Tim Leary came to San Francisco for the first time since the emergence of the Haight as psychedelic central. Gabe Katz wanted desperately to draw Tim for the cover because of his overweening admiration for him. The rest of the staff didn't want to add to Tim's guru and leadership status, but Gabe was the art editor. His original drawing had multiple halos and rays but we prevailed upon Gabe to cut it down to just a pronounced aura. Dr. Leary discussed his new religion, the League of Spiritual Discovery, which uses LSD, Marijuana, Peyote and other psychedelic substances as sacraments. He proclaims, "We urge our fellow Americans to consider forming their own religions...I think the social reality is that more young people are going to be using these drugs and the way to handle them is not to imprison them but for the universities to run courses on the visionary experience, on the methods of using these microscopes of experience."
THE LOVE BOOK
In Oracle 4 Lenore Kandel writes about censorship and the Love Book, and Lee Meyerzove probes the meaning of the bust of the Love Book and the bust in July of Michael McClure's play "The Beard" during its performance at the Committee Theater.
The police and City Hall were not pleased with the brashness of this emerging and very public bohemia. The Haight had its own institutions, drugs, dance halls, newspaper, customs, and a tremendous appeal to the disillusioned and alienated youth of America, and a belief in free love. Ron and Jay Thelin's Psychedelic Shop was the psychic center and meeting place for the new culture. They sold books about the psychedelic experience and Eastern religions and Western occult philosophy, a few poetry books, madrases, pipes, and bead necklaces. I worked there for rent money while editing the Oracle. The police who didn't like the police brutality story or the activity around the Psychedelic Shop, or free love, or poetry decided to bust us all at once. As a pretext, San Francisco Vice picked out Lenore Kandel's "Love Book," a small book of poems about the beauty and spirituality of the sexual act, using common names for our physical parts and much Tantric and Hindu symbolism.
The trial lasted 5 weeks as a parade of scholars, priests, nuns, sociologists public health officials, doctors, poets, and psychologists testified on the nature of love and poetry. I brought roses to the courtroom from Jay Thelin's garden and gave them to judge, prosecutor and jury. It was cosmic!
Lenore describes the Love Book as being about: "...the invocation, recognition and acceptance of the divinity in man thru the medium of physical love... Any form of censorship whether mental, moral, emotional or physical, whether from the inside out or from the outside in, is a barrier against self-awareness.'
YOGA AND THE PSYCHEDELIC MIND - BY AZUL (BOB SIMMONS)
Applying the teachings of the eastern religions in meditation, yoga, and chanting to the extraordinary and transcendental experiences with LSD was an essential concern of the Oracle. Yoga and the Psychedelic Mind by Bob Simmons recounts his discovery of yoga and meditation for the expansion of consciousness.
THE GOSSIPING GURU
The Gossiping Guru was Carl Helbing, an artist and astrologer, who lived in the Haight. He would provide gossip of the inner planes, announce flying saucer landings, suggest astrologically significant dates and pinpoint the coming of the next avatar. When he reprinted a letter that asked "Who then can tell us further of Him who was born February 5, 1962, when 7 planets were in Aquarius?" he received a long answer from Kitty McNeil. She described a joint meditation on the inner planes with all the world's mystics providing the spiritual energy and will needed to bring about the birth of the next avatar. Of course, we made her a columnist and called her column "The Babbling Bodhisattva." Kitty was a suburban housewife, a theosophist of the Alice Bailey variety, a psychic and a lover of LSD and hippies.
AT THE HANDLE OF THE KETTLE (Steve Lieper)
The Diggers were a group of anti-materialistic political anarchists, whose leadership sought anonymity in the midst of the Haight spotlight. At the Handle of the Kettle describes the vibes at a Digger Thanksgiving. It was customary for any Digger to claim to be Emmett Grogan, their most outspoken leader. Grogan, Peter Berg, and Peter Coyote had been members of the Mime Troupe. They saw the Haight as a living stage and created happenings and ceremonies such as the Death of Money and the Death of the Hippie. They coordinated anarchistic street takeovers, Summer Solstice ceremonies and free rock concerts. They fed hundreds of people in the Panhandle every day and helped provide crash pads for America's young refugees. They opened a Free Store where all the merchandise was free for the taking, and asked merchants and promoters to put 1% of their profits back into the community. They published their philosophy and announcements on mimeographed broadsides and leaflets that became known as the Digger papers.
FERLINGHETTI - AFTER THE CRIES OF THE BIRDS
The centerfold of issue 4 was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem After the Cries of the Birds Have Stopped. It is surrounded by a collage by Michael Bowen. "I see the future of the world in a new visionary society." The poem ends with the Chinese invading Big Sur in junks -- "Agape we are and agape we'll be".
