From "To Trip for God"

• The Mangnoson Affair
• Nearly Beloved 1

Thomm Quackenbush

The house was up a winding road through woods owned by Alex Grey or the church. My companions declared that we were all going to die. Following the unpaved road beyond red and green lights, I replied that we couldn't die. He must have killed us upon trespassing onto his property. This was the beginning of our surreal afterlife, disappointingly like a plywood haunted house.

Inside, volunteers checked us off and complimented us on the inventiveness of our actual last names. They wore The Eye of Spirit, Grey's talisman-a trisected eye within a pyramid within a circle; baby's first occult doodle, surrounded by an alphabet "intuited" by Allyson. This was available in the gift shop at a steep markup given that it was only flimsy silver. Petite Amber was confident that she could bend it. Once you bought and wore someone else's sigil, it's hard to deny you have fallen into worship.

Upstairs, where only "key holders" may go, were rooms one might rent out. I could find no written evidence of the prices. If one had to ask, one could not afford it. One did not pay for the amenities, little more than a bed (and Grey print on the wall) and a continental breakfast, but the boasting rights. The Greys were not commonly on the grounds. If one paid for the chance to do an internship, Alex Grey would meet with one for an hour a week. For some, who envisioned Alex Grey as a latter-day Picasso, this might be worth whatever dent it put in one's trust fund.

After removing our shoes and paying our fee for this revival, the blissed-out people behind the desk affixed blue wristbands to us and reiterate that they would boot us off the property if they saw us without one. There was no visible fence driving in. It would not be hard to sneak in. I could not see anyone who might serve as a bouncer, not that I wished to test this conjecture. They would have asked with exceeding, wide-eyed niceness until one left.

Everyone within exuded a warm vibe that I, for once, did not suspect. Perhaps they were acolytes of Grey. Perhaps curiosity or drug seekers. Despite having my finger on the pulse of the local spiritual community, none of these people were familiar. People here were peculiarly easily on the eyes. This place catered to visual beauty, after all. How did they dissuade the riffraff, those who would not get the cover of High Times and Vogue the same month? How long could I go before they realized I was a solid 6, a 7 in the right light, after a shower and good night's sleep?

A hundred people occupied every available seat and the borders of the room, gathered around a gong and speakers. Every vertical surface featured Grey's art, from paintings to seven-foot statues of eyes and wings. Artifacts of spiritual significance-amethyst geodes like spikey creches, ostrich-egg sized lingams and crystal balls-huddled together with more aesthetic than religious considerations.

It was impossible to wiggle into an alcove in the house where one was not watched, if not by the curious or vacant gazes of other attendees, then by those of Grey's art. Was this intentional? Let the acolytes know the eyes were always on them, judging their unworthy souls.

All the paintings on the walls were prints, not originals. His acolytes would otherwise have scratched and licked them to a pulp in hopes of communing more deeply with Alex.

Alex Grey tapped the gong with increasing force to silence us and set the mood. He dressed in black from his jacket to tight pants to fuzzy slippers. The only deviation was his silver medallion and gray-white hair.

Alex clutched the mic in both hands, close to his face, prayerful but uncomfortable, as though he meant to hide behind it. He was thin enough. If he were as charismatic a cult leader as the internet would have him be, he should be more at ease among his paying flock. I found this awkwardness endearing and almost reassuring.

He asked how we harvested, what we collected into ourselves, gathering divine experience of oneness winning out over the shadow. He spoke with consideration, haltingly, like Jeff Goldblum. The crowd chuckled conspiratorially, as though they were in on a joke that wasn't told.

Though this was not the first time I had met him, I had never seen him in his element. He was far from a televangelist in his fervor or poise. In interviews, Grey shied away from the interviewer, no matter how adulatory they were, because of how adulatory they were.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors worships the Cosmic Christ, the second coming of a green Jesus who will usher in a more environmentally sacred eon. The way to access the green Jesus was to take a staggering amount of LSD and dance on CoSM's property. When God sits at the edge of your fire and you charge a fee to approach, it was only sensible to cut out the middleman and worship Grey.

Alex tried to crack jokes during his sermon, mentioning that a particle of Jesus was statistically in the room, after which he snorted the air. He also tried a Buddhist quip, saying, "The Fourth Noble Truth is life is suffering... ow." From the reaction, one would have thought him Lenny Bruce and George Carlin in one.

His voice skipped through octaves, never settling on one long enough to establish his native tone. His Ichabod Crane limbs waggled as punctuation when he hit his trifold path, far more economical than having to remember the entire Eightfold Path:

• Right View: We are all erotic splatters of beauty throughout the whole universe.
• Right Application: Make art better than it was before. Come back to the wheel of reincarnation and reveal heaven here.
• Right Livelihood: What you would not be ashamed of doing for money.

This salmagundi of Christianity and Buddhism was superficially appealing. Few in the room were primed to look deeper. They paid their admission in every sense and wouldn't be cheated by seeing him as less than the Dalai Lama. (Grey does equate himself with the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and-oddly-Oprah Winfrey on the echelon of modern Enlightened Masters.)

I could understand Alex and Allyson through their art because visual, visionary art was their domain. I would not be so cocky as to interject myself. Given endless time and canvas, I wouldn't recreate their psychedelic intricacy. When the Greys impinged on writing-my realm-I felt less magnanimous. Alex Grey repeated that LSD, a substance not synthesized until the bulk of her work was on shelves, inspired everything Anais Nin ever wrote. She could not have been a brilliant, driven, passionate wordsmith, a seminal woman in the literary canon. It was alien possession borne of drugs. Nin herself was nothing. I could not let this blasphemy pass unremarked upon. I leaned over to tell Angela as much. She told me to hush so she could better hear Alex Grey.

How much of this sin I could paste solely on Alex Grey? Allyson stopped him from speaking and reinterpreted what she was sure he actually meant if he would stop talking and think for a minute. From his retreat from any rhetorical point that she did not like, this was the tempo of their relationship. Allyson seemed like the Svengali and Alex, a cowed marionette. He conceded to his wife on instinct, asking her permission to end their part of the evening so he could sit.

Still, Alex was the figurehead. He was the core artist, however often he shrugged that machine elves made him do it, however often Allyson said she didn't remember who painted what and by implication retroactively claiming ownership of his work. (She does marvelous art, but only she, and maybe Alex, was confused about what art Alex Grey had made.)

Allyson met Alex at a college party, she told us. He was a depressed art major. She drugged him with a cup of Kahlua spiked with LSD. He vomited prodigiously, expelling his godless existentialism. From then on, he was her pet. He did not contradict this story. They were two broken people who fused at the ragged edges. In lieu of therapy, they clung to psychotropics and a buffet of spirituality.

To kill time in transitions, Allyson Grey ordered us to turn to a stranger, introduce ourselves, and tell them one thing about us. I asked Amber if there might be juice and cookies later, followed by naptime. Such was the atmosphere that she took this as a serious inquiry, scanning the room for snacks.

This Full Moon Gathering took place in one of the homes on the property because the true Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, Entheon, did not exist in this world. Allyson gave a Wizard of Oz line about it being inside of us the whole time. The models of the eventual temple, a fat cylinder walled by interlocking faced topped with Soviet rutabaga domes, were available for sale. They intended to 3D print the temple as they had the models, envisioning a three-story, 12,000 square foot structure. It didn't appear architecturally sound or wise. They purported to want to fill it with the best examples of the Visionary Art movement, so the entirety of the work they had yet to sell with a few token pieces from other artists. How many of the donations would supply a foundation for this wonder of the modern world, this improbable landmark, this roadside attraction? They might as well make their dream outlandish, so long as someone else funded its impossibility.

After directing us to close our eyes to meditate or trance dance in place, Allyson asked where we were all from. People shouted that they were from Bali, Ecuador, and Kentucky. It would have shocked me if anyone came from further than New York City.

They invited their guests to speak. One man rambled about permaculture, looking how one would imagine someone rambling about permaculture at the Grey compound should look: bedraggled, begrimed, clothing loose and out of date, beard unkempt. After him came the Smile Revolutionaries, clowns who played tuneless music. The founder, a woman named Mindy, had the sourest expression I had ever seen, let alone on someone in a pink wig advocating the necessity of mirth. How could anyone manage dourness while tapping an LED tambourine? Angela thought this was intentional, a hilarious irony. I was sure it wasn't, as Mindy did not smile on or off stage.

Next came Joness Jones, an impossibly photogenic young devotee whom I gathered presently lived here. She dressed all in black, including a floppy black hat that made her seem smaller than she was. What was her role, beyond studying the Greys and absorbing their prana? How did she end up in this web? What would it be to spend concentrated time here, under the watchful gaze of the Greys? How could that much art and drugs not warp one down to the DNA? Who was Joness Jones that she, of all artists, had insinuated into their aesthetic caring? Her art was superb, as came as no surprise, daydream and nightmare visions. As it diverged from the Satanic Lisa Frank colors of the Greys, it drew my eye. Her winding snakes looked real from a distance. I wanted to examine them for shining scales, but we were not allowed to broach the informal barrier of the edge of the performance space.

Signs throughout the house stated that anyone doing or distributing drugs would be escorted off the grounds, a claim so opposed to everything the Grey represents that I snickered. This did not engender the trust of his acolytes. If people were not tripping when they entered, many were within five minutes of the sermon ending. This was Alex Grey bowing to lawyers, compromising his philosophy for insurance rates.

People gathered around a ten-foot circle of paper, using markers to vent their inspiration. Joness and a man with subdermal spikes painted on easels, which the throng treated as a spectator sport. Other artists appeared and began their work for this audience. A table materializes for people to get henna done. The pulse of techno music wafted from the other side of the house.

Turning around, Alex Grey loomed behind me, all nervous energy. He seemed like an introvert thrust into a spotlight he spiritually, but not emotionally, craved. He was an avatar of the art. He would approve of that phrasing over anything else I could say about him. His art was not this forced socializing. As a writer, I understood that better than most here. I would contentedly write all day, but react to having to read my work aloud like a vampire before a garlic cross; the art is for public consumption, but it is meant to stand on its own while I get back to typing.

"What is all this about, really?" I asked Grey, finding it the most pressing question.

He chortled under his breath. "This is the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors," he said with a practiced grin, no trace of condescension.

I did not need his affirmation or else did not understand its subtext. "No, I mean, why do all this?" I waved at the crowd, a mistake that caused them to realize I had an audience with the God-King. "Why gather these people?"

I couldn't predict the answer he would give, but my curiosity was genuine. The art did not require this. Building Entheon needed their tithes, but was Entheon the point to Alex Grey? Was it his apotheosis, his godhead on Earth? If he told me he fed on his followers' blood or was preparing a sacrifice for the Great Old Ones, I could have accepted his thinking and my place within it.

"The Sacred Mirrors reflect them," he said, the answer sounding channeled and not rehearsed. Given that the eponymous series was inspired by an LSD vision Alex and Allyson had in 1976 where they felt the interconnectedness of all things in a "toroidal fountain of" self-illuminating love energy," this reply might have been less deep than I wanted it to be.

He was pulled, not reluctantly, away by genderless, gorgeous people in artistically ugly clothing, my fractional audience with Alex Grey at its end.