*Their number encompasses the darkest bogeymen of countercultural nightmares- including Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Reverend Moon -as well as saintly figures devoted to the good of others; outright charlatans, narcissistic psychopaths, deluded New Age prophets as well as genuine gurus. *Since the 1950s, certain charismatic individuals have taken it upon themselves to collect others around them in ‘cults’, rejecting mainstream religion and society in favour of a claim to secret knowledge of the path of liberation. The consequences have often been disastrous, involving the devotees actually getting liberated from their money, freedom - and sometimes, their lives.   *Artist and archivist MICAH MOSES has spent twenty years not only studying cults, new religious movements and individuals of a spiritually inspired nature, but broadcasting their soundtracks to a wider world.   *Micah came to the Bureau ahead of his ‘GODBODY' exhibition around the theme of the New Age showing in London at The Horse Hospital in September 2023.   *This episode of the Bureau contains a selection of strange, esoteric and sometimes sinister sounds from the vast archive he has gathered over the years.    *For more on Micah’s WFMU Music of Mind Control radio show *For the GODBODY exhibition *Join our cult #counterculture #cults #cultleaders #newage #thenewage #secretsocieties #jimjones #jonestown #marshallapplewhite #heavensgate #thechildrenofgod #manson #charlesmanson #davidberg  #scientology #guru #godbody #thehorsehospital

*Roger Huddle is a born and bred Londoner, a working class music-mad mod who grew up in the 50s, got radicalised in the 60s and became a co-founder of one the most successful activist groups of the 70s - Rock Against Racism (RAR).   *RAR was a political and cultural movement which emerged in 1976 in reaction to a rise in racist attacks on the streets of the United Kingdom and increasing support for the far-right National Front at the ballot box.   •Between 1976 and 1982 RAR activists organised national carnivals and tours, as well as local gigs and clubs throughout the country bringing together black and white fans in their common love of music.   *The musicians came from all pop music genres including some of the UK's biggest post-punk and Reggae artists including The Clash, Misty in Roots, Elvis Costello and X-Ray Spex.   *Roger came into the Bureau to tell us all about it  and to school us in the London club scene of the 60s, radical socialism, agit prop, agit-pop, cultural revolution - and William Morris.   •For  more on Roger:  •For more on RAR and Syd Shelton check out the film White Riot  •Image courtesy: John Sturrock   #counterculture #rockagainstracism #rogerhuddle #sydshelton #thenationalfront #racism #thebeats #london #walthamstow #williammorris #socialism #revolution #rockrevolution #theclash #agitprop #trotsky

The pill, Profumo, pornography. Love, liberation and libido. Larkin, Lady Chatterley, Lolita,  *No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and more vilified than the 1960s.  *For some it was a time when music, fashion and drugs enabled young people to express their individuality and freedom and their hopes and dreams of a better world.  For others, it marked the advent of the permissive society, the undermining of authority, family values and common decency.  *And at the heart of this continuing controversy was ..sex.  *PETER DOGGET, journalist, cultural critic and writer, whose book 'Growing Up: Sex in the 60s' takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the sexual revolution, came into the Bureau to explain that while the orgiastic hedonism, ever-changing partners and polymorphous perversity of countercultural myth was enjoyed by a tiny minority, the vast majority of the British population could only gawp from the sidelines, still living in a world  with a moral code that stretched back to the Victorian Age.   We talk about the battle between two opposing forces: the urge to free the body from guilt, and the desire to control, cannibalise and exploit that liberation for profit or pleasure - plus VD, groupies, The Beatles miniskirts, Germaine Greer and Jane Birkin (RIP).   *For more on Peter and his work   *Get our Counterculture newsletter   *The Bureau of Lost Culture Home   #sex #counterculture #sexualrevolution #sexualliberation #libido #permissivesociety #thepill #miniskirt #hippie #commune #blowup #janebirkin #sergegainsbourg #nabokov #freelove #sohoradio    

*As the 60s turned into the 70s, and as some of the technicolour idealistic visions of the first summer of love started to fade, many of the denizens of those decades began to seek Utopia outside the cities of America and Europe. *Communes and communities sprang up in rural areas as spiritual seekers, hopeful hippies, fugitives, folkies, freaks and wild wanderers on the seas of fate tried to create new societies, living by their own values - often away from the watchful eye of the authorities.   *After experiencing a personal catastrophe, musician and writer DAVID BRAMWELL set off in search of salvation by exploring some of the alternative and intentional communities where folk are still trying to build utopia. He came across all sort of strange things and people along the way in an odyssey that took in a 1950s caravan on the northern shores of Scotland, a dominatrix community in the Czech republic and a time machine hidden in a vast underground temple in Italy.   *And he came in to the Bureau of Lost Culture to tell us all about it…   *Check out David's book 'The No. 9 Bus to Utopia', other writings, radio and countercultural projects.   *Get our Counterculture newsletter   *The Bureau of Lost Culture Home   #damanhur #counterculture #findhorn #findhornfoundation #utopia #alternativecommunities #intentionalcommunities #esoteric #hippie #commune #esalen #christiania #pan #devas #cosmic #sohoradio

*'This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius' claimed the first song in the hippie musical Hair in 1967.  And perhaps it was.   *As thousands gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the summer solstice sunrise and hundred of thousands gathered at the Glastonbury festival, Ethan Doyle White came to the Bureau of Lost Culture to talk about Paganism.     *Glastonbury itself is regarded by many as a ‘pagan place’ and many of those 8000 people who gathered at Stonehenge might describe themselves as 'pagans' - part of a counterculture that has roots going back to the pre-Christian era.   *But what does Pagan mean? Where did the word come? We take a trip through pagan history and ask what do modern pagans believe, think and do? We hear about Wicca, Heathens and Druids and delve into earth mysteries, magic, the New Age and psychogeography..   *Happy Solstice Brother and Sisters   For more on Ethan and his beautiful visual history of the Pagan Get our Counterculture newsletter The Bureau of Lost Culture Home   #pagan #counterculture #wicca #heathen #dionfortune #psychedelicsound #witch #esoteric #thegoldendawn #aleistercrowley  #magic #pre-christian

*In a remote village in the Ahl Srif tribal area of Northern Morocco, dwell a collective of Sufi musicians. They play a form of trance music which is used for healing.  Timothy Leary called them The 4,000-year-old Rock’N’Roll band - rather superficial hyperbole perhaps - though it is true that what The Master Musicians of Joujouka play is thousands of years old - and shares something in common with the wildest and most inspired of  rock music.   Record producer, film-maker and Beat historian Frank Rynne, who co-organises their annual festival,  came to the Bureau to tell the strange and wonderful story of the musicians of Joujouka, their culture and their interaction with the counterculture of the 50s and 60s   We hear about Tangier at the time - and the life there of Beat artists Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs with digressions into the dark side of bohemia - along with the story of doomed Rolling Stone Brian Jones who came to record the Master Musicians shortly before his death.   For more on the Master Musicians of Jojouka Get our Counterculture newsletter The Bureau of Lost Culture Home   #joujouka #counterculture #themastermusiciansofjoujouka #sufi #brianjones #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #williamburroughs #briongyson #rollingstones  #beatgeneration #thebeats

*They were psychedelic outlaws holing up in hill country hideouts to escape police harassment, dealing drugs to survive and blasting out a mix of LSD evangelism, mystical philosophy and grooved up rock’n’roll.   *In their short existence, The 13th Floor Elevators succeeded in blowing the lid off the musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinatory take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music.    *Paul Drummond author of 'Eye Mind - the Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators’ deemed the band significant enough to spend eight years of his life researching and writing about them - along with producing the definitve compilations of their work.   *We dig into their craziness - and into Janis Joplin, LSD, peyote, Antonin Artaud, mayhem, madness, music and more.   For More on Paul and his work Get our Counterculture newsletter The Bureau of Lost Culture Home #13thfloorelevators #counterculture #the13thfloorelevators #lsd #acid #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #occult #psychedelic #peyote  #rokyerickson #esoteric

*If they were a cult, they were a very British cult.   *In the 1920s if you had seen strangely attired groups of people walking in formation along southern England's pagan pathways and round its prehistoric stone circles, you may have encountered The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.   *They shared their initials - and a predeliction for arcane symbols, pointy hoods and cloaks - with the Ku Klux Klan but that's where the similarities end. *They thought they were spiritual samurai, rebuilding Britain after the Great War with magical rituals, outdoor living and utopian vision. They were clean-living proto-new age weekend hippies directed by a messianic autocratic visionary and produced extraordinary art and craft of graphics, symbols, costumes.   *They remain one of our most fascinating and forgotten countercultural groups.   *They also inspired a '70s rock opera..   *Annebella Pollen, author of a wonderful book on the Kindred, came to the Bureau to tell us all about them and about some of the other strange esoteric groups that flourished in between the world wars.   The episode contains music from Chris Judge Smith and Maxwell Hutchinson's rock opera Kibbo Kift   *For Bella’s book:  The Kindred of The Kibbo Kift   *Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC   *Listen to all our shows www.bureauoflostculture.com     Photo: Angus Macbean #london #counterculture #naturism #greenshirts #havelockellis #hgwells #aleistercrowley #occult #kibbokift #thekindredofthekibbokift #cults #cult #occult #esoteric #camping

"You do it to yourself" sang Radiohead Well that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode.   Historian of the mind MIKE JAY returns to the Bureau to tell of the intrepid scientists, artists, writers and thinkers who were experimenting with psychoactive substances and recording their experiences in the Victorian age and onwards.     But the notion that researchers might partake of drugs if they were going to have something valuable to say about them became unacceptable.   And we hear about the first British psychedelic experiences of Aleister Crowley, W B Yeats, Havelock Ellis and Maude Gone along with some of the lesser known London Psychonauts huffing ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide in the pursuit of knowledge during the 19th century counterculture.   For Mike's book: Psychonauts: drugs and the making of the modern mind    Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC   Listen to all our shows www.bureauoflostculture.com   #london #drugs #psychoactive #psychedelic #humphreydavy #wbyeats #aleistercrowley #occult #jameslee #morphine #heroin #opium #hashish #nitrousoxide #science

*Do you believe it's possible to know the future?   *Deep in the heart of the countercultural 60s, when the boundaries of consciousness were being explored and pushed forward, when human achievements were coming thick and fast, a psychiatrist and a rather un-counterculural science journalist, prompted by a terrible disaster, carried out a peculiar experiment with time..   *Writer SAM KNIGHT comes to the Bureau to tell their strange story and that of The Premonition Bureau - an attempt to harness the intuitions of the British public in order to predict - and possibly avoid - disasters.   *Visions of the future, foresight, foretelling, divination and  prophecies have populated myth, literature and history - the notion that time is not linear is even gaining currency in science, but is it really possible to anticipate what has not yet happened?   *We talk about all this and about writing, listening, the placebo and nocebeo effects, about psychic research.  voodoo death phenomenon and the writing of his wonderful book.   *Sam's book 'The Premonition Bureau' https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571357567-the-premonitions-bureau/ *Sign up for the Bureau of Lost Culture bulletin https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC   *The Story of the Brompton Time Machine https://soundcloud.com/the-real-tuesday-weld-1/the-brompton-time-machine   Jeff Edwards - the last child to be pulled from the Aberfan wreckage.    #premonitions, #time, #aberfan, #mentalhealth, #london #vision, #prophecy, #disaster, #peterfairley, #jcbarker, #psychiatry, #counterculture, #premonitionbureau, #foresight, #precognition #dreams