26 Sep Father Yod and the Source Family
In the Oscar-winning Best Picture, Annie Hall, Woody Allen famously orders, “… the alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast.” His commentary on LA cuisine was voiced at The Source, one of the country’s first health food restaurants and a 70s fixture on the Sunset Strip.
The Source was a gathering place for Hollywood hipsters such as John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Julie Christie and countless others, reporting to gross up to $10K a day at its peak. The staff took part in group meditations before and after their shifts and lived communally as the Source Family in a Hollywood Hills mansion called The Mother House.The charismatic founder of the Family and the restaurant was Jim Baker, an ex-Marine who took the name Father Yod (pronounced yode). Yod sported a white beard and white suits, was chauffeured about in a Rolls-Royce, had 14 “spiritual wives,” and led the Family’s psychedelic rock band, Ya Ho Wa 13, whose sixty-five albums are now highly-prized collectors’ items.
The Source Family embodied one of the most enduring stereotypes of LA: good-looking, health-food-eating young people, meditating and doing yoga, enjoying casual sex while listening to the groovy music of the time. On the Internet you can find intriguing photos of all 150 of them wearing floor-length white robes lounging around the mansion, or holding hands in a long human chain along the beach in Malibu.
The unconventional behavior of the family attracted scrutiny from authorities and thus the Family relocated to Hawaii in 1974. In 1975, Father Yod died in a hang-gliding accident (he went up with no previous experience), and the group dispersed. However, even today former Family members still talk about how their lives were positively shaped by this shared adventure, and a fascinating documentary, The Source Family, was released in 2012. Highly recommended for a psychedelic time travel to when alternative spirituality went almost mainstream.
© 2020 Catherine Auman
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True
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