The Hippie Movement

The Hippie Movement – History, Culture and Legacy

By Psychedelic Junction

In the 1960’s a youth movement got started up by mostly rich middle class people of America. This movement was for promoting the idea of peace, love, unity and freedom and for growing your consciousness to a whole new level, where mere materialistic concepts of life do not affect the way you perceive the world anymore. This group of individuals were called the Hippies (Hippy people). Their ideas of life and love amazed almost all the people across the Globe. Hippies were strange but at the same time funny and got connected with the people very easily. Trying to make the world a better place where there are no wars no violence was the main motive.
The Hippie movement basically started from San Francisco California where they initially got settled. San Francisco, corner of Haight Street and Ashbury Street – The place where the whole world got their first glance of this unique group of people with their colourful attire and funny but influential ideas. This place came to be known as the Haight Ashbury District.
The Hippie Movement – How it Happened

People who had problems accepting the constitutional laws and normal ways of living, in no time got influenced by the idea of Hippies the motto and joined them. Hippie movement or the youth movement which initially consisted of only people from the age group of 15 to 25 was joined soon by people from all age groups across the US sub-continent. All the way from their rallies against Vietnam wars till boom. In the culture of psychedelic rock people from different age groups caste and colour joined them for one common cause, no racism and no discrimination. Nearly 420,000 people joined the movement in 1969.
Hippie Movement – Its Nature and Lifestyle
Some hippies never worked till they were forced to earn a living. They always had parties filled with songs by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and many other rock and roll numbers which brought a revolution in the music world. It is believed that in the birth and upbringing of psychedelic trance a major contribution was of the Hippie movement and their concepts of free your mind to the world of higher consciousness where everyone is a part of a higher energy source connected to one another. Marijuana and LSD were common in all the Hippie parties. Early Hippies were basically musicians and artists. This new tribe or religion or group of people was so strange that people from conservative middle class could not relate to them initially and saw them as aliens. Hardly did they know the fact that all that these hippies ever wanted was and ever stood for was peace, love, unity, freedom, respect, dance, bliss, joy and a feeling of oneness with the world. They had an immense love for nature.
The Hippie Beliefs

Hippies were known for their belief in ideas of peace, never ending parties with enormous supplies of psychedelic drugs, music and dance. They believed that life is a gift to embrace and enjoy it. They filled there lives with colours of love for everyone. They would socialise during the day and would party all night in their funny and lively clothing, they would drink beer, sing songs of love, unity and danced on different numbers of various genres.
The Hippie Movement – The Trips Festival, Golden Gate Park
In the middle of 1965 and 1967 hippies spread over height Ashbury District and started promoting their ideas of psychedelics and peace. The single most important event that put the Hippies on the map was held at the Golden Gate Park later known as the Trips festival.
A week long festival designed to experience LSD trips took place at Golden gate bridge which in following years held infinite number of events lead by various musicians and artists.
The Hippie Movement – How it Gained a Name in the Mainstream World
In the 60s most frequent drug used by Hippies among many others was marijuana and LSD which later was promoted by Dr. Timothy Leary a Harvard professor. He said “LSD is western yoga. The aim of all Eastern religions, like the aim of LSD, is basically to get high; that is to expand your consciousness and find ecstasy and revelation within”.
Ken Keasey was another preacher who travelled across the country in a psychedelic bus distributing LSD to anyone who would like to have a pinch of it. Many famous musicians of that time like Bob Dylan who wrote and sung rolling stones expressed the views and thoughts of many hippies and in fact Dylan himself made this song to express the changes and transformation in his personality that he was going through. Drugs and psychedelics became a part of many songs and bands later. Music was in their veins and they danced to celebrate life.
Jimmy Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” is about marijuana. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” is a Beatles song describing LSD which afterwards got famous by the name of lucy.
What happened around the globe in The Hippie Movement?
    In Mexico, the hippies are called as jipitecas, who gathered at Avándaro and formed La Onda Chicana (Spanish term for hippies).
    On the other side of the planet, in New Zealand, alternative lifestyles were practiced by nomadic housetruckers and promoted energy, enough to sustain energy at Nambassa which is a hippie festival that was held between 1976 to 1981 in Waihi and Waikino in NZ.
    In United Kingdom, many New Age travellers who were mobile “Peace convoys” made their own summer pilgrimages to free music festivals that were held in Stonehenge.
    In the Ozzyland (Australia), hippies gathered in large numbers at Nimbin (a small township in New South Wales), for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the Annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally, also known as Madigrass.
    Piedra Roja Festival, held in 1970, in Chile was a major hippie gathering in that country.
The Hippie Movement – The Hippie Fashion and The Hippie Culture
Hippie fashion trends and hippie values affected both – the Culture and the Couture during the 1960′s. Television, Film, Arts, Music and Literature were popularly influenced by the hippies. Ever since the widespread movement of the Sixties, many different aspects of the hippie culture have been adopted by the mainstream cultures and media.
The immense diversity of different cultures and religions espoused by the hippies has largely gained a global acceptance. A gist of hippie culture could be given in a phrase – “West meets East”. The Eastern philosophy and their spiritual ideologies reached a wide western audience.
Hippies were the people who believed in intimacy, knowing everyone on the streets and trusting everyone who knew them was a habit. They believed in peace and lived a life of purity filled with vibrant colours. Share and care with good intentions was a belief. If you know a hippy you will never be alone. They offered homes to homeless and food to hungry.
They were selfless who believed that everyone was a part of them. Hippies opened free clinics, shelters, food joints and gave away all the materialistic possessions.
In 1970s the children of Hippies were known as flower children who would distribute flowers to symbolise the universal brotherhood and love the believed in. Carrying a major contribution towards the success of Summer of Love In 1967 they started spreading their message all over the Globe.
Allen Ginsburg in 1965. Came up with an idea of flower power to suppress wars and spread a message of love peace and unity.
In mid 1970s the mainstream media stopped paying attention to Hippie counter culture yippies and Acid rock gave way to punk rock, progressive rock, disco, and metal.
The Hippie Movement (1969-71) – The Psychedelic Bus from Greece to Goa and How Goa Became the Mecca for the Hippies
Thousands of Hippies got together and travelled for thousands of miles from Greece Europe to Goa India, overland route to India or the Hippie trail. With small amounts of cash and almost no luggage they united and followed the same route, they hitch-hiked across Europe to Athens and then to Istanbul, from their by train through central Turkey via Erzurum, finally into Iran, via Tabriz and Tehran to Mashad, across the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan. through Kandahar to Kabul, over the Khyber Pass into Pakistan, via Rawalpindi and Lahore to the Indian frontier. In India, hippies visited many different destinations and finally large numbers of Hippies gathered on the beaches of Goa.
They said that there is something in the soil. They made friends arranged psychedelic parties which went for 72 hours known as full Moon parties. Joined by many intellectuals in Goa like Goa Gil and Stephen they gave birth to Goa/Acid trance.
Early hippie legacy was continued just migrated to a new land which in no time turned into a birth place of psychedelic music. Their love and their colorful life had a huge impact on locals and in no time with their help hippies established their own businesses and psychedelic events. New psy Dj’s started evolving and it gave a new phase to global music which later was known as Goa trance music or acid psychedelic trance which took a global turn and the hippie culture took a shape of a religion all over the world. India, Nepal, Russia, Germany, Israel, Brazil, and many states of the U.S became popular on a hippie-backpacker’s map.
The Hippie Culture – Today
Unfortunately, this hippie culture that gained the importance of a religion among those who followed it, started to disappear due to many factors like Government interference, Government policies and laws, Drug Eradication and the propaganda that the mainstream media created for this – Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll culture.

But the fact remains, that these bunch of tribes all over the world stand for peace, love, unity, respect and freedom. They don’t want to disturb anybody or harm anyone. They are just true lovers of music and dance, and nature who would rather want to make love than wars, who would rather drop acid, not bombs!
The legacy of the hippies still continues in our contemporary culture in countless forms – from organic goods, organic paper and health food to giant music festivals, to contemporary sexual habits and to the cyberspace revolution, we call Cyber-Age.
But all that is lacking today is the spirit of oneness and the feeling of a one united tribe. The golden age of Eighties and Nineties of the hippie era has gone but the memories still remain fresh and even when I think of those times, I can see a unique group of pure energies with a beautiful aura. Times are changing, and with time, the psychedelic vibes are being felt by most of the people around the world. The transformation has started and a new-age psy revolution has begun – all in the best spirit of psychedelic freedom, love, music and for the one love of nature.
Peace.Love.Unity.Freedom.Respect
 ((( boOm shanti )))
psychedelicjunction