Growing up in the suburbs of Boston and raised on secular Judaism, Cocoa Puffs, and Gilligan's Island, Peter Bebergal was barely in his teens when the ancient desire to finding higher spiritual meaning in the universe struck. Already schooled in mysticism by way of comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, and Carlos Castaneda, he turned to hallucinogens, convinced they would provide a path to illumination.

Was this profound desire for God--a god he believed that could only be apprehended by an extreme state of altered consciousness--simply a side effect of the drugs? Or was it a deeper...

This epic cultural and historical odyssey unearths the full influence of occult traditions on rock and roll -- from the Beatles to Black Sabbath -- and shows how the marriage between mysticism and music changed our world.
From the hoodoo-inspired sounds of Elvis Presleytothe Eastern odysseys of George Harrison, fromthe dark dalliances of Led Zeppelin tothe Masonic imagery of today s hip-hop scene, the occult has long breathed lifeinto rock and hip-hop and, indeed, esoteric and supernatural traditions are a key ingredient behindthe emergence anddevelopmentof rock and roll.
With vivid...