Aquarius Rising, or the Second Coming, 1967 A.D.
Among many other things, Dr. Bruce Damer is a leading archivist and curator of our ‘60s countercultural heritage. For instance, he’s a keeper of the Timothy Leary Archives. Also, he’s performed a great service by making available, on sites like YouTube and the Internet Archive, excerpts from Aquarius Rising, an unreleased, intimate portrait of West Coast hippies, shot throughout 1967 by a mysterious Santa Cruzan named Pierre Sogol. (In the description for his YouTube videos, Damer notes that, “Pierre Sogol may not be the filmmaker's real name. We are trying to find the filmmaker.” Sogol does appear in his own footage several times—addressing the audience, conducting interviews, even skinny dipping alongside his hippie film subjects.)
“Pierre Sogol”
In his classic 1968 “firsthand account” of “young drop-outs in America,” The Hippie Trip, the sociologist Lewis Yablonsky laid out a ten-point “psychedelic creed.” These principles of the emerging movement were inspired by his many conversations with a charismatic “oracle” and “high priest” named Gridley Wright. Yablonsky intended this creed to serve readers as a guide to his own “trip”—that is, his journey into ‘60s subculture, with Gridley Wright as his companion and guide. But these ten principles also serve as a useful guide to Aquarius Rising, and I encourage you to keep them in mind while viewing these video excerpts:
The hippie movement is a spontaneous evolution. It is not a “heavy” worked-out plan.
Drugs are a key to the God in men. Drugs are sacraments for a greater knowledge of the universe. Drugs are a vehicle to a cosmic consciousness.
There are spontaneous leaders in the movement. They are not “pushy” leaders, who are self-appointed. They are selected by hippie constituents, because they are “spiritual centers.”
Sex is free, holy, and should be naturally acted out without guilt—for pure pleasure and communication.
The establishment and the police are not the enemy. They are a constant reminder that the trip into the universal unity of man was never meant to be easy.
Communes are places where people can “do their thing,” use psychedelic drugs, seek their personal freedom and identity with a minimum amount of “hangups” and interferences.
Violence is a result of frustrations and repressions.
“You can’t change anyone else—you can only change yourself.” A true hippie believer would not get “hung-up” with heavy game playing, the new left, war protests, or civil rights battles. He simply would strengthen his own perceptions of honesty and truth.
Children should not have the “heavy trips” of their parents put onto them. They should have the freedom to “naturally” evolve in their own line of growth.
People should stop playing “heavy games” in their life—as in work, marriage, or the general plastic society. They should, as Leary postulates, “turn-on, tune-in, and drop out.” In this more natural state of reality—with the aid of drugs—they will find their true spiritual condition.
Dr. Damer divided Aquarius Rising into seven “chapters” of varying length. (Chapters 2 and 6 are not available on YouTube, for an obvious but still frustrating reason.) The first chapter begins with an introduction to Sogol’s central themes: the kykeon devotees of Eleusis and the soma devotees of India mark the beginning of an ecstatic lineage which runs through the Essene Jews and Gnostic Christians, and culminates in today’s psychedelic drop-outs; the hippies are persecuted by the status quo in much the same way as these ancient heretical sects; the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1946-47), the invention of the atom bomb, and the synthesis of LSD-25 all mark the end of the Age of Pisces and the dawning of the Aquarian aeon.
Following the introduction, Chapter 1 proceeds to a Los Angeles “overture” which begins with footage of a Be-In during the Summer of Love and ends with footage from famous youth riots of the era, i.e., the Sunset Strip and Century City riots. These images of helmeted police marching in formation and bludgeoning unarmed kids evokes principle #5 above, “The establishment and the police are not the enemy. They are a constant reminder that the trip into the universal unity of man was never meant to be easy.” This nondual, metaphysical-theatrical approach to conflict with and suppression by powers-that-be is a common sentiment, and can be found in other hippie artifacts of the ‘60s and ‘70s, including Be Here Now.
Ram Dass, Be Here Now.
Aquarius Rising, Chapter 2 introduces us to the fascinating character of Gridley Wright, already mentioned above. Wright’s “origin story” is so good, it almost feels hagiographic: a Yale graduate, a former stockbroker and right-winger in the mold of William F. Buckley, who discovered grass and acid and quickly dropped out of the game, and into the center of the SoCal hippie scene. In late ’66, the now bearded and long-haired, bead- and muslin-wearing Wright opened up his Malibu Canyon home to squatters and freaks, much to the chagrin of his wealthy neighbors. When that location got too crowded and the situation with his neighbors and the authorities got too hot, he moved everything to a 44-acre property in nearby Decker Canyon. He gave this new commune two names, “Strawberry Fields” and “Desolation Row,” but it was “Strawberry Fields” that stuck. This is the community that Pierre Sogol visits in Chapter 2.
Strawberry Fields lasted about only six months. Wright had dispiriting brushes with both illness (hepatitis, pneumonia) and the law, and after a carelessly placed candle burnt down the main building, he called it quits. He tried and failed to organize other communes, until he found success in the 1970s with Shivalila, a Bakersfield community that practiced psychedelic tantrism. As “The Children’s Liberation Front,” Shivalila codified their beliefs and practices in a couple of publications, including The Book of the Mother, left behind as curious artifacts from a more adventurous era.
Chapter 3 moves us from the Los Angeles area to Haight-Ashbury at its peak. We witness a “daily Feed-In” hosted by the famous Digger collective, as well as an acid-spiked wedding in Golden Gate Park. We take a road trip up the coast to the Pacific Northwest, then right back to San Francisco, the “Mecca by the Bay.” Several former members of the Strawberry Fields commune migrated to Mecca around this time, and make appearances here, including “Green” from Mississippi and his lover, a young Russian named Natasha. We also meet Nancy, the "Florence Nightingale of the Haight," one of many hippies crashing at 870 Ashbury, the residence of a mysterious matriarch known only as “Betty.”
Chapter 4 is the only excerpt that I’d recommend skipping. The camera follows Nancy and Pierre as they attempt to score a nickelbag of coke from a dealer on the street. I think we’re supposed to be enthralled by this illicit act caught on film, but intervening decades-worth of witnessed drug deals, as depicted in generic cop shows and captured by reality TV, have dulled whatever edge this may have had back in 1967.
Chapter 5 introduces us to the OM Commune at Ben Lomond, and then takes us into Betty’s living room at 870 Ashbury, where Pierre interviews a couple of its residents.
At the beginning of Chapter 6, we meet Camilla, another young hippie whom Betty took under her wing. Camilla is dilated in every way, a walking ecstatic smile who frolics along a beach while communing with the grasses and sand. This might be the purest, most enjoyable portion of Aquarius Rising.
After leaving Camilla and her beach of wonders, we take a classic magic bus ride with the OM Commune from Chapter 5. We follow the gang as they keep crashing others’ property and keep getting busted by the local authorities; skinny dipping is cut short and naked hippies are sent scrambling by the sheriff and his deputies. After a scene of intense group hugging, Sogol shifts into a finale and an epilogue which restate and reinforce his themes from the introduction in Chapter 1.
Finally, with Chapter 7, we close out Aquarius Rising with an appendix which asserts that Jesus took mushrooms and that ergot is the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, as well as a “valedictory” about the martyrdom of JFK, and a bibliography which lists all the songs and written works used in Aquarius.
Spontaneity. Dancing. Chemical sacraments. Holy sex. Protests and riots—love thy enemy! Communes and magic buses. Liberated children. The end of heavy games. Pierre Sogol, whoever and wherever you are, thank you for the gift of this priceless footage, which captures a watershed moment in American culture, and preserves a brief florescence of revolutionary love.
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