"It was a matter of reinterpreting the Tarot," he says. "I replaced the swords with guns. And Justice is weighing the Bible against the Brain."

He says, "Because each card has so many different symbols, there is a real magic, ritual element to it. When you shuffle, you're supposed to transfer your energy to the cards. It sounds kind of hokey. It's not something I do all the time. I like the symbolism much more than the trying to rely on divination.

"I think a reasonable question would be, 'What's next? " he says, about to deal the cards and begin his reading. "More specific, 'What's my next step?»

Manson deals his first card: the Hierophant

"The first card that you put down," Manson says, looking at the upside-down card, "this represents wisdom and forethought, and the fact that I just dealt it upside down could mean the opposite-like a lack. I could be naive about something. This card is, right now, my direct influence."

This reading takes place after Rose McGowen's left the house they share in the Hollywood Hills. After Manson and McGowen played with their Boston terriers, Bug and Fester, and she showed him a catalogue with the Halloween costumes she wants to order for the dogs. She talks about the "Boston Tea Party," where hundreds of people parade their Boston terriers around an L.A. park. They talk about how they rented a 1975 powder-blue Cadillac limo-the only rental available-to drive out to some snow-bound farm in the Midwest where they bought two of the terriers for Manson's parents.

Her car and driver are outside, waiting. She's catching a red-eye flight to Canada, where she's making a movie with Alan Alda. In the kitchen, a monitor shows views from the different security cameras, and McGowen talks about how different Alan Alda looks, how big his nose is. Manson tells her how, as men grow older, their nose and ears and scrotum keep growing. His mom, a nurse, talked about old men whose balls hung halfway down their legs.

Manson and McGowen kiss goodbye.

"Thanks a lot," she says. "Now when I work with Alan Alda, I'll be wondering how big his scrotum is."

In the attic, Manson deals his second card: Justice

"This could be referring to my judgment," he says, "my ability to discern, possibly with friendships or business dealings. Right now this is representing where I'm at. I feel a little naive or unsure about either friendships or business dealings, which does particularly apply to certain circumstances between me and my record company. So that makes every bit of sense."

The day before, in the offices of his record label on Santa Monica Boulevard, Manson sat on a black leather sofa, wearing black leather pants, and whenever he shifted, the leather-on-leather made a deep growl sound, amazingly similar to his voice.

"I tried to swim when I was a kid, but I could never deal with the water in my nose. I have a fear of the water. I don't like the ocean. There's something too infinite about it that I find dangerous."

The walls are dark blue and there are no lights on. Manson sits in this dark-blue room with the air conditioning blasting, drinking cola and wearing sunglasses.

"I guess I have a tendency to like to live in places where I don't really fit. I started out in Florida, and maybe that made me not fit. That was the thing that drove me to like and be attracted to everything opposite of my surroundings, because I didn't like the beach culture."

He says, "I used to just like to look. When I didn't know anybody and I first moved to Florida, I'd sit and I'd watch people. Just listen to conversations and observe. If you intend to create something that people will observe and listen to, you've got to listen to them first. That's the key to it."

At home, in the attic of his five-story house, drinking a glass of red wine, Manson deals his third card: the Fool

"The third card is to represent my goals," he says, the leather-rubbing-leather sound in his voice. "The Fool is about to walk off of a cliff, and it's a good card. It represents embarking on a journey, or taking a big step forward. That could represent the campaign of the record coming out or going on tour now."

He says, "I have a fear of crowded rooms. I don't like being around a lot of people, but I feel very comfortable onstage in front of thousands of people. I think it's a way of dealing with that."

His voice is so deep and soft, it disappears behind the rush of the air conditioning.

"I am very shy, strangely enough," he says, "and that's the irony of being an exhibitionist, being up in front of people. I'm really very shy.

"I like to sing alone, too. The least amount of people are involved whenever I'm singing. When I'm recording, sometimes I'll make them hit record and leave the room."

About touring, he says, "The threat of death makes it all worth living, makes it all exciting. That's the ultimate relief of boredom. Being right in the middle of it all. I thought, 'I know that I'm going to have to take things to such an extreme to get my points across that I'm going to start at the bottom and make myself the most despised person. I'm going to represent everything that you're against and you can't say anything to hurt me, to make me feel any worse. I only have up to go. I think that was the most rewarding, to feel like there's nothing you can do to hurt me. Aside from killing me. Because I represent the bottom. I'm the worst that it gets, so you can't say that I did something that makes me look bad, because I'm telling you right now that I'm all of it. It was very liberating to not have to worry about how people are going to try and knock you down.

"If you don't like my music, I don't care. It doesn't really matter to me. If you don't like what I look like, if you don't like what I have to say, it's all part of what I'm asking for. You're giving me just what I want."

Manson deals his fourth card: Death

"The fourth card is your distant past," he says. "And the Death card most represents transition, and it's part of what has got you to this, how you are right now. This makes a good deal of sense, regarding the fact that I've just gone through such a grand transition that's taken place over the course of the last ten years."

Sitting in the dark-blue room at his record label, he says, "I think that my mom has in some ways that Munchausen syndrome, when people try and convince you that you're ill so they can hang on to you longer. Because when I was young, my mom used to always tell me I was allergic to different things that I'm not allergic to. She used to tell me I'm allergic to eggs and fabric softener and all kind of weird things. That's part of the medical element, too, because my mom's a nurse."

His black leather pants flare to cover thick-soled black shoes.

He says, "I remember that my urethra had grown closed, and they had to put a drill in my dick and drill it out. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to a kid. They told me that after I went through puberty I had to come back and go through it again, but I said, 'No chance. I don't care what my urine stream is like now. I'm not going back.»

His mother still keeps his foreskin in a vial.

"When I was growing up, my dad and I didn't get along. He was never around, and that's why I didn't really talk about him, because I never saw him. He worked all the time. I don't consider what I do to be work, but I think I've inherited his workaholic determinism. I don't think until I was in my twenties did my dad ever speak to me about being in the Vietnam War. Then he started telling me about people that he'd killed and things that he was involved in with Agent Orange."