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FORTY YEARS SINCE 'SUMMER OF EVIL' LEADS TO A REFLECTION ON THE EERIE YEAR OF 1969
It was a mysterious year, forty years ago, was it not?
Or do we believe in simple coincidence?
Some call it the "summer of evil," because it was the summer of the Manson murders. Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murdered actress Sharon Tate (who was eight months pregnant) and her friends in Los Angeles.
1969.
It was, of course, the last year of the Sixties, when our culture, and spirituality, were turned upside-down -- rocked from their foundations.
It was the year of Chappaquiddick. It was the year the Supreme Court okayed possession for personal use of obscene material. It was the year that a group in San Francisco published the first Satanic Bible. It was the year they brought abortion to Canada. As a publicist for a book called 1969: The Year Everything Changed puts it, 1969 saw "the birth of punk music, the invasion of Led Zeppelin, the occupation of Alcatraz, death at Altamont Speedway, and much more. It was a year that pushed boundaries on stage (Oh! Calcutta!), screen (Midnight Cowboy), and the printed page (Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex), witnessed the genesis of the gay rights movement at Stonewall, and started the era of the 'no fault' divorce." It was the year (speak of coincidence) a satanic musician named Marilyn Manson (no relation) was born.
In short, it brought the riotous Sixties to a crescendo -- a decade that set the stage for much of what we now see institutionalized around us.
It was the year of the moon landing. It was the year (August 15–18) of the Woodstock Festival -- where rebellion (and drugs) broke into the open. It was the year, the summer, of Category-Five Hurricane Camille -- the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in the recorded history of the U.S. It was the year of the My Lai massacre. It was the year as mentioned that the Altamont Free Concert was held at a speedway in northern California and is best known for the uproar of violence that occurred when a fan was stabbed to death by Hell's Angels, a biker gang that had been hired (by the Rolling Stones) to provide security for the event.
Hell's Angels! What's in a name? And was there any significance in one of the songs the Rolling Stones sung at Altamont -- Sympathy for the Devil? Was that the swan song of the Sixties?
Some like to play around with turning numbers backwards or upside-down and would have fun doing so with the two "nines" in that year.
1969. It brought psychic phenomena to the fore, which soon turned into the New Age. It was the heyday of feminism -- a blurring of the genders. It brought to maturity much of what had reached another crescendo in 1966 (the year they established the first Church of Satan).
In that "church" was a woman who would later join up with Charles Manson while the founder of the church himself served as a consultant for the horrid movie about the devil's seed, Rosemary's Baby -- which was directed by the husband of actress Sharon Tate!
Spookiness. "Coincidence." John Lennon would later die in the building where they filmed that movie (the Dakota), and it was Lennon's group, the Beatles, whose song "Helter Skelter" was said to have inspired Manson.
Were there truly spiritual elements at work?
One member of Manson's clan claimed he once picked up a dead bird, breathed on it, and it had flown away, and according to the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, there was a poignant moment during arraignment when Bugliosi glanced at his watch and noted that it had stopped. "Odd," he wrote. "It was the first time I could remember that happening. Then I noticed that Manson was staring at me, a slight grin on his face. It was, I told myself, simply a coincidence."
Yes, oh, yes: coincidence. Many of those. Summer is a time to reflect and also a time to pull the weeds (of happenstance). Note evil where evil is; purge. Obsess not on it, but neither ignore it, and remember always that the smallest spark from God splits the largest, blackest dark.
[resources: Prayer of the Warrior and Michael Brown retreats on deliverance and spiritual warfare in Minnesota and New Jersey]
[see also: 'Summer of evil' and When Satan plants 'weeds']
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