September 2007 Archives
been digging this awesome book:
that i got on tour at the equally vibratiously awesome Family Bookstore
i mean, for a long time i knew the father yod thing was heavy and awesome, and i have grooved deeply in the past to some of their heavy, heavy recordings, but reading this insider's scoop on how it all went down is really fun, surprising and inspiring. unlike the most famous cults of the 70's, the yahowha dudes never really had any huge disaster and in that way perhaps their story hints at a bigger picture of the 60's/70's explosion of communal/spiritual exploration. for every jim jones or manson, there were dozens, hundreds or maybe thousands of other small time "cults" just doing their thing. all the general public ever remembers are the poisoned kool aid mass suicides or that compound in waco going up flames or the serin gas subway terrorism in tokyo, or tom cruise being fucking crazy....our collective impression of "cults" is puritanical, ignorant and based in good old fashioned american christian fear more than anything else. not to say that tom cruise and scientology aren't fucking stupid, disgusting and lame. what fascinates me in all of this has always been the perpetual dialectic between enlightened spiritual purity and all-too-human melodrama. the cult as an avenue for spiritual freedom, exploration, experimentation, bliss, expanded consciousness on one hand, and a place of such deep opportunism, con-artists, megalomaniacs, murderers, Tony Robbins plastic self-help capitalists, T.M. pyramid schemes .
i undoubtedly inherited the interest in this stuff from my father, who studied "Comparative Religions" at UC Santa Barbara in the early 70's and then cruised down to L.A. to witness the cult explosion first hand. His own parents were into some rather esoteric turn-of-the-century "New Age" spiritualist christian stuff. just yesterday my father sent me this cool link to some awesome chakra sound healers....here's my favorite photo from their website:
anyway, anyone interested at all in the whole 70's spirituality explosion, SoCal New Age cults, west coast new age culture in general, cool robes, raw food gurus with 14 wives, hippie-communal psychedelic improv rock bands or any of that sort of shit should check this book "The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wha 13 and the Source Family" out. if anyone has the Father Yod DVD maybe we could trade
once i'm finished reading this.
A LINK TO THE FATHER YOD AND YA HO WHA 13 ALBUM "PENETRATION"
(that link courtesy of this blog)
