A home unlike all others

Wille, who edited the book and is also at work on a Source Family documentary, believes cults are due for a second look. "They have yet to be reassessed since the anti-cult backlash of the '70s," she noted. "What people of our generation don't realize is that our impressions have been formed by the images that have been repeated in the mass media." Indeed, who can link California and cult without envisioning Charles Manson? Wille admitted that even her perceptions were affected by this conditioning when she first saw pictures of the Source Family in the late '90s. "I thought, 'cool, creepy cult!' Because that was my mind-set back then."

Despite the trend toward collective living among senior citizens today, to say nothing of the mainstreaming of organic food and alternative medical practices, both integral to the Source way of life, these negative images and ideas continue to be upheld in books such as T.C. Boyle's "Drop City" and the memoir "My Life in Orange" by Tim Guest, or two new documentaries: "Join Us" (by "Dig!" director Ondi Timoner) and "Children of God." Of course, those perspectives remain valid, but what about the stories that don't detail abuse?

According to Erik Davis, author of "The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape," who also wrote "The Source's" introduction, "For the most part, small sectarian religious movements don't leave any mark on the larger culture unless they fulfill the archetype and something really bad happens. Everybody knows about the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, the Manson Family, Jim Jones. But there are myriad groups of that size or even larger that are actually influential on the culture in small ways.

"There isn't really a model of a successful, creative, alternative religious sect in the general mind-set. It doesn't exist as a category, so that when there is one, it's hard to figure out where to put it. It has to be kitsch, at best, or it has to be kind of dangerous."

Fortunately, unlike so many of these groups that formed in the wake of the '60s and disbanded without a trace, the Source Family had a dedicated Keeper of the Records, Isis Aquarian, who several years ago decided it was time to "come out of the Source closet." Packaged with a CD of music and interviews, "The Source" is an intimate history narrated by Isis and peppered with the recollections of Electricity, Djin, Sunflower, Damian, Lotus, Goddess and many other exotically named participants.