Guy Mannheimer, Mann Ranch and Esther Bell

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Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness

GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe

SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams




CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers

THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell

IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey

Unpublished manuscripts

About ordering

Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series

  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness

Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"

About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality

Why gay people should NOT Marry

The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage

Toby and Kip Get Married

Wedding Cake Liberation

Gay Marriage in Texas

What's ironic

Shame on the American People

The "highest form of love"

Gay Consciousness

Why homosexuality is a sin

The cause of homosexuality

The origins of homophobia

Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness

What is homosexuality?

What is Gay Spirituality?

My three messages

What Jesus said about Gay Rights

Queering religion

Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men

Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?

The purpose of homosexuality

Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality

What the Bible Says about Homosexuality

Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men

Varieties of Gay Spirituality

Waves of Gay Liberation Activity

The Gay Succession

Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?

The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter

Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium

Easton Mountain Retreat Center

Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism

The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey

The upsidedown book on MSNBC

Enlightenment

"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

Gay Spirituality

Curious Bodies

What Toby Johnson Believes

The Joseph Campbell Connection

The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)

Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The Two Loves

The Nature of Religion

What's true about Religion

Being Gay is a Blessing

Drawing Long Straws

Freedom of Religion

The Gay Agenda

Gay Saintliness

Gay Spiritual Functions

The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.

The Sinfulness of Homosexuality

Proposal for a study of gay nondualism

Priestly Sexuality

Having a Church to Leave

Harold Cole on Beauty

Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption

Not lashed to the prayer-post

Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process

Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)

Redeem Orlando

Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar

Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson

Mystical Vision

"The Evolution of Gay Identity"

"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."

Avalokiteshvara at the Baths

 Eckhart's Eye

Let Me Tell You a Secret

Religious Articulations of the Secret

The Collective Unconscious

Driving as Spiritual Practice

Meditation

Historicity as Myth

Pilgrimage

No Stealing

Next Step in Evolution

The New Myth

The Moulting of the Holy Ghost

Gaia is a Bodhisattva

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016

The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)

You're On Your Own

Superheroes

Seeing Differently

Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil

Allah Hu: "God is present here"

 
Adam and Steve

The Life is in the Blood

Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"

Seeing with Different Eyes

Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom

What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?

The Vision

The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside

A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside

The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis

The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby

Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara

Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection

Part 4: A Course in Miracles

The Secret of the Clear Light

Understanding the Clear Light

Mobius Strip

Finding Your Tiger Face

How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated

About Alien Abduction

In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke

Karellen was a homosexual

The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance

Intersections with the movie When We Rise

More about Gay Mental Health

Psych Tech Training

Toby at the California Institute

The Rainbow Flag

Ideas for gay mythic stories

People

Kip and Toby, Activists

Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.

Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement

About Hay and The New Myth

About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"

About Michael Talbot, gay mystic

About Fr. Bernard Lynch

About Richard Baltzell

About Guy Mannheimer

About David Weyrauch

About Dennis Paddie

About Ask the Fire

About Arthur Evans

About Christopher Larkin

About Mark Thompson

About Sterling Houston

About Michael Stevens

The Alamo Business Council

Our friend Tom Nash

Second March on Washington

The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"

Book Reviews

Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:

Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe

Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman








Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated








Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE

The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here

Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams

Two Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here

Finding Your Own True Myth:

The Myth of the Great Secret III









In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld












The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.

Guy Mannheimer

1943-1989

Guy Mannheimer was Toby Johnson's first lover. They met at a Gay/Straight Men's Gathering in San Francisco, April 28, 1972, co-sponsored by Gay-Rap.

Guy was soon living in Menlo Park, CA. He and about 6 other people, gay and straight, were living in a house--called Werder House (2100 Santa Cruz Ave. 94025)--that had previously been the home of members of The Grateful Dead. Toby used to hitchhike down the Pennisula to see Guy. When they first met Guy was staying with his cousin Lucy Bayer in Palo Alto.

(Here's a link to a story about the house and the Grateful Dead: jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-chateau-2100-santa-cruz-avenue.html)

That next summer Toby was on staff at the Mann Ranch Seminars (see The Joseph Campbell Connection). About halfway through the summer, Guy joined him, and then remained on staff for the next three years. (Also on staff in those days was a wonderful woman named Marty Kent Jones.)



Mann Ranch Staff 1973
Guy on the left, then Toby, then Geri Olson, below Nina Winter, then Janice.

(The long-haired blonde woman is Janice McHugh, a Canadian "undocumented alien"
living as a "hippie-chick" in San Francisco, who'd come to live in Toby's household on Arguello Street. We were dear friends.)

In 1973, partly because their friend Peter Goldblum was teaching in the training program--and partly because Toby had met Terry Carlson who was then working as a Psych Tech at Mt Zion Hospital Crisis Clinic and convinced him that was a good job--Toby and Guy moved to Napa and trained to become Licensed Psychiatric Technicians at Napa State Hospital.

In 1975 they returned to San Francisco, living in an apartment on 18th Street, between Noe and Sanchez, just down the block from the center of the Castro District. Toby got a job--as hoped for--at Mt Zion. Guy had found psychiatric nursing to be uncomfortable, and declined to follow that vocation track. During that time Guy discovered BAGL, Bay Area Gay Liberation, and then got Toby interested also. It was that involvement that indirectly led to Toby's work at the Tenderloin Clinic and the D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance (perhaps the most important thing Toby Johnson actually ever did to affect the course of gay history).

After about six months back in the City, Toby and Guy parted amicably, though not without pain. They remained friends.


In the late 70s, Guy became partners with Dan Hampshire. They lived together until Guy's death from AIDS in 1989.

Guy was a second generation Holocaust survivor. He'd been born in a displaced persons camp in Switzerland. His father, an attorney, had returned to Germany to help other Jews get out of the country; he was arrested and died subsequently at Auschwitz. Guy's mother, Rita, remained in Switzerland with her two children. After the war, she moved to New York City where Guy grew up. Guy knew his father to have been Herbert Mannheimer; after his mother moved to San Francisco in 76, she revealed to him that his father was actually a man she'd fallen in love with in the displaced persons camp in Switzerland named Rudi Goren.

Guy's whole life was colored by her experience of losing everything. It tormented him AND it made him especially sensitive to others' suffering.

Guy in long johns bottoms,
400 Coombs St, Napa CA 1974

When Guy and Toby met, Guy was in growth-oriented psychotherapy with famed gay psychologist Don Clark. Clark was an important influence in both their lives.

in the 1970s, Guy studied calligraphy with an old Jewish wiseman in San Francisco. As an exercise he produced a sampler with a quote from EM Forster. Though the wording is slightly off, it's a wonderful quote. Toby Johnson used Guy's sampler as a frontispiece for his novel Secret Matter

Guy was surely an example of that aristocracy: sensitive, considerate and plucky.



Guy attended the First Radical Faerie Gathering in 1979.
Here he is in the famous photo of the mud ritual circle.**
I can tell it is he because he is wearing glasses. Guy was very dependent on his thick glasses.
We'd broken up a couple of years before and weren't seeing each other at that time.
(I see that is partly why I was not at that Gathering--too bad!)



Here's the panel for Guy in the AIDS Quilt. Note the pink triangle and yellow triangle combined to form a Mogen David.



RFD Magazine #176, Winter 2018, on the theme: Images of Ourselves presented photos from the early days of the Radical Faerie movement. On page 31 was a photo of Guy playing the recorder. (I can be sure this is Guy because I recognize the pattern of the sarong he is wearing. Guy had been in Sarawak on the island of Borneo in the Peace Corps and had brought back various souvenirs, including 2 sarongs. We wore these around the house occasionally. This brown and purplish blue plaid was one of them.)



**About the Mud Ritual:

When I was in seminary as a Servite in Chicago—at Catholic Theological Union on the periphery of the Univ of Chicago Divinity School—I was the “house liturgist” and composed a number of modernized rituals over the course of a year.

One of my classmates wrote me a couple of years ago saying he still remembered the Ash Wednesday ritual. Instead of having a single priest put the ashes on everybody’s forehead, we all gave ashes to one another in the congregation (it was a group of about 15 or so), then we said the Miserere (Ps 51) and offered one another forgiveness and absolution.

THEN we did a second round with the ashes, but this time it was to wash the ashes off each other's forehead with white wash clothes in glass bowls of warm perfumed water. (And maybe recited Jesus’s instructions about washing your face and not showing your religious devotion openly.)

One of the major events of that First Radical Faerie Gathering in 1978 was the mud ritual in which everybody got covered with mud by one another, then they washed/scraped it off each other--in Harry Hay's famous expression: “scraping off the ugly green frog skins” of normality and pretense.

There weren't any white washclothes at the Faerie Gathering, but, ah, for me, it is like an echo of the Servite ritual from 1969. Neat!

I recognize (I think) Hal Offen (3rd from right in washed blue jean jacket with wool collar), Larry Wisch, Dan Hampshire, David Axel, Ira Rudolph, Sam Blazer, Andy Rose, Guy Mannheimer, myself (in red frame glasses that have turned dark in the sunlight). I'm sorry to admit I don't recognize any of the women (and interesting that I am on the women's side of the circle).

About Esther Bell:

    One evening in 1975, Guy and I had gone to a movie in the area of San Francisco called North Beach. It was cold and dark when we got out. We went down to the corner to wait for a bus. Already at the bus stop was a very old lady. She immediately engaged us in conversation, and then when the bus arrived asked for our help to get her up the steps. She had severe emphysema.
    Over the next year, Guy and I became friends and occasional caretakers of the old lady. And after Guy and I broke up, I took over the job on my own. My oversight of her lasted about three years, after which her relatives had her put in a nursing home where she subsequently died, probably at age 90 or so.

     Her name was Esther Bell. She entertained us with stories of her life. As a young woman, she'd been the jewelry and high couture buyer for I. Magnin's Department Store in downtown San Francisco. She told how she regularly sailed on the Queen Mary steamship from New York to Marseilles to travel to Paris to seek out upscale merchandise. Occasionally she travelled with Mr. Magnin himself.

    Esther also produced a line of her own jewelry, under the name Estabell or Estabel.
    She gave us some of her pieces (which unfortunately were later lost in a robbery of my home).
    Most of the Estabel line was broaches -- most with a floral theme or insect theme: enamel pansies, for instance, and painted or enameled wasps.

    Meeting Esther Bell was one of the highlights of our lives in San Francisco in those days.