The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Encyclopedia
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an informal organization of psychedelic drug enthusiasts and dealers that operated in the late 1960s. The group was founded in Laguna Beach, California
. The group was headquartered in the Mystic Arts bookstore on Pacific Coast Highway
. At that time, Laguna Beach was a common stopping point for those traveling south from Haight Ashbury (in San Francisco) to Mexico. Timothy Leary
, the excommunicated Harvard psychology lecturer
and devotee of free love
(and noted for the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out
"), became the godfather of the group.
, Los Angeles
and the Pasadena area. Most were vegetarians. Many of them continued to practice their own version of Christianity while opening research into Hinduism
, Vajrayana Buddhism, and other indigenous or Eastern religions.
. They took almost six weeks to move the load because New York's hippie market for marijuana at the time of their arrival was small and informal. Distribution of the Brotherhood's first wholesale load began the creation of an entirely new market and sales pyramid.
After sales prospered, the Brotherhood began to send researchers around the world to look into purchasing opportunities. Red Lebanese and black Afghan hashish
were favored because of their strength, perfumes, and popularity among buyers in the USA. Other varieties of hashish were also purchased and imported in volume. At a certain point, the cash flow was more than sufficient for them to set up their own laboratory in which to manufacture LSD. The elder chemist was the bright and quirky Owsley Stanley
, nicknamed "Bear", who favored "cocktails", mixtures of LSD and small amounts of amphetamine
, though there was no amphetamine in Owsley's acid. It was pure, and much of it was actually made by Nick Sand.
The Brotherhood operated originally as a psychedelics distribution network throughout the United States
, most notably in California where the organization received large shipments of hashish
from Pakistan
and Afghanistan
, helped by Welshman
Howard Marks
, now a prominent figure in the cannabis
culture. Some of the best Hashish that was imported were the half circle 'Elephant Ears' in the early 1970s .With funds from their hashish smuggling, the organization produced and distributed large amounts of the legendary "Orange Sunshine" LSD
. The organization was headquartered on a ranch in Garner Valley, near Idyllwild
. Members paid the Weather Underground
to break Timothy Leary
out of prison.
or the International Foundation for Internal Freedom. Many of its members were interested in peace and in ending the Vietnam war. A 1972 Rolling Stone
article dubbed them the "Hippie Mafia."
The Brotherhood also had a small vegetarian restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, two blocks north of Mystic Arts, named "Love Animals, Don't eat them". This restaurant operated with volunteers, with much of the food donated. Menu items did not have a price and patrons left donations for the food ordered.
Members of the Brotherhood felt that the Vietnam War
was not only illegal but that President Richard Nixon
was
using drug laws to imprison political opponents. Members Johnny Gail and Victor Forsythe advocated putting LSD in Nixon's punch. Grace Slick was recruited for that effort but the mission was not successful.
Timothy Leary had this to say about the Brotherhood: "The whole concept of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is like a bogeyman
invented by the narcs. The brotherhood was about eight surfer kids from Southern California, Laguna Beach, who took the LSD, and they practiced the religion of the worship of nature, and they'd go into the mountains. But they were not bigshots at all. None of them ever drove anything better than a VW bus. They were just kind of in it for the spiritual thrill."
In 1996, Orange Sunshine chemist Nicholas Sand was arrested in British Columbia, still making LSD, for which he spent several years in prison.
On September 26, 2009, Brenice Lee Smith, a suspected member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was arrested in California, after nearly four decades on the lam. The 64-year-old Smith was taken into custody at San Francisco International Airport, after arriving from Nepal. He was arrested on two, nearly 40-year-old warrants issued in Orange County, related to the sale and possession of drugs. On November 20, Smith, after serving two months in jail, pleaded guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish. Released the next morning, he immediately got back on a plane, to live with his wife and daughter in Nepal.
film Orange Sunshine.
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The group was headquartered in the Mystic Arts bookstore on Pacific Coast Highway
California State Route 1
State Route 1 , more often called Highway 1, is a state highway that runs along much of the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. It is famous for running along some of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, leading to its designation as an All-American Road.Highway 1 does not run...
. At that time, Laguna Beach was a common stopping point for those traveling south from Haight Ashbury (in San Francisco) to Mexico. Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, the excommunicated Harvard psychology lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
and devotee of free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
(and noted for the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out
Turn on, tune in, drop out
"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1967. Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and uttered the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary...
"), became the godfather of the group.
Formation
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love were a spiritual, drug-based group whose foundations were established on the belief over the mind-altering benefits of the drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). The group was composed of local surfers, drug users and affluent people from Orange CountyOrange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and the Pasadena area. Most were vegetarians. Many of them continued to practice their own version of Christianity while opening research into Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, Vajrayana Buddhism, and other indigenous or Eastern religions.
Drug sales
For several years, their psychedelic activities were underwritten by selling high-quality marijuana. As business expanded, they decided to see if they could build a national distribution network. Farmer John and Chuck Scott bought a new station wagon, loaded it up with kilo bricks of marijuana and drove from Laguna Beach to the Holland TunnelHolland Tunnel
The Holland Tunnel is a highway tunnel under the Hudson River connecting the island of Manhattan in New York City with Jersey City, New Jersey at Interstate 78 on the mainland. Unusual for an American public works project, it is not named for a government official, politician, or local hero or...
. They took almost six weeks to move the load because New York's hippie market for marijuana at the time of their arrival was small and informal. Distribution of the Brotherhood's first wholesale load began the creation of an entirely new market and sales pyramid.
After sales prospered, the Brotherhood began to send researchers around the world to look into purchasing opportunities. Red Lebanese and black Afghan hashish
Hashish
Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...
were favored because of their strength, perfumes, and popularity among buyers in the USA. Other varieties of hashish were also purchased and imported in volume. At a certain point, the cash flow was more than sufficient for them to set up their own laboratory in which to manufacture LSD. The elder chemist was the bright and quirky Owsley Stanley
Owsley Stanley
Owsley Stanley also known as Bear, was an essential and transitional personality in the development of the San Francisco Bay counter-culture. Spanning the Beat-era years of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters scenes, he was equally pivotal to the explosion of 1960's Psychedelia culture...
, nicknamed "Bear", who favored "cocktails", mixtures of LSD and small amounts of amphetamine
Amphetamine
Amphetamine or amfetamine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class which produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.Brand names of medications that contain, or metabolize into, amphetamine include Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat,...
, though there was no amphetamine in Owsley's acid. It was pure, and much of it was actually made by Nick Sand.
The Brotherhood operated originally as a psychedelics distribution network throughout the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, most notably in California where the organization received large shipments of hashish
Hashish
Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...
from Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, helped by Welshman
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
Howard Marks
Howard Marks
Dennis Howard Marks is a Welsh author and former drug smuggler who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases, supposed connections with groups such as the CIA, the IRA, MI6, and the Mafia, and his eventual conviction at the hands of the American Drug...
, now a prominent figure in the cannabis
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
culture. Some of the best Hashish that was imported were the half circle 'Elephant Ears' in the early 1970s .With funds from their hashish smuggling, the organization produced and distributed large amounts of the legendary "Orange Sunshine" LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
. The organization was headquartered on a ranch in Garner Valley, near Idyllwild
Idyllwild-Pine Cove, California
Idyllwild, Pine Cove, and Fern Valley are three adjacent communities, of which Idyllwild is the largest, located in the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, California, United States. "Mile-high Idyllwild" is a popular southern California mountain resort about one mile in altitude...
. Members paid the Weather Underground
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
to break Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
out of prison.
Other activities
The organization may have been inspired by, but did not evolve from, Timothy Leary's League for Spiritual DiscoveryLeague for Spiritual Discovery
The League For Spiritual Discovery was a religious organization based around the works of Timothy Leary, and strove for legal use of lysergic acid diethylamide for religious purposes. It was in existence until the end of the 1960s, and eventually closed by Leary...
or the International Foundation for Internal Freedom. Many of its members were interested in peace and in ending the Vietnam war. A 1972 Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
article dubbed them the "Hippie Mafia."
The Brotherhood also had a small vegetarian restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, two blocks north of Mystic Arts, named "Love Animals, Don't eat them". This restaurant operated with volunteers, with much of the food donated. Menu items did not have a price and patrons left donations for the food ordered.
Members of the Brotherhood felt that the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
was not only illegal but that President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
was
using drug laws to imprison political opponents. Members Johnny Gail and Victor Forsythe advocated putting LSD in Nixon's punch. Grace Slick was recruited for that effort but the mission was not successful.
Timothy Leary had this to say about the Brotherhood: "The whole concept of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is like a bogeyman
Bogeyman
A bogeyman is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behaviour...
invented by the narcs. The brotherhood was about eight surfer kids from Southern California, Laguna Beach, who took the LSD, and they practiced the religion of the worship of nature, and they'd go into the mountains. But they were not bigshots at all. None of them ever drove anything better than a VW bus. They were just kind of in it for the spiritual thrill."
Legal prosecution
On August 5, 1972, dozens of group members in California, Oregon and Maui were arrested. Others scattered around the world.Later arrests
In 1994, police arrested Russell Harrigan near Lake Tahoe, California. An Orange County judge dismissed the charges against Harrigan because of his exemplary lifestyle.In 1996, Orange Sunshine chemist Nicholas Sand was arrested in British Columbia, still making LSD, for which he spent several years in prison.
On September 26, 2009, Brenice Lee Smith, a suspected member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was arrested in California, after nearly four decades on the lam. The 64-year-old Smith was taken into custody at San Francisco International Airport, after arriving from Nepal. He was arrested on two, nearly 40-year-old warrants issued in Orange County, related to the sale and possession of drugs. On November 20, Smith, after serving two months in jail, pleaded guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish. Released the next morning, he immediately got back on a plane, to live with his wife and daughter in Nepal.
In popular culture
The Brotherhood is the subject of the upcoming documentaryDocumentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
film Orange Sunshine.
External links
- http://us.macmillan.com/orangesunshine Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World
- http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Orange-Sunshine-The-book-by-Nicholas-Schou/366745866648?ref=ts Orange Sunshine on Facebook
- http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/brotherhood_of_eternal_love.pdf The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
- Orange Sunshine Documentary Film Official Site
- OC Weekly article about the Brotherhood
- Free Marijuana Church
- Operation Julie