The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

[Magda Hassan]

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 to Mexico. Timothy Leary, the excommunicated Harvard psychology professor and devotee of free love and author of "turn on, tune in and drop out," became the godfather of the group. One contributor writes that the group was composed of local surfers, drug users and rich kids from Orange County, Los Angeles and the Pasadena area. This is contested by another contributor, who points out that the genesis of the Brotherhood was a rag-tag crew of very young street toughs in Compton, California - in a poor neighborhood - who in the course of smoking multiple kinds of vegetation and swallowing random available pills for recreational purposes, accidentally encountered LSD. At least a half-dozen of them found their lives transformed by that experience and, in due time, moved south to modest bungalows in the little-known town of Laguna Beach. They tended to wear simple cotton garments, sometimes robes. Most were vegetarians, and they daily spent considerable time in prayer and simply doing good deeds. Many of them continued to practice their own version of Christianity while opening research into Hinduism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and indigenous and Eastern religions as Brotherhood members happened to find them.
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 Tunnel. 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.
By the late 1960s, what had begun as a brotherhood of idealistic young pacifists had been infiltrated and corrupted by cynical outsiders, some of them armed. The brotherhood of love was gone; the informal organization's name was arrogated by punks and crooks who soon became notorious and widely detested.
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.[1] The organization may have been inspired by, but did not evolve from, Timothy Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery 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. Victor Forsythe was entrapped into sales of Brotherhood hashish in 1972 and after a year long trial, which resulted in a hung jury, he jumped bail and fled to Ecuador in 1973. In late 1974, Victor was arrested by US drug agents, and after three months of fighting extradition, was returned to the United States where he pleaded guilty in a plea bargain arrangement with the Orange County prosecutor. His book, Birth of an Angel, describes details of his arrest. During his imprisonment in Orange Country jail Victor was assaulted by a white supremacist prison gang and almost killed. After recuperating in the hospital, Victor completed the rest of his sentence in solitary confinement.
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."[2]
News Articles

Suspected LSD ring fugitive arrested in California THE ASSOCIATED PRESS September 30, 2009, 6:57 PM
A suspected member of an LSD distribution ring has been arrested in California after nearly four decades on the lam. San Francisco police Lt. Bill Darr said Brenice Lee Smith was taken into custody Saturday 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. The 64-year-old Smith is suspected of being part of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed the "Hippie Mafia." The group is suspected of smuggling large amounts of hashish from Pakistan and Afghanistan and producing and distributing "Orange Sunshine" LSD. The Brotherhood was also known for paying the Weather Underground to bust LSD guru Timothy Leary out of jail.


References

1. ^ Jacobs, Ron, The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground, Verso Books, 1997
   
2. ^ Timothy Leary
   

• The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia: The Story of the LSD Counterculture, Stewart Tendler and David May (1984) ISBN 1904879950
  

External links

• OC Weekly article about the Brotherhood
  
• 11-minute trailer for new documentary film called "Orange Sunshine" about the Brotherhood
  
• Free Marijuana Church
  
• Operation Julie
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:T...ed_License