Scorpio rising

The roots of my risk taking and contempt for authority figures

Much of my adulthood has been a combination of debauched behavior, sporadic drug dealing, sexual excess, while managing to become a master builder, having built and restored dozens of beautifully rendered homes. Over a span of 50 plus years, beginning by attending classes at The Theosophical Society in Boston, I’ve also made use of astrology as a means of self understanding and self acceptance. Having studied psychology at the university level, I can safely say that a properly interpreted horoscope will reveal much more about one’s strengths, weaknesses, and inner struggles than hundreds of hours of psychotherapy. It is a liberating experience and a powerful tool. But I’m straying from the point of this essay.

After reading Elizabeth Nickson’s article on Substack, referencing the recent class action suit brought against McGill University, with subsequent verdict for the plaintifs, I was also reminded of the role of the elites in funding this destructive project, and began to recognize the pronounced effect of the ethos behind the project, and it’s numerous permutations in popular culture of the 60s onwards. These various influences were certainly a large influence in my development as an adolescent.

I was an only child to brilliant mother, who was an accomplished artist mastering photographic realism in oil painting and pencil drawing. She drank and smoked all the way through her pregnancy with me however, and I was given infant formula right from the get go, as she was too self absorbed to be bothered with breast feeding. My dad was a violent drunk, and he left when I was 3 months old, when he beat up my maternal grandfather and sent him to the hospital. My grandfather told him that if he left, and never came back, they wouldn’t press charges. From that point onward, my grandparents subsidized my mother’s existence,

A woman of strikingly good looks, she attracted men who were mostly interested in drinking and getting into bed with her, and I became an inconvenient impediment to her various trysts and short term affairs. One day when I was 5, one of these individuals took a turn with me too, and it was a painful and traumatic event which etched into my psyche a deep distrust and wariness of any adult male or authority figure. I began at an early age to armor up, and reflexively, subconsciously, began to plan my revenge. As an adult, I cultivated a warrior physique, and actually relished the intimidating effect my persona exuded. People were afraid of me, and I liked it like that. Scorpio rising.

The raping of male children produces precisely this type of individual, an internally wounded individual who may vent that rage at any moment, or a beta male who pursues safe employment and prefers the company of gentler souls. I became an example of the first category. An excellent expose of male rape as a technique employed by the intelligence services and elite military, may be found in the Kay Griggs interviews.

See here:

At 15 years of age I was involved in the antiwar movement, to the point of organizing demonstrations where I was a student at Santa Barbara High School, and arranged for speakers to deliver fiery speeches calling attention to the horrors of the war in Viet Nam. From there I attended the Community School of Santa Barbara, which was run by a fellow by the name of Harvey Haber, who apparently was one of the ghost writers for the books attributed to L. Ron Hubbard. That place was little more that a training ground for antiwar radicalism, and I was aware right away that we were being groomed for the employment of violent protest techniques along the lines of Saul Alinsky. Although full of youthful testosterone verve, I could still see that these types of tactics would only bring bad press to the antiwar movement, and I left that place after only 2 months.

My grandparents decided to send me to a coed boarding school in the foothills of Ventura county, the Ojai Valley School, where I spent my junior and senior years. Their concern for my safety was probably due to my frequent attendance at the increasingly violent antiwar demonstrations where some people has been shot and killed by the authorities. They put up the money to get me into a more normalized environment, where the curriculum was standard college prep common to the era,

It was a relief to have escaped the insanity of my home life with my mom and her third husband, both of whom were enthralled by the exhortations of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. with plenty on wine, pot, hashish, and the occasional LSD or psilocybin trip thrown in. Not wanting to be square and convinced that all of this was normal I, at age 14, began smoking pot and tripping now and then too. Thank god I got sent away to school.

Once ensconced at OVS, it became apparent that there was plenty of drug use going on there too. In fact, for a college prep boarding school, the place was being run in a rather alternative / progressive manner, non denominational, with no school uniforms required, tobacco use permitted among the students in designated areas, and the course selection included classes introducing us to feminism and radical environmentalism. This was in 1970. Among area boarding schools of similar academic caliber, the place had a reputation for being fairly loose on discipline.

In my senior year I was elected student body president, and also first prefect, in charge of policing the boy’s dorms. This meant that nobody would ever tell me who was in possession of drugs, or where the party was, because it was my responsibility to search rooms and preside over the disciplinary board meetings, where various punishments were meted out to offenders. I became a pariah, socially ostracized, although in hindsight, it may have been to my benefit. That year, my last in high school, was remarkably sober for me. But not for a lot of the other kids.

That particular year, a new faculty member came on board, who taught some science classes, and was a dorm father in one of the three boy’s dorms. His name was Dr. Robert Lashbrook. Nobody knew it at the time, but he was apparently the number two scientist in charge of the MK Ultra program. This was three years before the program was officially shut down. Whether he was still acting undercover, performing clandestine duties, or just there cooling his jets, we’ll never know. Years later it would come to light that he had been involved in the drugging and murder of a fellow CIA agent, Frank Olson. I do know this however. That ‘71 – ‘72 school year, was one of the most drug saturated years ever in the school’s history, and during my stint as head prefect, we ended up having to send two kids home for severe psychiatric episodes, and they never came back. The stuff I’d confiscate wasn’t just pot or acid, there were hard tranquilizers, and amphetamines being used there as well. The administration didn’t seem overly concerned about any of this.

We also had a few teachers who were having sex with students, and one openly gay dorm father who would continually make passes at me. His English class featured Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckenridge, and in the cafeteria, if hot dogs were on the menu, he’d lovingly perform fellatio on it to the shock of everyone in attendance. One assembly we had featured an invited poet whose recital included a graphic story of bestiality. A lot of kids were squirming in their seats listening to that one.

The Lashbrook issue only came to light for me while perusing You Tube videos. And I came across this.

So whether or not Laskbrook was instrumental in facilitating excessive recreational drug use at OVS, it will probably remain open to speculation, with no definitive answers. The atmosphere at the school during that time period however was rife with many influences which seemed to be unwholesome and tacitly tolerated. But again, whether by design, or simply a reflection of the widespread epochal zeitgeist, one can only speculate. It was, from my time there, just one of many more exposures to powerful and influential elements that I would go on to experience in my life’s adventures.

Scorpio rising.