Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Michael M. Hughes 2018

Levitating the Pentagon: Radical Magic in the Sixties and Seventies
Witches and Occultists versus Kings and Nazis

As has been extensively chronicled, the 1960s was a decade fueled by the struggle for civil rights, the rise of feminism, revolutionary politics, radical social movements, environmentalism, youthful rebellion, and rejection of the middle-class American Dream. It was a heady time of expanded consciousness, with a counterculture dropping acid, demonstrating in the streets against the Vietnam War, blissing out to Eastern yogis, promoting free love, and embracing everything esoteric, magical, and occult. As the popular song from the musical Hair declared, it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and with it came a renewed interest in the mystical and spiritual dimensions of political action.

On October 21, 1967, as the legendary Summer of Love was fading into fall, a hundred thousand protesters—the largest peace demonstration of its time—descended upon Washington, DC, for a march against the Vietnam War. There was the usual rally with speakers and musicians at the Lincoln Memorial, but Jerry Rubin, one of the protest’s organizers, had pushed for more direct action: shutting down the Pentagon.

Rubin and another soon-to-be Yippie leader, Abbie Hoffman, had wanted to do something different, something that would shake up what was becoming the normal routine of marching and protesting. So after the rally ended, they, along with poet Allen Ginsberg, pediatrician Dr. Spock, the rock group the Fugs, and thirty-five thousand of the more radical protesters marched across the Arlington Memorial Bridge for a planned rendezvous at ground zero of the military-industrial complex: the Pentagon.

Their goal? To ritually exorcise the Pentagon by levitating the building three hundred feet in the air.

Hoffman had visited the Pentagon the month earlier with artist Martin Carey to determine how many people it would take to surround the massive building (twelve hundred, by their estimate). They were carrying pamphlets, which got them arrested for littering. When they were brought before a general services administrator, Hoffman requested a permit to levitate the Pentagon three hundred feet. He explained how they planned to chant the exorcism in Aramaic, after which the building would rise, turn orange, and vibrate until all evil energies were dissipated. The war would end.

After some discussion, the permit was granted—but only allowing the building to be raised ten feet. Hoffman relented, and the charges against the two were dropped.

After the protesters crossed the bridge they were met in the Pentagon parking lot by twenty-five hundred federal troops, many with guns at the ready, while riflemen stood along the roof and helicopters buzzed overhead. A few hippies placed flowers into the guards’ rifle barrels. Others attempted multiple times to breach the armed barrier and were beaten with rifle butts, arrested, and dispersed with tear gas. Rubin, Hoffman, and crew had brought along the hippie version of tear gas, a hallucinogenic purple liquid they called lysergic acid crypto ethylene (LACE), allegedly brewed by legendary acid chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III. Whoever it contacted, Hoffman claimed, would take off their clothes, begin kissing those around them, and make love. (It was actually harmless disappearing ink from Taiwan.)

If the levitation failed, Hoffman said, “We will dye the Potomac red, burn the cherry trees, panhandle embassies, attack with water pistols, marbles, bubble gum wrappers, bazookas, girls will run naked and piss on the Pentagon walls, sorcerers, swamis, witches, voodoo, warlocks, medicine men and speed freaks will hurl their magic at the faded brown walls .… We will dance and sing and chant the mighty OM. We will fuck on the grass and beat ourselves against the doors. Everyone will scream ’VOTE FOR ME.’ We shall raise the flag of nothingness over the Pentagon and a mighty cheer of liberation will echo through the land.” ²³

As they gathered at the Pentagon, Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and the Fugs, along with several hundred participants, began to chant and sing. Fugs member Ed Sanders had written the “exorgasm” ritual: “In the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis … in the name of the lives of the dead soldiers in Vietnam … in the name of Sea-borne Aphrodite … in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Iao Sabaoth, Yahweh the Unnamable … we call upon the Spirits to Raise the Pentagon from its Destiny and Preserve it. In the naaaaame—in all the names! Out, Demons, out!” ²⁴

Unfortunately no one—at least no one who wasn’t tripping on 250 micrograms of LSD—saw the Pentagon rise. But the crazed surreality of the ritual was a direct response to the surreal horrors of the disastrous war in Vietnam. It became legendary and led to the formation of the prankish, guerrilla theater activist group known as the Youth International Party, or Yippies. Their later stunt—throwing handfuls of fake one-dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange—also earned them a place in the history of creative protest.

As Jerry Rubin wrote in the Berkeley Barb: “The worst thing you can say about a demonstration is that it is boring, and one of the reasons that the peace movement has not grown into a mass movement is that the peace movement—its literature and its events—is a bore. Good theatre is needed to communicate revolutionary content.” ²⁵

Keep his words in mind, magical activists, because they are as true now as they were then.