Jump to content

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: Difference between revisions

Page protected with pending changes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
[accepted revision][accepted revision]
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
→Books: Copyedit (minor)
Line 37: Line 37:
* [[Owsley Stanley]]
* [[Owsley Stanley]]
* ''[[The Sunshine Makers (2015 film)|The Sunshine Makers]]''
* ''[[The Sunshine Makers (2015 film)|The Sunshine Makers]]''

== Film ==
* {{cite book |last1=Kirkley |first1=William A. |title=Orange Sunshine <!--|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5119260/reference |website=[[IMDb]] |access-date=2 July 2021 --> |date=2016 }}<ref>{{cite web |last1=Maerz |first1=Jennifer |title=Retracing the Steps of Psychedelic Outlaws on an LSD Mission From God |url=https://www.kqed.org/arts/12323259/orange-sunshine-or-psychedelic-outlaws-on-an-lsd-mission-from-god |website=[[KQED]] |access-date=2 July 2021 |language=en-us |date=2016-11-14 |quote=Church members engineer an international smuggling ring to bring hash, pot, and acid back from sources in Europe and Afghanistan. They trick out their vans and surfboards with secret compartments to hide the contraband from border agents. They launder their money through an art gallery in Laguna Beach, build an LSD lab in Palm Springs, and are ultimately responsible for distributing over 100 million hits of acid....The influence of this resourceful “Hippie Mafia” grew so strong that the acid they widely distributed (including the ubiquitous Orange Sunshine strain, from which the documentary takes its title) ended up in the hands of Steve Jobs and the Beatles.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Boessenkool |first1=Antonie |title=Film flashes back to the days when Laguna Beach was an LSD mecca |url=https://www.ocregister.com/2016/04/22/film-flashes-back-to-the-days-when-laguna-beach-was-an-lsd-mecca/ |access-date=2 July 2021 |work=Orange County Register |date=22 April 2016 |quote=In the documentary “Orange Sunshine,” Brotherhood member Travis Ashbrook recalls traveling to Afghanistan to buy hashish to fund the Brotherhood's LSD-making operation. Ashbrook describes a very different way of air travel at the time, with far less security and scrutiny than today. ...LOCAL KIDS John Griggs was the nucleus of the Brotherhood. He was a bit of a troubled kid. His first experience with LSD came after he and his friends robbed a Hollywood movie producer at gunpoint, relieving him of his drugs....Through parties, dances and at the beach, Griggs and others came together, including Randall and Travis Ashbrook, who grew up in Rossmoor and also spoke with the Register about his time with the Brotherhood....As a group, they moved to Modjeska Canyon and started a church, with LSD as their sacrament. They aimed to introduce it to everyone and called themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love....The Brotherhood sold hashish to fund the making of LSD. They were able to bring drugs across the country, to the East Coast, at a time when airline security was far less stringent than today. The Brotherhood moved to Laguna Beach in 1967 to set up its acid-making operation. The members opened Mystic Arts World, a store, art gallery and gathering place on Pacific Coast Highway....Police began focusing their attention on the Brotherhood, especially when Timothy Leary showed up....Neil Purcell, the retired Laguna Beach police chief who in 1968 arrested Leary. Leary was charged with possession of marijuana, LSD and hashish....But Griggs’ death in 1969 after ingesting psilocybin definitively ended the Brotherhood as it once was... in Colorado in 1981 when Randall was arrested. He said he served five years for conspiracy to smuggle hashish and for passport fraud. Ashbrook served 11 years in prison for hashish smuggling and tax evasion....These days, Ashbrook is a consultant for a medical marijuana company. Griggs Randall and Randall run a jewelry business in San Anselmo, near San Francisco.}}</ref>
* {{cite web |last1=Kane |first1=Rich |title=Orange Sunshine: When Laguna Beach Was the LSD Capital of the World |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqKVN1IH2V8 |website=Laguna Beach Patch |publisher=[[ Patch (website)|Patch]] |access-date=2 July 2021 |language=en |date=December 2011 |quote=Nick Schou, author of "Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World," gives you a tour of the places and characters from a long-gone era of Orange County history. |via=youtube}}


== Books ==
== Books ==
* {{cite book |last1=Tendler |first1=Stewart |last2=May |first2=David |title=The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia : the Story of the LSD Counterculture |date=2007 |publisher=Cyan Books |isbn=978-1-904879-95-4 |url=https://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/lsd/books/belcont.htm <!-- https://archive.org/details/TendlerMayTheBrotherhoodOfEternalLovePanther1984socialHistoryOfLSD_201509 --> |access-date=2 July 2021 |language=en <!-- |quote=First released in 1984, this book became an instant bestseller, and later on, a cult classic. Now updated and containing new material, it tells a brilliantly researched story of a group of idealists fascinated by the potential of LSD to improve the quality of life. Called a hippie mafia by police, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love came to symbolize the rise of LSD, the growth of the psychedelic movement, and the heady, optimistic, revolutionary days of the 1960s. --> |oclc=980273353}}
* {{cite book |last1=Tendler |first1=Stewart |last2=May |first2=David |title=The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia : the Story of the LSD Counterculture |date=2007 |publisher=Cyan Books |isbn=978-1-904879-95-4 |oclc=980273353 |url=https://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/lsd/books/belcont.htm <!-- https://archive.org/details/TendlerMayTheBrotherhoodOfEternalLovePanther1984socialHistoryOfLSD_201509 |language=en <!-- |access-date=2 July 2021 |quote=First released in 1984, this book became an instant bestseller, and later on, a cult classic. Now updated and containing new material, it tells a brilliantly researched story of a group of idealists fascinated by the potential of LSD to improve the quality of life. Called a hippie mafia by police, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love came to symbolize the rise of LSD, the growth of the psychedelic movement, and the heady, optimistic, revolutionary days of the 1960s. --> }}
::First released in 1984
::First released in 1984
* {{cite book |last1=Schou |first1=Nicholas |title=Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World |date=6 December 2011 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=9780312551834 |url=https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429996662 |language=en <!-- |quote=Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia. --> |oclc=428027195}}
* {{cite book |last1=Schou |first1=Nicholas |title=Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World |date=6 December 2011 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=9780312551834 |url=https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429996662 |language=en <!-- |quote=Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia. --> |oclc=428027195}}<ref>{{cite news |last1=Himmelsbach |first1=Erik |title='Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World' by Nicholas Schou |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-mar-24-la-et-book24-2010mar24-story.html |access-date=2 July 2021 |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=24 March 2010 |quote=Many in the brotherhood distrusted Leary, Schou writes. To them, the acid guru was a charlatan, addicted to fame and willing to glom on to anyone willing to help promote his great cause: himself. The entry of the high-profile Leary into the organization was accompanied by increased scrutiny from law enforcement, which prompted many members to flee California for Maui. Filling the void were nefarious characters more interested in money and fear than peace and love. The name of the brotherhood, Schou notes, “now was being hijacked by dope pushers and used as a sales pitch or a marketing device.” After Griggs died in 1969 of a drug overdose, the group lost its tenuous bond. Business became more ruthless. The drugs got heavier. Mistakes were made, and, in 1971, the police finally brought them down.}}</ref>


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 18:53, 2 July 2021

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Founded byJohn Griggs
Founding locationOrange County, California, United States
Criminal activitiesDrug use, manufacturing and distribution

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an organization of drug users and distributors that operated from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s in Orange County, California; they were dubbed the Hippie Mafia.[1] They produced and distributed drugs in hopes of starting a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States.[2]

The organization was started by John Griggs as a commune,[3] but by 1969, had turned to the manufacture of LSD and the importing of hashish.

In 1970, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love hired the radical left organization Weather Underground for a fee of $25,000 to help Timothy Leary make his way to Algeria after he escaped from prison, while serving a ten-year sentence for possession of marijuana.[4][better source needed][5]

Their activities came to an end on August 5, 1972, when a drug raid was executed on the group where dozens of group members in California, Oregon and Maui were arrested. Some who had escaped the raid continued underground or fled abroad.[2] More members were arrested in 1994 and 1996, and the last of them in 2009;[1] Brenice Lee Smith served two months in jail before pleading guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish, and then was released after being sentenced to time served.[6]

In 2010, Nicholas Schou published a book called Orange Sunshine on the brotherhood.[7] In 2016, a documentary directed by William Kirkley also named Orange Sunshine (named after the LSD they distributed) was released.[2]

See also

Film

  • Kirkley, William A. (2016). Orange Sunshine.[8][9]
  • Kane, Rich (December 2011). "Orange Sunshine: When Laguna Beach Was the LSD Capital of the World". Laguna Beach Patch. Patch. Retrieved 2 July 2021 – via youtube. Nick Schou, author of "Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World," gives you a tour of the places and characters from a long-gone era of Orange County history.

Books

First released in 1984

References

  1. ^ a b Schou, Nick (Nov 12, 2009). ""Hippie Mafia" Hash Smuggler Arrested". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  2. ^ a b c Schou, Nick (7 June 2007). "Eternal Sunshine". OC Weekly. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  3. ^ Robinson, Rita (8 April 2016). "Film 'Orange Sunshine', Trippy LSD Love Story". Laguna Beach Independent. Retrieved 2 July 2021. John Griggs founded the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in 1965 and was decreed by avid LSD-advocate and defrocked Harvard professor Timothy Leary as his spiritual guru. Griggs was a tough-guy malcontent from Anaheim who "saw God" the first time he took LSD in 1963. After stealing the drug from a Hollywood producer at gunpoint, Griggs and his buddy drove back to OC, popping pills along the way. "They took a lot," Kirkley said, and Griggs ran for miles in the middle of the night to tell his wife and high-school sweetheart, Carol, how much he loved her and that LSD was the antidote to hate and war. "He was completely transformed," said Kirkley, from thug to flower child with one whopping dose. As the Brotherhood grew, Griggs careened his gang into a tax-exempt church anchored by the headshop Mystic Arts
  4. ^ Brian Flanagan (2002). The Weather Underground (mp4). The Free History Project. Event occurs at 0:59:00. Retrieved March 2, 2012.[dead link‍]
  5. ^ Rudd, Mark (2009). Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. New York City: William Morrow and Company. pp. 225–7. ISBN 978-0061472756.
  6. ^ Schou, Nick (Dec 3, 2009). "Case Closed on "Hippie Mafia" Smugglers". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  7. ^ Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World, Nicholas Schou (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2010), ISBN 9780312551834.
  8. ^ Maerz, Jennifer (2016-11-14). "Retracing the Steps of Psychedelic Outlaws on an LSD Mission From God". KQED. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Church members engineer an international smuggling ring to bring hash, pot, and acid back from sources in Europe and Afghanistan. They trick out their vans and surfboards with secret compartments to hide the contraband from border agents. They launder their money through an art gallery in Laguna Beach, build an LSD lab in Palm Springs, and are ultimately responsible for distributing over 100 million hits of acid....The influence of this resourceful "Hippie Mafia" grew so strong that the acid they widely distributed (including the ubiquitous Orange Sunshine strain, from which the documentary takes its title) ended up in the hands of Steve Jobs and the Beatles.
  9. ^ Boessenkool, Antonie (22 April 2016). "Film flashes back to the days when Laguna Beach was an LSD mecca". Orange County Register. Retrieved 2 July 2021. In the documentary "Orange Sunshine," Brotherhood member Travis Ashbrook recalls traveling to Afghanistan to buy hashish to fund the Brotherhood's LSD-making operation. Ashbrook describes a very different way of air travel at the time, with far less security and scrutiny than today. ...LOCAL KIDS John Griggs was the nucleus of the Brotherhood. He was a bit of a troubled kid. His first experience with LSD came after he and his friends robbed a Hollywood movie producer at gunpoint, relieving him of his drugs....Through parties, dances and at the beach, Griggs and others came together, including Randall and Travis Ashbrook, who grew up in Rossmoor and also spoke with the Register about his time with the Brotherhood....As a group, they moved to Modjeska Canyon and started a church, with LSD as their sacrament. They aimed to introduce it to everyone and called themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love....The Brotherhood sold hashish to fund the making of LSD. They were able to bring drugs across the country, to the East Coast, at a time when airline security was far less stringent than today. The Brotherhood moved to Laguna Beach in 1967 to set up its acid-making operation. The members opened Mystic Arts World, a store, art gallery and gathering place on Pacific Coast Highway....Police began focusing their attention on the Brotherhood, especially when Timothy Leary showed up....Neil Purcell, the retired Laguna Beach police chief who in 1968 arrested Leary. Leary was charged with possession of marijuana, LSD and hashish....But Griggs' death in 1969 after ingesting psilocybin definitively ended the Brotherhood as it once was... in Colorado in 1981 when Randall was arrested. He said he served five years for conspiracy to smuggle hashish and for passport fraud. Ashbrook served 11 years in prison for hashish smuggling and tax evasion....These days, Ashbrook is a consultant for a medical marijuana company. Griggs Randall and Randall run a jewelry business in San Anselmo, near San Francisco.
  10. ^ Himmelsbach, Erik (24 March 2010). "'Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World' by Nicholas Schou". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2 July 2021. Many in the brotherhood distrusted Leary, Schou writes. To them, the acid guru was a charlatan, addicted to fame and willing to glom on to anyone willing to help promote his great cause: himself. The entry of the high-profile Leary into the organization was accompanied by increased scrutiny from law enforcement, which prompted many members to flee California for Maui. Filling the void were nefarious characters more interested in money and fear than peace and love. The name of the brotherhood, Schou notes, "now was being hijacked by dope pushers and used as a sales pitch or a marketing device." After Griggs died in 1969 of a drug overdose, the group lost its tenuous bond. Business became more ruthless. The drugs got heavier. Mistakes were made, and, in 1971, the police finally brought them down.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=The_Brotherhood_of_Eternal_Love&oldid=1031632755"