How L.A. cult the Source Family became hot content in 2023

“Father Yod simply gave me a thought for you. He desires me to inform you, ‘Camelot.’”

On a Zoom name in March from her house in Oahu, Hawaii, Isis Aquarian recounted her time within the Los Angeles religious commune the Supply Household, which she — by way of telepathic messages from the group’s chief — likened to the romantic image of the Arthurian world.

Within the Nineteen Seventies, wearing fashionable, flowing robes, caftans, robes and headscarves, she all however resembled Guinevere. “It was pure Camelot for all of us. For individuals who skilled it, it was one thing else,” she added. For Isis, the Household was tantamount to utopia.

Recognized for its pioneering in California way of life staples like well being meals, yoga, psychedelic rock and hippie style, the group’s chief, Father Yod, née Jim Baker, “left the physique” in 1975, after a cling gliding accident in Hawaii, the place the Household relocated in 1974. However Isis, now 80, stated their union — she was one in all Yod’s 14 religious wives — by no means ended. “He’s nonetheless the large man to me, nonetheless my man,” she stated. “Once you stay in each dimensions, the veil may be very skinny.”

To an outsider, Isis’ informal references to telepathy and interdimensional existence might sound delusional. However for members of the Supply Household, a bunch that some name a cult, it’s a lifestyle honed over a long time of examine and ritualism primarily based in Western esotericism. Their beliefs amalgamated rules developed by Kundalini yoga progenitor Yogi Bhajan; the astrological idea of the Age of Aquarius; the teachings of Manly P. Corridor, founding father of the Philosophical Analysis Society in Los Feliz; the freemasons and others. Father Yod bestowed every member with a primary identify; they modified their center and final names to the Aquarian. Like many spiritual and religious teams, the Supply Household positioned their religion in issues invisible to nonbelievers.

Father Yod, nevertheless, was onerous to overlook.

Their guru’s virile presence and checkered previous preceded him in his days as a determine on the Sundown Strip. Because the story goes, Midwest native Baker was a profitable restaurateur and Hollywood socialite, and likewise a convicted killer and suspected financial institution robber. At one level, his palms had been registered as deadly weapons. He moved to L.A. after World Battle II to audition for a task as Tarzan.

Impressed by the proto-hippie way of life led by Nature Boys Gypsy Boots and eden ahbez, he opened early well being meals eateries the Previous World and Conscious Inn. Within the late ’60s, he studied with Yogi Bhajan, and started creating his personal philosophy that blended numerous religious rituals, au pure residing and far-out concepts like “intercourse magick.” He then remodeled into Father Yod (which he described as “the precept and origin of all issues, the I, the energetic precept, the picture of masculinity”) and, later, YaHoWah (drawn from the Hebrew identify for God). He developed a day by day routine for the Household consisting of 40 directions that included chanting “YaHoWha” all through the day, respiratory methods, meditation, visualization, kindness to strangers and a six-count inhalation of the “Sacred Herb” (hashish).

Father Yod opened the Supply restaurant at 8301 Sundown Blvd. in 1969 to assist his rising household of followers, and it grew to become one of many first hotspots in L.A. for natural vegetarian meals. Stars similar to Steve McQueen, Goldie Hawn, Marlon Brando, Joni Mitchell and John Lennon dined on its well-known patio. It grew to become so synonymous with the only-in-L.A. narrative that it was satirized by Woody Allen in “Annie Corridor” and by “Saturday Night time Stay.”

The Household moved right into a Georgian-style mansion in Los Feliz, former house of L.A. Instances homeowners the Chandlers, which they dubbed the Mom Home, in 1972. Whereas there, they spent $30,000 on devices and recording gear and started monitoring and urgent psychedelic rock and singer-songwriter music. After they misplaced their lease, they relocated to a a lot smaller, three-bedroom house in Nichols Canyon. At its peak, the Supply Household counted round 140 members, together with Beautiful Previn, daughter of pianist and composer André Previn, Sky Saxon of garage-rock band the Seeds and the niece of former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Although the Supply Household disbanded in 1978, fascination with the group and its practices has surged within the new millennium. For the reason that mid-aughts, there have been documentary movies, books and a number of CD and vinyl report reissues of the group’s music. Bootleg T-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers seem in Google search outcomes. All of those could also be traced to an enormous assortment of photographs, video and audio recordings, recipes and manifestos that has survived the march of time.

After becoming a member of the Household in 1972, Isis Aquarian, who was born Charlene Peters, the daughter of an archivist for the Air Drive and NASA, served because the group’s documentarian, creating the clever materials that has been drawn from for numerous archival tasks during the last 15 or so years. After the group fell aside, she made it her mission to protect the Household’s legacy.

Most not too long ago, in November, Isis, curator Charlie Kitchings and filmmaker and writer Jodi Wille, who has beforehand labored with Isis on a ebook and a characteristic documentary, launched “Household: The Supply Household Scrapbook” along with the unbiased report label Sacred Bones. The ebook consists of beforehand unpublished pictures and ephemera from Isis’ archive and detailed captions that contextualize the photographs. Isis additionally moved her archive, round 50 packing containers of supplies, to the American Religions Assortment on the UC Santa Barbara library. Together with the ebook’s launch, a sequence of Supply Household occasions came about in Santa Barbara, Los Feliz, Malibu and Culver Metropolis in late March.

And now, Hollywood is getting concerned.

At a non-public dinner in Malibu on March 25 sponsored by the media firm Atlas Obscura, company together with actors Patricia Arquette and Mark Ruffalo, music producer Rick Rubin, actor and producer Ben Sinclair, unique Supply Relations and different curious events had been invited on “a journey into the cult roots of well being meals.” The menu, impressed by dishes on the unique Supply restaurant, featured seven programs together with “psychedelic toast,” “multidimensional soup” and a re-creation of the restaurant’s “conscious salad,” served by employees engaged in Supply Household cosplay, wearing flowing white frocks and wigs. Isis and fellow Supply Relations Venus, Zerathustra and Galaxy Aquarian blessed the meal with a ritual they carried out within the Household. “As above, so under, and round, we go, YaHoWah,” they chanted with corresponding hand gestures, as if guiding vitality across the 40-person desk adorned with poppies, dill flowers, wheat and reduce papaya, a flower little one’s rendering of a medieval banquet.

Arquette, who spent her childhood in a Subud commune in Virginia, stated she’s all the time been fascinated by numerous non secular philosophies and religious seekers. “It’s been good to speak to those elders who’re right here, about their radical experiences as younger individuals,” she stated. “Particularly after they talked about how Father Yod went down his personal ego path. That they acknowledged it made me really feel like there’s not an absolute revisionist historical past.”

The Malibu occasion doubled as a hub of in-progress Hollywood religious ventures. In response to Wille, Ruffalo, his supervisor Margaret Riley and the producer Stacey Sher are engaged on a Supply Household restricted sequence through which Ruffalo will play Father Yod. Sinclair is growing a sequence concerning the religious chief Ram Dass whereas Rubin is producing a docuseries about Yogi Bhajan. Two days after the occasion in Malibu, Rubin despatched a limo for Isis and interviewed her for 3 hours with a full digital camera crew as a result of, he stated by electronic mail, that he’s “excited by … Isis Aquarian’s hen’s-eye view of Jim Baker’s evolution from profitable man of the world to religious chief, whose ever-curious starvation for deeper religious connection was shared by 150 like-minded souls.”

Rubin stated he discovered concerning the Household after he moved to California within the late ’80s and started eating on the Supply Restaurant. “One thing concerning the house held an vitality despite the fact that the Supply Household had already moved on.” Throughout Father Yod’s lifetime, wrote Rubin, “The Supply story was an area story. Now it’s international.”

This renewed curiosity within the Supply Household comes along with a rising curiosity in cults extra broadly in standard consciousness, evident within the flood of streaming sequence similar to Netflix’s hit present “Wild Wild Nation,” concerning the Rajneeshees; HBO’s “The Vow” and Starz’s “Seduced: Contained in the NXIVM Cult,” competing applications concerning the high-profile NXIVM cult; Hulu’s “Stolen Youth: Contained in the Cult of Sarah Lawrence”; Showtime’s new “Waco: The Aftermath”; and a myriad of documentaries, restricted sequence and podcasts on Scientology, Department Davidians, Jonestown, the polygamist Church of Latter Day Saints and the Manson Household.

The Supply Household’s Isis Aquarian, one in all Father Yod’s 14 “religious wives.”

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Instances)

So what retains individuals coming again to the Supply Household? The rise of wellness traits like sound baths and microdosing suggests a rising open-mindedness amongst America’s higher center class of mystics. However shut examination of the Supply Household, past its natural produce and hippie bon vivants, reveals an offbeat world that’s maybe too freaky for Goop Nation writ massive. Southern California, nevertheless, is a unique scene. “In L.A., individuals like weirdos,” Wille stated. Los Angeles can also be a hub for reinvention, a storied vacation spot for seekers. It’s true now, and it was true then. “I used to be residing in New York and was completely drawn to L.A.,” Isis added. “Everyone simply began filtering into the Hollywood space.”

When the Supply Household shaped, the social and political local weather in america was risky, with an unpopular conflict in Vietnam, the ladies’s liberation motion, violence in opposition to Black residents and assassinations of progressive leaders. A rising variety of Individuals desired a unique lifestyle, to drop out of all of the social and political heavyosity and create a greater world. It’s estimated that between 2,000 and three,000 communes existed in america within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s.

Quick-forward 50 years, and plainly little has modified. “What was taking place again within the early ’70s was, in some methods, actually just like what’s taking place proper now,” Wille stated forward of a non-public dinner and public Q&A at a ranch in Malibu. “There’s political polarization and loads of issues that persons are sad about.”

J. Gordon Melton, retired distinguished professor of American non secular historical past at Baylor College, who’s studied new non secular actions because the early ’70s, stated that the Supply Household managed to evade the burgeoning scholarship motion in its day, which grew to become overshadowed by teams just like the Unification Church, the Hare Krishna motion and the Church of Scientology. “If this group had hung round for a few extra years on the Sundown Strip, they’d have been on the forefront of our consciousness,” he stated.

As for any risks associated to the Supply Household, Melton stated that such teams both have an inherently violent streak or react violently after they understand an assault. “And this group was by no means actually attacked,” he stated. In contrast to teams just like the Manson Household and the Peoples Temple, the Supply Household didn’t have interaction in mass suicide or homicide, although their staunch refusal of Western medicines resulted in no less than one very sick little one being admitted to a Los Angeles hospital.

Father Yod, left, demonstrating judo, and proper, enjoying guitar.

(Isis Aquarian / Supply Household Archives)

Zarathustra Aquarian; his spouse, Amy; and their daughter, Alyah — who’s additionally a “psychedelic clown” who leads “interdimensional journey demonstration and practicum” — applauded the self-discipline and openness that Father Yod’s teachings launched. Zarathustra and Amy utilized most of the Household’s rules of their marriage, together with pure childbirth and the assumption that intercourse is sacred, despite the fact that they didn’t get collectively till years after the Supply Household fell aside. “It was the best utopian group to ever happen round religious work,” he stated.

Galaxy Aquarian, born Daybreak Hurwitz, joined the Household in 1972 when she was 16 years previous, and ultimately grew to become one in all Father Yod’s religious wives and the clothier for the Household, making fantastical clothes and robes. She described her youthful self as a firebrand who was entering into loads of hassle, and stated she appreciates the group’s emphasis on consistency, kindness and honesty.

“I took loads of that with me, however I’ve tailored to life,” she stated. “I married one other man. I’ve worn a number of hats.” She’s engaged on a memoir about her time within the Household, which she was requested to not promote through the occasions. Hurwitz spoke throughout a Q&A in Los Feliz, however not on the roundtable in Malibu two days later.

Although curiosity within the Supply Household appears to be reaching an apex, it’s been a very long time coming. “File collectors knew about them earlier than anyone else,” stated John Wyatt, founding father of Cinespia, which screens basic movies in areas throughout the town. For the reason that Nineties, he’s been a collector of uncommon, obscure and personal press information sourced from space thrift shops, property gross sales and flea markets.

Wyatt recalled a time when distributors had been shifting information by Ya Ho Wah 13, Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76 and different Household-related recordings for $20 or much less as a result of the Supply had fallen out of style and the sellers “didn’t know what that they had.” The primary Supply-related album he purchased was “Penetration, An Aquarian Symphony,” a four-song heavy-psych improvisation with fateful guitars, whistling and off-kilter percussion. “It blew my thoughts,” he exclaimed whereas finding out his copy. “The duvet picture with the gong, the label design, that that they had their very own Greater Key Information.”

As is the case with loads of area of interest music, phrase ultimately unfold. Some Supply-related recordings had been included in writer Patrick Lundborg’s 2006 ebook “The Acid Archives,” a North Star for sure music lovers. At present, unique pressings of information that includes Father Yod — there have been about 20 LPs and 45s launched within the Nineteen Seventies — promote for tons of of {dollars}.

Numerous artifacts from the recordings of Father Yod and his Supply Household bands, from the not too long ago launched “Household: The Supply Household Scrapbook.”

(Isis Aquarian / Supply Household Archives)

A Q&A on the Philosophical Analysis Society on March 23, which adopted a screening of Wille’s 2013 documentary “The Supply Household,” made with Maria Demopoulos, was one of many extra heated discussions that Wille and the Household have participated in since they started working collectively. Some viewers members implied that the movie’s narrative arc, and the member of the family’s solutions that evening, had been selective, omitting Father Yod’s use of alcohol and cocaine. One questioner politely requested if the three feminine Relations on stage — Isis, Galaxy and Venus — in the event that they had been conscious, on the time, of the adverse views introduced within the movie, or in the event that they really feel negatively concerning the Household immediately. One other requested about patriarchy and energy constructions.

At one level, a former Supply Member of the family, Hail Aquarian, stood up within the viewers and approached the stage with a small canine and a few tea to spill. In a prolonged anecdote, he implied that Father Yod expressed his intent to “depart the physique” to some Relations a month earlier than the precise cling gliding accident, undermining the narrative that Yod by no means traveled alone or with out all of his wives. “I by no means heard something about that,” Isis responded earlier than debating the declare.

“That bought somewhat spicy,” Wille mirrored, two days later in Malibu. “It’s actually attention-grabbing to consider wild social experiments that had been taking place within the ’70s when nobody was monitoring issues or canceling issues,” she added. “What I like most is that the Supply Relations every have their very own concepts.”

So long as she’s seen to others on this Earthly dimension, Isis Aquarian will preserve selling the Household and sharing her expertise. In her estimation, all of “the tales behind tales behind tales of every little thing” are nonetheless unfolding. And Southern California will all the time be house, the place the place she felt most understood. “We had been the darlings of L.A.,” she stated.