Doctrines of the Dropouts

CULTS

In its short life, hippiedom has created not only its own language, music, art and dress style, but even its own religion. Denning it, however, is not easy, since the hippie faith is a weird blend of superstition and spirituality that spans continents and centuries.

One thing hippie religion is not is Judaeo-Christian in outlook. Jesus may be revered as the hip guru of his time who preached a primitive form of love power, but Western churches are generally abhorred by the hippies as irrelevant and square. Instead, they display a considerable interest in the occult on the theory that the important levels of spiritual consciousness are those that lie beyond man's reason. "Christ studied the occult," contends one Los Angeles believer, explaining dubiously that "he learned to walk on water."

There is also plenty of plain, garden-variety superstition in the hippie faith witnessed by their interest in ouija boards, numerology, tarot cards, palmistry, mind reading and astrology. Some communities are very keen on nature worship, and hold outdoor ceremonies honoring the onset of the winter and summer solstices. Black magic is very In among some hippies, as is Devil worship; there are even a few witches and warlocks around Hashbury ready to celebrate Black Masses in praise of Satan.*

Insofar as hippie religion is organized at all, it divides into three wings of more or less equal importance. One is the Neo-American Church, which claims an affiliation with the Native American Church, an authentic sect of primitive nature worshipers among the American Indian tribes in the Southwest. The connection is not the hippie love of red men but the fact that the Indians use the hallucinogenic drug peyote as a sacrament in their ceremonies.

Clergy & Liturgy. A second strand of hippie faith is Hindu mysticism; its followers peruse the writings of a gallery of gurus, ranging from the popular Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (TIME, Oct. 20) to Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta of Bengal. A third source of spiritual insight is Zen Buddhism, as promulgated by Oriental Scholar Alan Watts, a one-time Anglican priest who lives on a houseboat in San Francisco Bay.

Out of this mystical melange, hippie communities are developing clearly identifiable sects, with their own clergy, formal meetings and even liturgy. These groups borrow unabashedly from all three main strands of the psychedelic faith. The Neo-American Church, whose pastors are known as "boo-hoos" (the absurd title is meant to keep "an element of humor in our institutional affairs"), uses prayers from Buddhism, Tantric Yoga and Mohawk moccasins in its pseudo-marriage ceremonies. One popular center of hippie worship in Los Angeles is the Oracle-Cosmic Joy Fellowship, whose prelates are known as "coordinators." At its regular services, worshipers sit cross-legged in an incense-clouded room festooned with Indian print cloths, statues of Buddha and votive candles, holding hands and ecstatically chanting "Om" (a Hindu word signifying "the ultimate religion").

Confused & Eclectic. The goal of religious hippies is union with God, whom they envision as a "cosmic consciousness." Despite its bizarre aspects, a surprising number of clergymen see the hippie faith as a genuine spiritual impulse. "Hippieness has all the marks of a new religious movement," writes Harvard Theologian Harvey Cox, in, of all places, the current issue of Playboy. "It has its evangelists, its sacred grottoes, its exuberant converts." He suggests that the hippies' quest for warmth and love is a warning to Christianity. Other churchmen quite rightly question the spiritual validity of an undigested mixture of drug-induced visions, skimmed Orientalism and nature worship. Even Cox concedes that the hippies' "confused and eclectic" theology contains "very little corrective to just plain self-indulgence."

*One problem is that the traditional ritual requires the presence of a naked virgin and there aren't many of them in communal crash pads.

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