Additional Notes on the S.F. Oracle For the Haight-Ashbury in The Sixties CD-ROM

It began as a dream and ended as a legend. One morning in the late spring of 1966 I dreamt that I was flying around the world. When I looked down, I saw people reading a newspaper with rainbows printed on it -- in Paris at the Eiffel Tower, in Moscow at Red Square, on Broadway in New York, at the Great Wall of China -- everywhere. A rainbow newspaper!

I told my companion Laurie about the dream and she went out early for a walk up the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park to Haight Street telling everyone along the way -- artists, writers, musicians, poets, dope dealers, merchants -- about the rainbow newspaper. When I went out later, people were exploding with rainbow newspaper consciousness.

I strolled into Ron and Jay Thelin's Psychedelic Shop where the icons of the new emerging culture were gathered, displayed and sold. Books on Eastern religion and metaphysics and the Western occult were offered, along with Indian records, posters, madrases, incense, bead necklaces, small pipes, and other paraphernalia. Ron Thelin immediately contributed start-up money for publishing a Haight-Ashbury newspaper. He called his brother Jay, who had a weekend car-parking business at Lake Tahoe to supplement the losses at the Psychede lic Shop, and Jay sent about $500. I was stunned to see how quickly a dream could begin to become reality.

The Haight Ashbury Seed Pod

The Haight-Ashbury was still unknown to the world. The community was an artists' bohemia, and seed pod which was destined to catch the wind and blossom throughout the world. Since World War II, the Haight had been an inter-racial, working class neighborhood bounded by Golden Gate Park, middle class Victorian houses on Ashbury Heights and the mostly black Fillmore District.

The San Francisco State College campus had been located on lower Haight Street before it moved to the southern outskirts of the city, so its students, teachers, dropouts and alumni were still living in the area. Artists and poets, who had escaped the police crackdown of the North Beach Renaissance several years before, had also taken refuge in the Haight. Rents there were cheap. Six rooms in an elegant Victorian or Edwardian house built after the earthquake rented for $120. The houses and apartments were large enough to share, and cooperative living was common. Later, when the world descended upon the Haight, many flats would become crash pads to house America's teenage refugees.

It wasn't difficult in 1966 to work occasionally, sell marijuana or LSD intermittently, and thereby earn a living for oneself and friends. One could devote most of one's time to art, writing or music, experience the enhanced and ecstatic states of mind accessible through the use of marijuana and LSD, interact with other artists, get high and talk until the sun's rays erased the night. In these years, and in these ways the particular styles of music, art, and the way of life identified with the Haight, the 60s and the Hippies developed.

The Dialectical Pendulum

The years 1963-67 were formative to the Haight-Ashbury Hippie phenomenon. Swings of the dialectical pendulum of American history underlie the extraordinary changes that were about to occur in America. World War II was an abyss of planetary violence endin g with the development and use of the atomic bomb. The US emerged from the war as the economic and military leader of the world. The generation that fought the war became the conservative builders and maintainers of an economic empire whose worldwide interests had to be defended, while in their off hours they engendered the largest generation of children in our history.

Women returning to traditional family life relinquished the workplace to the men, and a housing boom brought jobs and homes for the new post-war families. Faceless suburbs arose on the farmland surrounding cities. TV emerged and began to dominate human communications. Gray flannel suits defined the rising middle class, and a cold and sometimes hot war engendered the military-industrial complex. Protecting American capital interests around the world from the rise of socialism and communism became the obsession of our political, economic and military policy.

But the 60s would also bring pivotal and generational change to America. The Fifties of the Cold War, the inquisitions of McCarthy, the Eisenhower uniformity and America's rise to economic world dominance started to give way to a new social energy with the election of John Kennedy, the racial crises and the renewed idealism of the Civil Rights movement. The assassination of Kennedy and the buildup of colonial war in Vietnam were counterattacks intended to rein in the forces of cyclical and generational change that had begun to emerge. Though the seat of government was back in the fists of the military-industrial junta, streets and campuses were occupied by a new idealistic generation who thought they could taste and control the future.

Dionysius Rising

In the late fifties torrential Dionysian winds that would shake the tree of history began to blow. The American yearning for liberty and rebellion burst forth in the poetry and prose of the Beat Generation, the painting of the Abstract Expressionists, and the emergence of rock n' roll music. These creative energies erupted within a culture gone rigid with profits, conformity, weapons of destruction and the politics of suppression of dissent.

Such buried, unconscious energies could not be confined. They celebrated the primacy of the individual and the experience of the body as universe center. It seemed that all forms and institutions would fall away and dissolve before the soaring experience of the Whitmanesque Self and its sensuous delight in the American earth. These rising vital energies found their correlatives in the occult philosophies of the West, the meditative philosophies of the East, the sensibilities of the Afro-American ghetto culture with its improvised jazz and marijuana high, and the ancient tribalism of the oppressed American Indian.

LSD -- The Rocket Engine

The Rise of the Universal Self has had its ups and downs since the late 50s, but its peak came with the discovery and use of LSD by American youth and intellectuals during the 60s. The rebellion, insight and visionary experiences of the artists of the late 50s would now come wholesale to anyone who wanted or needed to get out on the edges of the only frontier left in America -- their own mind and their own senses.

Harvard University with its highly publicized suppression of the psilocybin and LSD experiments of Drs. Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner brought instant Universal Selfhood and Dionysian release from social constraint to the awareness of anyone with the courage to journey to the frontiers of the mind.

LSD was the rocket engine of most of the social or creative tendencies that were emerging in the 60s. It sped up change by opening a direct pathway to the creative and mystical insights that visionaries, artists and saints have sought, experienced and communicated through the ages. But there were casualties of the LSD voyages including the psychologically wounded, badly guided, severe overusers, and victims of the CIA's irresponsible experiments with the psychedelic.

Millions of people took LSD, and for most of them it was a decisive instrument that accelerated change. It released energies that are still reverberating through our world. This brush with cosmic consciousness stimulated pagan and Dionysian energies, but it also resulted in the rise of authoritarian religious cults and the social and political reaction of religious fundamentalism. A vision of eternity and freedom was revealed to some while others in fear of such a vision sought the protection of authority and the old dogmas.

At The Handle of the Kettle

There were two visible handles on the symbolic kettle of the Haight as it boiled its way into history. They were held by the Diggers and by the Oracle. But the Diggers and the Oracle each represented a different philosophy and lifestyle. The Diggers were a loose association of non-members inspired by some former Mime Troupe actors including Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, Peter Cohon, Kent Minnault, Billy Murcott and a dynamic Hell's Angel poet, Bill Fritsch. They brought improvisation, dramatic confrontation and ritual from their theatrical background into the everyday life of the Haight. They were anarchistic, original, and intellectually insightful in their criticism of society and the fulfillment of their own goals. They intended to act out and bring into existence a total transformation of economic and human relations in our society. When anyone wanted to become a "Digger", they were told that they already were Diggers and they should "Do their own thing."

The Diggers were "psychedelic" but did not exclude hard drugs or alcohol from their pharmacology. They were passionately critical of the commercialization of the Haight and of the otherworldliness of the more transcendental school of psychedelic rangers. They wanted to abolish social authority and class structure by eliminating the use of money. "Freedom means everything free," said Emmett Grogan to emphasize their radical common sense. Emmett was not averse to refusing donations of money, or even burning it to make the point.

The Diggers began giving away free food daily at the Panhandle the week after the Love Pageant Rally. They opened a free store and continued putting on free events, rituals, and actions, including the Death of Money parade at which two Hell's Angels were busted and bailed out with a Hippie bail money collection.

The Diggers had a tendency toward anarchy that bordered on violence. They once planned a street happening during which mirrors were to be shined from Haight Street roof tops into the eyes of drivers going up the street. The Haight merchants, in defense against the Digger's demand to share their profits with the community, accused them of threatening extortion and violence.

Though the Diggers' sense of altered reality conflicted with the Love and Nirvana Now view of many other Hippies, the Oracle was receptive to their input, and they often sat in at our editorial meetings. At one junction when a Be-In was being planned on Hopi Indian Land, Emmett Grogan convinced me of its colonialist connotations and its physical impracticality. I represented this view to the Oracle staff, and it prevailed. Our refusal to support the proposed Hopi Be-In canceled the project. Generally, the atmosphere around the Diggers was desperate, dark and tense, while at the ordinary hippie pad, it was light, meditative, and creative with a mixture of rock and raga music, oriental aesthetics and vegetarian food.

Steve Lieper in "At the Handle of the Kettle" described the Diggers providing free food at the Panhandle and for Thanksgiving at their Free Frame of Reference garage. Just before we got to press the Health Department closed down the Digger garage. Lieper reported the dark confusion and revolutionary anarchy that hovered around the Diggers.

The Oracle Staff

Around this time most of the artists and writers, secretaries and business people who were to steer the Oracle on and off course in the year and a half to follow had gathered together: Stephen Levine, a New York poet who had moved to Santa Cruz and then to San Francisco; Travis Rivers, a Texan who brought Janis Joplin to San Francisco and managed Tracy Nelson, another blues singer; and George Tsongas, a poet and novelist from Greece and San Francisco. Though Tsongas had left after Oracle #2, he would return later and play a major role both artistically and editorially. Hetti McGee, originally from Liverpool, England, and Ami Magill were our staff designers. Along with Gabe Katz they originated and/or implemented the techniques -- split fountains, screens, double burns, rubylith overlays -- that made the Oracle palette come to life. Other staff included Harry Monroe, poet, world traveler and inspiration to all who would sit through the night and listen to him talk; Dangerfield Ashton, the best pen and ink artist South Carolina ever gave to America; Gene Grimm, a 6ft. 6in. former marine who had become as gentle as a butterfly; and Steve Lieper, a lanky Tennessee hillbilly who did a lot of everything.

Artists who designed and illustrated many Oracle pages, often anonymously, included Mark Devries, Steve Schafer, Michael Ferar, Armando Busick, and Gary Goldhill. Those who typed and organized our words, business and circulation, (many of whom were also artists and writers), included Tiffany, Lynn Ferar, Joan Alexander, Alan Russo, Arthur Goff, and Penny DeVries. There are many others too numerous to mention, some who were anonymous and others who you will meet in the Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties CD-ROM or the San Francisco Oracle Facsimile Edition. All their collective, selfless and creative work built the Oracle into a unique monument of American arts and letters.

Our first offices were the small upstairs spaces behind the Print Mint, a large poster shop on Haight Street that Travis Rivers managed. We converted even the tiny bathroom into an artists' workroom. Dangerfield would stay in there all night working on his elaborate mandalic designs.

Oracle Economics

Around this time we got some cash donations from marijuana dealers to help us expand from twelve pages to sixteen. Alex Geluardi, who was a benefactor and comforter to many San Francisco writers and artists, also donated money toward the Oracle's growth. Cash flow never did catch up to costs, so we occasionally had to borrow money to print. At one point Jay Thelin would get an unsecured $6,000 loan from the local Haight Street bank. One of the bank executives was pleased to lend the Oracle money, because he had just won a free trip to Hawaii for opening more accounts than any other bank in the state. Even Bill Graham, the rock impresario, with his reputation for realism and grouchiness, lent the Oracle $1,000. But after the first few issues the only outright donation we got was $5,000 from Peter Tork of the TV rock group, the Monkees. There was a karmic retribution to that contribution. My companion Laurie fell in love with Tork's business associate during an LSD trip, and on Christmas day drove away with him to LA in his Mercedes.

But by Oracle #8we would be mostly self-sustaining. The paper was able to pay the rent and food costs for most of the staff, many of whom were living together in several small communes. We had started the paper printing 3000 copies and grew gradually to about 15,000 by Oracle #4. We jumped to 50,000 for #5, the Be-In issue, and grew to almost 125,000 by about Oracle #7. We estimated that five or more people read each issue, lifting circulation to over 500,000. We sent Oracles as far west as New Zealand, India and Vietnam (we would receive Vietnamese marijuana from soldiers in return) and as far east as Prague and Moscow hidden in the bottom of boxes of second-hand clothing.

Oracles were sold in the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley by Hippies for whom it was often the sole means of support. We let anyone take a free ten copies to sell in order to get a stake, and then buy more. The Oracle was the largest employer on the scene. We had a large worldwide subscription list, and backpackers and gypsies would buy as many as 100 to take back to their hometown.

Oracle Aesthetics

The Oracle would go from hand to hand and mind to mind in the evocative states unveiled by marijuana and LSD. It was a centering instrument for that intense, aesthetic, and expanded perceptual universe. To this day I meet people who tell me how they had seen an Oracle in some small town in West Virginia, or thereabouts. They attribute to that sighting of the Oracle their recognition that they were not alone on a dark planet in an empty universe. From that moment on they date the beginning of their journey toward self-realization.

To achieve the oracular effects we wanted we would give the text, whether prose or poetry, to artists and ask them to design a page for it, not merely to illustrate it, but to make an organic unity of the word and the image. Most of the artists would conceive and manifest their designs in a state of expanded awareness. Thus, the Oracle pages correspond to the methodology of the Thanka art of Tibet and Byzantine art in which artists established a visionary state of mind, through meditation, chanting, abstinence and/or prayer, and tried to convey that vision in their painting.

The perceivers of the art then could mount to that same elevation, and experience within their mind the same visionary state. So, looking at an Oracle could be a sort of occult trance experience communicated across the dimensions of space and time, through the tabloid medium, from one explorer of inner worlds to another. That was the magic, the fire, that spread from mind to mind with the Oracle. Motifs and techniques were universal -- from ancient Chinese spirals to Sci Fi. Wings, rays, auras, arabesques, swirls, unicorns, and centaurs, mandalas, collages, flying saucers and their inhabitants, op-art, flowers and paisley, nudes, feathers, and ghosted images were interwoven into a dazzling cross-cultural spectacle of multidimensional depth, pattern and flow.

Go to Part 2.