John Starr Cooke (March 1920 – August 21, 1976) was an American mystic and spiritual teacher who influenced the development of the counterculture movement that emerged in San Francisco during 1966–1967.
John Starr Cooke was also published in American Theosophist in August 1945 with a story called "Black Magic Question Mark".
[2] On these travels, John Cooke met an assortment of gurus, mystics and spiritual figures, including Meher Baba.
Cooke also studied medieval Tarot decks in museums,[2] and spent considerable time living in London.
In 1950 a pregnant Millen Cooke (and with John denying paternity) read Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1950.
In December 1950 the Oser family moved suddenly to central Africa, led by Cooke and his communications with the Ouija board.
As he left the bank, he suddenly tore the scarf off, due to a burning sensation on his shoulder, simultaneous with the feeling of a heavy blow to the base of the spine.
She paid him to close 1001 Nights for a time and in Algiers Gysin carried Cooke around on his back in search of medical help.
Hubbard couldn't come but sent his right-hand man "Lucky" Jim Skelton, an Australian Scientologist the Cookes had previously met in London.
He was told he would eventually be able to walk with the aid of crutches; however, Cooke did not wish to become a spectacle and an object of pity, and chose instead the dignity of the wheelchair.
Cooke would likely have heard of the apparently miraculous cancer cure of Hollywood actress Eva Bartok after she was "opened" in the Subud method in May 1957; the case was widely reported in the press in November 1957.
Bowen's friend, fellow Beat artist Michael McCracken told him of a "real wizard" that he ought to check out and they went together to Cooke's Carmel home to see him.
Members of the Bahá'í faith visited Cooke at the Carmel highlands, perhaps a continuation of his earlier strong interest in the Bahá'ís.
Although the group of people present – Cooke, Bill Eaton, Nadine and Dean - had been meeting regularly to meditate, they had not previously together used the Ouija board.
"[2] John unsuccessfully tried Nadine and Dean as operators of the silver dollar planchette, but as soon as he paired with Bill Eaton "the board just….started whizzing around.
The Cooke group incorporated dozens of visitors into the ONE Ouija sessions, including local historian and author Rosalind Sharpe Wall, A Wild Coast and Lonely: Big Sur Pioneers, Andrea Puharich, author of the 1959 book The Sacred Mushroom.
A couple of months later a long-time member of Cooke's group, David M, went to Hawaii and was for a time the favoured disciple of Bray.
[19] Cooke found the many visitors to Carmel a burden, and in May 1963 considered a permanent move to Mexico to be relieved of this, as well as to reduce his living expenses.
The final ONE Ouija session at Carmel was held on 16 November 1963,[22] and by the end of 1963, Cooke was living at Tepotzlan in Morelos, Mexico.
[13] Cooke led quite a social life in Mexico according to his sister Alice Kent, holding parties and hosting many guests from the United States.
In January 1964 Cooke presided over Bowen's initiatory ritual consumption of Datura stramonium, an age-old means of inducing visions.
On Bowen's first trip to Millbrook (likely between June 1964 and October 1964), he took large copies of the New Tarot images that Cooke had painted.
[23] On May 28, 1965, the ONE Ouija sessions were re-convened at Tepotzlan when Rosalind Sharpe Wall and Bill Eaton came to visit Cooke.
[27] In early January 1966 Cooke and Eaton flew up from Mexico and held a couple of ONE Ouija sessions in Bolinas, California.
[28] In May 1966 Cooke directed Michael Bowen to return to San Francisco, where a psychedelic community was gathering force in the Haight Ashbury district.
[31] The Church of ONE was represented at a press conference held in Haight Ashbury on April 5, 1967, for "The Council for the Summer of Love".
[33] In New York, Bowen raised further money from Peggy Hitchcock, drove to Washington and purchased thousands of daisies.
Bill Eaton, Rosalind Sharpe Wall, and four others attended, including Dr. Ralph Metzner, who wrote an introduction to T: the New Tarot.
In early 1976 Cooke became the basis of a film Prophecy of the Royal Maze, which showed him doing a New Tarot reading for the Aquarian Age.
Prophesy of the Royal Maze was released 21 June 1978 and screened in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Honolulu.