What made the hippie movement so unusual, and also so powerful and unique was its psychedelic vision, based on LSD use. Make no bones about this, without LSD there would have been no hippies. Not weed, not rock and roll, LSD. This is a historically based statement, and is not just because of what I saw or experienced. Now I don't want to imply that anyone should go and do acid. Just doing acid does not make you a hippie. And there were alot of other factors that contributed to why the LSD did what it did. Where we were, the actual LSD, the times and the mind set of alot of the youth in those times. But the spiritual awareness that came about from the psychedelic vision that produced hippie caused us to hold great promise in what we thought we could do with the problems of the world. We need that vision now. But there are a few problems with this today in 2007. Back then we tripped in mass, in the Haight, and later elsewhere all over the country and world. People frequently had divine insights that were experienced as a group, and then shared and discussed when we all came down. These insights were frequently used to come up with other unifying ideas. Today we trip in fear of arrest, without knowledge of how to direct the trip, usually with other dumb drugs such as alcohol or whatever on top of the acid, not to mention the acid is not strong enough or not LSD. Plus the whole thing is for kicks. This attitude is why the diggers had the "Death of Hippie" parade in Oct.67. It has, for the most part, prevailed to this day. As a father I am appalled at the wanton rape and killing of children I see today. This very day a whole family was found dead, one baby lived, in Wisconsin. As crazy as the sixties were overall, there is social death and mayhem around us that is unparalleled since our country's inception. We as counterculturists had a vision one time, a vision for the whole earth, and all mankind. Allen Cohen of the San Francisco Oracle, in the video he made called "Oracle Rising" said," one day some newspaper reporters came to the Oracle office in the Haight and asked me what hippie was all about. I said love, its all about love. Oh, you mean sex? No, I said, its all about love. By love I mean the togetherness, sisterhood and brotherhood, experienced as a mass field of loving consciousness, brought on by our LSD use." We need this love today, brothers and sisters. But to get it we need to change our consciousness. Are you up to the task to love and change the world? We can do it!
Hell yea I am down for love and LSD...they are probably my two favorite things I wanna start a revolution of love
the word hippie was a word created by a closed minded society. Now you find tons of kids running around trying to relive the past and be "hippies". I personaly dont think that this is in the least bit hip.
LSD opened the doors of perception to many people (still does), but it's use is a relatively new phenomenon. To go back to the roots of the movement, we have to examine shamanism. Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna, both major players in the "free love, free drugs" ethos of the time, stressed "better living through chemistry" in a new way, in a meaning of the phrase not seen before - before, it applied to man's taming and destruction of nature through pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and other such chemicals. Now it became a phrase involving empathogens, like MDMA, and entheogens like, yes, LSD, but also psylocibin mushrooms, DMT, amanita mushrooms and others. Access to Divinity, by whatever name one calls it, was now in the hands of the people rather than an elite priesthood. Even after the Protestant revolution, the priesthood still controlled the people's spiritual lives. Now, spiritual experience could be had by anyone brave enough to venture into a greater reality. As a result, a greater intellectual freedom, an ideological independance, sprung up around the world - not specific to Haight-Ashbury, I might add. Europe has had its share of freethinkers, the healing practises of Naturopathy, homeopathy, and many others had their roots in European spas and "nature cure" clinics. The movement was/is a global phenomenon, and as such we might say we represent the next step (hopefully) of societal evolution - away from the brutal, uncaring, faceless beaurocracy and into a world where freedom and love are truly valued. (Apologies for the rambling, got a little off topic :tongue: )
I'd have to disagree. I do ABSOLUTELY agree that LSD was a very important element in the outbreaking of culture, but other things were happening. People were dissatisfied with the presence of a futile (Nam) war. They were tired of the uptight culture permeating the air in the 40's & 1950's (which spawned the Beat movement in a sense). Black became growingly dissatisfied with segregation & what have you. You don't need to trip to think outside of this cultural box we're put in; however, for some (like muah, at times) it's takes the swift kick in the ass of LSD to break up that overly accepting of wrongness head junk that haults the loving thought-flow. Take the Renaisance movement? Do you suppose this breaking free of pre-Bohemia bohemians was caused by some psychedelics?? Maybe, but I think it was a variety of things in the air at the time. Eh... speculation.
All about spreading love, but not through using LSD. I don't think you need mind altering drugs to have visions of how to make the world a better place, and I don't think this kind of activity should be glorified, regardless of whether or not it helped spawn the hippie movement. What I do think is really cool is people who are open minded enough to think of ways to make the world a better place and not rely on drugs to do so.
i agree with izzie, but acid is truly like magic. it really can open your mind to knew and wonderful things an open-mind is based on the person for sure but being open to drugs isnt bad. as long as you dont let rule you its all good! love you kids so much, love you all!
dear eman resu, for the historical record my friend, before it was all said and done, the hippies did indeed use the name "hippies" as a definition for themselves, in the Haight and elsewhere. The "death of hippie" parade on Oct.6, 1967, put on by the diggers was to kill the mindset of heavy drug use and the artifical mimicking of the actual deeper consciousness of the freaks, with the "exterior coolness" that had become the fake norm by the newcomers in the Haight. As a matter of fact, "The" Allen Cohen I mentioned in the thread said point blank to my face that he had no problem with the word, and most other original freaks did not either. Another hippie, the late Elizabeth Gips of "Changes Radio" in Santa Cruz Ca., who was up to her neck in the early Haight and elsewhere, someone else I knew personally, even defined the word, the hip implying to have "gnosis', to have inner or higher knowledge, from her book, "Diary of A Haight Ashbury Pilgrim". So freaks who were real people had no problem with the word. I was one.
I want to start a reveloution of peace and love too! I've never tried LSD...my life is one huge mind trip as it is! Peace and love guys...that's what makes the world go round.
To Izzy and Turqouise and anybody else who mistepped the meaning here, I was not saying that hippie was all about nothing but LSD use. I was saying that it was LSD specifcally that acted as the primary catalyst that induced people to have a totally higher view of reality. There are alot of mis-understandings, in what I see and hear from most not actually "back in the day", and even from some who were, that hippie was about just being cool, doing dope(this misunderstanding brought the drug culture into fore), hanging out, having radical views, or listening to rock and roll. I'm simply saying that the extreme social and spiritual view that I know of and remember as "early" hippie in 65' and 66' was spawned by a profound consciousness shift, a shift induced by mass and frequent strong LSD use. Good reading on this is "LSD and the American Dream", by Jay Stevens, or the Facsimile Edition of The San Francisco Oracle by Allen Cohen, available on disc on his web site by name. I'm not trying to make waves here, I'm just making the point that in order to get the "LOVE" we need and want it takes something "heavy" in order to undo the mind from its trappings. LSD did it to the freaks, can it do it today, or will it take something heavier, like the Kundalini?
Ahem.. I'm not referring to drugs in general, just LSD. From a historical standpoint, it was only synthesised in 1943 and thus can be called "recent", as opposed to mushrooms, cannabis, ayahuasca etc which have been used for centuries, perhaps millennia.
I have mixed feelings about this. I believe that various drugs can act as "springboards" into a certain lifestyle or certain thoughts. It has been traditionally used as such for thousands of years. I think that hippie's are anyone that has rejected popular culture to learn how to live closer to the earth. This in turn creates things that are quite associated with hippiedom: nakedness, barefootness, shamanic drug use, communes, camping, dreadlocks, beards, self-sufficient living, etc. I'm a proud hippie, I'm not a poser, and I did not live in the 60's.
in the book 'high art' Ted Owen puts forth the notion that LSD basically provided a certain freedom to the arising youth culture.And in many respects the drug did provide a rallying point of experience for a group who were much as disillusioned with the war in vietnam,racism,class distinctions and parental and governmental controls.
