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