Everyone knows that the 1970s was a very “interesting” decade. An era of druggy, sexual excess that saw the “Me Generation” do their collective thing, no matter how far out that sort of behavior would have seemed just ten years earlier. But it wasn’t just that sex, drugs and rock and roll went mainstream in a big way in the 70s, the occult was so… well commonplace then that the likes of LOOK magazine would publish entire issues on the subject, with Anton LaVey as the cover boy. Even the normally staid women’s magazine McCall’s published a quite remarkable (and lengthy) round-up article on not merely “new agey” or culty belief systems, but the more “evil” side of things as well. TIME magazine had a 1972 cover story declaring “Satan Returns.” (First TIME was wondering aloud if God was dead, now this!)
 

 
But if you REALLY want to get across the point of just how far the occult craze penetrated American popular culture at the time, look no further than the Man, Myth & Magic publication. Originally sold as a newsstand magazine in the UK, Man, Myth & Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural was reformatted by the publisher for the US market as 23 hardback volumes with a 24th being the very detailed and cross-referenced index. Exorcism. Indian snake charmers. Astrology. Voodoo. Weird ghostly voices appearing on tape recordings. Witchcraft. Cargo cults. Nostradamus. Alchemy. Hypnosis. Tarot. Demonology. Aleister Crowley. Norse gods. Buddhism. ESP. UFOs. Zombies. Paganism. Telekinesis. Drugs. Rituals. Stonehenge, etc. You get the idea. But as sensationalist (and DARK!) as the trappings of the publication generally were, the editorial was scholarly, even academic, and lavishly illustrated in full color.

But what most people don’t recall (but many will) is that Man, Myth & Magic was actually sold in drugstores and supermarkets. It was also heavily advertised on television with a commercial featuring the demonic face you see above, painted by Austin Osman Spare. Imagine that! (Actually you don’t have to imagine anything, the commercial’s embedded at the end of this post).
 

 
This… happened! Although I was far too young for it at the time, I can vividly recall a huge display in the cereal aisle (natch) for Man, Myth & Magic at the local Kroger in my hometown of Wheeling, WV. If it got as far as a podunk town Wheeling, with a very large in-store display to boot, that’s a pretty good indication of what sort of distribution they had for it. Note at the end of the TV commercial they mention that you can buy it at the Walgreens chain, indicating that Walgreens was probably underwriting part of the cost to air the spot.

This would, of course, NEVER happen today, but back then? Man, Myth & Magic was sold next to the Count Chocula!
 

 
Continues after the jump…

 
The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council of Los Angeles posted a letter, written by either a child or someone rather child-like, to their Facebook page with the caption “We enjoy reading your letters and emails, like this one that came all the way from Milwaukee.”
 

 
Apparently dog, cat, and human sacrifices are not wanted by anyone in Eagle Rock, or the rest of the United States, for that matter—and besides, human sacrifice is illegal!

LAist.com reported on the supposed “Satanic cult”:

A little internet-sleuthing reveals that a group with an Eagle Rock P.O. box made the cut of an old list of Satanic cults. It seems that along with JNCO jeans and the X-Files, Satanic ritual abuse panic is making a comeback. The group is called Feraferia and it was formally chartered by Fred Adams in 1967 who lived in Pasadena and used to take groups up into the San Gabriel Mountains for rituals, according to a website dedicated to the group. The group was an offshoot of neopaganism dedicated to Hellenic goddess. It is big on being in touch with nature, the Goddess, faeries, vegetarianism and optional nudity.

Adams eventually moved up north to Nevada City with to be with his soul mate and co-ritualist Lady Svetlana in the 90s and he died in the late aughts.

So apparently the author of that letter has some out-dated information on cult activity in Eagle Rock—which is a welcome relief! With that problem out of the way, the neighborhood can now get to the more pressing matter of building that desalination plant and the sabotage-proof pipeline nets.

H/T: LAist.com

 
Even in the twisted milieu of pulp illustration, Lee Brown Coye was an outlier. His was not a world of square-jawed detectives or musclebound Tarzan manqués, nor was he one to luridly but lovingly render the adipose flesh of reanimated dead in colorful gouaches. Coye did ten darkly expressionistic covers for Weird Tales between the mid ‘40s and early ‘50s, in dolefully subdued shades that emerged from dense, nihilistic black fields to coalesce into nightmarish wraiths. It was strong stuff that recalled Emil Nolde and Georges Roualt, and even if he’d never done anything else, those covers and his black and white interior work for that publication surely would have made him the cult figure who inspired Mike Mignola, Guillermo del Toro, and Stephen King. But there were also his macabre black and white ink drawings that graced book covers for the likes of Arkham House and Farrar & Reinhart. Coye secured his reputation with his work for the Sleep No More anthology before going on to produce definitive covers for H.P. Lovecraft works like The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, and perhaps his masterpiece, his work on Three Tales of Horror, which sports 19 Coye illustrations, all more than sufficiently disquieting to merit accompanying Lovecraft’s dark mythos.
 

 

 
More eldritch darkness after the jump…

When I was a kid I was told that Ouija boards were portals to Hell. That used to really freak me out, until I realized that I don’t believe in Hell.

Now that I’m past all that superstitious mumbo-jumbo, I’m completely charmed by the jewelry of UK punk and Occult artist Bex Ling which features Ouija boards, crystal balls, seeing eyes, palmistry, and the hands of fortune tellers. Not one piece of it emits a whiff of bad juju to me.

Her jewelry, sold under her company Misfit Makes, is crafted out of the same material that Shrinky Dinks are made of, so I doubt that it’s opening any windows of evil.

I predict you’ll take a look at some of her pieces:

 
“Gypsy-inspired” fortune teller’s necklace

 
Ouija board necklace

 
Palmistry brooch

 
Pentagram earrings

 
If “Subtle” and/or “Danger” is your middle name, there’s a vehicle in South Los Angeles perfect for you. Described as an “awesome project that you can drive as you restore,” this 1969 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 75 limousine is priced to sell at $2999. 

Wait, did you see that custom paint job? Let’s stop to appreciate this badass Caddy. Not only is this limo’s tail fin spray-painted in red to read, “I’m gonna f*cking kill you” and the side, “Go to Hell,” its hood has been tastefully decorated with an (upside down) satanic pentagram. Additionally, its Craigslist ad explains that there is a working partition window which “makes drinking legal in the back.”

 
Want a really good story? Talk the owner down to $2666.

via Deke Dickerson

 
Submitted for your approval are two priceless videos from the cusp of the late ‘80s “Satanic Panic” era which, despite the outrageously ridiculous performances, are an insight into just how seriously some folks took the threat of creeping occultism at the time. Placed in historical context, this was the start of a cycle of hysteria so real that many high-profile arrests were made based on groundless allegations of “Satanic ritual abuse,” most notably the McMartin Preschool and West Memphis Three cases. It was a heavy time for followers of the left-hand path, but these clips remain utterly hilarious.
 

Wally George, host of ‘Hot Seat’

Hot Seat was a syndicated talk show, running from 1983 to 1992, hosted by over-the-top reactionary conservative commentator (and estranged father of actress Rebecca De Mornay), Wally George, who termed his delivery “combat TV.” The show’s format was a precursor to the popular “shock talk” shows hosted by the likes of Morton Downey, Jr. and Jerry Springer, with a profoundly right-wing posture. Hot Seat‘s studio audience was generally comprised of aggressively out-of-control meatheads, as you will see in these clips.

In the segments, Wally brings ‘80s uproarious cult goth band, Radio Werewolf - led by Nikolas Schreck, onto the program, and is given the treatment.

Since the mid 80’s Schreck has been a major figure in occult circles, having been a public spokesman at times for the Church of Satan, the Temple of Set, and his own Werewolf Order.

Schreck married Zeena, daughter of Church of Satan founder, Anton LaVey, and the two of them together have published several acclaimed books on occult and esoteric subjects such as The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman and Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left-Hand Path Sex Magic.

 

Schreck, pictured here with wife Zeena, who co-directed Radio Werewolf from 1988-93. Both renounced Satanism and occultism in the late ‘90s and today are artists and Buddhist teachers.
 
I had the opportunity to discuss Radio Werewolf’s Hot Seat appearances with Nikolas, in this exclusive Dangerous Minds interview:

I was initially aware of one appearance Radio Werewolf made on Hot Seat, but your webmaster informed me that you actually appeared on the show twice.

Nikolas Schreck: Well, thank God you turned to me to correct your appalling ignorance on these matters of earth-shaking importance! Now future historians can use your article to confirm that in fact, Radio Werewolf battled Wally George an unholy three times. Our first titanic Hot Seat struggle took place on April 25, 1987. That went over so well that he then invited us on his radio program, where Wally started things off with a bang with a little flattery, introducing me as more dangerous than Hitler, Jim Jones and Manson. The other guest that night was a Baptist minister who officially declared me possessed. Our final Armageddon of the airwaves occurred in the Fall of ‘87, when Radio Werewolf returned to Hot Seat to declare our triumphant return to the stage after the little obstacle of my ear getting cut off during that eventful summer. And that event led to a kind of “Brides of Radio Werewolf” spinoff, since Wally, admirer of the ladies that he was, was so taken with two of my stripper girlfriends who accompanied me to the show that he later had them on as guests so that he could pretend moral outrage at our sinful ménage à trois. If I’d paid Wally to be Radio Werewolf’s publicist, he couldn’t have done a better job.

Wally George’s presentation is so exaggerated that at times he comes off as, what would be known in the world of professional wrestling, a “heel.” Did you ever get the impression that there was any insincerity or fakery to George’s act?

NS: Wally was a consummate showman, no more or less insincere or fake than his showbiz idol Ronald Reagan, who both cunningly played exaggerated roles for their niche Neanderthal audience in the grand old tradition of American populist demagoguery. Offstage, Wally was unfailingly courteous to me, and was actually genuinely supportive of my career, despite his on-the-air hostility. Hard to say which one of us was “the heel” or “the face”. Our encounters were definitely “kayfabe” professional wrestling at its finest though. The difference being that what we did when the cameras rolled was completely improvised. We served each others needs. I understood that Radio Werewolf couldn’t be “The Most Evil Band in the World” without a worthy Van Helsing adversary such as Wally to oppose us. And he needed me to be the “Man You Love To Hate” so that he could be the “Good Guy” for his fans. Really, the supposedly more legitimate network news journalists who interviewed me were all just as contrived and two-faced as Wally.  At least he was honest about it.
 

 
In the OC Weekly article on Wally George you are quoted “the audience was whipped into a genuine frenzy. They did not take it as a joke, and it felt very dangerous to be there.” Do you feel there was a closed loop between exploitative infotainers such as Wally George and Geraldo Rivera, and a fearful Cold War era public that created the Satanic Panic of the 80’s? Did you personally experience repercussions as a result of your appearances on Hot Seat?

NS: The live audiences watching the Radio Werewolf appearances on Hot Seat could easily have turned into lynch mobs, but I was as recklessly irresponsible as Wally in feeding fuel to the fire. It’s astute that you place all this in its Cold War context, because looking at these and other wacky ‘80s clips today without understanding the panicky fear of imminent nuclear Armageddon permeating the USA under the Reagan regime, it’s hard to understand the hysterical theological intensity driving the Satanic Panic. Wally and Geraldo were both simply fear-mongering entertainers making a living by giving the terrified audience exactly what they wanted. And I was part of the same closed loop, in that I collaborated with them by consciously embodying their worst fears, since that early phase of Radio Werewolf was designed as a self-parodying, mirroring manifestation of that society’s deepest nightmares about “occult music”. As for repercussions, Wally first invited us on Hot Seat after the horrified reaction in Los Angeles to my public announcement of Radio Werewolf’s “Free Manson” benefit concert at a Friday the 13th performance in March of ‘87. That was immediately followed by many months of death threats, LAPD surveillance and harassment of me and my friends, blacklisting and banning from certain clubs, the need to have security guards patrol our concerts, so I can’t determine how much of these shenanigans were inspired by the Wally vs. Werewolf broadcasts specifically.
 
More interview and those amazing clips after the jump.

 
Since he supplied us with a visual vocabulary for cutesy dread over many decades, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Edward Gorey designed a set of whimsical tarot cards. The set is called the “Fantod Pack,” the word fantod signifying “a state of worry or nervous anxiety, irritability” and thus possibly the most Edward Gorey word ever. (David Foster Wallace was fond of the word as well, using the phrase “howling fantods” multiple times in Infinite Jest; the main clearinghouse website for DFW information is called The Howling Fantods.) 

Not surprisingly, Gorey’s tarot set is (a) not precisely a tarot set, (b) reflexively downbeat, (c) more like a parody of a tarot set, and (d) utterly hilarious. Seriously, and I know that he is known for this style of humor, but looking over the Fantod Pack will give you a whole new appreciation for the possibilities of the deadpan mode of humor. Why is the “Stones” card so funny, when it’s just a little drawing of three plinths of varying size? Somehow the silly self-seriousness of the project is communicated. The backs of the cards feature a typically Goreyish creature called a “Figbash.” Here’s one now:
 

 
Authorship of the Fantod Deck is attributed to a “Madame Groeda Wyrde,” which might engage the minds of those of you who enjoy anagrams. The instructions are as hilarious as the other elements of the set, as for instance:
 

Interpretation must always depend on the character and circumstances of the person consulting the pack. What might portend a wipe-out for a teenage hotdogger from Yokohama, might warn an octogenarian spinster in Minot, North Dakota, of a fall in the bathtub, though, of course, the results might come to much the same thing.

 
Ahem: “To read your fortune, first shuffle the pack and take it in your left hand. Stand in the centre of a sparsely furnished room and close your eyes. Fling the pack into the air. Keep your eyes closed. Pick up five cards and place them face up in the form of a cross.” Then you’re supposed to read the cards in the following fashion. The center card shows your current situation, the top card depicts “something from the past that continues to affect your future,” on the left is your “inner self,” the card on the right shows “the outer world,” and the bottom card displays “something about to come into being in the near future.”
 

 
Every card comes with an evocative list of associated words, and these too are simply brilliant. Unfailingly austere and morbid—nobody’s meeting a dark & handsome stranger in this set—the peculiar word choices only enhance the grim comedy, with bizarre words like chagrin, bêtise, megrims, impetigo, catarrh, inanition, cafard, barratry, and champerty lending everything a flushed air of erudite and anemic horror.

Some sources falsely attribute the deck to the 1995, which is when Gorey made the first set available. Its origins actually trace back to an issue of Esquire in the 1960s. An unauthorized deck was printed in 1969, after which an authorized limited edition of 776 copies was created (750 numbered, and 26 lettered) in 1995. Since 2007 it is available as an unlimited deck; you can get it from Amazon for about ten bucks. Copies of the 1995 limited edition set run much, much higher, though—there are three of them available on Amazon for $450 each.   
 

“The Sea”
January / wasting / loss of ears / an accident in an elevator / lurching sickness / cracks / false affection / vapors / a secret enemy / misdirection / demons / estrangement / chagrin
 

“The Limb”
February / miscarriage of justice / gapes / a forged snapshot / morbid sensations / a useless sacrifice / alopecia / a generalized calamity / broken promises / ignominy / an accident in a theatre / fugues / poverty
 

“The Stones”
March / a forged letter / paralysis / false arrest / falling sickness / evil communications / estrangement / a sudden affliction / anemia / strife / a distasteful duty / misconstruction
 
The rest of this great tarot deck is after the jump…..

3-7-00
 
Reading these flyers, distributed in Chicago in 1999 and 2000, is a very dizzying experience. I think we all have an idea what numerology is and how it works; it’s quite another thing to see it practiced with such vigor.

The author of these flyers is unknown. Here is the author’s declaration, taken from 2/1/00, of the conspiracy he or she is purporting to uncover, which is about an “ancient order” that controls most of the important events that happen on earth: “The ANCIENT ORDER not only tells the future; they decide it. The ANCIENT ORDER decide what outcome they want. Then they use this (over 300 years old) Laser Ray system to control the public, who do not know.”

They were found by Marc Fischer inside free newspaper dispensers on the streets of downtown Chicago between March 1999 and March 2000. Here is Fischer’s account of finding the mysterious photocopies:
 

These photocopied flyers were found over the course of a year in downtown Chicago. The main purpose of each flyer is to bring to light the mysterious workings of a group called “The Ancient Order” - who this group is, when they will strike in the future, what they were responsible for in the past, and how they have left their mark throughout history. Neither I nor anyone I know ever saw the person that was behind these flyers. The flyers were often hard to find if you weren’t paying close attention or in the right place at the right time. Every flyer is a single sided 8 1/2” X 11” photocopy, though several are longer and feature two or more pages stapled together.

The flyers were only found inside free newspaper dispensers. Like newspapers, the flyers were always dated, and were folded so that the bold headlines could be read along the top. Only the most recent flyer was ever available; back issues did not recirculate. The flyers were frequently left in the same locations but distribution was erratic and unpredictable. Usually only one copy of the day’s report was available in a dispenser. The dispenser’s clear plastic display window was always used for maximum visibility, but extra copies were rarely left inside the boxes. I have never seen more than three copies of the same flyer and I doubt that many copies of each one exist. There was never a contact address on the flyers or a way to subscribe.

Almost exactly one year after I first saw an Ancient Order flyer, they seem to have stopped circulating completely. The last flyer I found, “The Ancient Order and the Pearl Harbor Prevision”, is dated 3-17-2000.

 
 
In addition to the ones selected here, you can see the entire set at Ubuweb, along with Fischer’s description. There are 40 “issues” spanning 47 pages. Most of the issues are a single-page long, with the longest covering six pages.

Let’s have a look at the technique of the author. This excerpt, which comes from 12-17-99, is chosen almost at random:
 

President Lincoln was assassinated on 4-14-1865, the 23,846th day of the 1800’s. 36,535 - 23,846 = 12,679. Lincoln was assassinated 12,679 days before theend of the 1800’s.

13,000 - 12,679 = 321. Notice how far 12,679 is from 13,000. The difference is 321, just like 3,2,1, a countdown. Now look at Lincoln’s name total:

A(1) B(2) R(18) A(1) H(8) A(1) M(13)=44
L(12) I(9) N(14) C(3) O(15) L(12) N(14)=79
44+79=123

President Lincoln’s name adds to exactly 123. And that was from the day he was born in 1809. He was assassinated 12,679 days before the end of the century and 12,679 is exactly 123 away from 13,000. 123 & 321 are the exact opposite of each other.

 
Lest anyone think I’m out to distort the author in some way by truncating the arguments contained in the flyers, I emphasize that this bit of prose is complete on its own terms. The significance of the number 13,000 is not explained, nor is the significance of the “countdown” number 123.

Some of the manipulations are not numeric but alphabetical in nature, like anagrams or noticing that three important presidents (Lincoln, Nixon, and Clinton) can be linked by the I-O pattern in their last names, stuff like that. The near-anagrams “Dorian” and “Gordian,” as in “Gordian Knot,” get quite a workout.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the author was able to shoehorn any event at all into the numerological scheme of the Ancient Order. Here is a partial list of topics that (so the author claims) the Ancient Order caused or was involved in:
 

Adolf Hitler
the Los Alamos nuclear test sites
Voltaire
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
the assassination of John F. Kennedy
the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
the death of Lady Diana
the OJ Simpson case
the Branch Davidian showdown at Waco
the Oklahoma City bombing
Ellen Degeneres
the Dred Scott case
the Holocaust
the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
the Columbine killings
Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution
Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray
the Susan Smith murders
the impeachment of Bill Clinton
the death of Bruce Lee
the murders committed by John Wayne Gacy
the murders committed by Jeffrey Dahmer
the murders committed by Charles Manson and the Family
the murder of Gianni Versace
the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
the Pearl Harbor attack
the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby
the March of Dimes
the assassination of Julius Caesar

 
In hindsight we can perhaps be grateful that the author apparently ceased production of these flyers before 9/11. If he or she lived to see it, we can only suppose that this defender of the peoples of the earth from the malign influence of the Ancient Order fairly went out of his or her mind.

Here are a few tasty examples of the Ancient Order flyers. Clicking on any of the pictures will spawn a much larger image.
 

4-9-99
 
More tweaked numerology after the jump…

The cover of Alice Bailey’s 1934 book.
 
Recently, I was reading a feature about Jonathan Richman in a 1986 issue of SPIN. This startling (to me, anyway) quote from Lou Reed jumped off the page:

One of my big mistakes was turning [Richman] on to Alice Bailey, that’s where that insect song comes from. I said, “Do you know, Jonathan, that insects are a manifestation of negative ego thoughts? That’s on page 114.” So he got that. That’s a dangerous set of books. That’s why Billy Name locked himself in his darkroom at Andy Warhol’s Factory for five months.

Wait a minute: Lou Reed was interested in Alice Bailey? Like, the theosophist Alice Bailey? Like, the musician Lou Reed, from New York City? Magic And Loss, okay, but I can’t hardly believe that the Lou Reed I’ve listened to for most of my life ever gave a flying fuck about esoteric matters. And that’s why Billy Name became such a recluse? Shut the front door, I said to the 1986 issue of SPIN; surely, Lou was pulling the journalist’s leg, putting him on, taking the piss.

How little I know. As it turns out, not only was Reed genuinely interested in Bailey’s work, but the Velvets’ “White Light/White Heat” was inspired by Bailey’s A Treatise on White Magic. That “white light goin’ messin’ up my mind” wasn’t just the rush of speed; Lou was singing about some heavy astral shit! Rock historian Richie Unterberger developed the Reed/Bailey connection while researching his White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-by-Day. Here’s Unterberger’s take on the song’s relationship to Bailey’s teachings, and to Reed’s occult interests:

Specifically, “White Light/White Heat” is often assumed to be about the exhilarating effects of crystal methedrine amphetamines, and Reed does say the song “is about amphetamines” in his 1971 interview with Metropolitan Review. But an equally likely, and perhaps more interesting, inspiration is Alice Bailey’s occult book A Treatise on White Magic. It advises control of the astral body by a “direct method of relaxation, concentration, stillness and flushing the entire personality with pure White Light, with instructions on how to ‘call down a stream of pure White Light.’” And it’s known for certain that Reed was familiar with the volume, as he calls it “an incredible book” in a November 1969 radio interview in Portland, Oregon.

Additionally, in his “I Was a Velveteen” article in Kicks, Rob Norris remembers Reed explaining “White Light/White Heat” as one example of “how a lot of his songs embodied the Virgo-Pisces [astrological] opposition and could be taken two ways.” Norris, who would get to know the band personally at the Boston Tea Party, also thinks the “white light” concept might have informed another of the album’s songs, “I Heard Her Call My Name.” “He was very interested in a form of healing just using light, projecting light,” says Norris today.

Incidentally, Reed wasn’t the only major ‘60s rock artist influenced by Bailey; Kinks guitarist Dave Davies discusses white light energy in his autobiography Kink, which reprints a couple extended quotes from Bailey’s books. Also interested in “white light” was Lou’s friend from the Factory who ended up doing the White Light/White Heat cover, Billy Name. According to Reed’s unpublished 1972 ZigZag interview, Name “got so far into it he locked himself in a closet for two years, and just never came out…I know what he was doing because I was the one who started him on the books [by Alice Bailey on magic], and we went through all fifteen volumes.”

 

 
In this excerpt from The Velvet Underground Day-by-Day, Unterberger gives a detailed account of Reed’s 1969 interview with Portland radio station KVAN. Here’s the relevant passage:

The Velvets will later be portrayed as a kind of ultimate anti-psychedelic group, but are in fact very much people of their time. Reed even steers this particular discussion in a direction that would find favor with the most spaced-out of hippies. He’s just had his aura read, he says, and had his previous incarnations revealed by a ‘reverend’ in Los Angeles, where “they told Doug, for instance, if you have long hair, you should always get it trimmed a little, get the ends cut off, because you’d pick up spiritual wasps.” (For the record, Lou’s aura was white, with “some blue, some green.”) Reed also reveals that he’s had 1,143 past lives. “Geez, that’s a lotta lives,” the deejay replies.

Reed goes on to hint at the origin of the “white light” he sings about in ‘White Light/White Heat’ when he reveals that he has recently been investigating a Japanese form of healing in Los Angeles that’s “a way of giving off white light … I’ve been involved and interested in what they call white light for a long time.” He briefly talks about Alice Bailey and her occult book A Treatise On White Magic, another likely source of his interest in white light. “It costs like ten dollars, unfortunately,” he notes apologetically. (Reed’s interest in such matters might later seem rather unlikely, given his hard-bitten, realist image. But Rob Norris recalls discussing “angels, saints, the universe, diet, yoga, meditation, Jesus, healing with music, cosmic rays, and astrology” with Reed in the late 60s in an article for Kicks magazine. Furthermore, he recalls Reed being a member of the Church Of Light in New York, which studied Bailey’s work as part of its theosophical teachings.)

Lita Eliscu’s 1970 Crawdaddy interview with Reed, “A Rock Band Can Be A Form of Yoga” (reprinted in All Yesterdays’ Parties), also mentions Reed’s interest in Bailey’s writings—to wit, “The teaching planned by the Hierarchy to precede and condition the New Age, the Aquarian Age.” News to me. Despite the song’s obvious beauty, I always figured Lou was merely being snide in the chorus of “New Age.”

Here’s a frenzied “White Light/White Heat” from one of the Velvets’ Boston Tea Party shows in 1969:
 

 
Like a modern day Lazarus, disgraced evangelist and ex-con Jim Bakker has risen from the dead. The Howdy Doody from hell has a new base of operations in the Ozarks. It’s called Morningside and is a smaller version of his gaudy, ill-fated, Christian theme park Heritage USA. Morningside’s not far from Branson, where the rotten egg smell of meth labs mingles with the Old Spice and lavender scent of sexagenarians lining up for “Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner & Show.” The oleaginous huckster’s proximity to hillbilly Vegas is perfect - kind of like finding crab lice in a commune.

Morningside has a TV studio that airs a handful of programs, most of which feature Bakker and his new wife Lori. Now Lori ain’t no Tammy Faye by a long shot but they both share the same startled expression in their eyes - a wide-eyed, caught in the headlights look, that comes from years of staring at a husband who looks like a demented sock puppet.

The Jim Bakker Show has its own hard hitting investigative journalist named Zach Drew. As you can see in the video below, Zach is a pretty excitable guy. When he lands a major scoop, like cows with mystical hairdos, he practically wets himself. You got to admire his enthusiasm even as you wonder what’s crawled up the reporter’s bunghole to make him so damned giddy.

Anyway, here’s some “Breaking News!” from The Jim Bakker Show that somehow managed to fly under the radar of all of the major news outlets. It’s the mystery of the red-haired heifer - what Jim Bakker calls “a supernatural event.” I’m a bit bewildered as to why the heifer’s markings (it looks like the number 7) qualify as supernatural. Maybe it’s because I’m a non-believer when it comes to follicle-related miracles involving cattle. A red-haired cow with a massive rockabilly quiff or Afro might grab my attention. But the markings on this little lady doesn’t really do much for me. And I’m currently tripping on 400 mics of pure LSD.

If after viewing the video, you’re at all curious about the Biblical significance of the number seven click here. Otherwise, do what I did - drop another tab of acid.

In the book of Revelation there are seven churches, seven angels to the seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpet plagues, seven thunders and the seven last plagues. The first resurrection of the dead takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for the Church.

The heifer harbinger of the end times doesn’t appear until around the ten-minute point in the video but the lead-up is worth viewing just to witness Zach Drew’s delusional notion that this is the scoop of the century.