real hippies go to rainbow gatherings

Real Muslims make a pilgrimage to Meca. Real Hippies make a pilgrimage to the rainbow gathering. This year it's out west in Washington state, or there about. You can get directions in a couple of months (nobody knows exactly where it is yet) at www.welcomehome.org
It's always on the 1st of July. On the 4th of July we always have a huge prayer circle (sometimes 30,000) for peace. I've seen rainbows circle the sun on a cloudless day at that time. Thirty thousand hippie ohm prayers make for awesome energy. Then the kids from kiddie village parade into the center of the circle, and then the party is on for the rest of the day.
I've been to fifteen or so since 1977. I think the first is always the best. My first was on the east fork of the Gila river in southern N.M.. I'll never forget the magic,or the love. When you come into camp with your backpack on, everyone you pass says, "welcome home", and you know YOU ARE FINALLY HOME. Then you wonder why it took so long to get home.
You can also check out www.welcomehere.org for ride sharing.

 

Real Hippies generally avoid places that advertise that it is where "Real Hippies" go.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

real hippies go wherever the hell they want.....

 

so... real hippies are rich enough to travel all the time.


you made me sad.

 

did i say that?
nope.....
i'm a real hippy.
i live in a beautiful place and travel very little.
'going wherever the hell i wish' can also mean not going anywhere at all.

i was merely stating the obvious.
the premise of the thread is false.

real hippies are free....we can come and go as we please.
there is no obligation to do things like go to rainbow gatherings.

 

Didn't realize todays hippies had so many negative vibes. All I was trying to do was turn you on. Hippie has gone from peace love and brotherhood, to sex drugs and rock and roll. The internet is a real drag.

 

It has always been both.

Hippiedom has had pretty good PR the last couple decades.

But did you really expect to get a warm welcome telling people they aren't hippies unless they go to this festival, at a board where many people identify as hippies and may or may not be going to this festival?

I mean, it's like if I walked into a cathedral and told them they weren't Catholic if they've used condoms.

 

Maybe the dark is from your eyes.

 

I assume you didn't mean to offend, but saying real hippies go to rainbow gatherings can be interpreted negatively. It's as if it's a requirement to be a real hippie, or else you're just a poser.

I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, you're just trying to encourage people to attend. I'm here in Oregon and am tempted to go, but none of my friends is interested and I don't care to go by myself. I still have a few months to work something out, so we'll see.

 

something about the rainbow family leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I can't quite put my finger on it. I don't know if its the fact that there is no way 30,000 people can gather in one place in the forest and leave no environmental footprint when they leave, or that there is an air of conformity about rainbow gatherings. This thread is a good example of that....in order to be Z, you must first do X and Y.

What makes me a hippie in the slightest is my free-spiritness and reluctance to follow any large group. I would honestly like to check out a rainbow gathering sometime, but I'm prepared for it to be not at all as magical as people make them out to be.

 

Any time the words "Real" and "Hippie" appear next to each other to me it implies some type of status symbol. I was once asked why if I was such a hippie why I didn't go to Burning Man. For me it is just another status symbol. I hear so many yuppies go to Burning Man from SF and it sounds like they are mythologising it. They talk about going out into the desert and doing a bunch of drugs then jumping back into their SUV and driving back to the city with all of their crap and their regular lifestyle and talk about how "Life changing" it was. If it was really so life changing how come they went back to doing the same stupid consumerist bullshit that they did before they went. Then it becomes this egotistical pissing match about who is a "Real Burner". That is the issue I had with the original post.

So I've never been to a Rainbow Gathering. I may never go. I can't say for certain. But that doesn't make me a "Fake Hippie". I still do everything I can to help others (shit I even do it as a part of my job), I still am a "free spirit" whatever that means, I still don't believe in war, and I still believe that people should all be treated equally, with respect and not exploited. These are the things that make me a "Real Hippie" not weather or not I go to a fucking Rainbow Gathering. Sorry if this makes me an arbiter of "Bad Vibes".

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

Do you live at these gatherings permanently, year round?

 

yeah, I think that you can't have a gathering of so many people without there being some environmental impact. Though I think that there are a lot of things that people do that have negative environmental impacts. I think that there is an effort made to minimize environmental impacts, though it's acknowledged that there is some environmental impact.

I think that there is a certain amount of conformity with any social group. I don't think that conformity is always a bad thing, but I think it can be a bad thing when you betray something more important for the sake of conformity. There is a value of non-conformity that is present there though.

I've only been to two gatherings, both last year, the national and a regional. Both were in the northeast, so maybe the character of the gatherings can be different in different places.

I think that the gatherings can be magical. They can also be bullshit.

You can have stuff stolen from you. There are people who can mess with you. Just because it's rainbow land doesn't mean that the same bullshit that goes on outside rainbow land doesn't also happen there.

I think that there's people that go there just to try to get free drugs and free food, or just do selfish things.

There's also people that really have the peace and love vibe, and I think that makes it worth it, because there aren't too many other places that I've seen where you can find that.

Just as there are people elsewhere who might talk trash about you if your clothes are shabby, or because they think you are poor, there there are people that might talk trash about you if your clothes are new and they think you are rich.

It's not everyone, but to some degree there is a kind of mirror image of the world.

so there are problems, but I think that it can still be worth going to

 

I think it can be nice to go places with people, but I don't think that you have to be dependent on them. I would say you could just go if you feel like it. I think there would be more freedom to it that way.

Maybe there are other events that you wouldn't want to go to by yourself, but I think that it's the kind of place where you can just go and be.

 

at last we finally have a definitive definition of a real hippie

since the first one was held in 1972 i guess those sixties folks must have been something else

 

Hahahahaaa, that is real funny, real hippies..

 

Duck said, "But did you really expect to get a warm welcome telling people they aren't hippies unless they go to this festival, at a board where many people identify as hippies and may or may not be going to this festival?

Sorry dude, never said that people aren't hippies unless they go to the Rainbow. I said real hippies DO go, and they do. Of course, there's always a few energy suckers that PRETEND to be hippies. They come and trash the site, put out bad vibes, and then leave the mess for the REAL hippies to clean up after them. The TRUE real hippies stay at the site for two or three weeks after the gathering and clean up. You know, the native Americans lived like that for hundreds of years before the honkeys came and polluted this land with nukes and oil and cities and cars and roads and toxic landfills. So Meliai should think about what large group is making the big foot print. And if we hippies don't band together, the fascists are going to make it illegal to be a hippie.

 

Each year I go to Glastonbury
It is my place of pilgrmage though not the Musical festival favourite
It is to the place of mystical site of Avalon, the small village of cosmopoltan taste and simplicity, Olde Abbey, Arhurian Tor and nearby ancient site of Stonehenge
I guess that it is wherever you feel your aura is most at peace
eace:

 

no no I agree 100% about the "honkeys" coming and leaving a much larger environmental footprint. But thats another thing that bothers me about the Rainbow family. Their very name is taken from an old native american prophecy:

When the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the warriors of the Rainbow

Its a great concept and its great that members of the family stay behind for weeks to clean up, but honestly I think its all just a little hypocritical. Most people drive to these gatherings and the fact that there is trash left behind at all shows they are not immune to the ways of the honkeys.

I read this prophecy a while before I even heard of the rainbow family. I think the concept of hippies gathering in the forest for three weeks of nature and brotherly love and music and even drugs is awesome, to be honest, but I don't think any of that makes them true warriors of the rainbow, in the sense that the native americans meant.

The native American prophecy was talking about a complete change in the modern way of life, not a temporary vacation from it. If the Rainbow family wanted to be true warriors of the rainbow they would find a sustainable way to live off the land self sufficiently year round without using vehicles or any modern conveniences that have any kind of environmental impact whatsoever.

The Amish are actually closer to the true warriors of the rainbow than the rainbow family.

 

i have been to glastonbury several times, but not for the festival...just for the magick of the town.
it's been several years, but the last two times i've stayed at the backpackers by the market cross.
i remember staying in the same building in the 70's, when it was still an inn.