Trickster No. 4: Ken Kesey

From the sublime in Gandhi, to the ridiculous in Kesey, TricksterWorld® has it all…
Kesey pretty much fell into Tricksterdom by accident. Taking a job as a hospital cleaner to support his fledgling writing career, he was asked if he’d participate in some drug trials. After one particularly powerful session, he noted the name of the drug and snuck some out to share with his writing buddies… and innocently launched LSD on an unsuspecting world.

I say innocently, for Kesey had no idea about the complexities of drug culture, addiction and crime when he did this. He just believed like an evangelical that this stuff was the best thing ever, and opened the way into a whole new world of fabulous experience.

Making a whole lot of cash out of his debut novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which itself is a meditation on freedom of experience and authority, Kesey then set about his mission to turn the rest of the world on. With his band of Merry Pranksters based at his ranch in La Honda, this day-glo gang made it their goal to give everyone a taste of this alternative world they’d discovered… So painted up a high school bus, rigged it with all the AV equipment possible and drove across the states throwing parties, with a little ‘Electric Kool-Aid’ thrown in for good measure.

If you haven’t read Tom Wolfe’s brilliant account of their exploits, I thoroughly encourage you to do so. And reflect on its similarities with the Acts of the Apostles as you do so. Here is a band of people who have discovered something amazing… It just happens to be that the authorities don’t like it one bit. Far too ‘free’ and threatening to good rule. So they go after the movement’s leader… who is ranting on about ‘going beyond’ – about how this experience ought to be open to all at all times if only they’d open their gourds to let it flow…. They didn’t need him to mediate it! He disappears… is sighted in various places, his band of followers unsure how they can go on…

I’d love to have time to write the book ‘Acid, The Spirit and the People of God’ (with thanks to Gordon Fee)… The AV equipment, the fervour, the desire to go beyond… It all just seems so like the Emerging Church! Kesey is one of my favourite Tricksters for genuinely wanting to turn people on, and certainly remains one of my big inspirations for Vaux. If we ever do another service, you’ll know not to drink the orange juice 😉