[LSD, Psychedelic Religion] Application for Membership in the Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church

Austin: Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church, nd. Small handbill printed on recto only, 3 ¾ x 5 ½ in.

Undated application for membership into the Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church (OKNeoAC or Neo-American Church), perhaps the most-well known and longest lasting pyschedelia-centered religion to arise out of the 1960s. 

Founded by Arthur Kleps in 1966 - the same year as Timothy Leary’s League of Spiritual Development - the Church claims mind altering substances as religious sacraments. This handbill specifically cites LSD and peyote as a “greater sacrament,” to be taken only after the use of marijuana and nitrous oxide -- “lesser sacraments.” Originally, the Church hoped that this philosophy would allow for religious exemption to the laws which criminalized LSD and other drugs in 1966. Following the successful court challenges of the Native American Church over use of peyote, OKNeoAC entered a legal battle with the United States. The judge in their case eventually ruled that they would not receive an exemption, citing the use of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as church hymns as indicative of the lapsed seriousness of the enterprise.

The Church was, in fact, serious in their lack of seriousness and attack on structure. In 1971, Arthur Kleps published “The Boo-Hoo Bible,” outlining the theocracy and philosophy of the Neo-American Church. Kleps was originally inspired by his time with Timothy Leary at the Millbrook estate, and Leary was considered a guru of the Church in its early days. However, by 1973, Leary was excommunicated for “excessive horse-shit.” Kleps was deeply critical of what he saw as opportunistic use of Eastern religions  - “I found nothing in my visionary experience to encourage me to believe in any occultist or supernaturalist system” (Kleps 8). Instead, the Neo-American Church is a project in solipsism, apparently unclouded by doctrinism of any kind. 

Small abrasion to front center of handbill, not more than ¼ inch, resulting in fading to a few letters of the text. Otherwise fine.

Kleps. Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism. Austin: OKNeoAC, 1975.