The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

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Orange County in southern California was the seat of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love (German: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love ) was an American association of drug users, producers and dealers. The declared aim of the so-called hippie mafia was the spiritual transformation of society through the use of LSD . The "Brotherhood" was based in Orange County (California) from the mid-1960s to the 1970s .

history

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love emerged from an Anaheim motorcycle gang . The brotherhood was initiated by John Griggs; other members were Carol Griggs, Michael Randall, Travis Grant Ashbrook and Rick, Ron and Wendy Bevan.

In an armed robbery on a Hollywood film producer in the early 1960s, John Griggs and his gang captured an unknown amount of LSD , which they immediately tried. They then made the decision to offer LSD to as many people as possible at the lowest possible price. The difference was to be paid by smuggling Mexican marijuana and Afghan hashish .

After reading Timothy Leary's text Start Your Own Religion , the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL) was founded, which was also registered as a religious community. Analogous to the religious community of the Native American Church , which regards the ingestion of mescaline-containing peyote cacti as a sacrament, the brotherhood wanted to use LSD as an approved sacrament. The BEL initially specialized in the distribution of LSD in order to gain further followers. The best-known variety was named Orange Sunshine after a song by the Sunshine Company because of the color of the tablets . In order to disguise the income from drug trafficking, on the advice of Ram Dass , the BEL founded Mystic Arts World , a bookstore with an attached gallery and a head shop in Laguna Beach . The business quickly became the go-to destination for hippies in Southern California . The location was then given the nickname "Dodge City".

For a time, the Brotherhood estate was also the residence of Timothy Leary and his then-wife Rosemary. It was also during this time that Leary ran for governor of California, was arrested on a marijuana offense and sentenced to ten years in prison. The Brotherhood commissioned and funded the release of Timothy Leary from prison in September 1970 with the help of the Weathermen , an underground student organization.

The brotherhood was largely destroyed in 1972 by a large-scale police operation. According to the Los Angeles Times , the Brotherhood had become a multimillion-dollar underground organization .

Filmography

  • The Sunshine Makers , directed by Cosmo Feilding-Mellen, USA 2015.
  • Orange Sunshine , directed by William A. Kirkley , USA 2016.

literature

  • Timothy Leary: Because they knew what they were doing. A flashback. With an afterword by Gisela Getty, Munich 1997, p. 321 ff. ISBN 3-453-12582-7 .
  • Stewart Tendler, Davaid May: Brotherhood of Eternal Love. From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia - The Story of the LSD Counterculture , London 1984 (2nd edition 2007)
  • Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain: Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond , New York 1992, pp. 236 ff., ISBN 978-0-8021-3062-4 .
  • Nicholas Schou: Orange Sunshine. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World , 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain: Acid Dreams , p. 236.
  2. ↑ Orange Sunshine. The Movie.
  3. ↑ Orange Sunshine. The Movie.
  4. ↑ Timothy Leary: For They Knew What They Do , p. 323.
  5. ↑ Orange Sunshine. The Movie.
  6. ↑ "The Brotherhood Of Eternal Love, 'Psychedelic Evangelists' Or Street-smart Drug Dealers?", Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1989
  7. ↑ The Sunshine Makers in the IMDb .
  8. ↑ Orange Sunshine in the IMDb.
  9. ↑ Orange Sunshine. The Movie.