John Starr Cooke

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. 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 (1967, 1992), the Atlantean Tarot, and the Medieval Tarot (1992).

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 (1889–1968), 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 (particularly San Francisco) 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. 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.

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. 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."

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.

In April 1963 Cooke hosted David "Big Daddy" Bray, the Hawaiian Kahuna, now aged 73. 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. 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.

Cooke attended a Subud conference when Pak Subuh came to San Francisco around September 1963. Cooke, as per Subud custom, asked for and received a new name from Subuh, Lionel. By this time the 1958 Subud group in Carmel had dwindled to only Cooke and Dean, who also attended the conference. The final ONE Ouija session at Carmel was held on 16 November 1963, and by the end of 1963, Cooke was living at Tepotzlan in Morelos, Mexico. and wished to find out whether Leary and his associates would, with LSD, create something positive or create more danger and damage for the future. Leary later referred to Cooke as "the great crippled wizard". Bowen paid a second visit to Millbrook around January 1965.

On May 28, 1965, the ONE Ouija sessions were re-convened at Tepotzlan when Rosalind Sharpe Wall and Bill Eaton came to visit Cooke. Bill Eaton stayed in Mexico and the ONE Ouija sessions continued sporadically for the next nine months.

In early January 1966 Cooke and Eaton flew up from Mexico and held a couple of ONE Ouija sessions in Bolinas, California.

On February 16, 1966, Cooke and Eaton held the final ONE Ouija session in Mexico.

In May 1966 Cooke directed Michael Bowen to return to San Francisco, where a psychedelic community was gathering force in the Haight Ashbury district. Bowen discovered the San Francisco Oracle and its editor Allen Cohen and became a member of the staff. Cooke was later published in issue number nine in an essay beginning "ONE – that Great Architect of the Universes – designed a single Design."

Tepoztlan, 1967-1976 In early 1967 Cooke formed the Church of ONE. 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". Other members of the Church of ONE included Rosalind Sharpe Wall and Michael Bowen. In New York, Bowen raised further money from Peggy Hitchcock, drove to Washington and purchased thousands of daisies. Some of these flowers were photographed in the gun-barrels of the soldiers protecting the Pentagon, and this image became iconic of the Sixties. Bowen again spoke to Cooke after the event.

In September 1969 the complete 78-card New Tarot for the Aquarian Age was issued as a box set, with an instruction booklet and a revised version of T: The New Tarot. The box set was re-issued in April 1970 and July 1970.

By the 1970s the mysterious burn on Cooke's shoulder, despite coming and going over the years, remained an open sore. He had previously travelled to the US for two unsuccessful operations to have it closed up, where the ailment was diagnosed as skin cancer. On a third occasion he was told the wound was too deep for surgery and that nothing more could be done. In due course, the cancer would cut through an artery in his neck and he would bleed to death.

Cooke continued to practice magic and to teach ONE consciousness, attracting new students as well as old. Michael Bowen paid a final visit in 1973. In 1974, Rosalind Sharpe Wall issued the ONE Ouija session transcripts as "The Word of One".

As John grew weaker, Alice went down to Mexico to care for him.

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. By this time he was in great pain from a swollen hand caused by the cancer in his shoulder moving down his arm. He saw a preliminary version of the film a few nights before he died but the film was not completed for another year.

Cooke died August 21, 1976, aged 56.

Prophesy of the Royal Maze was released 21 June 1978 and screened in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Honolulu.

After death

In 1979 Alice Kent issued Communify, a New Tarot-based board game that she had devised with Cooke.

In 1992 Alice Kent re-issued the New Tarot as part of a box set which included the Atlantean Tarot and the Medieval Tarot.

Footnotes