Word: mysticism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Ikeya-Seki comet appeared on Indonesia's eastern horizon early one morning last October. From the base of the volcano Agung, navel of creation and home of the Great Gods, the mystic prophets of the island of Bali watched it streak through the sky for ten days and were alarmed. It was an omen, they warned, of much death and change of government in the land...
...first big impetus toward this sort of mysticism came from the late writer-mystic Aldous Huxley, who in The Doors of Perception (1954) furnished a superseductive account of his experience under the influence of mescaline. Huxley recalled that earlier mystics had used fasting or self-flagellation to achieve a spiritual state. Nowadays, he argued, such measures are no longer necessary, since we know "what are the chemical conditions of transcendental experience...
...have been particularly thick around Manhattan that day. Knut Hammarskjöld, 44, director general of the International Air Transport Association, was conjuring up otherworldly aircraft at a meeting of the Aviation Space Writers Association. "I must make a confession," said Knut, whose Uncle Dag Hammarskjold was rather a mystic before him. "I believe in those Unidentified Flying Objects. Is it really unlikely that there exist civilizations outside our planet which are more developed, both technically and mentally, than we are? Are these space neighbors of ours getting more interested in what we are doing as our own technical abilities...
Like any other voodoo mystic, Haitian Dictator François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier has his good-luck day: the 22nd. He was elected "President" on Sept. 22, 1957, inaugurated Oct. 22, then installed as "President for Life" on June 22, 1964. Some Haitians even credit his occult powers with the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, a longtime foe. But last Jan. 22, Duvalier's luck suddenly seemed to turn when one of his two DC-3s crashed on Haiti's southern peninsula, crippling his rickety little air force. Haitians hopefully spread the word that Duvalier might...
...expansion; the Mexican government expelled him after two months. He tried unsuccessfully to reopen in the Caribbean, finally established something called the Castalia Foundation on a 3,000-acre estate in Millbrook, N.Y., near Vassar and Bennett colleges. Along the way, he had become very much a religious mystic; the four-story foundation headquarters was filled with religious statues, yoga exercisers and Leary followers seeking spiritual enlightenment by smoking marijuana cigarettes and chewing morning-glory seeds...