Story No. 6: The continuous trip. An essay on Deadheads.
Story No. 5: Yeah, yeah, right! right! right! A correspondence with Merry Prankster Ken Babbs.
Story No. 4: Getting to the core of Swedish neoshamanism.
Story No. 3: A correspondence with Owsley Stanley.
Story No. 2: A correspondence with Tim Scully.
Story No. 1: Skip's story: The beginnings of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
Table of Contents
The continuous trip. An essay on Deadheads
Going to a Grateful Dead concert was for many people like taking a collective trip, and if the magic was there it took them far into space. Some Deadheads - which was the name given to particulary loyal fans - followed the band from gig to gig, year after year, sometimes for several decades.Published January 2012.
Yeah, yeah, right! right! right! A correspondence with Merry Prankster Ken Babbs
It was 1964. Using an old, wildly painted school bus called Furthur, novellist Ken Kesey and his group The Merry Pranksters decided to take a road trip across the USA. The driver was beat legend Neal Cassady, and along on the ride was Ken Babbs. Published November 2009.
Getting to the core of Swedish neoshamanism
In the winter of 2009, the editor of The Oak Tree Review secretly made a fieldwork on a workshop in shamanism. It was arranged by a Swedish group using a technique called core shamanism, which was developed in the 1970s by anthropologist Michael Harner. In this personal and revealing story, the editor shares his feelings of doubt towards the dogmatic team leading the course. Published June 2009.
A correspondence with Owsley Stanley
Owsley "Bear" Stanley was the sound man for seminal rock band the Grateful Dead. In the late Sixties he became a legendary figure in the counterculture after he started manufacturing LSD together with his apprentice Tim Scully. Their acid reached a huge number of people in America. In this interview, Owsley brings a new perspective on Tom Wolfe's bestselling book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Published May 2009.
A correspondence with Tim Scully
In the mid-Sixties Tim Scully lived with and built sound equipment for the Grateful Dead. In 1966, he started manufacturing LSD together with his friend Owsley "Bear" Stanley. When Owsley was arrested in 1967, Scully set up two other labs, one of them resulting in the making of his legendary product "Orange Sunshine". Published May 2009.
Skip's story: The beginnings of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Skip's story is an account of the very first days of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, an American organization using LSD as a religious sacrament in the 1960s. Their idealism seemed to have faded in the early Seventies, and in a 1972 article the Rolling Stone Magazine called them the "hippie mafia". In this unique text, original member Skip is telling the story of how he and his friends were deeply moved by the powerful hallucinogen, and how the experience changed their lives forever. Published May 2009.