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Kerry Thornley and Kerista

In the mid 1960s, Kerry Thornley joined The Gentle Way, “a sexually swinging psychedelic tribe” engaged in communal mate swapping, dope smoking, and LSD-tripping. Kerry worked for a while as The Gentle Way’s public relations envoy, publishing the Gentle Folk Bullsheet to promote the group’s extracurricular activities.

The Gentle Folk Bullsheet. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

The Gentle Way was established by John Presmont (aka Brother Jud) who first came to the attention of the authorities in 1964 when he and seventeen of his free swinging followers were arrested in a communal compound in New York City where “a phonograph was playing soft music and marijuana cigarettes were strewn about… While the detectives were questioning the 17, Mrs. Barbara Sharif Bey, 22 years old, of 279 East Third Street, arrived with a pound of marijuana. The police went to her apartment, where they found her husband, John, placing two additional pounds of marijuana in bags… John Presmont, 45, a bearded occupant of the apartment, told the police the group believed in collective love and was trying to raise funds to buy an island in the Bahamas where it could set up a legal colony of marijuana users.”

Tired of being hassled by the NYC fuzz, Brother Jud and his mob of furry freaks moved to the sunny climes of Southern California where they became renowned for their “beautiful weekend orgies,” as Kerry fondly remembered. The group eventually changed its name from The Gentle Way to The Kerista.

Brother Jud (seated in the middle) with members of Kerista.

Kerry authored a number of “case histories” based on his Kerista experiences for Monogram Publications, a Southern California erotica publisher. In 1966, the group’s newspaper changed its name from Kerista to Kerista Swinger, presumably to generate greater appeal from a new generation of hip sexual experimenters. The Kerista Swinger unabashedly pronounced itself the “Hippest Paper in the USA.” Kerry—calling himself “Young Omar”—wrote several articles for Kerista Swinger, including this snippet:

“Kerista is a religion and the mood of Kerista is one of holiness. Do not, however, look for a profusion of rituals, dogmas, doctrines and scriptures. Kerista is too sacred for that. It is more akin to the religions of the East and, also, the so-called pagan religions of the pre-Christian West. Its fount of being is the religious experience and that action or word or thought which is not infused with ecstasy is not Kerista. And Kerista, like those religions of olden times, is life-affirming.”

Front page of the January 1966 edition Kerista Swinger.

Complete PDF download of the issue here.

In Drawing Down The Moon (Amazon), Margot Adler observed that Kerry’s writings on Kerista signaled the beginnings of the Neo-Pagan movement in contemporary culture, which since the mid-60s has expressed itself in myriad forms, such as free love communes, Wicca practitioners, the back-to-nature movement, psychedelic experimenters and various other groups dedicated to spiritual growth and sexual freedom. In Drawing Down the Moon, Adler cited Kerry as the first person to actually use the word Pagan to describe past and present nature religions.

Read RAW’s take on the Keristas here.

1986 Kerista essay by Kerry Thornley.

More on those krazy Keristas here.

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You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00002)

Cover of the first issue of Balls: The Ungarbled Word. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
In 1968, Roger Lovin began publishing the first French Quarter underground newspaper. Initially titled Balls: The Ungarbled Word it later became known simply as The Ungarbled Word.

The first issue was a rather crude, Xeroxed affair and although it came across as amateur in appearance, Balls featured top notch content including an excerpt from one of the first Discordian writings by Bob McElroy (aka Mungojerry Grindlebone) titled “The Gadfly’s Glossary.”

Cover of the third issue of Balls: The Ungarbled Word.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Full PDF here.

The third issue of Balls:The Ungarbled Word featured an excerpt from Greg Hill’s “Draftee’s Dictionary.” The full version, like Mungo’s “Gadfly’s Glossary”, is part of the Discordian Archives. Links to both are provided here and here.

Ungarbled Word occasionally ran Discordian recruitment advertisements, such as the following:

Sometime in 1958 or ’59 Lord Omar Khyyam Ravenhurst, K.C. was seized by a Mystic Fit. When he revived, he stammered, “How blind we have been. All of this confusion could not just have HAPPENED! SOMEBODY had to PUT all this discord here!” Whereupon Malaclypse the Younger, K.C. had a vision of Eris in which she gave him instructions quite incompatable with those received by Lord Omar, and the DISCORDIAN SOCIETY was born.

SINCE THEN, membership has more than tripled, and the Society has been brought to dynamic Discordian perfection by Fang, the Unwashed, W.K.C., etc., and Mungojerry Grindlebone, C.T.E., etc.

THE DS is the hottest item to hit the holy market since Islam. If you have the wit, come join the gathering sages – If you have but half the wit, join somebody else’s flock and get fleeced.

Why the Discordian Society?

THE PURPOSE of the DS is to provide false, comforting answers to the otherwise unanswerable questions that plague mankind; to give metaphysical reasons for the disorder around us; to promote the unworkable principles of discord – In short, to provide the world with a workshop for the insane, thus keeping us out of mischief as Presidents, Priests, Ministers, or other Dictators.

How to Join

Membership in the Legion of Dynamic Discord is open to anyone who asks for it.

A Few Saints

Some of the major saints are St. Bokonon – see CAT’S CRADLE by Vonnegut; St. Quixote – DON QUIXOTE by Cervantes; St. Oberosia – see PENGUIN ISLAND by France; Sr. Yossarian – see CATCH-22 by Heller; and Jt. Pkflrmids – see YOUR EYE DOCTOR by tomorrow.

For more information contact:
The Discordian Society
P.O. Box 501 – Rayville, La.

Discordian advertisement from the August issue of The Ungarbled Word.

After his Army discharge in 1968, Greg Hill returned to California and immersed himself in the burgeoning counterculture, penning a regular column called Happenings Westcoast published by Lovin in the August edition of The Ungarbled Word.

Draft of Greg Hill’s Happenings Westcoast, August 1968.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
August 28, 1968 letter from Roger Lovin praising Greg Hill and Hailing Eris.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

Happenings Westcoast became a regular feature in The Ungarbled Word and the title was soon changed to Etcetera Pacifica.

September 12, 1968 issue of The Ungarbled Word featuring Greg Hill's Etcetera Pacifica.

Hill produced the column for just a few months until December ’68 when he called it quits on account of his mounting frustration with anti-establishment militants.

Draft version of Hill’s final Etcetera Pacifica column dated December 5, 1968.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill's final Etcetera Pacifica column as it appeared in The Ungarbled Word.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll examine how Roger Lovin got caught up in the Jim Garrison investigation madness.

Mucho thanks to Tim Cridland (aka Zamora the Torture King) for his assistance to this and future installments of our Roger Lovin series.