Druid Heights

Erik Davis posts a chapter of his upcoming book Visionary State on the Marin County (Calif.) community of Druid Heights.

The Heights was and is one of those rare places that is known but not known. It was the site of hundreds of amazing parties over the last fifty years and yet remained tucked beneath some freaky beatnik cone of silence, its muddy dirt road still unmarked on many maps.

There is a current of California bohemianism with strong Pagan overtones going back to at least the 1930s, but it was "under the radar" until the 1960s with the emergence of Feraferia and the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, to name just two groups. I cover some of these "paradisical" Pagans in my own book--which finally was re-sent to the publisher this week, hurray--but one of my next projects will be further investigation of American Pagan movements that predate the arrival of Gardnerian books in the USA. The books, in fact, arrived about a decade before actual Gardnerian Witches and had as much or more impact.