Aloha, LSD played a significant role in the extension of occultural world views in the San Francisco Bay Area's post WII counterculture. But the drug arrived not just with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters but also with elements of the CIA and messing around with mind control. Conflicting politics of derangement, so to speak. The SF Weekly has an informative story--Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD--describing some of the CIA's efforts to push mind bending control of unsuspecting dosees via LSD, illicit sex, and the like. This is an aspect of the overall MK Ultra history that has not been well reported previously. I find it interesting that LSD use served two more or less opposing goals in the same place and time--one aiming to expand consciousness for most if not all, and the other intending to destabilize consciousness for the political benefit of a national intelligence agency. One strikes me as liberating and democratic and straightforward, the other as oppressive and colonizing and hypocritical. My own sense, having encountered LSD first through the human potential route, is that the drug does not so much induce belief in occulture where none existed before as suspend some motivations for disbelief in occulture. Honestly, I cannot imagine what a secret dosage of LSD by the CIA would have led me to believe or not vis a vis occulture. But I'm tending to go with legions of devils and blazes of hellfire and a lifetime of troubles. Much like some of the actual dosees declare even decades later. In any case, list members interested in occult aspects of post WWII counterculture may find this report useful. http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-03-14/news/cia-lsd-wayne-ritchie-george-h-white-mk-ultra/ Musing Bad Trips Courtesy Elements Of the CIA! Rose, Pitch