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Thelema, Aleister Crowley and the Usage of Psychoactive Drugs to Achieve “True Will” by Christopher Etter The concept of Dyothelemic theology was developed in the late seventh century by order of the Sixth Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. However, it was for the most part forgotten due to the fact that it initially was a compromise to keep the Egyptian churches in the on the same page as the rest of the Christian world. However, the Egyptian churches were lost to the Islamic Empire as it gained ground and conquered Egypt. It was then revived partially by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century in the form of Thelema. However, Crowley's ideology and practices were anything but Catholic. At the age of 28, Crowley had a prophetic vision, and transcribed what he said was a conversation with his Higher Self, an angel named Aiwass. This prophetic vision was dictated and called "The Book of the Law". In that text, the prophesy of a New Aeon to come was declared, and the declaration of a new philosophy was declared. That philosophy could be summed up as "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". This statement is easily misused and misunderstood, but the essence of the philosophy is the pursuit of what Crowley called "True Will". Thus the philosophy was called the "Law of Thelema", derived from the term Thelema, which is a Greek word meaning "will". Thelema is the concept that the Catholic Church struggled with for centuries when the dyophysite/dyothelite argument emerged between the fifth and seventh centuries. The whole of Crowley's philosophy was centered around the practitioner's pursuit of what was called one's True Will, or the alignment of the Human will with Divine will. Thus, the system later called "Magick" emerged as a way for the practitioner to harness the ability of the human will to reunite with the Divine Will in order to achieve enlightenment and to create change in the universe using the faculties of the mind gained by achieving this enlightenment. For Crowley, enlightenment was found by overcoming human restraints through proper meditational techniques and reuniting with Divine spiritual forces so that the practitioner's will becomes one with the Will of the universe. The methods used composed an elaborate system of ritual and practice centered around Crowley's insight into enlightenment and based around his extensive knowledge of other cultures and religious and scientific practices. He was a member of two major initiatory secret orders, and within a short period of time rose to the head of both orders. As he rose to the highest grade levels he began to reestablish a new school of thought around his insights and philosophies. Unfortunately, the nature of his insight and rituals drew much criticism and controversy as well as ostracism from the society he lived in and both the Masonic orders and the Rosicrucian orders he was once affiliated with. The reason for this controversy was his usage of drugs and sexual rituals, and the scandalous nature of the way he conducted religious ceremony and teaching. I will be showing using Crowley's own words that his fatal flaw in his philosophy was the incorporation of psychoactive drugs and sexual ritual into his Thelemic system. I will also be showing that the misguided notion that psychoactive drugs somehow enhance or help facilitate the pursuit of enlightenment and True Will is a misconception that has plagued our culture and destroyed the most brilliant minds of this century. Psychoactive drugs are the reason for the unraveling of brilliance and enlightenment, but ironically the entire movement was created by minds that sought the exact opposite. With the intention of finding higher consciousness brilliant minds succeeded in polluting the bloodstream of the American and world youth cultures, and led innocent minds on a dead end path. This misguided philosophy not only destroyed the lives and minds of the genius intellects behind the pursuit of enlightenment, but helped create a world epidemic of drug addiction and organized and violent crime. This text is not designed to condemn these minds, in fact I hope to show the good intention of the counter-culture movement and how drugs are the reason it failed. They sought in vain to liberate the American youth sub-culture and in turn help enslave millions of people all over the planet. The use of psychoactive drugs has existed in some forms as early as the beginning of human existence. From ritual use of marijuana to shamanistic uses of psychedelic plants, and early consumption of coca leaves. However, the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were the two time periods of early serious usage of narcotics on a more global level. This time period yielded an explosion of revolutionary thinkers, philosophers, artists and poets. With this explosion of higher consciousness came the experimentation with readily available and legal psychoactive drugs. These drugs included cocaine, opium, heroin, hashish, marijuana just to name a few. At this time they had not been regulated and legislation did not exist to prohibit the use and distribution of these drugs. It was not only considered sophisticated, but it was considered by some to be essential. Sigmund Freud was one of the earliest advocates of cocaine. For example: "Here we would like to recapitulate the indications the Dr. Freud proposed for cocaine in July of last year (1883); these are: Coca as a stimulant; Coca in the treatment of gastric disorders; Coca for the treatment of morphine and alcohol addicts; Coca for the treatment of asthma; and Coca as an aphrodisiac." (Guttmacher, 1885). This viewpoint has obviously been proven erroneous; however some of the medicinal benefits do include pain relievers as used in dentistry and to treat skin ailments such as poison ivy. Freud later spoke on this same issue concerning subcutaneous injections for the relief of the pain from a pinched sciatic nerve, which he would administer to himself. He also explored the psychological effects cocaine. The writer Charles Baudelaire (author of Les Paradis Atrificiel), along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De quincey, and British poet James Thompson (author of The City of Dreadful Night) all experimented with opiates, mostly in the form of Laudanum. Laudanum was medicinally used for stomach ailments mostly, and was used to help treat diarrhea in the unsanitary ghettos and slums. Cocaine, hashish and opiates were all readily available and totally legal. In England, legislation to reduce drug use and distribution didn't emerge until 1920 with the Dangerous Drugs Act. In America, the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, the Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 and the Harrison Narcotic Act all sought to limit and eventually eradicate the distribution and usage of now illegal opiate use, but availability and usage didn't slow down much at all. Among the long list of brilliant minds to come out of this era was Aleister Crowley. As I have stated, Crowley was concerned with reconciling the human condition's relationship with the Divine by using a system of philosophy and ritual that was designed to realign the human will (thelema) with Divine Will, and thus the meaning of finding one's own True Will. The phrase Do what thou wilt shall be whole of the Law" then came to mean exactly that, do True Will. Unfortunately, this system had a fatal flaw that would take Crowley decades to even realize was there. As a means of finding True Will Crowley employed the use of psychoactive drugs to help the practitioner find True Will by enhancing the experience of meditation and opening faculties in the mind that were easier to open using psychoactive chemicals than by traditional meditational techniques alone. Hashish was among the initial chemicals used by Crowley and his students. Crowley wrote extensively on his experiments with hashish and his reasoning behind it. However, initially the conclusions weren't exactly positive results. He wrote concerning one particular ritual designed to achieve enlightenment: "Once again I was almost there- all went brilliance- but not quite. I had too much drug and too little invocation." He later wrote after ingesting two grams of hash: "Samadhi is hashish, an ye will; but Hashish is not Samadhi (it's a low form this Atmadarshana.)(I don't and didn't quite understand this. I think it means that only an Adept can use Hashish to excite Samadhi; or else that Hashish is the evil and averse Samadhi)". In a text called "The Psychology of Hashish" he spoke of "Scientific Illuminism" in regards to the usage of hash and mysticism and wrote: "Hashish at least gives proof of a new order of consciousness, and (it seems to me) it is this prima facie case that mystics have always needed to make out, and have never made out. He continued to develop his system of Magick at his private residence called the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily. By this time, his drug use included cocaine, heroin, hashish and ether as the core regimen, and at this point he had been using these drugs for nearly twenty years. He was 44 when he moved into the Abbey of Thelema, and it was there that the school of Thelema was thoroughly established. The core of his philosophy and rituals revolved around psychoactive drug use in conjunction with the study of Qabalah and various sciences that were exclusive to the circles he was affiliated with: mainly the esoteric secret societies of the Golden Dawn, O.T.O., and the Rosicrucians to name a few. He elaborated on these occult sciences to incorporate his ideas and adapted rituals, which included adapted Tantric sexual rituals. These sexual rituals became the core of what would later be called the Gnostic Catholic Mass and other complex systems of Tantric sexual rituals that composed the grade levels of his school of thought on Thelema. For the rest of his life, his system was grounded in heavy drug use. Toward the end of his life, he began to realize the error of this approach even though this part of his insight is usually over looked. In regards to his heavy cocaine and heroin addiction, he wrote: "I, The Beast 666 wishing to prove the strength of my Will and the degree of my courage, have poisoned myself for the last two years and have succeeded finally in reaching a degree of intoxication such that such withdrawal of the drugs (heroin and cocaine) produce a terrible attack by the "Storm-fiend." The acute symptoms arise suddenly, usually on awakening from a nap. They remind me of the "For God sake turn it off" feeling of having an electric current passing through one, and of the "Sugar-starvation" of the Baltoro Glacier. The psychology is very complex and curious: I think a detailed record of my attempt at breaking the habit will be interesting and useful. Foundation of Hyacinth (Sutin pg. 295) (I want to add in here that the title "The Beast 666" was something his very abusive Christian mother dubbed him as a child. This abuse led him to seek alternative spiritualities and left him with a contempt for Christian culture). This quote shows the intensity of his addiction and is probably the first real account of serious withdrawal symptoms of a serious addict. His addiction got worse and the realization that his will was no longer controlled by Divine Will, (let alone his own) became more clear as he became aware of the negative affects of hard drugs on the body mind and human will. He wrote on this: "My memory is quite clear that I have been taking heroin continuously for many weeks: three or four doses to help me get up, and others practically all day at short intervals. As to cocaine, I must have had at least two or three prolonged bouts of it every week, plus a few "hairs of the dog" on most of the 'off days'. Most of my mental and moral powers were seriously affected in various ways, while I was almost wholly dependent on them for physical energy, in particular for sexual force, which only appeared after unusual excesses, complicated by abnormal indulgence in alcohol. My creative life had become spasmodic and factitious.[.....} I avoided washing, dressing, shaving, as much as possible. I was unable to count money properly, to inspect bills, and so on; everything bored me. I could not even feel alarm at obliviously serious symptoms." Liber Tzaba (Sutin pg. 295-296). These are the inherent symptoms of serious drug addiction: the inability to function properly without the chemical and the inability to change the self-destructive pattern even during seriously threatening circumstances. The serious drug addict first becomes dependent on the drug to function properly even though the way the addict functions is anything but proper, let alone healthy. Then even though things get visibly (worse) the addict is unable to change the situation despite how strong the will of the user may be. Keep in mind here that Crowley's adeptness centered in the ability to comprehend the essence of the human will in relation to the will of the universe and even he became a slave to the affects of these chemicals. His intentions were not simply to indulge in these practice either. He had higher aspirations, but the negative affects of these behaviors were not known in the early twentieth century and they snuck up on the unaware magician who obviously thought he was pursuing attainment of True Will and achieving enlightenment. By the time he had realized the error of his ways it was too late. He was in the last days of his life, broke, homeless at times, ostracized by the community and wandering. He wrote this next quote in an attempt to correct this behavior, but it was probably too late. He had already spent the majority of his life advocating these practices and designing a system around them, and by this time drugs had undermined his life efforts. "Mine inmost Identity says: "To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, and be drunk thereon": it is lawful to do this, for to worship Him is to make him Manifest, and so to fill the world with Truth and Beauty. But I have erred in going too far; the worship has become forced, and fallen into fanatical frenzy which blasphemes Him. [......] I must justify Him (and myself) by making myself unchallengably master of these "means of grace". I must be as capable of using them, and as confident in my capacity, as an engineer is of handling high explosives; and every piece of work undertaken with the aid of these tools, must prove by its perfection that His precepts and His promises are wrought of Righteousness and tested by Truth." Liber Tzaba (Sutin pg. 296). The unfortunate reality here is that he still holds the idea that the psychoactive drugs he used were acceptable to use if used in moderation. As addiction studies in recent decades have concluded, once the human will has been enslaved by the bonds of chemical addiction, abstinence is almost always the only applicable means of correcting the brain chemistry and behavioral tendencies involved with an addictive personality. The irony is, as I will clearly show, is that True Will is clearly defined in the Narcotics Anonymous precepts of "1. Realizing one is no longer in control of the will" and 2. "One must turn the will over to a Higher Power (Divine Will)." He further sought to alleviate his addiction through the composition of a fictional novel called "The Diary of a Drug Fiend". This text was an analogous attempt to define the nature of drug addiction using the structure of Dante's Divine Comedy, written in the sixteenth century (?). Dante's Divine Comedy was a text were The author goes on a guided trip through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso) and sees the nature and meaning behind each plane of existence. The first realm Paradiso is a realm where the two main characters experience the indulgence of cocaine and heroin. Inferno is, in turn, the negative physical and psychological consequences of such indulgences. Purgatorio is the period of rehabilitation where the two characters submit their will the will of King Lamus. The two characters experience True Will through the period of rehabilitation and by becoming free from the bonds of addiction that enslaved them. However, this book is still written with the notion that even after True Will was achieved the drugs could be used in moderation to achieve positive meditational effects. This again is the fatal flaw of the addict whose brain biochemistry has been changed by the indulgence in these chemicals. The old Narcotics Anonymous adage: "One is too many and a thousand never enough" would apply to this flaw. Crowley leaves the door open for the possibility that these chemicals are still useful, and as we will see this led to other philosophers, in following decades, to pass through that door again with the hopes of achieving enlightenment through the same means. Had Crowley closed that door for good, the world would be very different today. Unfortunately, he kept using drugs especially heroin, all the way until the end of his life in 1947. I will end this section with a quote from Crowley that I truly wish he had lived by. When speaking of drugs Crowley wrote: "But why should we talk of drugs? They are only counterfeit notes, or at best the Fiat notes of a discredited government, and we are seeking gold. This pure gold is ours for the asking; its name is mysticism. We may begin by reassuring ourselves. The gold is really in the vaults of the Treasury [...] and the chief reason why we should not burglariously use such skeleton keys as morphia is that by so doing we are likely to hamper the lock." Timothy Leary, LSD and the Sixties Counter-Culture
This hope that there was still something to be gained from the use of these chemicals is the fatal flaw of the serious drug addict, but it is also the fatal flaw of the seekers of enlightenment that followed Crowley in the decades to follow. Crowley’s aspirations of pursuing enlightenment through bio-chemical means reemerged in following decades by a group of scientists and thinkers starting in the 1950's and would become the central school of thought that formed the basis for starting a counter-cultural revolution during the 1960's. This counter-cultural revolution is most closely associated with the "Hippie" movement and the revolutionary thinking of the anti-war and social freedom movements during the 1960's and into the 1970's. After the end of World War II, America began to experience a shift in thinking amongst the American youth. The notion of Civil Rights began to emerge and people influenced by the compassion for others and the desire to create political and social change began to form movements that would prove to create major revolutionary changes in human society. During this time, ideas of multi-cultural spiritualities came into public focus. The religions of the East began to make an impression of the youth seeking a greater spiritual awakening. Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism were among the major Eastern philosophies that created the biggest impact. Artists, poets and musicians all began to reflect this aura of social change, and popular culture in American youth itself began to shift its focus to a more enlightened mind frame. All over the country protests, violence and cultural movements emerged in the name of positive social change, equal racial and gender rights, anti-war movements and "anti-establishment" focused at the rigid cultural restraints placed on society by the generations before them. The era was fueled, and some would say in essence created, by a small group of influential geniuses whom through there differing philosophies, viewpoints and influences in American society created formed and built what we now refer to as the 1960's counter-culture. An era of revolutionary thinkers and movements that were concerned with restructuring the social norms for the sake of positive change. The change mainly took the shape of compassion for other human beings and the essence of freedom. The 1960's counter-culture is created and formed by many genius minds, However, I am only going to speak on a specific circle of thinkers for the sake of this text. Minds of this time included Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the revolutionary civil rights leaders, but to include the whole of 1960's thinkers into this thesis would lead the content and reader astray. The circle I am referring to had one thing in common: Aleister Crowley. They all may not have realized it at the time, but they all shared one thing in common: the open mind that enlightenment could be found through the use of psychoactive drugs to help enhance meditation and open and expand the faculties of the mind. I will be showing that through the discovery of LSD in 1938, and through the reemergence of the drug through Dr. Timothy Leary, Dr Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) and CIA experiments, the 1960's counter-culture was once again polluted with the philosophy that consumed and destroyed the essence of enlightenment for Aliester Crowley: the reckless philosophy that enlightenment can be found through altering the biochemistry of the brain. This practice of drug induced pseudo-enlightenment, even though it simulates such experiences, leads to the corruption of the practitioners of the study, by leading them towards chemicals that directly lead them away from the true essence of enlightenment: one's True Self, and True Will. LSD (lysergic diethylamide) was first discovered by Albert Hoffman in 1938. Hoffman was a Swiss scientist working for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. The psychoactive/psychedelic properties were not discovered however until he accidentally ingested 250 micrograms of the chemical five years later. The chemical remained within the scientific community and was not readily available to the public at that time. Thus, Crowley never got to try it. Hoffman wrote concerning his experiments with LSD: "I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief, they assumed unusual dimensions and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. [Another time] I lost all control of time; space and time became more and more disorganized and I was overcome with fears that I was going crazy." (Hoffman, 1943). The psychiatric community was the first to experiment with it to treat certain psychological dysfunctions such as schizophrenia, and memory suppression. The drug was marketed commercially as a way to gain insight into mental disorders under the brand name Delysid. The CIA and Army Military Intelligence then began its experiments with the chemical. According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA conducted a program call MK-ULTRA in which LSD was tested as a means for brain-washing and interrogating subjects. It was also considered as a means of chemical warfare both in the offensive sense and in the defensive sense in the instance that Russia or China might use it on us. There was a period where CIA operatives were dosed to test the effects and to prepare for the possible event of a chemical attack from another country. The reports of this test yielded negative results because the unpredictability of the drug was unsuitable to be a useful tool for the military. The CIA was using Harvard labs as a center for its research into LSD, and at the time two scientists and professors at Harvard were conducting experiments of their own into psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. Those professors were Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert, who would later change his name to Baba Ram Dass. Dr. Timothy Leary had previously had an experience in Mexico with colleagues in 1960; in which he ingested psilocybin mushrooms. He wrote of the experience: "It was... without question the deepest religious experience in my life. I discovered that beauty, revelation, sensuality, the cellular history of the past, God, the Devil- all lie outside my body, outside my mind." He then began the pursuit of this experience through extensive study, research and experimentation with psychedelic drugs. "Since my illumination of August 1960, I have devoted most of my energies to try to understand the revolutionary potentialities of the human nervous system and to make these insights available to others." (Timothy Leary, 1970). It was Timothy Leary's assertion that Aliester Crowley hadn't had the right drugs to complete his spiritual awakening. He felt that Crowley had the right idea, but because he died before LSD had made its way to the populace, he never got to achieve full enlightenment. In 1979 Leary is quoted as saying: "Crowley understood the interstellar goal of the human evolution and was bitterly aware of his imprisonment on the planet. Gravity and the inability of current technology to reach 'escape velocity' kept him from breaking out." Using the research and insight from earlier scientists in this field such as Aldous Huxley and William James, Leary began his crusade to "turn the world on" to LSD at Harvard, where the CIA was already conducting research on LSD. Leary began to create a following and a circle of friends, thinkers, philosophers, scientists, artists, poets and journalists emerged. Among the first to participate in Leary's research projects was poet Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg had already experimented with peyote, mescaline and LSD, and they set off to "turn on the world". The CIA began to have problems with Leary's open experiments. The CIA pressured Harvard, and eventually the university found reasons to fire Dr. Leary and Dr. Alpert. This in turn, created a wave of controversy and public interest into LSD. This also gave Leary and his colleagues, including Allen Ginsberg, fuel to start a campaign across the country to the advocate the effects of LSD and its relationship to spiritual awakening. Allen Ginsberg was among a list of "beat poets" including Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and William Burroughs. These minds helped contribute the philosophical aspect of 1960's counter-culture through poetic artistic influence. And they helped lay the artistic groundwork for socio-political change. William Burroughs participated with Ginsberg in Leary's experiments with an initially negative reaction. His response was: "Listen: Their Garden of Delights is a terminal Sewer... Their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit." Burroughs also spoke out about sex and drug addiction: " Sexuality is seen as a compulsion much like the need for drugs. Both addictions emerge into a world divided between hunters and the hunted There is no strong affection between people, only obsessive desires and needs." However, Burroughs and Ginsberg both, along with Kerouac continued the pursuit for self-realization through the usage of drugs. The LSD induced enlightenment campaign began with musicians as well. Allen Ginsberg and Leary began to "turn on" artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in England as well as members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Leary also sent Michael Hollingshead to England with five "books" (5000 hits) of LSD to "turn on" the most influential musicians and minds he could find. Among that list were Paul Mc Cartney, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards. Essentially at this time, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Who were all "turned on" and spreading the philosophy of psychoactive drug induced enlightenment. That obviously doesn't sum up the whole of the differing philosophies of all the bands members (obviously!), but psychoactive drug use to help the pursuit of enlightenment was definitely advocated in their music and messages to their fans. The Beatles were probably among the most influenced by LSD. The album Revolver was the first album to reflect the now psychedelic influence in their music, and some of the lyrics were actually paraphrased from some of Leary's texts. In fact in 1967, Aliester Crowley's head is the second face in from the top left corner of the St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. They were heavily influenced by the movements concerning the pursuit of higher consciousness. Another major influence of this particular movement in the 1960's was the American novelist Ken Kesey. Ken Kesey participated in government experiments with LSD at Stanford University and worked in an insane asylum taking hallucinogens regularly, where we wrote "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". In 1964, he and a group he put together called the Merry Pranksters began a campaign to travel across the country to introduce the youth to the effects and benefits of LSD. They began throwing large public events where Kool-Aid with large amounts of LSD mixed in was distributed in large quantities. These events were called "Acid Tests" and along with the LSD were elaborate light shows accompanied by the music a band called the Warlocks, who later became the Grateful Dead. Kesey's approach to spread the Gospel of LSD was less scientific than Leary's and more of a social one, but the message remained the same. It advocated the philosophy of spiritual awakening through the usage of psychoactive chemicals accompanied by study, and celebration. What Leary and Kesey also didn't realize they were achieving was "turning on" an innocent minded and naiive culture to a now sub-culture of the 1960's. This sub-culture was composed of the harsh reality of harder drug use and organized (as well as unorganized) crime. Where Leary originally advocated the usage in scientifically controlled experiments he began to fall from that and publicly distributed these powerful psychoactive chemicals to people with little or no spiritual expertise, and to people who by a majority where lost, troubled or rebellious American youth. And where Kesey originally advocated the public use for the intention of creative and spiritual awakening through community and music, he created the environment for a sub-culture of drug dealers and drug addicts in the music scene. The movements no longer became solely centered around the controlled usage of LSD. The original chemicals that took down Aliester Crowley who came before Timothy Leary and everyone to follow him (who all incidentally owe their entire inspiration for creating this philosophy to Crowley) now became equally apart of both the youth counter-culture and the music scene. These drugs included amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, DMT, PCP, MDMA (ecstasy) just to name a few. This is a fatal combination when the culture is then introduced to the harshness of street life and the reality of other drugs that Crowley himself with all his training couldn't even attempt to control. Even until his last day Crowley, who was a master of certain sciences concerning the mind, body, spirit and most importantly Will was a literal slave to these chemicals. When American youth culture was innocently introduced to these elements it began to not only deteriorate the counter-culture movement, but undermine the motives of the well intentioned thinkers behind it and begin a downward spiral of American youth corruption. This corruption, as we will see has taken the lives, happiness and salvation of millions around the globe since this reckless movement started and we are now facing a world-wide epidemic of drug abuse and addiction; not to mention the level of violent crime and even war associated with the illegal distribution of drugs globally. I will end this section with a quote from the author of one of my research sources, Ken Goffman: "These drugs have been used with enjoyment and apparent impunity by some. But because of the syndromes of dissolution so often connected with their long-term use, such substances have generally undermined the project of embodying the counter-cultural impulse in effective action and sustainable modes of living. Counter-culture by definition strives toward freedom, while drug addiction is a kind of slavery. In this sense, addictive drug use can ultimately be assessed as anathema to counter-culture despite its presence in recent counter-cultural episodes." The State of American Culture During the 70’s, 80’s 90’s and the 21st Century
The 1960's counter culture movements then led to the 1970's. A decade of emerging music styles, and radical political and social change. The 1960's ended with a successful Civil Rights movement and transitioned with another major war in Viet Nam. The social tones of American youth continued to reflect change and positive compassionate progression towards a more peaceful society. Unfortunately, the progression and acceptance of hardcore drug use continued to grow and undermine any positive effect created by the social changes of the 1960's and early 1970's. The music festival Woodstock helped solidify the essence of the movement of positive social change through the expression of community and artistic expression through music and art. And through this solidification came a number of influential music artists. The presence of drugs was still a major aspect of this solidification as well. Drug use through the philosophies advocated by the enlightenment seeking thinkers of the 1960's, was considered an essential part of the movement with the intention of positive spiritual awakening. The late 1960's and the 1970's also gave birth to a new generation of harder rock and roll bands and artists such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. These artists helped pave the way for a new breed of musical talents and styles. Heavy Metal came out of the influences of Led Zeppelin and Hendrix as well as the Doors. The punk scene in New York City was heavily influenced by the Ramones and Sex Pistols. Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead provided the framework for what would become called the "jam-band" scene in following decades. Crowley's presence and influence was still ever present in the emerging rock and roll music scene as Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin III album was released in 1970 with "Do what thou wilt shall be whole of the Law" engraved in the center of the album. Jimmy Paige was an avid reader of Crowley's works and owns the Boleskine House in Scotland where Crowley began writing in 1900. As Rock and Roll became Heavy Metal, the glamorization of Crowley, the Occult, and Satanism became a trendy way for angry, misled youth to explore and vent their hostilities; not realizing they were walking a path toward spiritual darkness. The music industry took advantage of this trend by signing and marketing albums and artists that catered to the over-indulgent lifestyles that were glamorized by the Heavy Metal and Rock and Roll music artists themselves. The illusion of "evil", sexual indulgence, violence, and indulging in excessive alcohol and drug use became the trend of many American youths, and in turn that's what sold albums. If you tried to name one successful positive Christian Heavy Metal band you would be at a loss of names. These artists were normally criticized and ridiculed. Crowley, the occult, Anton La Vey (who created the Church of Satan) and dark spiritualities were all used to cater this fake illusory image of "evil" to masses of American youth who truly had no real idea what "evil" truly was. Even Crowley had positive intentions behind his pursuits, his indulgences became his downfall, but they weren't his intentions. Crowley was a genius and an educated scholar, but the image perpetuated by the Heavy Metal scene was one of over indulgence for the sake of indulgence and it glamorized "evil". The concept of "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" became the creed of the genre, and the negative effects of the hedonist lifestyles of "rock-stars" became apparent as most of the 70's 80's and 90's artists who advocated this philosophy are still crippled by heroin and cocaine addictions in the twenty-first century. That is if it didn't take their lives. Indulgence in alcohol and drugs took the lives of a large number of genius minds including: Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bradley Nowell of Sublime, Lance Staley of Alice in Chains(?), and arguably Kurt Cobain (even though he committed suicide, heroin played a major part). The list goes on and on and it is honestly, in my opinion, already way too long. Cocaine and Heroin played the largest roles in taking these people from us, but it's role in destroying lives and community reaches much farther than the music industry. Heroin addiction hit its height during the Viet Nam War where half the soldiers had tried heroin during their time in South East Asia and 20% of those claimed they had become addicted to heroin. Cocaine was normally injected, or snorted during the 1970's, and had a major presence in the disco and nightclub life in New York City and around the country. However, it was around the beginning of the 1980's that cocaine made it's most ruthless presence in the form of solidified "crack" cocaine; which is the smokeable version of the chemical. This epidemic started in 1981 when dealers using the Bahamans as a smuggling route into Florida made the decision of start cooking it make crack and in turn dropped the price to only $2.50 a hit. This process was then in turn taught to youth in Florida by immigrants, and the process then spread all throughout the United States. Starting in night clubs, the idea of the "crack house" emerged to better accommodate the users. In 1984, illegal residences were turned into improvised night clubs, or "crack houses" that operated 24 hours a day. This spread throughout the country. In New York City it was estimated that the majority of the users were upper class white males, but because of the low price it spread quickly through lower income communities. By the late 1980's it was estimated that up to 10,000 drug dealers existed in at least 50 U.S. cities. The crack epidemic was in full force by the early 1990's and it became synonymous with gang violence, serious crimes and social decay. During this time, hip-hop was emerging out of the disco and funk genres of music in the predominately Africa-American cultures. The Hip-hop lineage started with Kool DJ Herc who is credited with originating the style in the early 70's. Then in the late 1970's Afrikka Bambatta, who was a Black Spade, created an organization called the Zulu Nation which was concerned with uniting gang members from the Bronx, New York City in a positive way. Zulu Nation worked at getting gang members out of the crime and violence of New York City and instilled in them a new sense of culture. According to KRS-1, this new sense of culture was designed around nine elements: DJing (using turntables), rap (the art of conscious spoken word), beat boxing (using the mouth to create sounds), break dancing, graffiti art, street language, street knowledge, street fashion, and street entrepreneurialism trade and business (not to be confused with selling drugs). Zulu Nation and Afrikka Bambatta attempted to instill a positive movement in the roughest areas of New York City, which was polluted with crime, gang violence and crack and drug sales. They instilled what is called the "The Infinity Lessons" and attempted to bring conscious thinking and awareness to the style of Hip-hop. With the help of Grandmaster Flash, Krs-1, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy, they created the "Stop the Violence" movement and tried desperately to change the decaying society in the ghettos of New York City. The reason NYC was in a state of decay was because of the drugs. Drugs, especially crack, provided a non-taxable source of income amounting in the millions. With that money came the need to organize groups in order to manage that money, so gangs were formed. Then came the need for guns to protect that money and the people involved, thus began gang violence over the struggle for this money (remember we're talking millions and millions of dollars). Because the addiction to those drugs is so strong the money came in a seemingly endless flow of drug sales. As the gangs grew, the violence grew. Along with all the sales and possession charges issued to those caught, there was an explosion of murders and violent crimes involved with gang violence, and drug influenced crimes such as theft. All this because the drugs are so addictive that the source of non-taxable income never ceases in fact it continued to grow until the late 1990's. Despite the efforts of Zulu Nation and the conscious hip-hop artists the music industry began to take over hip-hop. The music industry, as previous stated, caters to the desire of the masses because the music industry gets its money from larger record sales. As with Heavy Metal and Rock and Roll, what was selling records on a multi million dollar scale were the albums and artists that glamorized the drug culture. This is mostly because most American youths themselves glamorized the illusory lifestyle of money, guns, cars, rims, clubs, sex and violence (just like "sex, drugs and rock and roll"). These elements are the formula for large record sales because unfortunately they are the elements of youth culture. The record companies sign people who will make these albums. Who ends up suffering are the American people, as well as the recording artists that are committed to creating positive change in the community. KRS-1 is at the forefront of what is called "Conscious Hip-Hop" and he is one of the foremost advocates of conscious positive change in the community and in the youth. He's been around since the start of the positive motion, but artists like him get forgotten as artists glamorizing the drug culture enjoy millions of dollars in record sales. On this very topic KRS-1 spoke bluntly on his album “The Sneak Attack” on track 6 by saying: Along with the birth of hip-hop in the early 1980's came the invention of digitized music technology. In Europe, mostly in England, a style of rhythmic technologically based styles of music began to emerge, commonly called "techno" or "house" music. This music gave birth to what would come to be known as the "rave" scene. The rave scene started as a collection of usually illegal parties, thrown at random unofficial venues, such as warehouses or open fields. The party essentially would consist of a collection of Dj's who spun records with varying styles of beats. Each beat on each record would be matched with speed and the result would be a collection of continuous music with elaborate variations of rhythms and tones that would last all night, sometimes days. The party would consist of hours and days of dancing and ecstatic expressions of freedom and spiritual awakening through becoming one with the rhythms and sounds through dance. Naturally however, as we have seen, this was accompanied eventually by those who wished to open minds with chemicals and those who wished to make money selling those chemicals. In New York City, the parties started in illegal venues. You had to call a hotline the night of the party to find the location. The days of the disco nightclub scene were nearing and end, and the days of illegal "outlaw" parties began. The scene was literally flooded with heavy narcotics. It was so available that you could not avoid it. The most popular drugs available were LSD, Crystal Meth(amphetamine), and MDMA (ecstasy). Dealers were easy to find because they could broadcast their presence due to illegality of the party to begin with. The authorities could do nothing to stop it because the parties would pop up randomly and there was no way to punish the venue because usually the venue was illegal to begin with. Mayor Giuliani helped make raves illegal in NYC for these reasons in the mid 1990's, and this was followed by the "Rave Act" (attached to the Amber Act) in 2003. President Bush signed this legislation, which although is very ambiguous in nature (even a Republican event could be held responsible if someone were to smoke a joint of marijuana on the venue premises) it held venue owners and promoters of the event responsible if drugs are sold, distributed or used at the event. The legislation singles out raves, but again the language is vague. The rave scene slowly burned out for the most part during the late 1990's as well as those who regularly attended the parties. Another reemergence in the late 1980's into the 1990's that continues into the twenty-first century is the "jam band" scene. The band the Grateful Dead; which started as the Warlocks, began in the 1960's and helped begin the LSD movement created by Ken Kesey on the west coast of America. They continued to play with a huge following all the way through the 1970's, 1980's and up until 1995 when the lead singer Jerry Garcia died. The Grateful Dead had a loyal following that followed them both geographically and through the course of time. Generations of "Dead Heads" would follow them around the country every year, year after year. In the essence of Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary's original mission, the following was also composed of loyal followers of the philosophy that enlightenment through psychoactive drugs was a valid practice. Along with these followers were simply those who wished to sell drugs to stay on tour and support their own habits. Where this was reflective of the original essence of the 1960's there were also those who felt these neo-hippie drug dealers were also corrupting the Grateful Dead scene. The distinction was vague between actual philosophers/lovers of the music and the kids that merely wanted to get high and sell drugs. Along with the Grateful Dead were other bands with differing styles, but similar messages and followings. The followers of the Grateful Dead often blended in with other scenes such as the band Phish. When Jerry Garcia died and the Grateful Dead stopped touring the followers of the "Dead" began following other similar bands and this led to boom in the amount of "jam-bands" and concerts in that genre. Through the late 1990's and into the twenty-first century this particular genre continues to live on and in fact is actually gaining a little momentum compared to the other areas of music. The fact of the matter still remains though, that the drugs still circulate and the youth are still addicted and distributing them to each other. The essence of the original spiritual movement has been lost, and at best the usage of drugs is a mere attempt to seek that long lost pursuit of what the forefathers of the philosophy never found, enlightenment through psychoactive means.
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