of his life at that time was a
mess, and few people around him actually understood what he was talking about, even other
acid heads. He began to suspect the depth and genuineness of many people’s commitment
to their psychedelic principles. Much of it seemed off-the-peg, un-thought-through, mere
slogans. Lack of contact with other people whom shared his gnosis eventually wore him
down. Others around him were rebelling too against the Kesey orthodoxy, the re-heated
Christianity of hippie dogma. But the style of rebellion was aimed inward, at the self, at
the body: a needle-fuelled so-called hedonism, which was really just broken ideals and a
victim consciousness.

Alex went down into that nihilism for long enough to see that it led to
boredom and stagnation, then started off in the only other direction he could see:
becoming a touchmore normal; joining a college course, settling down a bit. He was 21,
and needing a direction, any direction almost. His gnosis slept for a few years; he was in
a state of spiritual compromise. But during this time, he grew himself a career, a
life and when it no longer satisfied him, when change was in the air again, he was
ready to begin a serious study of magick.

Just as the writings of 60’s psychedelia carried over the contempt
for or fear of practical magick & sorcery, the magickal traditions that Alex began to
study, had had all the psychedelic technology bowdlerized out of them. Obviously, the
magickal revival of the 1970’s owed much to the mass consumption of acid in that
decade. So someone must be aware of a connection, but even Crowley, with