Psychedelic Alchemy
“Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.” – Robert Hunter
The troubadours traveled the land in the times of the golden age. They came to town, creating tremendous excitement. We’d all gather together in the sacred places to not only listen, but participate in the harmony of the crowd, enjoying the music and magick as they cast their spell. Mind expanding rituals took place before and during the performance, the participants all melding together in a cosmic consciousness… at least while the music played and the colours swirled.
“There's a band out on the highway
They're high-stepping into town
It's a rainbow full of sound
It's fireworks, calliopes and clowns
Everybody's dancingCome on children, come on children
Come on clap your handsSun went down in honey
And the moon came up in wine
You know stars were spinning dizzy
Lord the band kept us so busy
We forgot about the timeThey're a band beyond description
Like Jehovah's favourite choir
People joining hand in hand
While the music plays the band
Lord they're setting us on fireCrazy rooster crowing midnight
Balls of lightning roll along
Old men sing about their dreams
Women laugh and children scream
And the band keeps playing onKeep on dancing through to daylight
Greet the morning air with song
No one's noticed but the band's all packed and gone
Was it ever here at all?
But they kept on dancing”- from “The Music Never Stopped”
Yes indeed, I was one of those in the crowd, partaking of the music and cosmic consciousness, to some degree. Speaking as a fan of the music and former fan of the band, the Grateful Dead were one of a kind.
The themes present throughout their lyrics, symbols, and
mythology, combined with their initial role as the house band of the Acid (LSD) Tests
and cult following make the Grateful Dead one of the most interesting bands
around in terms of the hidden, or occult, connections.
Anyone who’s listened to “Dark Star -> St. Stephen” from Live Dead can attest to its magickal qualities. Go on, turn down the lights, spark up the candles and whatever else you’ve got and listen to it. This is a powerful piece of music, made to affect the listener on a mystical level.
“Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes.
Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis.
Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion.
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter.
Glass hand dissolving to ice petal flowers revolving.
Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of good-bye.
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?”
Not only will we look at the rather well-known LSD distribution role and how that fits in with larger political conspiracy, but also the symbolism in the band's artistry and song lyrics. A pivotal figure in both areas is the main lyricist, Robert Hunter.
Hunter was one of those involved in the MK-ULTRA LSD experiments along with Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and leader of the Merry Pranksters, and poet Allen Ginsberg in 1964 at Stanford University.
To truly comprehend these experiments and their purpose, it is also necessary to understand Aldous Huxley and the plan for pharmaceutical control. Huxley spearheaded the Tavistock LSD program.
“There will be in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing... a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies,” Huxley stated. [1]
“Huxley collaborator Keith Ditman provided author Ken Kesey with an unlimited supply of LSD, and it was from this small group that arose Kesey's guerrilla theatrical Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead, a rock band that still commands a large cultic following after the demise of its leader. According to a 1968 FBI memorandum, Jerry Garcia, the leader of the Grateful Dead, was employed “to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more benign and non-threatening directions.”” [2][3]
Jerry Garcia also went by the moniker of “Captain Trips,” mimicking the work of Capt. Hubbard, a former high-level OSS officer known as the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD.”
As anyone who has tried it can tell you, LSD is just no good for any kind of control of those under its influence. However, it can very well distract or disengage those who use it from what could be termed ‘practical reality of the everyday world’.
Author of Mind Control, World Control, Jim Keith states it plainly:
“I believe that dumping LSD on the populace of the planet was seen as one of those high-leverage activities. It was a way of turning the masses away from a political activism that might net them a share of the world pie, and toward the life of ecstatic mystic peasantry.” [4]
So when Robert Hunter penned the lyrics to what would become known as “U.S. Blues”, I wonder what he was really thinking? Is it just a bit of fun or something more sinister?
"I'm Uncle Sam,
that's who I am,
been hidin' out,
in a rock 'n' roll band."
Now it should be noted that a large percentage of those who experienced LSD, me included, would still have done it knowing this in advance. The benefits in terms of consciousness expansion may outweigh its dangers, but that certainly cannot be said for all who indulged… just like anything else.
From this point, it is clear that the Grateful Dead’s involvement with LSD and its distribution and dissemination is legendary. For anyone wanting to read more about this topic (although without the Huxley and Tavistock conspiratorial bent), check out Tom Wolfe’s highly entertaining The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
With regard to the occult concepts connected with the Grateful Dead, it is notable that the original name of the band was The Warlocks. Before that, Jerry played in a band called The Zodiacs. Starting to see a pattern? The story of the name Grateful Dead is an interesting one as well. It involves a traveler who happens upon a funeral, but the deceased was too poor to pay for burial. The traveler is generous enough to foot the bill and the deceased aids the traveler in the future as the “grateful dead.” The concepts involved here are certainly noteworthy too: life after death / reincarnation and communication with the spirit world.
Robert Hunter was one of many figures in and around the band interested to some degree with the occult, theosophy, Rosicrucianism, alchemy, and similar ideas. [5]
In fact, the Acid Tests reminded some involved of an alchemical reaction:
“The whole point of the acid test, it seemed to Bear (Owsley, renowned LSD chemist), was to “expose you right down to your infinite detail, exposing you to forces of the universe that [Kesey and the Pranksters] didn’t thoroughly understand.” All the demons and spirits that are part of mythology and part of alchemical lore were “part of that real other reality which you fall right into with things like the acid test … They had discovered on their own the secret rituals of the ancient witchcraft rites and alchemical rites of human history that had been lost, suppressed by the Christian church among other things.” [6]
Now, let’s take a look at some of the symbolism of the band’s artistry and lyrics. First, the symbols of the band are very closely identified with them, probably more so than any other artist. The Steal Your Face logo with its death head and lightening bolt with red, white, and blue signifies the not only the U.S. but also invokes the concept of the red and blue degrees of freemasonry.
Another highly used symbol is the red rose.
Throughout time, it has been a symbol associated with
secrecy (a la Rosicrucians). The other imagery tends toward animated
figures of death. Many other occult secret societies use similar imagery whose
stated purpose is reminding initiates "that the spiritual nature attains liberation only after the philosophical death of man's sensuous personality."[7]
In terms of song lyrics, there are probably too many to choose from, but check out tunes like “Fire on the Mountain”, a nod to shamanism, “Franklin’s Tower,” referring to founding father and secret society grand master Benjamin Franklin and the Liberty Bell, or “St. Stephen” with its rose imagery and wishing well, golden bell, and ladyfingers dipped in moonlight. Robert Hunter is a semiotician, or one who specializes in the theory and study of signs and symbols. Reading his lyrics makes this obvious.
Another notable quality of
Hunter’s lyrics is the way they continually reveal different aspects of meaning
over time. This is difficult to describe to someone totally unfamiliar, but I
believe most fans would agree with this statement and most hermeticists would as well.
At this point, the obligatory mention of the fact that the Grateful Dead played at the Giza pyramids in Egypt is due. The performance at Giza must have been quite a spectacle, but quite literally overshadowed by the pyramids themselves.
Of course, no investigation of this type would be complete without mentioning the fact that three consecutive keyboard players all died prematurely (a curse?). Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan died from alcoholism and related problems, Keith Godchaux in an auto accident, and Brent Mydland overdosed on heroin and cocaine. In addition, Jerry Garcia himself passed while in rehab to quit his addiction to heroin in 1995.
Not too long ago, it was publicized that two band members, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, are also both members of the Bohemian Club. That’s right, the same one featured in the Bohemian Grove taped ritual. In light of the above information, does this seem at all out of character?
1. Cited in Smith, Caulfield, Crook, and Gershman, The Big Brother Book of Lists. (Los Angeles: Price/Stern, Sloan, 1984)
2. White, Carol, The New Dark Ages Conspiracy. (New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984)
3. Keith, Jim. Mind Control, World Control. (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997) p. 96-97.
4. ibid.
5. McNally, Dennis, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. (Broadway Books, 2002)
6. ibid.
Additional source:
Lesh, Phil, Searching for the Sound: My Life With the Grateful Dead.
2007 Occult of Personality. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Comments
It differs from mere coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic that is being expressed through meaningful relationships or events.
It was a principle that Jung felt encompassed his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious [2], in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were due not merely to chance, but instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamicThe thing about the Grateful Dead was their music was never that psychedelic! Perhaps they had hidden symbols, not all that hidden, but the music was essentially country rock! I remember my first dead show, I was so disappointed.
Bohemian Grove, eh?
Our psychedelic industrial word/sound/image project, Choronzon, invaded Bohemian Grove on the date of Cremation of Care, 2005. That was some interesting effectuation, there...I've heard tell that the Weaving Spiders did their job well...
http://choronzon.org/nwc
BTW, you're the most interesting person I've seen on this crazy Vox thing yet.
:-)
The grove invasion sounds rather exciting, perhaps we can chat about that at some point? ;-)
I am enjoying the link too!
The album <i>New World Chaos</i>, incidentally, was completed on 30 August of that year making it the second time we finished an album on the DAY of a national-news-level natural disaster, in this case, Katrina - AND had some reference to the type of disaster in the title and or accompanying textuality of a cut on that album. In this case, it was "Reaping the Whirlwind". In 1989, <i>Zero Divided by Infinity</i> was finished on 17 October and was immediately followed by the Loma Prieta earthquake; it contained a piece called "Mother Nature's Fault".
Bizarre coincidence like this is awfully difficult to think of as nothing but coincidence; since we know every event connects to much more than the linear, it's not completely daft to believe our actions can influence reality. It's something beyond both science and art to me, very difficult to quantify, and infinitely easy to qualify.
The Bush administration began to falter and collapse after Katrina. It has been sapped of power. And Kucinich's resolution to impeach Cheney? It's H.R. #333.
I believe there is a true oppositinal force here that has wanted to effect itself upon reality for a very long time, and in doing what we're doing, we give this bizarre chaos a chance to manifest benevolently, or at least not malevolently.