Lynn Darnton and the Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom, 1968 vs 1978, from the BBC’s Everyman series.
In 1967, Lynn Darnton was living in North London with members of The Exploding Galaxy, an experimental dance/performance collective organized by Filipino kinetic artist David Medalla. But he was kicked out for cannabis use, which was strictly forbidden.
He then established The Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom, whose name came from Andrija Puharich’s 1959 psychedelic classic ‘The Sacred Mushroom: Key to the Door of Eternity.’ In ’68 the Tribe established a rural commune in Suffolk, which International Times called “the first rural hippy commune.”
I’m pretty sure the beginning footage here is from a ritual performance at London’s Middle Earth psychedelic club. Another performance of theirs there was raided by police. And later a group of Covent Garden market porters stormed the place with axes and box hooks because they heard a (false) rumor that the group was about to sacrifice a child.
Darnton wrote an article in Oz #31 called “Magick Mushroom,” and he appears to have been one of the first people in England to investigate and experiment with indigenous psilocybin mushrooms. He dried them by a fire and ate them with jam.
