John Starr Cooke
John Starr Cooke was an American mystic and spiritual teacher who influenced the development of the counterculture movement that emerged in San Francisco during 1966–1967. His teachings were based on the doctrine of “One Consciousness”, which Cooke believed was communicated to him through a Ouija board in the early 1960s. He designed three original decks of Tarot cards: T: The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age, the Atlantean Tarot, and the Medieval Tarot.
Early life in Hawaii
Cooke was born in 1920 into a wealthy family in Honolulu, Hawaii, the youngest of the eight children of Clarence Hyde Cooke and Lily Love. He is a nephew of zoologist Charles Montague Cooke Jr, grandson of arts philanthropist Anna Rice Cooke, great-grandson of New England missionaries Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague, and great-great-great grandson of American military officer in the Revolutionary war and politician Joseph Platt Cooke.According to Brion Gysin, Cooke was in touch with the Kahunas of Hawaii from an early age. In later life, Cooke knew Kahuna David “Big Daddy” Bray, a friendship that likely began in Cooke's childhood.
Cooke developed a lifelong interest in the Tarot at the age of nine when he mistakenly bought a Tarot deck instead of regular playing cards.
John travelled to the mainland many times with his mother before her death in 1933.
John's sister Alice married Democratic politician and lawyer Roger Kent in 1930. They lived at Kentfield, California in Marin County of San Francisco, and after their mother's death, Alice took on a surrogate mother role for the young John. John continued to travel regularly from Honolulu to San Francisco through the 1930s.
At 19, Cooke employed the Ouija board at Kentfield with his sister, who was also mystically inclined. He would continue to use the Ouija board for at least the next thirty years.
At this age, Cooke was also a dancer and actor in Hollywood. He moved permanently from Hawaii to California after July 1940.
1940s and early 1950s
In 1943 on advice from the Ouija board, Cooke married Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea. Millen Cooke, as she became known, was a poet, writer, and occultist who had a poem published in 1936 in Weird Tales, but was most active between May 1946 and May 1950, with stories and essays appearing in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Fiction, and Other Worlds Science Stories. She had written a number of letters to American Theosophist in the early 1940s. John Starr Cooke was also published in American Theosophist in August 1945 with a story called "Black Magic Question Mark".In 1944 John's father Clarence Hyde Cooke died, and John and Millen Cooke traveled the world, including a mission to go as far north and as far south as possible. 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, and spent considerable time living in London. Millen Cooke had a series of visions which John Cooke drew and was later known as the Atlantean Tarot.
In 1948, John Cooke learned that Meher Baba was seeking to establish an ashram in California, and he assisted the group to purchase Meher Mount in the Ojai Valley.
In 1950 a pregnant Millen Cooke read Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1950. Millen Cooke was so enthusiastic about the ideas she encountered that she flew at once and alone to New York. John was enraged to find his wife had left and drove virtually non-stop for a day and a half to find her.
In New York Cooke quickly became a master of the techniques given in Dianetics, and subsequently met Mary Oser, who had flown to New York from Switzerland seeking a competent practitioner of Dianetics to treat her husband.
Mary Oser had attended Reed College in Oregon where she met fellow student Peter Oser, a great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller. They were married after he had proposed several times and they relocated to the Oser family's home city of Basel, Switzerland.
Soon after John Cooke met Mary Oser he returned with her to Switzerland and lived with the Oser household in Basel, practicing the methods of Dianetics. Peter Oser became a blind follower of John Cooke.
In December 1950 the Oser family moved suddenly to central Africa, led by Cooke and his communications with the Ouija board.
In 1951 John Cooke and Millen Cooke were divorced, and their daughter Valerie Melza Cooke was born. Around this time, Peter Oser and Mary Oser were also divorced.
In 1952 John Cooke married Mary.
Northern Africa ca. 1952–1956
Cooke and his new wife Mary traveled together throughout northern Africa on vision quests. Although he never considered himself a Muslim, John became associated with a Sufi sect amongst whom he was regarded as "a great healer and saint".On their travels the Cookes heard about Brion Gysin and his 1001 Nights Restaurant in Tangier.
Around mid-1955 they found Brion Gysin, having been sent across the Sahara by their Ouija board in search of him. Gysin later described Cooke as "a practising magician on a private income." John and Mary Cooke were soon regulars at Gysin's restaurant and became financially involved. Gysin later featured John and Mary Cooke in his novel The Process as Thay and Mya Himmer. According to Gysin, Cooke had a unique style of whirling Dervish dancing.
The shoulder burn
In August 1956 the Cookes planned to move to Algiers and live in a renovated colonial villa; however, their plans changed after a mysterious encounter in a Tangier bank with family members of the Sufi sect. According to his sister Alice, as Cooke stood in the bank queue, a scarf was placed on his shoulders. 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. He was thereafter paralysed and remained unable to use his legs properly for the rest of his life. In addition, he had a burn-like mark on his shoulder that remained with him for life.The Cookes continued to Algiers as planned, but Mary called Gysin in Tangier for assistance. 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. Gysin also adopted Cooke's appearance of close-shaven head and goatee.
John and Mary Cooke sent word to L. Ron Hubbard in London to come and cure John. Hubbard couldn't come but sent his right-hand man "Lucky" Jim Skelton, an Australian Scientologist the Cookes had previously met in London. Gysin had also met Skelton in London.
Skelton met with some success in reducing the paralysis, but complained to Hubbard that the method was not fully effective. Hubbard countered that Skelton was not performing the method correctly, which led Skelton to split from Hubbard and Scientology. In addition, Lucky Jim fell in love with both John and Mary and lived together with them.
John and Mary's son Chamba was born October 3, 1956. Soon after the birth, Mary decided that John was not stable enough to be a father to Chamba so she divorced him. Mary married Jim Skelton in July 1957.
After unsuccessful treatment in France and Denmark, John Cooke returned to the United States.
Return to America ca. 1957
Cooke returned to California either late in 1956 or during 1957. 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. He first stayed at a rehabilitation centre, then with Alice and Roger Kent at Kentfield until March 1958.Cooke was looking for a cure for his paralysis. He was told by his friend John G. Bennett, a leading Gurdjieff follower, about an Indonesian religious leader, Pak Muhammed Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, and the religious group Subud. 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. Cooke agreed to finance Subuh's stopover in the US and, with his sister Alice Kent, greeted Subuh on his arrival in San Francisco on March 22, 1958. At around this time, Cooke moved to the Carmel highlands and his home became the Carmel headquarters for Subud.
Carmel, California 1958–1963
Around mid-1958, Cooke met the young San Francisco-based Beat artist Michael Bowen. 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. Cooke became particularly close to Michael Bowen and the two would work together until Cooke's death.The Subud devotees who had gathered around Cooke in 1958 formed the nucleus of a meditation group. The group met frequently and attracted many others. At the beginning of 1962 the meditation group received a general impression that "something" was coming. February 5, 1962, when seven planets were conjoined in Aquarius, was seen by some astrologers as the date of a worldwide catastrophe. Cooke's group had expected not a catastrophe but a change in consciousness affecting all of mankind.
Cooke's house was used by other groups as a venue to hold spiritually oriented workshops. Members of the Bahá'í faith visited Cooke at the Carmel highlands, perhaps a continuation of his earlier strong interest in the Bahá'ís.
On the evening of August 17, 1962 a spontaneous Ouija board session took place at Carmel. 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. Cooke "just got out a big piece of paper and wrote the alphabet around and used a silver dollar."
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 flow, once started, was unerring; there was no hesitation for a letter and no mistakes were made. Nadine began to record the letters as Bill Eaton read them off aloud. The pace was so swift that no one could have followed the meaning if Nadine had not recorded."
The messages came in a torrent of letters that had to be later separated into words and sentences.
The group met again for another session on 29 August. They again communicated with the entity which later identified itself as “WE”, or “ONE”. The group continued to meet and hold Ouija sessions at Carmel every week or so for the next fifteen months. For each session they would draw up a new alphabet board and draw a different symbol in the middle.