It has never been easier to blend in, said Florence, and that was partly why she allowed the young Initiates to participate in the ambient esotericism. People talked about thought police, William Blake, and Hölderlin at parties, they read Castaneda and Blavatsky, they looked at Escher pictures to stimulate their trips, they discussed UFOs and countryside fairies. It was common to smoke hash, and, while the pipe went around, page through Le mystère des cathédrales or argue over whether the best Tarot was Crowley’s or Rider–Waite’s (or, as Laura and I insisted on calling them, Frieda Harris’s or
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