The San Francisco Gate interviews author (and modern mystic) Erik Davis about his new book “The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape”.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the spiritual eccentricity of California. I was born in the Bay Area, and I grew up in Del Mar, a beach town north of San Diego. And during my adolescence I was exposed to the whole gamut of California weirdness. It was the tail end of the spiritual counterculture. By the time I went away to college I had hung out with Zen practitioners, gone to the Hare Krishna temple and taken classes in my public high school from an EST leader. At a much later point in my life, I decided to find out more about California’s spiritual experiment: Why did it happen here? Where did it come from? Who were the major players?”

In addition to his visual tour of faith and spirituality in California, Davis is also the recent author of a mystical exploration of the Led Zeppelin IV album.

Tags: Paganism