remember and commemorate the lives of saints by the way they were killed, just as today people hang the effigy of Christ on their walls and around their necks, strewn up like a side of veal on a crucifix, which is actually a commonly used Roman torture device. Another Saint of note in this fashion is St. Apollonia. She was a Christian martyr in 249 AD who had her teeth crushed and broken with pincers, torturing her to make her renounce the name of Christ. Today the Catholic Church honours her as the patron saint of toothaches.

This is very much in following suite which Manson set forth on Holy Wood. In the fictitious land of Holy Wood death is what makes one a celebrity and violence is the new religion where the Saints of this new religion are dead stars which is hinted at in Mechanical Animals on the song Posthuman. During the Guns, God & Government tour, Manson donned a papal robe and miter, singing in front of an alter with two casts of his severed heads while tapestries of the Saints we're to be worshiping hung on each side of him; dead stars like Elvis, James Dean, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, and Charles Manson, among others, who may not be dead but who is remembered today and is famous only for who he killed. It's the idea and reality that in death we're remembered much more profoundly than we were in life. And if you're famous and you're killed in the spotlight it acts as a Christ-like immortalization, just as in the case of JFK and John Lennon. This is the meaning behind Manson's coined term Celebritarian, that our religion is based on death; we drink the blood in the form of wine and whose body we feed upon in the form of a communion wafer; the idea of Celebritarianism, the devouring of celebrity as demonstrated by the first celebrity, Jesus Christ. See also The Lamb Of God .com and Celebritarian.com.

Valentine's Day: we're celebrating love through death. Because in American your famed is based upon when, where and how you died or who you kill, that's how the covers the papers are filled.

Because we're not remembered in life, we're remembered in death. And if we die young and are martyred we mean more than we ever could alive. Because: