PDF Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius Gary Lachman 9780971394230 Books
Download As PDF : Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius Gary Lachman 9780971394230 Books
How did a decade of love and peace end in Altamont and the Manson Family bloodbath? Gary Lachman explores the sinister dalliance of rock's high rollers and a new wave of occultists, tying together John Lennon, Timothy Leary, Mick Jagger, Brian Wilson, Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, Jim Morrison, L. Ron Hubbard and many more American cultural icons.
PDF Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius Gary Lachman 9780971394230 Books
"I have spent some time studying religion, esotericism and mysticism. I was born in 55 and didn't have the full 60s experience. I came in at the tailend. what is fascinating is that this book goes a long way to explaining what was going on in the background of the 60s. Unfortunately or fortunately, most people don't see most things through, and what people grasped onto was the surface meaning of the occult/esoteric underflow and made many superficial, dangerous and immature decisions based on very little information. Traditional religious ideas weren't successful in capturing the imagination of a generation recently emerged from two very destructive wars and a successful economy that allowed for more leisure time to discuss new ideas. Many of the old ideas weren't holding water, and esotericism helped to feed the void. This book is deeper than the cover looks. If you are at the very least interested in the culture of the 60s this is a must and unique read. I'm sending a copy to my buddy who teaches a college course in rock and roll history."
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Tags : Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius [Gary Lachman] on . How did a decade of love and peace end in Altamont and the Manson Family bloodbath? Gary Lachman explores the sinister dalliance of rock's high rollers and a new wave of occultists,Gary Lachman,Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius,Disinformation Books,0971394237,General,Nineteen sixties - Social aspects,Nineteen sixties;Social aspects.,Occultism - Social aspects,Occultism;Social aspects.,Popular culture - History - 20th century,Social history - 1960-1970,Social history;1960-1970.,1960-1970,Body, Mind Spirit / General,General Adult,Nineteen sixties,Non-Fiction,Occultism,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Popular Culture - Counter Culture,Popular Culture - General,Social Science,Social Science / Popular Culture,Social aspects,Social history,Sociology,mystic sixties; dark side of the age of aquarius; john lennon; mick jaggar; charles manson; new wave occultists; sinister
Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius Gary Lachman 9780971394230 Books Reviews :
Turn Off Your Mind The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius Gary Lachman 9780971394230 Books Reviews
- In my late teens and early 20s, I became obsessed with mysticism. While I was never much good at meditation or ceremonial magic, and never had the guts to ask anyone for hallucinogens, I made up for that in my volume of reading. Alan Watts, Ken Wilber, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, Donald Michael Kraig, Carlos Castaneda, Anton LaVey, Michael Aquino, Don Webb, Stephen Flowers, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, Robert Thurman, Herman Hesse, Ram Dass, Lama Surya Das, Reginald Rey, Dion Fortune, Peter J. Carroll, and Phil Hine were just a portion of the authors on my voracious reading list. Disinformation (publisher of Turn Off Your Mind) was, to my high school self, a doorway into the unknown, away from the mundane world that I felt condemned to living in a small city in the decidedly mundane upper midwest. What especially intrigued me was not only the states of consciousness that people could achieve, but the unconventional lifestyles many led. I wanted to lead a life like that, too!
So did Gary Lachman (nee Valentine, who recounts his "roccult" lifestyle in New York Rocker My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 1974-1981). Born too late for the decade he recounts in Turn Off Your Mind, he embraced the backlash of 1970s punk (which set the scene for the gothic and industrial soundtrack of my own youthful rebellion), only to become jaded by the consequences of a life lived without limits that he saw play out around him. This book is a recounting of the roots of the 1960s countercultural explosion in the re-emergence of, of all things, late Victorian and early Edwardian occultism- the boom in western spirituality brought on by the emergence of the Theosophical Society, which, after receeding into the shadows during the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s, saw flickers of life again in the 50s- and a bonfire in the 60s.
Lackman's style is rambling, a rapid-fire narrative of biographical details and anecdotes, which sometimes leaves some narrative threads sadly hanging and incomplete. He quickly weaves connections from one thinker or movement to another; despite the sensationalist appearance of the book's cover and title, he's actually rather fair to most of the characters he treats in the book (except Alan Watts, though my issues with his characterization must wait for another day). He makes a pretty good case that many of the leading lights of rock were much more deeply involved in occult matters than I'd previously been lead to believe; while most of the territory was familiar ground to me, Mick Jagger's relationship to thelemic filmmaker Kenneth Anger was definitely a new one, and Charles Manson- a figure I'd never found terribly interesting- came to life as an avatar of how the conflation of nondual mysticism, drugs, and radical politics and social liberation could go together to form a very toxic brew. Other stories were fun to revisit- the rises and falls of Timothy Leary and Carlos Castaneda; the influence of Aleister Crowley and Aldous Huxley on the 60s; Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan; the encounter between the counterculture and Indian gurus; and the intersection of the counterculture with fantasy and science fiction literature.
While the book gets four stars for content, it was clearly an early effort for Lachman, whose style has matured in more recent works. I don't think his treatment was completely even-handed in this one and, while not as sensational as the book's jacket or some of the reviews would have it, he still has a pretty negative take on most of the events and characters of the time. It is still worth reading as a great narrative history of people and ideas that shaped our culture, however, and I highly recommend it on that basis alone. - I have spent some time studying religion, esotericism and mysticism. I was born in 55 and didn't have the full 60s experience. I came in at the tailend. what is fascinating is that this book goes a long way to explaining what was going on in the background of the 60s. Unfortunately or fortunately, most people don't see most things through, and what people grasped onto was the surface meaning of the occult/esoteric underflow and made many superficial, dangerous and immature decisions based on very little information. Traditional religious ideas weren't successful in capturing the imagination of a generation recently emerged from two very destructive wars and a successful economy that allowed for more leisure time to discuss new ideas. Many of the old ideas weren't holding water, and esotericism helped to feed the void. This book is deeper than the cover looks. If you are at the very least interested in the culture of the 60s this is a must and unique read. I'm sending a copy to my buddy who teaches a college course in rock and roll history.
- Gary Lachman undertakes a very thorough research about questions that are puzzling a lot of people until this very day how come that something that seemed so good (brotherhood of men, harmony and understanding...) went so wrong? The initial idea of the sudden awakened generation "with the new explanation" and with flowers in their hair, ended in massacres, satanism and bad trips... Where did it all go wrong? A breathtaking walk through high influential books of the sixties such as The Morning of Magicians or Steppenwolf, through music of the age, theories that origin in the era of the fin de siecle and are reborn in the sixties.... A book that gives an idea about what really went wrong back in those days, but also draws us very vividly back to those days, and, the most important part of it all, gives a lot of references to other important and influential books, worth to be read.
