The 70s

The seventies




The Age of Inspiration

 Astrology, Indian Vedanta, Buddhism, macrobiotics, Walldorf education, cosmology, homeopathy, pendulum, I Ching, esoteric teachings from various sources, yoga, Macrobiotics and so on... there were more of them than I can remember right now and we were spontaneously learning about these things now.

There were many new spiritual movements as for example Hare Krishna, Martinus, Summit Lighthouse, Ananda Marga and also the start of Vattumannen, our first big alternative bookstore in Sweden.

I think the interest in Indian gurus started when Beatles made Guru Maharishi popular and helped him to spread his Transcendental Meditation, which opened the door also to other Indian gurus..


From India we also got Prabhupada who came with the Hare Krishna movement.
Young people became vegetarians and the guys had long hair, necklaces, embroideries and often also long Indian orange scarves and maybe also an Indian rosary for meditation - together with a Thor´s Hammer and on the bookshelf there were both BhagavadGita and the Edda side by side, together with Castaneda and The Lord of the Rings.

In the late 70s the interest in shamanism was just about to start and we rediscovered Thor, Oden and  Freya and the “old rituals” become focus for a new interest among these “alternative people”.

Generally, seen in gross perspectives, society was split up between materialists, who dreamed about making money, and freedom-loving hippies, who dreamed about their fairy-tale visions. At this time it was easy to see on which side a person was. There was a clear duality, which vanished in the 80s.




Some pictures from the Caravan.

The Caravan was a group of people who went with horses and wagons through Sweden in 1978.

The group of “alternative people”, that they were part of,  produced a record “Jordljus” and this sort of people still meet at “Tingmöten” in the forests every year.


We had a book named “Eat Brown Rice and Make Revolution!” People wanted to live a simple life close to a free nature. With Miso, sea salt and Tamari  the yin-yang balance, made popular by Ohsawa, was fixed. 




Collectives had spontaneously been formed by young, idealistic people who wanted to live in a more simple and natural way. We had  Ljusbacken and Christiania and many, many, many more... everywhere.
It was the birth of a new living spirit, the Age of Inspiration.


So much had happened in a very short time.
It was a revolution of the collective consciousness,
it was the energetic conception of a new way of thinking. 


It was an inter-religious honeymoon where different religions and belief systems were married into a new mixture where both Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Thor and Parsifal had their places together with a new understanding of spirituality where also Mother Earth had her place being the divine mother of whole nature.

Nobody called himself "religious" and nobody was an atheist. People just were what they were and it was so clear that it was not even discussed..

This was a true spiritual inter-tribalism where all the best paths came together in a mixture of fairy-tales, gods and goddesses.

There was also the back side of the quest for the psychedelic side of life.
The use of cannabis and LSD also propagated as a “more divine” substitute for mainstream´s dropping out with alcohol.


There were people playing Red Indians, reading Castaneda and also having teepes, but there was no Medicine Man and no WakanTanka. The eagle had not yet come to Sweden.
Western interest in Shamanism was in the cradle.




From the East we had the old, cosmic knowledge, yoga, drumming, playing, dancing and chanting. The message was: Forget about the evil material world and become free from illusion like Buddha or reach the heart of Universe and dance in eternity in divine bliss and ecstasy with Krishna.


From the Middle we had esoteric books, psychic mediums, old ritual magic, Khabbala, astrology, Tarot Cards, old Christianity and so on.
I and some of my friends were often in the small Liberal Catholic Church where I got one little book about The Holy Grail and another about König Ludwig II of Bavaria.
The Grail is about the adventures of Parsifal and Lohengrin.


Freude, schöner Götterfunken, 
Tochter aus Elysium, 
Wir betreten feuertrunken, 
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum. 
Deine Zauber binden wieder, 
Was die Mode streng geteilt, 
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, 
wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. 




I think the 70s were about getting feuertrunken

in the way that Schiller had referred to.

Heaven is awaiting you!


Freude!

One love! One heart!

Alle Menschen werden Brueder...


From the West there was Spiritual silence! Only the voice of the USA: “Conquer the world and make war and money!” The true spirit of the West was just missing but young people protested and made demonstrations with the slogan “USA out of Vietnam!”


The Red Indians had a 200 years´ old prophecy that said that they were going to teach the White People to live in harmony with Mother Earth and this would happen when the right time had come, which was when white people had begun to have long hair and when dead birds were falling from the sky.


In the early 80s we had not yet heard about this prophecy.
I got it in a fax from Greenpeace around 1986.
Clic here!


Skattungbyn 

In 1977 or 1978 we were some people who spent a week on a meadow close to an old red house on the mountain in Skattungbyn.
Fransson, the owner of this place, told me that Ingmar Bergman had made a part of his film Jungfrukällan at this place.

This week brought extremely much inspiration  and I got two visions that filled my mind.
It was the old typical Swedish Dalecarlian Kurbits Paintings and it was the concept of Swedish Red Indians in our Nordic forests. I did not know the meaning of it as it was just two  pictures and a strong feeling. I had the impression that there was “something special” about Skattungbyn.

The song “The fine crystal” comes from this village and when I came home I bought a flute and I learned to play this song (the only thing I could ever play).




I went home and started to learn to paint these old motives.





Next year I went back to Skattungbyn with Mikael W Gejel who was editing the little paper Gimle (about esoterics and Nordic mythology) and he had already given me a shaman drum.
It was fun to have one, but...why? What was the purpose?




Obviously the time was almost getting ready for the Red Indians to start their education of the white people and in 1985 Rolling Thunder came to Sweden.

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