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The Afterlife of Jim Morrison
by Corrine De Winter
FATE Magazine :: July-August 2008
When the body of American pop singer Jim Morrison was found lying still and breathless in a bathtub in the early morning hours of a July morning in Paris, there seemed to be an emerging smile on his lips.
Just as millions of people would theorize over exactly what the elusive Mona Lisa’s smile was all about, such was the mystery that followed Jim Morrison, lead singer for the Los Angeles-based band The Doors. Throughout his short life, and long after his death, Morrison’s preoccupation with the supernatural spurred countless rumors, one of which was that the singer did not in fact die on the morning of July 3, 1971, but instead cleverly staged his own demise. The strange circumstances surrounding Morrison’s death lent credence to this belief.
James Douglas Morrison was born in Florida in 1943. His father Steve, a high-ranking naval officer, was strict and traditional in the upbringing of his three children. The Morrison family moved to Virginia in the late 1950s, and Jim attended high school in Washington, D.C.
According to one astrologer, Jim’s birth at 5:45 a.m. on December 8, 1943, put him in the right place at the right time for cosmic knowledge and a universal consciousness. Curiously, his Mercury and Saturn are placed in the nearly identical positions as the chart of Nostradamus, the 16th-century astrologer renowned for his prophetic writings.
The event that marked Morrison’s supernatural awakening was an incident involving a car wreck when he was just four years old. While traveling with his family from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the family encountered what Morrison later called “the most influential moment of my life.” A truck had overturned on the highway, and a group of Pueblo Indians lay injured and dying where they’d been thrown to the pavement by the crash.
Jim began to cry. His father stopped to see if he could help while Jim stared, helpless, through the window at the awful scene. When his father returned to the car Jim was near hysterics. “They’re dying!” he cried. His father tried to calm him by saying it had all been a dream. Years later Jim told friends that as his father pulled the car away from the accident, an Indian died and its soul passed into Jim’s body.
Eventually Morrison made his way to California in 1964 to study filmmaking at UCLA. “The attraction of the cinema lies in the fear of death,” Morrison would say. “Movies create a kind of false eternity.”
It was at UCLA that he met and joined forces with Ray Manzarek to form the Doors, a group that quickly gained attention for their keyboard-laced melodies and ethereal singer.
As fame rose for the band, Morrison became less and less inhibited on stage and off. He tested the limits, both of the authorities and of himself. Walking narrow ledges on rooftops in Hollywood while under the influence of drugs or alcohol was just one of the stunts Morrison would frequently pull. It quickly became obvious that Morrison was a “Wild Child” who could not be tamed by anything or anyone. Were these incidents a form of self-destructive behavior that would graduate into suicide?
Jim’s friend Bill Siddons says, “Jim took things all the way. He would follow a line to its conclusion, whether that led him into the morass of hell or into heaven.”
The unknown was always attractive to Morrison, and at times he would try to contact the supernatural through drugs. Drug usage has long been associated with spiritual awakenings and prophetic visions. Studies have shown that while the mind is in an altered state, perception and psychic awareness are heightened. The mind is more open, and ready to see what would normally be dismissed or overlooked.
Peyote, a cactus with hallucinogenic properties, is a sacred tool for Native Americans who used it to induce visions. Morrison experimented with it, and claimed that it led him to a visitation by a Native American spirit.
Morrison related to Native Americans as a people rejected and persecuted by the white man, their beliefs often viewed as strange and eccentric. It was a natural role for Morrison to step into. His identification with the Native American shaman (mystical healer) left many with the feeling that Morrison was able to transcend human boundaries and connect with the spiritual world. He wrote about mystics and shamans often, as in this passage from his book Wilderness:
Magic rite
To call up the godhead
Spirits, demons
The shaman calls…
“Break on through to the other side,” Morrison sang, hinting that he was aware of another dimension where the living and the dead mix in a strange kaleidoscope of dark knowledge....read the rest of this article exclusively in the July-August 2008 issue of FATE! Click here to buy this issue now.
