{"id":5294,"date":"2022-03-21T18:29:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T18:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/?p=5294"},"modified":"2022-03-21T18:45:49","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T18:45:49","slug":"altamont-dark-rituals-counter-cultural-musings-from-tsptr-dossier-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=5294","title":{"rendered":"Altamont: Dark Rituals\u2013 Counter-Cultural musings from TSPTR. Dossier #8"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eighth of our monthly counter-cultural musings from\u00a0<\/strong>TSPTR, <\/strong><\/a>darkness at the end of the \u201960s<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The problem with invocations is that they have a habit of working. They are particularly potent when made at points of critical mass, when others are calling similar forces from the ether. Throughout 1969 the air in California was crackling with heavy anticipation, on 6th December the Moon moved into the house of Scorpio, the point in the month “when the Universal Vibration is at its most unstable”. At the same time The Rolling Stones took to the stage at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California, this was to be the last date of their \u201969 North American tour \u2013 a month long junket to support their 10th American album Let It Bleed<\/em> \u2013 and the West Coast astrologers started to get nervous.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/C28jTm6zRB8<\/p>\n

Since the release of their eighth LP, Their Satanic Majesties Request<\/em> in December \u201967, the Stones had been flirting with the occult. The violence of their songs seemed more and more to mirror the social misery of the late \u201960s \u2013 street riots, assassinations and the grinding imperative of The Vietnam War. Stanley Booth, a writer travelling with the band, was taken with their song \u2018Midnight Rambler\u2019, a queasy homage to Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler. It made him think of George Howard Putt, the recently arrested “sex-slayer” of Memphis, as well as The Zodiac Killer who was at that point rambling free through the San Francisco Bay Area. A mere three months had passed since the Tate-LaBianca murders and as concert crowds amassed at Altamont, reports of Manson\u2019s arrest were just beginning to circulate. Seeing the landowners of the Altamont area shut their doors fearing more of the same violence, Booth wrote in his notebook that “murder seemed to be in the air these days, like the scent of flowers in the spring”. And now, singing about death and the devil while wearing a shirt emblazoned with the sign of the omega, and flanked by Hells Angels, Mick Jagger seemed to be deliberately playing with the dates astrological fire.<\/p>\n