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" The songs of our ancestors

are also the songs of our children "

The Druid Way

The Summer of Love

June 9th, 2017

Eden Ahbez (1908 – 1995)

Perhaps, after the very interesting election result, you might like to relax with a BBC4 documentary airing tonight, entitled The Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World. I was pleased to read that it will look at the roots of this phenomenon – exploring “how a 19th century sect of wandering German naturalists led to a generation of hippies dropping out in San Francisco.” Very few people, even in Germany, seem to know about this very positive story. After researching this movement for A Brief History of Nakedness, I decided that the protagonist in my novel The Prophecies should be a child of this movement, who then gets caught up in the insane search for the Holy Grail of racial purity.

At times like these, when the world of politics and violence can occupy so much of our attention, it helps – I believe – to look beneath the surface!

The photo shows a proto-hippy of the 1940’s, Eden Ahbez, who wrote the beautiful song, ‘Nature Boy’, immortalised by Nat King Cole, which you can listen to here:

3 Responses to “The Summer of Love”

  1. Gosh, haven’t heard that one for a long time! Didn’t know who wrote it. Thank you, will look out for that programme. Blessings. 🌿

  2. Your post inspired me to have a look around and to learn more about eden ahbez this morning. I imagine you’ve seen this already, but I especially liked this scan (linked here) of the first two pages of a four-page article that he wrote for Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization magazine in 1948.

    All paths lead to the heart—
    Which is the end of paths.

    To live in the heart—
    Is to live in the soul—
    to live in the whole.

    Those thoughts dovetail nicely, I think, with your post a few days ago about nectar-seeking bees. Wish I could see the documentary, but I’m headed out shortly for my morning walk to work (which is also good for keeping me heartened!). 🙂

  3. The photo is of Bill Pester in 1917 not Eden Ahbez who was of the next generation. I highly recommend Gordon Kennedy’s book “Children of the Sun” to anyone who wants to learn more of the German lebensreform movement and of the Nature Boys

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