From Darkness Into the Light. Marino Restrepo

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      The next and most dangerous stage began when another group of Americans introduced the tarot card, some old esoteric treatises, Voodoo and Candombe, and all sorts of practices originating from eastern paganism, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and hundreds of yoga schools offering the seven levels.

      All leaders of eastern paganism (or gurus, as they were known) had their heyday and dedicated themselves to conquering souls in western countries like Colombia. Occult metaphysics and all kinds of magic and superstition were the gods of the New Age who captured the peace and love spirit of the 1960’s. Many of my friends in Colombia were trapped by eastern paganism to the point of becoming apostles of these sects; they created large local centers and their lives mirrored the eastern culture, especially their clothing and food choices. I was completely seduced by the supernatural fantasy of those magical, philosophical ideas. Although I studied them all with great interest, I was never a disciple or follower of any of them because my interests were more in the arts and music lines.

      In the late 1960’s, I met a girl with whom I shared my life for about a year; we seemed to be meant for each other. We stayed together for all that time, without having other relationships, something not normal for the lifestyle upon which I had embarked. In the course of only four years, I had had love affairs with innumerable Donnas and Cindys from all over the United States, and with a similar number of Lolas and Marias from my own country.

      My last relationship came to a climax when I was 20 and my girlfriend got pregnant. Most of her family was involved in politics, worked for the government, and had a lifestyle that our own generation really hated. To them, we were the trash of the world. The news of my girlfriend’s pregnancy was not well received in her family and she was advised to have an abortion. Although we were contaminated with all the magic, occultism, eastern paganism and other spiritually poisonous currents, it was impossible for us to commit such a crime. Moreover, her relatives made it very clear that they were morally superior to us. Some weeks later and after facing many difficulties, we married in a Catholic church in Bogotá. A few days later, they suggested we to go to Germany where they would help us find work. The truth is that they wanted us to be far away from them, so that we would not damage their reputation.

      When we arrived in Germany in the middle of a severe winter, the first thing we had to change was our diet. Being vegetarians, we were undernourished and that could affect the baby. Moreover, we had no idea how to follow a vegetarian diet without risking malnutrition. The same spirit flying in the skies and hearts of young Americans had influenced most young people in Germany. Without much difficulty, we joined different groups and kept the same habits for a while. After learning German, I entered the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Hamburg.

      After the arrival of our first baby, our life as a couple changed due to our difficulty in coping with “the establishment” against which we had rebelled. That “establishment” hated us because of the way we dressed, thought, acted and lived. We coped by finding a neutral territory where we could enjoy the benefits offered by “the establishment” without losing our revolutionary identity of “love and peace”. In order to do so, we had to change our clothes and appearance; my hair went back to almost normal; I had my beard cut, but kept a big mustache that annoyed people of “the other dimension” (as we called them). However, I managed to get a job with which to cover our basic expenses. An act of charity on the part of my wife’s family led her in securing a trivial diplomatic job for the Columbian Government. We spent six years in Germany. Less than two years after our first baby was born we had our second child.

      Meanwhile, my life continued to be closely related to the psychedelic world at the university through my artistic work and the music I listened to, studied and composed. I took advantage of every single opportunity that presented itself. I often traveled to Berlin and visited the traditional Kuhdam Boulevard, a set of blocks with hundreds of coffee shops, bars and rooms with small live stages side-by-side on many blocks of the boulevard. I took my guitar with me and, under the effects of drugs, played all the songs I knew to my new friends from Europe and the United States. This way, I kept the spirit I had brought from Colombia alive, and became more esoteric, metaphysical, astrological, superstitious, spiritualistic and alchemistic. A large eastern pagan movement led all this spiritual activity. Our heroes — the Beatles and many others — were the most fervent followers of these mystical currents and had a great influence on us. It was almost impossible to meet a group of young people anywhere without hearing a magical or mystical comment of some sort. Our whole lives were guided by occultism. The only thing my wife and I shared, as a couple, was the rock-and-roll concerts. They became our focal point and we would attend them after feeding our babies. Tickets were very expensive and buying them meant not having adequate funds for everything else, but we did not care. The concerts became our church.

      Little by little, the life and union between my wife and myself began to change. We no longer thought the same way. She began to feel nostalgic of her roots and I got increasingly involved in my artistic-psychedelic world. At the end of 1976, we decided to go back to Colombia. Most of our former “love and peace” friends no longer had mystical experiences. On the contrary, their lives were now focused on partying with alcohol and cocaine. To make things worse, American drug-trafficking mafias had built a paradise in Colombia from where they produced and dispatched drugs to the rest of the world. Many liquor and cigarette smugglers — unscrupulous people who were used to breaking the law and enforcing their will by killing — joined the drug business. Strong and powerful organizations appeared, and all the upper-middle class friends with whom I had shared my psychedelic life in Colombia began to finalize negotiations with American drug dealers using their knowledge of the English language and culture. A few months after arriving in Colombia, my marriage came to an end and my life started to go downhill due to my use of alcohol, cocaine, the bad deals I had made and my lustful nature, sparked by the use of all these drugs.

      I went to the United States where I began a troubled and confused life — separated from my love of the arts and music. I spent some time in Florida and New York; my life became immersed in a world of bars, cocaine and women who were as decadent as I — a world full of anxiety due to the separation from my children and wife. Nothing seemed to fill that emptiness. My spiritual life that I viewed as the last step on a magical ladder — full of gifts and power — was no more than a devil’s sham, but I was completely unaware of that at that time. Later on, my artistic connections and acquaintances in New York led me to start a new life in California. I got involved in an activity that would take 20 years of my life and that kept me moving between the cinema, television and music, in a world of drugs and lust. Hollywood seemed to be the great Mecca for this type of life. The same spirit that had baptized me to the world of Donna in Colombia, through that first marijuana cigarette in 1967, was still orienting my life in California. It was no coincidence that coming from the same dark force, it would beckon me, giving one last shake before leaving me in perpetual spiritual darkness.

      My artistic life began again in California and helped me somehow to fill the emptiness and anxiety that had caused me to waste away during the previous four years. At the same time, my magical and esoteric activity increased considerably. California could well be the world center of the New Age movement and its spiritual darkness. Esoteric prophets, new metaphysical or spiritualistic sects, the most important centers of satanic masonry, along with the most active satanic churches of America were — and still are — thriving in California. Many evil characters had infiltrated Hollywood as famous writers working for the most prestigious film studios, or as producers of the greatest movies ranging from Disney’s productions for children to Warner Brothers’ horror movies. This spirit began to grow in the 1960’s when the “love and peace” generation was born, and has increased ever since in San Francisco Bay. The most obscure movements are promoted from Hollywood; they are shown as entertainment, as fantasy, as an expression of the seventh art, whose only purpose is to supposedly enrich our daily lives. Much could be said about this topic, but I would have to ask the Lord to give me the opportunity to write another book on this vast and obscure subject.

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