A revised and expanded edition of SA contributor Gary Lachman’s excellent history of the rise of the occult counterculture in the 1960s, Turn Off Your Mind, is now available as The Dedalus Book of the 1960s.
Gary will be discussing occultism and music alongside Frances Morgan and Edwin Pouncey at the Strange Attractor Salon on 20th January.
Book tickets here
Writes Gary:
‘How did the Morning of the Magicians become the Night of the Living Dead? In my revisionist history of the 1960s counterculture, I explore the occult roots of the love generation, and show how they reached into practically every aspect of the mystic decade’s life. Alan Watts, Hermann Hesse, the Beach Boys, the Beats, Aldous Huxley, Led Zeppelin, Krishnamurti, H.P. Lovecraft, Jimi Hendrix, R.D. Laing, the Maharishi, the Church of Satan, Tolkien: these are only some of the 60s icons whose contribution to our occult counterculture is re-examined and re-assessed as I try to unravel how the dawning of the Age of Aquarius led to some dark knights of the soul.
This edition, revised and enlarged, includes more than a hundred pages of new material on subjects ranging from the Harmonic Convergence and 2012, to the suicide cult surrounding Carlos Castaneda, and the C.I.A.’s experiments with hallucinogens. In an Afterword I reply to critics of the book and explain why it was acclaimed by fundamentalist Christians and Satanists alike. And a in new chapter on “Murder in the Aquarian Age” I introduce readers to the notorious hippy serial murderer, Charles Sobhraj, a.k.a. the Serpent, and the enigmatic 60s activist, paranormal researcher, and convicted killer, Ira Einhorn, known as ‘the Unicorn’. You may have been around in the 60s and you may remember them, or maybe your grandparents do, but I suspect that either way Turn Off Your Mind will give you a whole new view on what was really going down. Namaste.’
More over at Dedalus