Joan Didion wrote in”The White Album”, her 1979 collection of essays on life in the 60's; “The 60's abruptly ended on August 9, 1969, the date of the murders on Cielo Dr.”
The decade of the 60's has become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period. This was a time when a ridged culture became unable to hold back the demand for greater individual freedom. A counter culture broke free and sparked social revolutions throughout much of the world.
Yes, it was an unusual decade, and the legacy of the America's Counter Culture movement of the 60's is huge.
It was a time of Social and political upheaval, a time of revolution, individualism and non-conformity and it was also a time of love, music, sex and mind expanding psychedelic substances.
By the end of the 60's much the counter culture, which had began as a progressive social movement bent on changing the world for the better, seemed to have lost it's focus and become self indulgent and hedonistic. Rather than a social movement it had seemingly de-evolved into a superficial social trend.
And the Manson Family crimes represented the dark extreme of a counter culture that was becoming increasingly incongruous.
Just a few days after the murders on Cielo Dr. but before the Manson Family was arrested the Woodstock Music Festival took place in upstate New York.
For many Woodstock seemed the pinnacle of the movement. it was a moment when personal freedom and non-conformity reigned.
As astrologer Steffan Vanel writes:
” I personally experienced Woodstock as an explosion of Aquarian universal love and brotherhood. I witnessed it as the small groups of hippies in every town on the East Coast coming together and amassing to nearly a half million. I was only 17 years old at the time, but I remember thinking “This is going to change the world. This power of love is what is really going to change the world. Kids from now on are going to become hippies, and drugs and music is going to do it!”
“ The collective good vibes of Woodstock didn’t last long. The next big festival was the Rolling Stones at Altamont, California where someone was murdered. The Rolling Stones had tried to show how US/California cool they were by hiring the Hells Angels for security for the show and paying them with cases of beer. A very bad move. Here we saw the dark sides of Pluto (death), Neptune (drugs and alcohol), and Uranus (sudden erratic craziness).” Read Steffan Vanel's entire article
But for many Americans Woodstock was seen as, the epitome of a generation gone wild on drugs, with lax morals and a loss of standards. The already darkening perception of hippie culture turned black when Charles Manson was arrested (October 69) and the details of all the murders came out....this signaled the end of an era.
As prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, says, "The mantra of the era was `peace, love and sharing. Prior to (the Manson case), people just didn't identify hippies with violence. Then the Manson family comes along, looking like hippies, but being mass murderers. And that shocked America: How could this be?”.
Looking back at the 60's the decade seems to resemble an amazing and beautiful love affair that in the end went very very bad. However, during that affair, society was impregnated with the Aquarian vision of brotherhood and service to all mankind.
What was conceived in the 60's has been nurtured and growing within our sociey and soon will take on a life of it's own. We can only hope the birth will be painless and that what's being born will arrive healthy.
Excerpt from "The World Transformed"“The most interesting alignment begins when Uranus enters Aries and squares Pluto in Capricorn from June 2012 to March 2015. It could be the coupling of the Uranian need for nonconformity, change or rebellion with the fearless impulsiveness of Aries that will release the world from traditional conservative constraints.
This Uranus in Aries-Pluto in Capricorn contact is quite capable of igniting the cultural revolutionary forces that began in the mid-1960s...when Uranus and Pluto were coupled in Virgo. In affect, what was conceived at that 1960's coupling will be born...come to life and become viable during this era.” Read more
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Forget Woodstock, Charles Manson was the real face of 1969
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