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COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 2

If some of the ideas and hypotheses put forward in the main article on this page are conjectural, it is hard to argue against the many changes that have come our way through stuff that happened in the late 60s. But while many of the changes have been slow in coming and subtle in their effects, they were not all like that.
.....There were some dramatic changes that took place almost immediately. One of these was in the sudden expansion in the number of books on mystical, metaphysical, spiritual and similar subjects. Of course, such books had always been published. The big change was that suddenly they started to sell -- big time. The change in consciousness that this represented was immense.
.....In 1965, as a young aspirant to the hip culture, I tried to find a book on yoga. Living in London, I had the famous Charing Cross Road -- wall to wall bookshops with Foyles, a some-what tarnished crown, at its head -- in which to pursue my task. I didn't have the time to browse so I went straight to the counter in each shop and asked: "Do you have any books on yoga?" The most intelligent and knowledgeable response I got ended up offering me a book on yoghurt-making. Even that was a pretty avant-garde subject for a bookshop to have something on -- yoghurt not yet having made the transition from Shangrila to Safeway. What I found was that almost no one had even heard of yoga and none of the book-shops, mainstream or specialised,stocked books on such an esoteric subject. In the end, in the Penguin Bookshop (claim to fame: 'Every Penguin in Print',) I found a book called 'Yoga' by a nice man called Ernest Wood. At the same time I picked up a copy of 'Buddhism' by Christmas Humphreys. I still have both books, though they are now so yellow with age that they look like they have been through a golden shower. I had read Kerouac's 'The Dharma Bums' and now I was about to find out what the title meant.
.....There is a point to the story and the point is this: pre-1967 no one had heard of yoga; post-1967 everyone had. That is some gigantic change. Isn't it?
.....And it wasn't just yoga but a whole range of esoteric subjects that quite suddenly became of interest to a broad spectrum of readers. The general public were, of course, merely catching up. For the books that in 1968 suddenly became unexpected bestsellers, had been produced in late 1966 or 1967 and we had already read them.
.....But there were some seminal books amongst them and there was more and better to come. 'Supernature' by Lyall Watson changed our view of the natural world and gave it a meaning that had some profound implications. John Michell's 'A View Over Atlantis' made us look again at pre-Christian spirituality and enabled us to see the legacy that had been left for us, carved into the land. And 'Chariots of the Gods' by Erich von Daniken, challenged our Christian pre-conceptions about where we came from and offered some out of this world suggestions.
.....The last of these books was, arguably, one of the most influential to be published in the latter half of the 20th century. In many ways von Daniken redefined esoteric writing. His infinitely accessible but nonetheless extremely erudite and well argued tome set a new standard of easy-readability for books that would otherwise have been of academic interest only.
.....And, in so many ways, it was a revolutionary publishing event. Briefly, the book suggested that life on earth could not have developed in the way it did without some external influence. Without too much trouble von Daniken could demonstrate that there were earthworks -- like the lines and symbols on the Nazca plains and Elephantine Island in the Upper Nile -- that could only have been viewed from above. Drawing on biblical references to flaming chariots and other bright objects in the sky, he was able to put forward a persuasive case for UFOs and visitors from other worlds. He could even draw on the earliest cave paintings to support his case. These seemed to show a space-suited figure, but we will come back to this contentious interpetation later. What made the book more impressive was the massive blasphemous sweep with which he suggested that the planet may have been 'seeded' with life by an alien culture. 'Was God an Astronaut?' asked the book's cover flash. And for a while we were certainly sure He might have been.
.....The book, of course, was given a lot of stick by the Christian fundament-alists. But that is their job -- to remind us what small-minded and bigotted mean. That, however, was better than von Daniken being dragged out and barbequed.
.....For the rest of us, it became a talking point for months. The evidence was convincing, except for one thing. There was one picture in the book of one of the earliest cave paintings. Taken from the wall of a cave high in the Atlas Mountains in Africa that was thought, at that time, to have been the birth place of Homo Erectus, the painting seemed to show a space-suited and helmetted figure. The interesting thing was the radiations coming from his helmet. They were strange; not at all like a glow effect or anything one would recognise. But I did. They seemed to me to be psilocybin mushrooms (psilocybe semilanceata, liberty caps, to be precise.)
.....Looking now at the photograph of the original cave painting in von Daniken's book, I realise that I must have based this interpretation on another rendering of the painting -- the mushrooms are not clearly enough seen in the photograph to form any conclusions about what they might be. However, I can tell you this, whatever I based my conclusion on, it was clear and unequivocal. I was in no doubt.
.....It was not a particularly original or revolutionary conclusion to come to. Indeed, one had only to have read Carl Jung's 'Man and His Symbols' and have had a psychedelic experience to appreciate from where the symbols came. But as the years unfolded there was much to support it. Early cave paintings from Siberia, mushroom stones from the ancient Mayan culture and so much of the new wave of archeological research seemed to fit in with the hypothesis.
.....Although Paul Devereux does not go quite as far as saying the same thing as me, he is constrained by his academic background and the lack of hard evidence. However, reading between the lines of his book, one old tripper reading another old tripper, I got the distinct feeling that he had come to a similar conclusion. Sorry, Mr Devereux, if I have assumed too much. But what do you expect?
.....For those of us who have had the experience, it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination. Is it?