Aloha,

On Sat, 11 Oct 2014 13:09:15 -0700, [log in to unmask]  
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi, Pitch -
>
>
> Speaking of 'love alchemy', I recollect that Rexroth
> provided a great essay for the intro to Waite's  *The
> Holy Kabbalah*, with an excerpt below :

During the 50s and 60s, Kenneth Rexroth was a local/regional
literary celebrity in the SF Bay Area, prominent in the San
Francisco Renaissance/Beat scene. Local popular culture tended
then to cherish such celebrities (a tradition dating back to Emperor  
Norton).
Thanks to his early experiences with the Wobblies and the like,
he worked to bring topics of high culture and intellectual discourse to
wider public attention. Generally via short, critical essays in popular
magazines and local newspapers.

I am sure that a weekly dose of Rexroth in the SF Examiner
during my teen aged years influenced me in all sorts of ways.
Critical thinking, good writing, poetical visions, magical world view...

Online archive of Rexroth's essays--still worth a read, IMHO!:

http://bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/index.htm

What I recollect about the early-mid 60s SF avante garde scene,
which I closely observed (but could participate in only a bit, because
SF and its club/theater/gallery/restaurant scene was across the Bay
and more or less closed to teen agers) was that, so far as magic
was mentioned or openly performed, it was either Western Esotericism--
like the Kaballah Rexroth discusses, Tarot, astrology, or Golden Dawn
variations--or something drawn from some varieties of Buddhism,
Taoism, or, more rarely, Hindu Tantra.

Often combined with environmentalist, experimentalist, Leftist,
culturally avante garde, or human potentialist themes. Sometimes
also including some commercialism--saleable objects d'art or
performances or pieces of writing.

What I still regard as somewhat amazing was that topics like these
were legitimate topics of discussion in the popular--if sometimes
progressive--local/regional media. Not really sensationalized or simply
disparaged. Taken seriously as something to think about.

What changed the avante garde culture tellingly was the intertwined
rise of sex--topless bars (it was a quiet, memorable point of town pride  
that
Carol Doda had attended my junior high school)--drugs--Merry Pranksters,
Owsley Stanley, electric kool aid acid tests--and rock n roll--SF bands,  
psychedelia,
and all. Plus the advent of LaVey's Church of Satan and nascent  
Neo-Paganism.

SF Bay Area occulture reached out and drew in more different, even novel,
sorts of magic. (Datewise, we are getting into the 70s, past the Beat  
period.)

The nationalization of the media, I'd say now, tended to sensationalize
and disparage these (and other linked) topics and drive them deeper
underground, mobilizing countercultural vigor. Folks didn't want to read
the likes of Rexroth in an established local newspaper but to garner
hipper insights from the Berkeley Barb.

Musing SF Bay Area Avante Garde Culture Shifted Toward Counter Culture!  
Rose,

Pitch










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