Back in September, R.U. Sirius's podcast turned me on to an intriguing new book. It's named The Visionary State, a big, thick and pretty coffee-table book, with text by Erik Davis and countless jaw-droppingly beautiful photographs by Michael Rauner.
Formally speaking, the book is a piece of topographical history, treating of California from the time of the first Catholic missions in the late 18th century until the last couple of years. Places are visited, described and depicted, stories and anecdotes are heaped one upon another, the names of countless people and organisations form a blur. And the thing joining these places and people and stories is this: they all pertain to the dippy religio-spiritual movements that keep sprouting in the state of nuts, fruits and flakes. The book's sub-title is "A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape", and the title might as well have been "Kalifornia Kults".
Davis writes in a pleasant and accessible style, artfully controlled in such a way that it seems effortless. His perspective is wryly enthusiastic: he's no stranger to meditation, yoga and mind-altering substances, but he keeps an often humorous distance between himself and his subjects.
"California consciousness is a paradox. California has witnessed and inspired some of the worst excesses of modern spirituality: paranoid messiahs, manipulative sex-and-drug cults, and the murky and profoundly silly confusions that infest the New Age. But if California consciousness has sometimes fallen far, it is because it has also reached -- and gotten -- so high. The adepts of California's new edge have drawn the spiritual marrow from the old bones of religion, and used this energy to catalyze postreligious forms of healing, art, and cosmic connection." (p. 263)
I imagine this book was given in the tens of thousands as Christmas presents to Californian boomers. It'll soon become a prominent part of the state's self-image. But it also brought great joy to me, a tee-totalling skeptic and atheist in faraway Sweden. And to my surprise, I found direct connections from Davis's various visionaries to my own life history. Fritz Perls, the Gestalt therapist who once unwittingly lent his name to a company co-founded by my New Age mother, shows up briefly at Esalen. The Society for Creative Anachronism, never far away during my decade in the Stockholm Tolkien Society, is revealed to have neo-Pagan Goddess worshipper roots, its first gatherings having taken place in the Berkeley back yard of the New Age witch and fantasy author Diane Paxson. American global cultural imperialism isn't just about Levis and Coke.
You don't need to have one religious bone in your body in order to enjoy this book. In fact, any sort of religious dogmatism will probably diminish your enjoyment of it, as you might feel partial toward one of the movements described and against all the others. Me, I simply see them all as religious nuts, but nuts who got amazing buildings erected and whose antics make wonderful stories. Lovers of architecture and photography may want to get the book simply for the pictures. Rauner has taken most of them at sunrise, all golden light and vibrant hues, with not a single living soul to be seen. But if humankind is your study, and you enjoy observing its frantic struggle to make sense of the cosmic contingency solution we inhabit, then Erik Davis's writing will rivet you to your seat. Highly recommended!
Update 2 January: Writes Erik Davis, "The whole book was designed to be enjoyed by materialistic, tee-totaling Swedes! Glad it worked..."
Davis, Erik & Rauner, Michael. 2006. The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape
. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 272 pp. ISBN 0-8118-4835-3.[More blog entries about books, spirituality, New Age, religion, architecture, California, photography; böcker, religion, newage, Kalifornien, arkitektur, fotografi.]
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