Writer on the occult Gary Lachman sends word that a new revised and enlarged edition of his classic book, Turn Off Your Mind, has come out in the UK as The Dedalus Book of the 1960s: Turn Off Your Mind. Currently it’s only available from amazon.co.uk – but is well worth the internation purchase if you’re from elsewhere. Here’s Gary’s description of the book:
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.
Groovy.
Previously on TDG:
