Rosemary Woodruff Leary - Psychedelic Refugee: The League for Spiritual Discovery, the 1960s Cultural Revolution, and 23 Years on the Run

PSYCHEDELIC
REFUGEE

It is ripe time for acknowledging the contributions of the female lineage of early psychonauts to the psychedelic countercultural currents. David F. Phillips has restored Rosemary Learys authentic voice with great respect, diligence, and care so that it can tell us her own larger-than-life story of courage, adventures, and feminine values.

MARIA PAPASPYROU, MSC, COEDITOR OF PSYCHEDELIC MYSTERIES OF THE FEMININE

Rosemary Woodruff Leary lived a mythical lifenot merely present at many of the defining moments in 60s and 70s psychedelic counterculture but helping to create themand we are lucky enough to get to travel through these times and spaces with her in this lovingly reworked memoir. Rosemarys unerring commitment to knowing herself deeplywithout taking herself too seriouslymakes her a wonderful guide through these pages. I felt I had made a new friend by their close. Her principled commitment to living freelyyet never at the cost of sacrificing the freedom of othersinspires.

CHARLOTTE WALSH, AUTHOR, LECTURER, ATTORNEY, AND DRUG POLICY ADVOCATE

Rosemary Woodruff Leary was one of the worlds great psychedelic pioneers. She worked throughout her life to educate people about the psychedelic experience and was instrumental in helping to orchestrate the cultural revolution of the Sixties. She did this at the expense of her personal freedom, which was compromised for a significant portion of her life. In a world where men often overshadow the accomplishments of women, Rosemary stands out as one of the most important psychedelic revolutionaries of our timea brave and articulate heroine of highest integrity, sensitivity, and beaming intelligence. Interacting with many of the most influential cultural innovators of her time, she was not only at the center of all the action during the countercultural revolution of the 1960shelping to orchestrate much of it behind the scenesshe was also an extraordinary writer, brilliantly recording her insightful observations. As a result, this book is at once an invaluable historical document and, although heartbreaking at times, a beautiful work of literature, a page-turning romance adventure story, and a spiritual inspiration. David F. Phillips did an extraordinary job at piecing this book together from numerous sources and reconstructing the memoir as Rosemary had intended it to be. Most highly recommended!

DAVID JAY BROWN, AUTHOR OF DREAMING WIDE AWAKE AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF PSYCHEDELICS

Psychedelic Refugee covers Rosemarys intimate life with the charismatic Timothy Leary, her public life as a performer in his psychedelic roadshows, their harrowing arrests for marijuana and LSD, and her secret life as a primary player in his prison escape. She also tells the story of her years with Leary on the run in Algeria and Switzerland and her 23 years in hiding from the wrath of the American government for the act of freeing him from an unjust sentence. The Learys associations with the Castalia Foundation, the League for Spiritual Discovery, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weather Underground, and the international Black Panther Party are described in the authors riveting firsthand account. This is the compelling untold story of an exceptional woman who was a pioneer of the psychedelic generation.

MICHAEL HOROWITZ, COEDITOR OF MOKSHA: ALDOUS HUXLEYS CLASSIC WRITINGS ON PSYCHEDELICS AND THE VISIONARY EXPERIENCE AND SISTERS OF THE EXTREME: WOMEN WRITING ON THE DRUG EXPERIENCE

Rise up, ye women that are at ease;

hear my voice, ye careless daughters;

give ear unto my speech.

ISAIAH 32:9

Rosemary Woodruff Leary
19352002

FOREWORD

Rosemary Woodruff Leary, Psychedelic Pioneer

MARTINA HOFFMANN

with Friends of Rosemary Woodruff Leary

One of the great female Psychedelic Pioneers, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, died on February 7, 2002, at her home in Aptos, California. She was sixty- six years old. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 26, 1935, into a conservative Baptist environment, Ro, as she was known to her friends, began her psychedelic journey long before her relationship with Dr. Timothy Leary. In the fifties, as one of the early seekers who prefigured Americas emerging counterculture, she escaped to New York City at a tender age, where she became part of the citys most progressive music (jazz), art, and literary (Beat) circles and experimented with psilocybin mushrooms and peyote. From here the course of events brought her to eventually become the accomplice of the most dangerous man in America.

The sheer number of psychedelic luminaries present at her memorial, held on April 20 (2002) in Santa Cruz, gave testimony to the fundamental role she played during the psychedelic revolution and beyond. Among them were Ralph Metzner, Frank Barron, Peggy Hitchcock, Robert Anton Wilson, Michael and Cindy Horowitz, Chet Helms, and many others, including Ram Dass, who was at her hospital bed.

In the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties era, because of the pervasive sexism, which obscured womens intellectual contributions, women rebels were viewed mostly as being muses to their male counterparts. Rosemary Leary soon transcended this role by becoming Timothy Learys partner in creating the setting, which shaped LSD experimentation in its formative years. As he described in Flashbacks:

Rosemary and I shared the work too. I was finishing the work of psychedelic poetry based on the Tao Te Ching. Rosemary edited the manuscript. She joined... me in preparing the slide shows and tapes we used in our weekend workshops in various cities around the East Coast. We tried to stimulate LSD experiences with sounds, strobes, and slides, as Ralph, Michael, and I alternated murmured narration and Yogi instructions, while Rosemary whispered philosophic poetry, hour upon hour, recapitulating the evolution of the species, taking our astounding participants up the chakras of their bodies. (Flashbacks, pp. 23233)

Her greatest contribution to the psychedelic movement was surely her consistent refusal to cooperate with federal authorities. She received thirty days of solitary confinement for not testifying against Leary after G. Gordon Liddy busted Millbrook in 1966. Then she proceeded to orchestrate Learys escape from prison in 1970 with the aid of the Weather Underground and planned for their subsequent escape to Algeria. Most critically, that same year she refused an offer of amnesty from the FBI in exchange for providing names of others who had committed illegal acts in the name of freedom of consciousness. This self- less show of bravery was to define the course of her life.

In her own words:

After escaping from Algeria, and suffering through yet another arrest and release in Switzerland, I left Leary, searching for a country that would allow me to find some peace and sanity. What followed were years of adventure and fear in some very far-flung places. I lived underground as a fugitive for twenty-four years in Europe and the Americas, long after Leary was captured again and eventually released from the U.S. prison system.