# Superstar: The Psychedelic Jesus of the Counterculture October 08, 2025 [ Erik Davis ](/people/erik-davis) Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey *The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.* ![cover of the Oracle showing prophet figure](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-10/A.Oracle.jpg?itok=wYCNWz9-) Rick Griffin, cover of the *Oracle,* San Francisco, vol.1, issue 6As the contemporary dialogue between religious leaders and the psychedelic world deepens, a new psychedelic Christianity is emerging. This development in turn resurrects a significant but understudied figure of the American religious imagination: the “psychedelic Jesus” associated with the spiritual counterculture in the late 1960s and 1970s. This psychedelic Jesus—to be distinguished from the mestizo or Indigenous Jesus of the peyote-using Native American Church or Maria Sabina’s mushroom *veladas*—is a “freak Jesus” who crops up in three overlapping domains: the broad “occultural” milieu of hippie spirituality, individual trip reports, and the collective imagination of the Jesus People, aka the Jesus freaks, a movement of fervent young Christians who grew out of the drug culture. Though the Jesus People rejected LSD and the grab-bag of occulture, I argue that many singular features of the revival are directly rooted in psychedelic spirituality—something that even *Time* magazine suspected when it named its important 1971 cover story on the Jesus People movement “The Alternative Jesus: Psychedelic Christ.” ![Drawing of a male bearded face and handwritten notes](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-10/B.%20Be%20here%20now.jpg?itok=enPxS6Qs) Ram Dass, *Be Here Now*, Lama Foundation, 1971. The Jesus who appears within the broad patchwork of 1960s and 1970s occult culture is a wisdom figure. He manifests as the crucified Christ, seeing through the *leela* of existence from the butcher-block pages of Ram Dass’s 1971 classic *Be Here Now*. Or he appears on the cover of the Haight Street underground newspaper *The Oracle* (1967), as an Aquarian-age prophet whose face recalls the Shroud of Turin. This psychedelic wisdom figure derives less from the canonical Jesus than from the esoteric Master who appears in “hidden teachings” like the *Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ* (1908), supposedly channeled from the Akashic records, or from the ecumenical yogi Jesus of Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship. In the psychedelic 60s, this esoteric Jesus could grow intensely heretical. For the notorious Process Church of the Final Judgement, Jesus Christ is a god in balance with Jehovah, Lucifer, and especially Satan; Charles Manson, who came to personify psychedelic evil, also claimed identity with Jesus Christ. The psychedelic Jesus also appears in the phenomenological weave of actual trips. Pioneering psychedelic psychiatrist Stan Grof (b. 1931) reported that Christian and Jewish elements were the most common religious material appearing in the LSD trips he supervised. Grof emphasized that many subjects identified their harrowing “ego death” experiences with Christ on the Cross. Acid trips also regularly feature in the conversion narratives of Jesus People. Some of these accounts emphasize the demonic or spiritually void nature of psychedelic journeys, but others — including narratives given by movement leaders like Lonnie Frisbee (1949-1993) and Oden Fong (b.1950)—feature positive experiences that include millennialist revelations or transcendental encounters with Jesus. These drug experiences confirm the truth or attraction of Christianity *within the trip itself*. Because Jesus People would generally demonize drug culture, these “bridge experiences” remain fundamentally but productively ambivalent. ![image from Zapped Comic](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-10/C.Zapped.jpg?itok=kj11c2MR) Steve Gregg, cover of *Zapped* Comics, issue 1, 1973. The third domain of the psychedelic Jesus lies in the discourse, imagery, and spiritual experiences associated with the Jesus People. The first of these “street Christians” emerged from Christian coffee shops and communal homes in hippie California in the late 1960s, but quickly grew to national prominence. Scholars and journalists extensively covered the movement, emphasizing its stylistic and affective novelties as well as its often militant blend of hippie mores and fundamentalist beliefs about scriptural inerrancy and imminent Apocalypse. By the mid-1970s, the Jesus People movement had largely been assimilated into broadening nondenominational Christian currents, while changing those currents in some crucial ways. While Jesus People rejected drug culture, I suggest that the modes of religious experience they favored owe a significant debt to the discourse and phenomenology of psychedelics. Examples include the experiential immediacy of their Jesus “encounters,” the transhistorical intensity of eschatological time, and the sometimes synchronistic operations of the divine in daily life. Other connections are more aesthetic. Jesus People music groups like Agape or Fraction played heavy acid rock, expressing an evangelical recoding of the purple haze and affective ferocity of psychedelic mysticism. ![Image showing Jesus rising on a wave](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-10/D.surfing-Jesus.jpg?itok=G8S-26E-) Rick Griffin, “Surfing Jesus,” 1977.Popular imagery also illuminates the psychedelic Jesus. Rick Griffin (1944-1991) was a well-known Haight Street poster artist and underground cartoonist, and his powerful psychedelic work is informed by an esoteric if playful mysticism that includes arcane Christian references. In 1970, Griffin and his wife Ida became Jesus freaks, with Rick visually “working through” his conversion in his remarkable publication *The Man from Utopia* (1972). Tapping into the Jesus People spirit, Griffin went on to produce artwork associated with Calvary Chapel, a key Southern California point of contact between the Jesus movement and the evangelical Christian mainstream (Lonnie Frisbee preached there). In addition to Christian rock album covers, Griffin illustrated Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith’s *Gospel of John* (1980) magazine. In these vibrant years, Griffin, who was a surfer, also produced an unforgettable image of a surfing Christ —a veritable icon of the psychedelic Jesus. See also:- [ Art ](/topic-tags/art) - [ Researcher Reflections ](/topic-tags/researcher-reflection)