title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1938 to 1940. Under pressure from his father, he became a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In the first months as a "plebe", he received numerous demerits for rule infractions and then got into serious trouble for failing to report rule breaking by cadets he supervised. He was also accused of going on a drinking binge and failing to admit it, and was asked by the Honor Committee to resign. He refused and was "silenced"—that is, shunned by fellow cadets. He was acquitted by a court-martial, but the silencing continued, as well as the onslaught of demerits for small rule infractions. In his sophomore year his mother appealed to a family friend, United States Senator David I. Walsh, head of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, who investigated personally. The Honor Committee quietly revised its position and announced that it would abide by the court-martial verdict. Leary then resigned and was honorably discharged by the Army. About 50 years later he said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".


title: Timothy Leary

text: To his family's chagrin, Leary transferred to the University of Alabama in late 1941 because it admitted him so expeditiously. He enrolled in the university's ROTC program, maintained top grades, and began to cultivate academic interests in psychology (under the aegis of the Middlebury and Harvard-educated Donald Ramsdell) and biology. Leary was expelled a year later for spending a night in the female dormitory and lost his student deferment in the midst of World War II. Leary was drafted into the United States Army and received basic training at Fort Eustis in 1943. He remained in the non-commissioned officer track while enrolled in the psychology subsection of the Army Specialized Training Program, including three months of study at Georgetown University and six months at Ohio State University.


title: Timothy Leary

text: With limited need for officers late in the war, Leary was briefly assigned as a private first class to the Pacific War-bound 2d Combat Cargo Group (which he later characterized as "a suicide command ... whose main mission, as far as I could see, was to eliminate the entire civilian branch of American aviation from post-war rivalry") at Syracuse Army Air Base in Mattydale, New York. After a fateful reunion with Ramsdell (who was assigned to Deshon General Hospital in Butler, Pennsylvania, as chief psychologist) in Buffalo, New York, he was promoted to corporal and reassigned to his mentor's command as a staff psychometrician. He remained in Deshon's deaf rehabilitation clinic for the remainder of the war. While stationed in Butler, Leary courted Marianne Busch; they married in April 1945. Leary was discharged at the rank of sergeant in January 1946, having earned such standard decorations as the Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.


title: Timothy Leary

text: As the war concluded, Leary was reinstated at the University of Alabama and received credit for his Ohio State psychology coursework. He completed his degree via correspondence courses and graduated in August 1945.


title: Timothy Leary

text: After receiving his undergraduate degree, Leary pursued an academic career. In 1946, he received a M.S. in psychology at the State College of Washington in Pullman, where he studied under educational psychologist Lee Cronbach. His M.S. thesis was on clinical applications of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1947, Marianne gave birth to their first child, Susan. A son, Jack, arrived two years later. In 1950, Leary received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. In the postwar era, Leary was galvanized by the objectivity of modern physics; his doctoral dissertation ("The Social Dimensions of Personality: Group Process and Structure") approached group therapy as a "psychlotron" from which behavioral characteristics could be derived and quantified in a manner analogous to the periodic table, foreshadowing his later development of the interpersonal circumplex.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary stayed on in the Bay Area as an assistant clinical professor of medical psychology at the University of California, San Francisco; concurrently, he co-founded Kaiser Hospital's psychology department in Oakland, California, and maintained a private consultancy. In 1952, the Leary family spent a year in Spain, subsisting on a research grant. According to Berkeley colleague Marv Freedman, "Something had been stirred in him in terms of breaking out of being another cog in society."


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's marriage was strained by infidelity and mutual alcohol abuse. Marianne eventually died by suicide in 1955, leaving him to raise their son and daughter alone. He described himself during this period as "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis ... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots".


title: Timothy Leary

text: From 1954 or 1955 to 1958, Leary directed psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 1957, he published "The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality", which the "Annual Review of Psychology" called the "most important book on psychotherapy of the year".


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1958 the National Institute of Mental Health terminated Leary's research grant after he failed to meet with a NIMH investigator. Leary and his children relocated to Europe, where he attempted to write his next book while subsisting on small grants and insurance policies. His stay in Florence was unproductive and indigent, prompting a return to academe. In late 1959 he started as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University at the behest of Frank Barron (a colleague from Berkeley) and David McClelland. Leary and his children lived in Newton, Massachusetts. In addition to teaching, Leary was affiliated with the Harvard Center for Research in Personality under McClelland. He oversaw the Harvard Psilocybin Project and conducted experiments in conjunction with assistant professor Richard Alpert. In 1963, Leary was terminated for failing to attend scheduled class lectures, though he maintained that he had met his teaching obligations. The decision to dismiss him may have been influenced by his promotion of psychedelic drug use among Harvard students and faculty. The drugs were legal at the time.


title: Timothy Leary

text: His work in academic psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney, which sought to better understand interpersonal processes to help diagnose disorders. Leary's dissertation developed the interpersonal circumplex model, later published in "The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality". The book demonstrated how psychologists could use Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scores to predict how respondents might react to various interpersonal situations. Leary's research was an important harbinger of transactional analysis, directly prefiguring the popular work of Eric Berne.


title: Timothy Leary

text: On May 13, 1957, "Life" magazine published an article by R. Gordon Wasson about the use of psilocybin mushrooms in religious rites of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico. Anthony Russo, a colleague of Leary's, had experimented with psychedelic "Psilocybe mexicana" mushrooms on a trip to Mexico and told Leary about it. In August 1960, Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico, with Russo and consumed psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. In 1965, Leary said that he had "learned more about ... [his] brain and its possibilities ... [and] more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than ... in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research".


title: Timothy Leary

text: Back at Harvard, Leary and his associates (notably Alpert) began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of psilocybin on human subjects (first prisoners, and later Andover Newton Theological Seminary students) from a synthesized version of the drug, one of two active compounds found in a wide variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms, including "Psilocybe mexicana". Psilocybin was produced in a process developed by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, who was famous for synthesizing LSD.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Beat poet Allen Ginsberg heard about the Harvard research project and asked to join. Leary was inspired by Ginsberg's enthusiasm, and the two shared an optimism that psychedelics could help people discover a higher level of consciousness. They began introducing psychedelics to intellectuals and artists including Jack Kerouac, Maynard Ferguson, Charles Mingus and Charles Olson.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary argued that psychedelic substances—in proper doses, a stable setting, and under the guidance of psychologists—could benefit behavior in ways not easily obtained by regular therapy. He experimented in treating alcoholism and reforming criminals, and many of his subjects said they had profound mystical and spiritual experiences that permanently improved their lives.


title: Timothy Leary

text: The Concord Prison Experiment evaluated the use of psilocybin and psychotherapy in the rehabilitation of released prisoners. Thirty-six prisoners were reported to have repented and sworn off criminality after Leary and his associates guided them through the psychedelic experience. The overall recidivism rate for American prisoners was 60%, whereas the rate for those in Leary's project reportedly dropped to 20%. The experimenters concluded that long-term reduction in criminal recidivism could be effected with a combination of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy (inside the prison) along with a comprehensive post-release follow-up support program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous.


title: Timothy Leary

text: The Concord conclusions were contested in a follow-up study on the basis of time differences monitoring the study group vs. the control group and differences between subjects re-incarcerated for parole violations and those imprisoned for new crimes. The researchers concluded that statistically only a slight improvement could be attributed to psilocybin, in contrast to the significant improvement reported by Leary and his colleagues. Rick Doblin suggested that Leary had fallen prey to the Halo Effect, skewing the results and clinical conclusions. Doblin further accused Leary of lacking "a higher standard" or "highest ethical standards in order to regain the trust of regulators". Ralph Metzner rebuked Doblin for these assertions: "In my opinion, the existing accepted standards of honesty and truthfulness are perfectly adequate. We have those standards, not to curry favor with regulators, but because it is the agreement within the scientific community that observations should be reported accurately and completely. There is no proof in any of this re-analysis that Leary unethically manipulated his data."


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary and Alpert founded the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to carry out studies in the religious use of psychedelic drugs. This was run by Lisa Bieberman (now known as Licia Kuenning), a friend of Leary. "The Harvard Crimson" called her a "disciple" who ran a Psychedelic Information Center out of her home and published a national LSD newspaper. That publication was actually Leary and Alpert's journal "Psychedelic Review" and Bieberman (a graduate of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, who had volunteered for Leary as a student) was its circulation manager. Leary's and Alpert's research attracted so much attention that many who wanted to participate in the experiments had to be turned away. To satisfy the curiosity of those who were turned away, a black market for psychedelics sprang up near the Harvard campus.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Other professors in the Harvard Center for Research in Personality raised concerns about the experiments' legitimacy and safety. Leary and Alpert taught a class that was required for graduation and colleagues felt they were abusing their power by pressuring graduate students to take hallucinogens in the experiments. Leary and Alpert also went against policy by giving psychedelics to undergraduate students and did not select participants through random sampling. It was also ethically questionable that the researchers sometimes took hallucinogens along with the subjects they were studying. These concerns were printed in "The Harvard Crimson", leading the university to halt the experiments. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health launched an investigation that was later dropped but the university eventually fired Leary and Alpert.


title: Timothy Leary

text: According to Andrew Weil, Leary (who held an untenured teaching appointment) was fired for missing his scheduled lectures, while Alpert (a tenure-track assistant professor) was dismissed for allegedly giving an undergraduate psilocybin in an off-campus apartment. Harvard President Nathan Pusey released a statement on May 27, 1963, reporting that Leary had left campus without authorization and "failed to keep his classroom appointments". His salary was terminated on April 30, 1963.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's psychedelic experimentation attracted the attention of three heirs to the Mellon fortune, siblings Peggy, Billy, and Tommy Hitchcock. In 1963, they gave Leary and his associates access to a sprawling 64-room mansion on an estate in Millbrook, New York, where they continued their psychedelic sessions. Peggy directed the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF)'s New York branch, and Billy rented the estate to IFIF. Leary and Alpert set up a communal group with former Psilocybin Project members at the Hitchcock Estate (commonly known as "Millbrook"). One of the IFIF's founding board members, Paul Lee, a Harvard theologian, a participant at Marsh Chapel and a member of the Leary circle, said of the group's formation:


title: Timothy Leary

text: The IFIF was reconstituted as the Castalia Foundation after the intellectual colony in Hermann Hesse's 1943 novel "The Glass Bead Game". The Castalia group's journal was the "Psychedelic Review". The core group at Millbrook wanted to cultivate the divinity within each person and regularly joined LSD sessions facilitated by Leary. The Castalia Foundation also hosted non-drug weekend retreats for meditation, yoga, and group therapy. Leary later wrote:


title: Timothy Leary

text: We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the 21st century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.


title: Timothy Leary

text: the headquarters of Leary and gang for the better part of five years, a period filled with endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests, many of them on flimsy charges concocted by the local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Others contest the characterization of Millbrook as a party house. In "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", Tom Wolfe portrays Leary as using psychedelics only for research, not recreation. When Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters visited the estate, they received a frosty reception. Leary had the flu and did not play host. After a private meeting with Kesey and Ken Babbs in his room, he promised to remain an ally in the years ahead.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1964, Leary, Alpert, and Ralph Metzner coauthored "The Psychedelic Experience", based on the "Tibetan Book of the Dead". In it, they wrote:


title: Timothy Leary

text: A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key—it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary married model Birgitte Caroline "Nena" von Schlebrügge in 1964 at Millbrook. Both Nena and her brother Bjorn were friends of the Hitchcocks. D. A. Pennebaker, also a Hitchcock friend, and cinematographer Nicholas Proferes documented the event in the short film "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You". Charles Mingus played piano. The marriage lasted a year before von Schlebrügge divorced Leary in 1965. She married Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholar and ex-monk Robert Thurman in 1967 and gave birth to Ganden Thurman that same year. Actress Uma Thurman, her second child, was born in 1970.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary met Rosemary Woodruff in 1965 at a New York City art exhibit, and invited her to Millbrook. After moving in, she co-edited the manuscript for Leary's 1966 book "Psychedelic Prayers: And Other Meditations" with Ralph Metzner and Michael Horowitz. The poems in the book were inspired by the "Tao Te Ching", and meant to be used as an aid to LSD trips. Woodruff helped Leary prepare weekend multimedia workshops simulating the psychedelic experience, which were presented around the East Coast.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In September 1966, Leary said in a "Playboy" magazine interview that LSD could cure homosexuality. According to him, a lesbian became heterosexual after using the drug. Like most of the psychiatric field, he later decided that homosexuality was not an illness.


title: Timothy Leary

text: By 1966, use of psychedelics by America's youth had reached such proportions that serious concern about the drugs and their effect on American culture was expressed in the national press and halls of government. In response to this concern, Senator Thomas Dodd convened Senate subcommittee hearings to try to better understand the drug-use phenomenon, eventually with the intention of "stamping out" such usage by criminalizing it. Leary was one of several expert witnesses called to testify at these hearings. In his testimony, Leary said, "the challenge of the psychedelic chemicals is not just how to control them, but how to use them." He implored the subcommittee not to criminalize psychedelic drug use, which he felt would only serve to exponentially increase its usage among America's youth while removing the safeguards that controlled "set and setting" provided. When subcommittee member Ted Kennedy asked Leary whether LSD usage was "extremely dangerous", Leary replied, "Sir, the motorcar is dangerous if used improperly...Human stupidity and ignorance is the only danger human beings face in this world." To conclude his testimony, Leary suggested that legislation be enacted that would require LSD users to be adults who were competently trained and licensed, so that such individuals could use LSD "for serious purposes, such as spiritual growth, pursuit of knowledge, or their own personal development." He presciently noted that without such licensing, the U.S. would face "another era of prohibition." Leary's testimony proved ineffective; on October 6, 1966, just months after the subcommittee hearings, LSD was banned in California, and by October 1968, it was banned nationwide by the Staggers-Dodd Bill.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1966, Folkways Records recorded Leary reading from his book "The Psychedelic Experience", and released the album "The Psychedelic Experience: Readings from the Book "The Psychedelic Experience. A Manual Based on the Tibetan..."."


title: Timothy Leary

text: On September 19, 1966, Leary reorganized the IFIF/Castalia Foundation under the name the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion with LSD as its holy sacrament, in part as an unsuccessful attempt to maintain legal status for the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion's adherents, based on a "freedom of religion" argument. Leary incorporated the League for Spiritual Discovery as a religious organization in New York State, and its dogma was based on Leary's mantra: "drop out, turn on, tune in". (The Brotherhood of Eternal Love later considered Leary its spiritual leader, but it did not develop out of the IFIF.) Nicholas Sand, the clandestine chemist for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, followed Leary to Millbrook and joined the League for Spiritual Discovery. Sand was designated the "alchemist" of the new religion. At the end of 1966, Nina Graboi, a friend and colleague of Leary's who had spent time with him at Millbrook, became the director of the Center for the League of Spiritual Discovery in Greenwich Village. The Center opened in March 1967. Leary and Alpert gave free weekly talks there; other guest speakers included Ralph Metzner and Allen Ginsberg. Leary's papers at the New York Public Library include complete records of the IFIF, the Castalia Foundation, and the League for Spiritual Discovery.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In late 1966 and early 1967, Leary toured college campuses presenting a multimedia performance called "The Death of the Mind", attempting an artistic replication of the LSD experience. He said that the League for Spiritual Discovery was limited to 360 members and was already at its membership limit, but encouraged others to form their own psychedelic religions. He published a pamphlet in 1967 called "Start Your Own Religion" to encourage people to do so.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary was invited to attend the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In by Michael Bowen, the primary organizer of the event, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In speaking to the group, Leary coined the famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out". In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, he said the slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan when the two had lunch in New York City, adding, "Marshall was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that's a lot,' to the tune of [the well-known Pepsi 1950s singing commercial]. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'" Though the more popular "turn on, tune in, drop out" became synonymous with Leary, his actual definition with the League for Spiritual Discovery was: ""Drop Out"—detach yourself from the external social drama which is as dehydrated and ersatz as TV. "Turn On"—find a sacrament which returns you to the temple of God, your own body. Go out of your mind. Get high. "Tune In"—be reborn. Drop back in to express it. Start a new sequence of behavior that reflects your vision."


title: Timothy Leary

text: Repeated FBI raids ended the Millbrook era. Leary told author and Prankster Paul Krassner of a 1966 raid by Liddy, "He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But I've never owned a weapon in my life. I have never had and never will have a gun around."


title: Timothy Leary

text: At the end of 1967, Leary moved to Laguna Beach, California, and made many friends in Hollywood. "When he married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff, in 1967, the event was directed by Ted Markland of "Bonanza". All the guests were on acid."


title: Timothy Leary

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Leary formulated his eight-circuit model of consciousness in collaboration with writer Brian Barritt. The essay "The Seven Tongues of God" claimed that human brains have seven circuits producing seven levels of consciousness. An eighth circuit was added in the 1973 pamphlet "Neurologic", written with Joanna Leary while he was in prison. This eighth-circuit idea was not exhaustively formulated until the publication of "Exo-Psychology" by Leary and Robert Anton Wilson's "Cosmic Trigger" in 1977. Wilson contributed to the model after befriending Leary in the early 1970s, and used it as a framework for further exposition in his book "Prometheus Rising", among other works.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary believed that the first four of these circuits ("the Larval Circuits" or "Terrestrial Circuits") are naturally accessed by most people at transition points in life such as puberty. The second four circuits ("the Stellar Circuits" or "Extra-Terrestrial Circuits"), Leary wrote, were "evolutionary offshoots" of the first four that would be triggered at transition points as humans evolve further. These circuits, according to Leary, would equip humans to live in space and expand consciousness for further scientific and social progress. Leary suggested that some people might trigger these circuits sooner through meditation, yoga, or psychedelic drugs specific to each circuit. He suggested that the feelings of floating and uninhibited motion sometimes experienced with marijuana demonstrated the purpose of the higher four circuits. The function of the fifth circuit was to accustom humans to life at a zero gravity environment. Leary did not specify the location of the eight circuits in any brain structures, neural organization, or chemical pathways. He wrote that a higher intelligence "located in interstellar nuclear-gravitational-quantum structures" gave humans the eight circuits. A "U.F.O. message" was encoded in human DNA.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Many researchers believed that Leary provided little scientific evidence for his claims. Even before he began working on psychedelics, he was known as a theoretician rather than a data collector. His most ambitious pre-psychedelic work was "Interpersonal Diagnosis Of Personality". The reviewer for "The British Medical Journal", H. J. Eysenck, wrote that Leary created a confusing and overly broad rubric for testing psychiatric conditions. "Perhaps the worst failing of the book is the omission of any kind of proof for the validity and reliability of the diagnostic system," Eysenck wrote. "It is simply not enough to say" that the accuracy of the system "can be checked by the reader" in clinical practice. In 1965, Leary co-edited "The Psychedelic Reader". Penn State psychology researcher Jerome E. Singer reviewed the book and singled out Leary as the worst offender in a work containing "melanges of hucksterism". In place of scientific data about the effects of LSD, Leary used metaphors about "galaxies spinning" faster than the speed of light and a cerebral cortex "turned on to a much higher voltage".


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's first run-in with the law came on December 23, 1965, when he was arrested for marijuana possession. Leary took his two children, Jack and Susan, and his girlfriend Rosemary Woodruff to Mexico for an extended stay to write a book. On their return from Mexico to the United States, a US Customs Service official found marijuana in Susan's underwear. They had crossed into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in the late afternoon and discovered that they would have to wait until morning for the appropriate visa for an extended stay. They decided to cross back into Texas to spend the night, and were on the US–Mexico bridge when Rosemary remembered that she had a small amount of marijuana in her possession. It was impossible to throw it out on the bridge, so Susan put it in her underwear. After taking responsibility for the controlled substance, Leary was convicted of possession under the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 on March 11, 1966, sentenced to 30 years in prison, fined $30,000, and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. He appealed the case on the basis that the Marihuana Tax Act was unconstitutional, as it required a degree of self-incrimination in blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment.


title: Timothy Leary

text: On December 26, 1968, Leary was arrested again in Laguna Beach, California, this time for the possession of two marijuana "roaches". Leary alleged that they were planted by the arresting officer, but was convicted of the crime. On May 19, 1969, The Supreme Court concurred with Leary in "Leary v. United States", declared the Marihuana Tax Act unconstitutional, and overturned his 1965 conviction.


title: Timothy Leary

text: On that same day, Leary announced his candidacy for governor of California against the Republican incumbent, Ronald Reagan. His campaign slogan was "Come together, join the party." On June 1, 1969, Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal bed-in, and Lennon subsequently wrote Leary a campaign song called "Come Together".


title: Timothy Leary

text: On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further ten added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively. On his arrival in prison, he was given psychological tests used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of these tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Inventory"), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a result, he was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower-security prison from which he escaped in September 1970, saying that his nonviolent escape was a humorous prank and leaving a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone.


title: Timothy Leary

text: For a fee of $25,000, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary out of prison in a pickup truck driven by Clayton Van Lydegraf. The truck met Leary after he had escaped over the prison wall by climbing along a telephone wire. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the U.S. (and eventually into Algeria). He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver for $10,000 and the remnants of the Black Panther Party's "government in exile" in Algeria, but after a short stay with them said that Cleaver had attempted to hold him and his wife hostage. Cleaver had put Leary and his wife under "house arrest" due to exasperation with their socialite lifestyle.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1971, the couple fled to Switzerland, where they were sheltered and effectively imprisoned by a high-living arms dealer, Michel Hauchard, who claimed he had an "obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers"; Hauchard intended to broker a surreptitious film deal, and forced Leary to assign his future earnings (which Leary eventually won back). In 1972, Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, persuaded the Swiss government to imprison Leary, which it did for a month, but refused to extradite him to the U.S.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary and Rosemary separated later that year; she traveled widely, then moved back to the U.S., where she lived as a fugitive until the 1990s. Shortly after his separation from Rosemary in 1972, Leary became involved with Swiss-born British socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a stepdaughter of financier Árpád Plesch and ex-girlfriend of Hauchard. The couple "married" in a hotel under the influence of cocaine and LSD two weeks after they were introduced, and Harcourt-Smith used his surname until their breakup in 1977. They traveled to Vienna, then Beirut, and finally ended up in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1972; according to Lucy Sante, "Afghanistan had no extradition treaty with the United States, but this stricture did not apply to American airliners." American authorities used that interpretation of the law to interdict Leary. "Before Leary could deplane, he was arrested by an agent of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs." Leary asserted a different story on appeal before the California Court of Appeal for the Second District, namely:


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's bail was set at $5 million. The judge at his remand hearing said, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas". Facing 95 years in prison, Leary hired criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin. Leary mostly directed his own defense strategy, which proved unsuccessful: the jury convicted him after deliberating for less than two hours. Leary received five years for his prison escape, added to his original 10-year sentence. In 1973, he was sent to Folsom Prison in California, and put in solitary confinement. While in Folsom, he was placed in a cell right next to Charles Manson, and though they could not see each other, they could talk together. In their discussions, Manson was surprised and found it difficult to understand why Leary had given people LSD without trying to control them. At one point, Manson said to Leary, "They took you off the streets so that I could continue with your work."


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary became an FBI informant in order to shorten his prison sentence and entered the witness protection program upon his release in 1976. He claimed that he feigned cooperation with the FBI investigation of Weathermen by providing information that they already had or that was of little consequence. The FBI gave him the code name "Charlie Thrush". In a 1974 news conference, Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, and Leary's 25-year-old son Jack denounced Leary, calling him a "cop informant," "liar," and "paranoid schizophrenic." No prosecutions stemmed from his FBI reporting. In 1999, a letter from 22 "Friends of Timothy Leary" sought to soften impressions of the FBI episode. It was signed by authors such as Douglas Rushkoff, Ken Kesey, and Robert Anton Wilson. Susan Sarandon, Genesis P-Orridge and Leary's goddaughter Winona Ryder also signed. The letter said that Leary had smuggled a message to the Weather Underground informing it "that he was considering making a deal with the FBI" and he then "waited for their approval". The reported reply was, "We understand." The letter writers did not provide confirmation that the Weather Underground okayed his cooperation with the FBI.


title: Timothy Leary

text: While in prison, Leary was sued by the parents of Vernon Powell Cox, who had jumped from a third-story window of a Berkeley apartment while under the influence of LSD. Cox had taken the drug after attending a lecture by Leary promoting LSD use. Leary was unable to be present due to his incarceration, and unable to arrange for legal representation; a default judgment was entered against him in the amount of $100,000.


title: Timothy Leary

text: On April 21, 1976, Governor Jerry Brown released Leary from prison. After briefly relocating to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Harcourt-Smith under the auspices of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, the couple separated in early 1977.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary then moved to the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where he resided for the rest of his life. Unable to secure a conventional academic or research appointment due to his reputation, he continued to publish books through the independent press while maintaining an upper middle class lifestyle by making paid appearances at colleges and nightclubs as a self-described "stand-up philosopher". In 1978, he married filmmaker Barbara Blum, also known as Barbara Chase, sister of actress Tanya Roberts. He adopted Blum's young son Zachary and raised him as his own. He also took on several godchildren, including Winona Ryder (the daughter of his archivist Michael Horowitz) and technologist Joi Ito.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary developed an improbable partnership with former foe G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate burglar and conservative radio talk-show host. They toured the lecture circuit in 1982 as ex-cons debating a range of issues, including gay rights, abortion, welfare and the environment. Leary generally espoused left-wing views, while Liddy generally espoused right-wing perspectives. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both. The 1983 documentary "Return Engagement" chronicled the tour and the release of "Flashbacks", Leary's long-germinating memoir; biographer Robert Greenfield has since asserted that much of what Leary "reported as fact in "Flashbacks" is pure fantasy."


title: Timothy Leary

text: On September 25, 1988, Leary held a fundraiser for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul. Journalist Debra Saunders attended and wrote about her experience.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's extensive touring on the lecture circuit continued to ensure his family a comfortable lifestyle throughout the mid-1980s. He associated with a variety of cultural figures, including longtime interlocutors Robert Anton Wilson and Allen Ginsberg; science fiction writers William Gibson and Norman Spinrad; and rock musicians David Byrne and John Frusciante. In addition, he appeared in Johnny Depp's and Gibby Haynes's 1994 film "Stuff", which chronicled Frusciante's squalid living conditions at that time.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary continued to take a wide array of drugs (ranging from serotonergic psychedelics to the nascent empathogen MDMA and alcohol and heroin) in private, but consciously eschewed proselytizing substances in media appearances amid the escalation of the war on drugs throughout the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Instead, he served as a prominent advocate for space colonization and life extension. He expounded on the eight-circuit model of consciousness in books such as "Info-Psychology: A Re-Vision of Exo-Psychology". He invented the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's space colonization plan evolved over the years. Initially, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. This idea was inspired by musician Paul Kantner's concept album "Blows Against The Empire", which was derived from Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. While incarcerated in Folsom State Prison during the winter of 1975–76, he became enamored by Princeton University physicist Gerard K. O'Neill's plans to construct giant Eden-like High Orbital Mini-Earths, as documented in the Robert Anton Wilson lecture "H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange", using raw materials from the moon, orbital rock, and obsolete satellites.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In the 1980s, Leary became fascinated by computers, the internet, and virtual reality. He proclaimed that "the PC is the LSD of the 1990s" and enjoined historically technophobic bohemians to "turn on, boot up, jack in." He became a promoter of virtual reality systems, and sometimes demonstrated a prototype of the Mattel Power Glove as part of his lectures (as in "From Psychedelics to Cybernetics"). He befriended a number of notable people in the field, such as Jaron Lanier and Brenda Laurel, a pioneer in virtual environments and human–computer interaction. During the evanescent heyday of the cyberdelic counterculture, he served as a consultant to Billy Idol in the production of the 1993 album "Cyberpunk".


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1990, his daughter Susan, then 42, was arrested in Los Angeles for shooting her boyfriend in the head as he slept. She was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial for murder on two occasions. After years of mental instability, she died by suicide in jail.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Although he considered her the "great love of his life", Leary and Barbara divorced in 1992; according to friend and collaborator John Perry Barlow, "Tim basically gave me permission to be her lover. He couldn't be for her what she needed sexually, so it made more sense for him to anoint someone to do that for him." Thereafter, he ensconced himself in a diverse circle of prominent figures, including Johnny Depp, Susan Sarandon, Dan Aykroyd, Zach Leary, author Douglas Rushkoff, and "Spin" magazine publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. Despite declining health, he maintained a regular schedule of public appearances through 1994. Reflecting a modicum of political rehabilitation after several failed attempts to adapt "Flashbacks" as a film or television miniseries, he was the subject of a symposium of the American Psychological Association that year.


title: Timothy Leary

text: From 1989 on, Leary began to reestablish his connection to unconventional religious movements with an interest in altered states of consciousness. In 1989, he appeared with Robert Anton Wilson in a dialog called "The Inner Frontier" for the Association for Consciousness Exploration, a Cleveland-based group that had been responsible for his first Cleveland appearance in 1979. After that, he appeared at the Starwood Festival, a major Neo-Pagan event run by ACE in 1992 and 1993. His planned 1994 WinterStar Symposium appearance was canceled due to his declining health. In 1992, in front of hundreds of Neo-Pagans, Leary declared, "I've always considered myself a Pagan." He also collaborated with Eric Gullichsen on "Load and Run High-tech Paganism: Digital Polytheism". Shortly before his death on May 31, 1996, he recorded the album "Right to Fly" with Simon Stokes, which was released in July 1996.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In January 1995, Leary was diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer. He then notified Ram Dass and other old friends and began the process of directed dying, which he termed "designer dying". Leary did not reveal the condition to the press at that time, but did so after Jerry Garcia's death in August. Leary and Ram Dass reunited before Leary's death in May 1996, as seen in the documentary film "".


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's last book was "Chaos & Cyber Culture", published in 1994. In it he wrote: "The time has come to talk cheerfully and joke sassily about personal responsibility for managing the dying process." His book "Design for Dying", which tried to give a new perspective on death and dying, was published posthumously. Leary wrote about his belief that death is "a merging with the entire life process".


title: Timothy Leary

text: His website team, led by Chris Graves, updated his website on a daily basis as a proto-blog. The website noted his daily intake of various illicit and legal chemical substances, with a predilection for nitrous oxide, LSD and other psychedelic drugs. He was also noted for his trademark "Leary Biscuit", a cannabis edible consisting of a snack cracker with cheese and a small marijuana bud, briefly microwaved. At his request, his sterile house was redecorated by the staff with an array of surreal ornamentation. In his final months, thousands of visitors, well-wishers and old friends visited him in his California home. Until his last weeks, he gave many interviews discussing his new philosophy of embracing death.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary was reportedly excited for a number of years by the possibility of freezing his body in cryonic suspension, and he announced in September 1988 that he had signed up with Alcor for such treatment after having appeared at Alcor's grand opening the year before. He did not believe he would be resurrected in the future, but did believe that cryonics had important possibilities, even though he thought it had only "one chance in a thousand". He called it his "duty as a futurist", helped publicize the process and hoped that it would work for his children and grandchildren if not for him, although he said that he was "lighthearted" about it. He was connected with two cryonic organizations—first Alcor and then CryoCare—one of which delivered a cryonic tank to his house in the months before his death. Leary initially announced that he would freeze his entire body, but due to lack of funds decided to freeze his head only. He then changed his mind again and requested that his body be cremated, with his ashes scattered in space.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary died aged 75 on May 31, 1996. His death was videotaped for posterity at his request by Denis Berry and Joey Cavella, capturing his final words. Berry was the trustee of Leary's archives, and Cavella had filmed Leary during his later years. According to his son Zachary, during his final moments, he clenched his fist and said: "Why?", then, unclenching his fist, said: "Why not?". He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations, and died soon after. His last word, according to Zach, was "beautiful".


title: Timothy Leary

text: The film "Timothy Leary's Dead" (1996) contains a simulated sequence in which he allows his bodily functions to be suspended for the purposes of cryonic preservation. His head is removed and placed on ice. The film ends with a sequence showing the creation of the artificial head used in the film.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Seven grams (¼ oz) of Leary's ashes were arranged by his friend at Celestis to be buried in space aboard a rocket carrying the remains of 23 others, including "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, space colonization advocate Gerard O'Neill and German-American rocket engineer Krafft Ehricke. A Pegasus rocket containing their remains was launched on April 21, 1997, and remained in orbit for six years until it burned up in the atmosphere.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary's ashes were given to close friends and family. In 2015, Susan Sarandon brought some of his ashes to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, and put them into an art installation there. The ashes were burned along with the installation on September 6, 2015.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary was legally married five times, fathered three biological children and adopted a fourth child. He also regarded Joanna Harcourt-Smith (his domestic partner from 1972 to 1977) as his common-law wife for the duration of their relationship. His first wife, Marianne Busch, died by suicide.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary was an early influence on applying game theory to psychology, having introduced the concept to the International Association of Applied Psychology in 1961 at its annual conference in Copenhagen. He was also an early influence on transactional analysis. His concept of the four life scripts, dating to 1951, became an influence on transactional analysis by the late 1960s, popularized by Thomas Harris in his book, "I'm OK, You're OK".


title: Timothy Leary

text: Many consider Leary one of the most prominent figures of the counterculture of the 1960s, and since those times he has remained influential on pop culture, literature, television, film and, especially, music.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary coined the influential term reality tunnel, a kind of representative realism. The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, everyone interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder."


title: Timothy Leary

text: His ideas influenced the work of his friend Robert Anton Wilson. This influence went both ways, with Leary taking just as much from Wilson. Wilson's 1983 book "Prometheus Rising" was an in-depth, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary's eight-circuit model of consciousness. Although the theory originated in discussions between Leary and a Hindu holy man at Millbrook, Wilson was one of its most ardent proponents and introduced it to a mainstream audience in 1977's bestselling "Cosmic Trigger". In 1989, they appeared together on stage in a dialog called "The Inner Frontier" hosted by the Association for Consciousness Exploration, the same group that had hosted Leary's first Cleveland appearance in 1979.


title: Timothy Leary

text: World religion scholar Huston Smith was "turned on" by Leary after being introduced to him by Aldous Huxley in the early 1960s. Smith interpreted the experience as deeply religious, and described it in detailed religious terms in his book "Cleansing of the Doors of Perception". Smith asked Leary whether he knew the power and danger of what he was conducting research with. In "Mother Jones Magazine", 1997, Smith commented:


title: Timothy Leary

text: First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart—descriptively indistinguishable—that's not the last word. There is still a question about the truth of the disclosure.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In the 1968 "Dragnet" episode "The Big Prophet", Liam Sullivan played Brother William Bentley, leader of the Temple of the Expanded Mind, a thinly fictionalized Leary. Bentley held forth for the entire half-hour on the rights of the individual and the benefits of LSD and marijuana, while Joe Friday argued the contrary.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary appears in Cheech & Chong's 1981 film "Nice Dreams", featured in a scene in which he gives Cheech "the key to the universe".


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1994, Leary appeared as himself in the "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" episode "Elevator", and also appeared in an episode of "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." as the character Dr. Milo.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1996, months before his death, Leary appeared in the feminist science fiction feature film "Conceiving Ada".


title: Timothy Leary

text: The 1998 movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel, portrays heavy psychedelic drug use and mentions Leary when the protagonist ponders the meaning of the acid wave of the 1960s.


title: Timothy Leary

text: "The Psychedelic Experience" (1964) was the inspiration for John Lennon's song "Tomorrow Never Knows", on The Beatles' album "Revolver" (1966).


title: Timothy Leary

text: The Moody Blues recorded two songs about Leary. "Legend of a Mind", written and sung by Ray Thomas on their album "In Search of the Lost Chord" (1968), begins: "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no, he's outside looking in".


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary recruited Lennon to write a theme song for his California gubernatorial campaign against Ronald Reagan (which was interrupted by Leary's prison sentence for cannabis possession), inspiring Lennon to come up with "Come Together" (1969), based on Leary's campaign theme and catchphrase.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary was also present and sang when Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, recorded "Give Peace a Chance" (1969) during their bed-in in Montreal and is mentioned in the lyrics of the song.


title: Timothy Leary

text: The Who's 1970 single "The Seeker" mentions Leary in a sequence where the song's protagonist claims that Leary (among other high-profile people) was unable to help them with their search for answers.


title: Timothy Leary

text: While in exile in Switzerland, Leary and British writer Brian Barrett collaborated with the German band Ash Ra Tempel and recorded the album "Seven Up" (1973). He is credited as a songwriter, and his lyrics and vocals can be heard throughout the album. Commenting on the work of his friend H. R. Giger, a surrealist artist from Switzerland who won an Academy Award for his work on the film "Alien", Leary noted:


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1995, Leary had a cameo at the end of the music video for the song "Galaxie" by alternative rock group Blind Melon.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1973, "El Perfecto Comics" was organized by Aline Kominsky and published by The Print Mint to raise funds for the Timothy Leary Defense Fund. The comic features 31 underground artists contributing mostly one-pagers about drug experiences (primarily LSD). The front cover and a contributed one-page story are by Robert Crumb.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 1979, Last Gasp published a one-shot edition of Neurocomics titled "Timothy Leary". "Evolved from transmissions of Dr. Timothy Leary as filtered through Pete Von Sholly & George DiCaprio", it is based on Leary's writings related to life, the brain, and intelligence. DiCaprio collaborated with Leary on the script.


title: Timothy Leary

text: Leary authored and coauthored more than 20 books and was featured on more than a dozen audio recordings. His acting career included over a dozen appearances in movies and television shows in various roles and over 30 appearances as himself. He also produced and/or collaborated with others in the creation of multimedia presentations and computer games.


title: Timothy Leary

text: In 2011, "The New York Times" reported that the New York Public Library had acquired Leary's personal archives, including papers, videotapes, photographs and other archival material from the Leary estate, including correspondence and documents relating to Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Arthur Koestler, G. Gordon Liddy and other prominent cultural figures. The collection became available in September 2013.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine () is a fictional character who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. Constantine first appeared in "Swamp Thing" #37 (June 1985), and was created by Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben.


title: John Constantine

text: The titular Hellblazer, Constantine is a working-class warlock, occult detective, and con man from Liverpool who is stationed in London. He is known for his endless cynicism, deadpan wit, ruthless cunning, and constant chain smoking, but he is also a passionate humanitarian driven by a heartfelt desire to do some good in his life. Originally a supporting character who played a pivotal role in the "American Gothic" "Swamp Thing" storyline, Constantine received his own comic in 1988. The musician Sting was a visual inspiration for the character.


title: John Constantine

text: The "Hellblazer" series was the longest-running and most successful title of DC's Vertigo imprint. "Empire" ranked Constantine third in their 50 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time, while IGN ranked him number 29 in its Top 100 Comic Book Heroes, and the character ranked number 10 in "Wizard"s Top 200 Comic Book Characters of All Time.


title: John Constantine

text: The character made his live-action debut in the film "Constantine" (2005), portrayed by Keanu Reeves. On television, Constantine was portrayed by Matt Ryan in the NBC series "Constantine" (2014–15), who later reprised the character in the Arrowverse series "Arrow" and "Legends of Tomorrow", and several animated productions. Jenna Coleman later portrayed a female version of the character (and her ancestor) in the Netflix series "The Sandman", adapting both Constantines' roles from Neil Gaiman's comic series.


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine is notable for the fact that many of the people who wrote his stories have claimed to see him apparently showing up in real life despite him being a fictional character.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine first appeared in 1985 as a recurring character in "Swamp Thing", in which he acted as a "supernatural advisor" to the main character.


title: John Constantine

text: In these early appearances, Constantine was depicted as a sorcerer of questionable morality, whose appearance was based on that of the musician Sting (specifically, as Sting appeared in the films "Brimstone and Treacle" and "Quadrophenia"). Alan Moore created the character after artists Steve Bissette and John Totleben, who were fans of The Police, expressed a desire to draw a character who looked like Sting. They had already drawn at least one character in Sting's likeness, a briefly glimpsed background figure wearing a black-and-red-striped T-shirt in "Swamp Thing" #25. In his earliest Swamp Thing appearances, the character is drawn with a marked resemblance to Sting, and in "Swamp Thing" #51, Constantine appears on a boat with the name The Honourable Gordon Sumner on the bow.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine's official debut was not until "Swamp Thing" #37, when he was drawn by Rick Veitch and Totleben. "Crisis on Infinite Earths" #4, his second official appearance in a cameo role, shipped two weeks after the release of "Swamp Thing" #37. In that issue, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez, Constantine is wearing a green suit as opposed to his more traditional black suit and tan trenchcoat ensemble. Moore describes Constantine as being drawn from a number of "really good ideas... about serial killers, the Winchester House, and... want[ing] to draw Sting in a story." Calling these disparate strands a "big intellectual puzzle", Constantine was the result of "fit[ting] it all together." Initially created "purely to get Sting into the story", by the time of the 1985 San Diego ComicCon, Moore stated, "It's turning into something more than that now." Veitch's contribution was to give Constantine an earring, something he considered risque for 1985.


title: John Constantine

text: Asked in 1985 about the similarities between John Constantine and the character Baron Winters (from Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's "Night Force"), Moore revealed that he was a "big fan" of Wolfman and "Night Force", but that "no intention to rip off Baron Winters" existed. He said:


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine and Winters met each other during Moore's run on "Swamp Thing" and again in Neil Gaiman's "The Books of Magic".


title: John Constantine

text: In 1988, Constantine was given his own title, "Hellblazer". In 1993, at the launch of DC's Vertigo Comics imprint, "Hellblazer" was made an official Vertigo publication. It was the longest continuously published Vertigo title. Before the launch of the Vertigo line, Constantine appeared in several DC Universe titles, but for many years afterwards, editorial policy forbade the use of Constantine outside the Vertigo line. The policy was reversed in 2011, when a version of Constantine appeared in the DC Universe crossover series "Brightest Day", a spin-off series, "Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing". In 2011, Peter Milligan added him to the inaugural key roster of The New 52 series "Justice League Dark". Milligan began writing "Justice League Dark" while also writing the Vertigo's "Hellblazer" series, being a writer of both series at the same time. In an interview, Milligan told Newsarama:


title: John Constantine

text: Beginning in "Justice League Dark" #9, Jeff Lemire assumed writing duties on the series, replacing Milligan, who had remained on the Vertigo title. Lemire said he considers "Justice League Dark" his dream gig at DC Comics because Constantine is one of his all-time favourite characters not just in comics, but in all fiction. Lemire also teased that while Constantine, Zatanna, and Deadman would remain on the roster, the team would change in his opening arc and expand.


title: John Constantine

text: Although a compassionate humanist who struggles to overcome the influence of both Heaven and Hell over humanity, and despite his occasional forays into heroism, Constantine is a foul-mouthed, disillusioned British cynic who pursues a life of sorcery and danger. His motivation has been attributed to an adrenaline addiction that only the strange and mysterious can satiate. He also seems to be something of a "Weirdness Magnet" (a term also used to describe


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine). He is shown to be someone with a wide and international circle of contacts and allies, and is adept at making friends. At the same time, his close friends inevitably suffer or are outright killed simply by being in his life; this has left a severe mark on him. In #69, when the King of Vampires killed the man sleeping beside him and casually asked if he had been a friend, John replied, "Must be. He's dead."


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine also has a reputation as being one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. Despite this, he rarely uses magic, instead choosing to use his wits to trick his opponents. Constantine is also referred to as "The Constant One" because of his whole family tree being somewhat connected to the occult. Many of his ancestors are sorcerers from different eras of history, and have taken part in many known historical events. Some of his ancestors have roles in other works outside Hellblazer, such as "Batman: The Order of Beasts", "The Sandman", and "Books of Magic".


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine is bisexual, which was first established in a 1992 comic that referred offhandedly to his having male and female exes. Early stories exclusively showed him dating women, although Brian Azzarello's "Ashes & Dust in the City of Angels" showed him as having relationships with men, as well. His romantic relationships in the New 52 have included numerous partners, most significantly Zatanna, as well as the sorcerer Nick Necro; all have been fraught with distrust and mutual disappointments. The relaunch "Constantine the Hellblazer" #1 (2015) reaffirmed Constantine's bisexuality through his interactions with male and female characters in the issue. Later issues of "Constantine the Hellblazer" depicted John falling in love with a male bartender named Oliver, whom he dated. In the 2020 movie "", Constantine reveals that King Shark is his ex. Mairghread Scott, a co-writer on the movie, discussed this with Comic Book Resources.


title: John Constantine

text: While Constantine has worn many clothes over the years, he was originally portrayed as often wearing a blue pin-stripe suit, tan trench coat, and occasionally gloves. As the series progressed, his trademark attire became a grungier (or perhaps the same, just older) trench coat, white shirt, and black tie, but eventually returned more to his earlier fashion. Constantine smokes Silk Cut cigarettes, consuming 30 or so a day. Constantine also occasionally breaks the fourth wall, where he talks to the reader and narrates the story himself.


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine is unusual among comic-book characters in that he has aged in real time since his creation. During the first year of his solo series, Constantine celebrated his 35th birthday. In the relevant issue, Constantine is reading a newspaper when he notices the date on the cover is his birthday, making his date of birth May 10, 1953. Five years later, on May 10, 1993, he turned 40. In "Hellblazer", it was mentioned multiple times that the aging process of Constantine himself might be different due to the demon blood that he obtained from Nergal. In a 2011 interview, DC co-publisher Dan DiDio said, "Constantine in the Vertigo universe is in his 60s, and what you have in the DC Universe is a character who is markedly younger".


title: John Constantine

text: In Constantine's early appearances in "Swamp Thing", his past was a mystery; his life as a child and young adult was not developed until Jamie Delano's "Hellblazer" stories. John Constantine was born in Liverpool, Lancashire (now Merseyside), on May 10, 1953. His mother, Mary Anne, died giving birth to John and his stillborn twin brother because an earlier abortion—forced on her by John's father, Thomas—had weakened her womb. Because he was unable to accept responsibility for his wife's death, Thomas blamed John and the pair grew up with a deep dislike for one another. While in the womb, John strangled his twin brother with his own umbilical cord; in a parallel universe, the twin survives to become the well-loved and well-adjusted magician who John never was.


title: John Constantine

text: In their childhood, John and his older sister Cheryl lived briefly with their aunt and uncle in Northampton to escape from their father's alcoholism and subsequent imprisonment for stealing a female neighbour's underwear. They moved back to Liverpool when their father was released. John's bloodline and ancestry were known as the Laughing Magicians, legendary mages who have the power over synchronicity and were infamous for bluffing and tricking gods. This ancestry later drives John Constantine to partake in his lineage and practice magic. One of John's first acts of magic, as a child, was to hide all of his childhood innocence and vulnerability in a box to rid himself of it. Later, in the 1960s, a teenaged John ran away from home, but not before a botched curse caused his father to become withered and frail. John eventually made his permanent home in London in 1969, rooming with Francis "Chas" Chandler, a young man who has since gone on to become John's closest and longest-surviving friend.


title: John Constantine

text: During the 1970s, John became involved in occult circles in London. He travelled other countries and visited San Francisco, where he met, and subsequently began a relationship with, the female magician Zatanna Zatara (in DC's The New 52, but the two met in New York). He also became enamoured of punk rock; after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Roxy Club in London in 1977, John cut his long hair, called himself Johnny Con-Job, and formed his own band, Mucous Membrane, whose members included Chandler (as a roadie), a drummer named Beano, and fellow Liverpudlian Gary Lester. They later released an album called "Venus of the Hardsell". John also performed as a famous stage magician in the 1980s, where he became famous for predicting the assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan.


title: John Constantine

text: John's first venture into occult "heroism" was a disaster. On tour with Mucous Membrane at the Casanova Club in Newcastle, he found the aftermath of a magical orgy gone horribly wrong; an abused child, Astra Logue, had conjured a hideous monster that took revenge on her father, the club's debauched owner, and the other adults who were tormenting her, and the monster refused to leave. With typical recklessness, John convinced some members of the band, along with several occultist friends, to try destroying the creature by summoning a demon of their own. Unfortunately, this demon was not under their control; and after it had destroyed the child's monster, it tormented Constantine's friends and took the child to Hell. John had summoned the demon by one of its names, but not its true name – Nergal – which would have been required to bind and control the demon. Nergal went on to be a regular antagonist throughout the series. John suffered a nervous breakdown after this incident, and was committed to Ravenscar Psychiatric Hospital, which he drifted in and out of over the years.


title: John Constantine

text: The guilt of Astra hung over him for many years, until in his mid-40s, he used some magic and con-artistry to free not only her, but also the souls of all the other children trapped in Hell. As for the rest of the "Newcastle Crew", the incident left the group both physically and psychologically scarred. After helping Dream retrieve his sands from Constantine's own dying ex-girlfriend Rachel, Dream in turn relieves Constantine of the nightmares that had plagued him since the incident.


title: John Constantine

text: John is later freed from Ravenscar by London gangsters, threatening to torture and kill his sister and her family unless he helps to resurrect a mob boss's dead son. Knowing that resurrection is impossible even by magical means, John instead summons a demon to take the boy's place; a desperate act that has bloody consequences many years later. Years later, John was able to reconvene the surviving members of the "Newcastle Crew" to help with his investigation of the Brujería cult, as seen in "Swamp Thing" #37–49. The cult murdered most of them, including John's then-lover, Emma. These people, and others who have died due to John's carelessness, have continued to appear to him as silent, reproachful ghosts. Chas is the most prominent one of very few human friends to have survived a long-term association with John.


title: John Constantine

text: John first met Swamp Thing in 1985 after being interested in the creature. John later acts as the Swamp Thing's protector, guide, and voice of omen, even teaching the Thing to amplify his powers. Both would have further adventure with each other, such as John introducing the Thing to the Parliament of Trees, Thing using John's body to make love to his wife and father a child named Tefe, and fighting off the Damnation Army from summoning the Anti-Christ. Both carry a dull, but nevertheless fruitful friendship with each other. Constantine even invites Swamp Thing to his 40th birthday and assures the Thing he will try not to bother him again. In 1991 while in his late 30s, John contracted terminal lung cancer. During this time, he sought the help of a dying friend, Brendan, who had sold his soul to the First of the Fallen, the most powerful lord of Hell. When the First came to collect the soul, John tricked him into drinking holy water, which rendered him helpless and prevented him from collecting the friend's soul at the appointed time.


title: John Constantine

text: For this, the First promised to make John suffer unprecedented torment in Hell when he dies. Slowly dying from cancer, John hatched a plan to save himself from eternal torment. He secretly sold his soul to the other two Lords of Hell. When they discovered Constantine's actions, they realized that they could not allow him to die, or else they would be forced to go to all-out war over his soul, a war whose only winner would be "the Lord of the Hosts", i.e., God and his angels. They were also far too stubborn and proud, however, to enter anything resembling an alliance. As a result, they were forced to cure John of his cancer. This led to the First plotting a grand revenge on Constantine, who manipulated the demon via his ally Ellie, a succubus, into coming into a trap; the plan only barely succeeded, and while the First was temporarily defeated, many of John's friends were killed.


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine then went on to have a series of adventures and misadventures playing the role of puppet and puppeteer with his signature style and profane sarcasm. He managed to free Astra and every other child in Hell, but at the cost of the First returning to power; also, as part of the scheme, John's worst attributes were given separate existence as "Demon Constantine", which meant he himself could not go to Hell. As part of an attempt to regain his nastier edge, he used Ellie, and this led to her taking out a revenge scheme in 1998 that forced him to turn to the First for help; Ellie ended up in Hell, and several of John's oldest friends left him. John, being tired of all this, contacted God. God appears and the two converse in a campfire. John then tells him his reason for contacting Him. He warns God that if his soul is ever sent to Hell, he would easily take over, and do nasty things such as unleashing the demons and locking away Hell so that the damned cannot enter and have no resting place. John blackmails God to do his bidding, and that is to keep his soul away from Hell. God, knowing of John's abilities, does so, but warns him of what will come next.


title: John Constantine

text: On return to Britain in 2003, and after reconciling with his sister (who believed he was dead), he went on to be involved in a magic war in London, and was horrified to find his niece Gemma, whom he had wanted to keep out of this life, had become a witch. He soon ended up organising a counterstrike against a creature known as the Shadow Dog, having been warned of its coming and believing it was an entity that brought death and madness; instead, it was a guardian against the true enemy, the Beast, who was manipulating John into giving it free access to humanity. In the process, he was rendered an amnesiac, leaving him vulnerable to the schemes of the demon Rosacarnis. To get his memories back, he had to spend a day in her service, in which she had him father three demonic children, who went on to massacre anyone who knew Constantine, from friends to enemies to people who had only briefly met him. Among them was his sister Cheryl; one of his sons had exploited her husband's religious fanaticism to make him see his wife as a witch — and thus a person to be killed. This forced Constantine to go on journey to Hell in the hopes to return his sister's soul. Accompanying him was Nergal, the demon he thought he had killed by sending him to the border of Heaven.


title: John Constantine

text: While in Hell, John and Nergal met Demon Constantine, who tried to kill the original one. John was forced to let Nergal enter his body to finish him. Later, they also encountered Ellie, who seemed to have quite pardoned John for him selling her out to the First. She was not subject to any torture or punishment, either. The couple finally arrived at Rosacarnis' hall, where there was a feast with all three of Constantine's children, the First, and many demons from all Hell. Because of Nergal's earlier possession of his body, any damage done to John would be mirrored on Nergal. Nergal, however, calls the bluff, showing that the effect goes both ways by clawing at his chest slightly. John begs Rosacarnis to kill him to save his sister, but just as she is about to, the First of the Fallen intervenes and immediately kills Rosacarnis, since Constantine's soul is his by "right of insult" and will only be taken when he deems fit. The First also kills Rosacarnis' two sons, but spares the daughter, who had been dealing with issues of identity and had doubts about whether she wanted to continue to exist.


title: John Constantine

text: Following this, the First commands Nergal to release the soul he is holding. Cheryl's soul is pure and innocent, and does not belong in Hell, but the First offers her a truly devilish deal. He informs her that her husband, Constantine's brother-in-law Tony, has killed himself with her blood still staining his hands, thus making him twice damned, and offers to fairly divide her husband's punishment between the two of them if she stays of her own free will. Constantine attempts in vain to argue that Tony murdered her and does not deserve that mercy. Despite all that has happened, Cheryl still loves her husband enough to accept the First's deal and decides to stay. Constantine can do nothing, as the First gloats over his victory and then sends him back home. Unable to look at his niece Gemma's tear-filled eyes because of his failure, Constantine runs barefoot down the stairs and into the Liverpool night.


title: John Constantine

text: John later revisits Ravenscar Asylum, the place where he was thrown after being framed for Astra's murder. John remembers all the maltreatment he suffered, and remembers every suffering and guilt he had for the past years. At first, it appears as though it is too much for him and that he will be overtaken by the images of the ones he has hurt, but the being turns into the form of a baby. This baby, who is the sum of all his guilt and self-hatred, is then promptly thrown off a cliff near the asylum and into the sea. After killing the creature, Constantine is now free, and becomes even a bit more cocky and picks back up his earlier style from the beginning of his book and his appearances from Swamp Thing: a double-breasted blue suit underneath his trench coat, and slicked-back, gelled hair.


title: John Constantine

text: Later on, a Sudanese shaman who had first bound the hunger demon Mnemoth has been having dreams of Constantine and a war-mage named Mako, who is coming to kill him and devour his being. Constantine is a specific target of the war-mage because he is the "Laughing Magician", who is also known as the "Constant One". Mako wants to devour him so he can absorb that power and have his being made a fixture of the universe. To counter this attack to come, the African magus puts a dream of his into a tree root, with Constantine's true nature in those dreams. After doing this, a young man is sent as a messenger to find John and deliver the message. Constantine later notices that something is wrong on the synchronicity lines, and seemingly, he is going head first against the traffic. Remembering that Mako mentioned Ravenscar when he found out about Constantine, he tries to summon his unborn brother, but instead is summoned to his brother. The soul of Constantine's brother tells John that he was not to be born and that it should have been he who had been born, instead, as he is the Laughing Magician; he requests that John and he merge their souls so they become one and can fix the world. They had previously attempted this, but John was apparently too strong-willed. John then makes the link that the soul of his unborn brother caused him to get cancer and for his relationships to fail, and that anytime he tried to take control of his life, something bad would happen to make John weaker, so their souls might be able to merge. After realizing this, John cuts the soul of his brother out of his own soul, so he can control his life and live his way.


title: John Constantine

text: In the 2010s, John entangles himself in further adventures. He goes to India and fights a ghost of a British soldier of the Sepoy rebellion, fights a Babylonian shape shifter named Julian, gets his thumb cut off to contact , marrying a young girl named Epiphany Greaves, who was also the daughter of an infamous gangster, looking for his lost trench coat that his niece sold, finding his sister's long-lost son named Finn, and finally getting his sister's soul from Hell.


title: John Constantine

text: By 2013, John was contacted by the Three Fates, who tell him that he will finally die in five days. Having lived a good and adventurous life, John happily accepts his fate rather than trying to fight it like he always does. When the fifth day came, John Constantine was murdered in his own home, when he was ambushed and killed by a gangster. His funeral was attended by many of his friends and family, but it later turns out that he had faked his death yet again. Constantine decides he should keep a low profile, because he does not want to hurt the people around him again. He bids farewell to Finn and Epiphany, and finally visits Gemma. In the meanwhile, Gemma, hearing about her uncle's return from the Fates, tries to kill herself with a poisonous revolver, but Constantine sneaks the last remaining dart from his niece. Gemma says her life will be better without him, because he takes up too much of it and she is either hating him or loving him too much. John suggests he let her be, but Gemma fears he will return and put her life to misery. John tells Gemma to make her own decision, and she reluctantly points the revolver at him. Gemma closes her eyes before muttering, "Damn you, John Constantine" and pulls the trigger, but when she opened her eyes again, Constantine had vanished. The last scene shows Constantine in the Long Journey's End bar, holding a glass of liquor with a vacant look.


title: John Constantine

text: In "The New 52", Constantine appears as one of the lead characters in "Justice League Dark". His history is slightly altered, such as meeting Zatanna in New York instead of San Francisco, and the origins of how he got his trademark trenchcoat. During the gap where he travels the world to learn magic, the "New 52" added the history of him meeting Nick Necro, who was implied to be John's mentor and original owner of the trenchcoat. The "" storyline would establish that the three characters were all involved in a magical pact and a love triangle, which fell apart due to Zatanna ending her relationship with Nick to pursue John. Nick states "We were all in love, and you two shut me out!" The character also stars in the ongoing series "Constantine", which replaces "Hellblazer". He is still an unsavory trickster in the "New 52" universe, as, while during the Trinity War between the three Justice Leagues, he tries to trick Shazam (15-year-old Billy Batson) so that he can steal his magic. He fails, causing Billy to become even more distrustful of other people than he already was.


title: John Constantine

text: In "Constantine" #14, it was revealed that John Constantine, as a boy, was taught and cast his first magical spell—at the cost of the lives of his parents and his house burning down (it was implied that his mother, unlike in "Hellblazer", survived the childbirth). It was also revealed that he spent his childhood in the '80s in Liverpool, England (it is not shown if he had any siblings, like Cheryl Constantine in "Hellblazer"). The one who taught John his first spell was Tannarak from the Cult of the Cold Flame ("Constantine" #15).


title: John Constantine

text: His primary enemies in "Constantine" are Mister E, Sargon the Sorceress (the original Sargon's daughter), and Tannarak: all are members of the Cult of the Cold Flame. Together with his allies Papa Midnite, the psychic mage Spellbinder, and a witch called Julia Everheart, Constantine attempts to destroy the Cult by conspiring a scam to take Sargon and Tannarak by surprise. However, prior to the planned battle, Constantine is thrown into the battlefield in Dar es Salaam in World War I because of a ritual going wrong, making his plan ultimately fail. An encounter with Doctor Occult there results in Constantine being transported to Earth-2 - a world dying under siege from Darkseid and his army of Parademons.


title: John Constantine

text: In Earth-2, he is assaulted by the Parademons, but Wotan comes and rescues him, before trapping him to open a gateway to escape the dying Earth. Constantine manages to convince Wotan to spare his life, then works with the ancient sorcerer to open a door through his body to Earth-0. As Wotan enters the doorway, he is split into two halves, because there are two John Constantines in this world: the original Constantine and the native one of Earth-2, who is surrounded by his friends and even gets married. After the death of Wotan, Constantine resolves to find his Earth-2 counterpart. He travels to Liverpool and witnesses all the horror and despair of the dying world. As soon as John reached the destination, he is shocked to find his "parents" (actually the Earth-2 John's parents), his friends Gary Lester, Chas Chandler and his former love interest Maureen still alive.


title: John Constantine

text: The Earth-2 John quickly attacks him by grabbing him in the neck, but they are engulfed in visions of their lives in parallel right after: a dangerous life marred with sorcery, adventures and regrets of Earth-0 John and a much quieter, much happier life of Earth-2 John. Constantine quickly earns the trust of the Earth-2 family, who consider him to be a wonder. Together, they escape to a warehouse where John instructs them to draw sigils to cast a complex spell. As John is lecturing about the unpredictability and the price of magic, Doctor Fate appears in front of his eyes, claims to have foreseen his arrival and offers to help him.


title: John Constantine

text: Doctor Fate reminds John of an incoming horde of Parademons and tells him to quickly cast the spell to escape from the dying world, himself hoping to flee with John and the family too. John discovers that the spell requires one Constantine to die: either himself or the Earth-2 John. As the Parademons storm in and take each family member down one by one, John is torn over between saving his own life and let the good, honest Earth-2 John live by sacrificing himself. Finally, he chooses to save his own skin: as he is kissing the other John, he holds his hand and drives the knife into his heart, ultimately kills the "other John". As the spells start working, John casts an additional spell to trick Doctor Fate, which masks his presence from the ancient sorcerer, then departs, brings along the family members and many other people.


title: John Constantine

text: By killing the "proper" Constantine, he earns the wrath and hatred of the Earth-2 family. Being called "Devil", John corrects the family when they reach Heaven while peeling through the layers of the dying world: Heaven itself, also under assault from Darkseid's force, has closed its door and started departing, deems this world beyond salvation. Later, John and his entourage are attacked by Doctor Fate, who manages to detect Constantine's whereabout. Despite succeeding in countering the assault, John loses his "mother" Mary-Anne, who is dragged back by Fate's chain. This greatly traumatizes Thomas Constantine, John's father, who even attempts to commit suicide, but is talked out of it by John.


title: John Constantine

text: After a long and hard trip, Constantine finally makes it back home, but Darkseid has sensed him and is in hot pursuit. As the menacing hand of the Apokolips God is reaching to him, Constantine enacts his "last trick": by sacrificing some souls of his entourage, John manages to get enough power to cast the "Ring of Dolus" spell, which uses every happy memories, every pleasant thought, every piece of hope in John Constantine to swirl a magical "web" made of lies. This powerful spell helps John projecting an illusion of an already dead universe to fool Darkseid, while John manages to bring himself, the family and the Earth-2 civilians to safety - he even "pickpockets" some survivors back from Darkseid's clutch.


title: John Constantine

text: As Constantine lands in the Jurassic Coast, England, he is confronted by Thomas, who points a gun at his head. Tired of everything, John yells at his father, begs him to kill him off for good. Unable to do it, Thomas drops his gun, but Maureen quickly puts it up and prepares to shoot John while questioning his actions. John contemplates and sees that he is no hero, but he is the only one willing to sacrifice "proper John" to save his family, or trade a hundred people for the safety of 6 billion. He magically teleports away, leaving the family and the survivors behind. Later, John goes back to New York and visits his old friend Lloyd at his bar to tell him about his latest adventures.


title: John Constantine

text: The "New 52" "Constantine" series ends at issue #23 and was relaunched as "Constantine: The Hellblazer" written by Ming Doyle and James Tynion IV in June 2015.


title: John Constantine

text: The "Constantine" "" tie-in tells the story of John Constantine five years into a possible future of the "New 52" universe. He somehow obtains the ultimate occult artifact, the Helmet of Fate, and manages to trick and kill the ancient magician Nabu with the help of an old ifrit.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine's origin in the "New 52" universe is seemingly retconned in the "Secret Origins" series. In the story, a group of kids in Liverpool manages to get their hands on an occult book and uses it to summon a magical creature called "Legendbreaker" to discover Constantine's true origin. Instead, the creature tells three conflicting stories: one featuring John's mother dead in childbirth, leaving him to his abusive father; another having John Constantine being born in a loving family with proud and doting parents; the last one is a John born in an unremarkable family, but his older sister is mad and (probably) possessed by a dark force. They all lead to the death of his entire family and set the path for John Constantine into the world of magic, to the fateful incident in Newcastle, albeit the actions and consequences are different. The creature tries to claim the souls of the young "mystics", but the real John Constantine shows up and chases it away. He tells the kids to go back home, forget what has just happened, and his true origins will forever remain unknown - but it does not matter.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine stars in the DC You title "Constantine: The Hellblazer" written by Ming Doyle and James Tynion IV. The title introduces John in a new outfit and new hairstyle, in his own adventures, unrelated to superheroes business.


title: John Constantine

text: Constantine uses magic to trick a cashier in a clothes store and gets himself a new suit. He pickpockets a passengers, uses the money to buy a meal in a small restaurant and gets acquainted to its owner Oliver, a single father of two daughters. As John is busy chatting and flirting with Oliver, an old "friend", the demon Blythe, pulls John away and convinces him to help them solve their problems in their latest business place, a soul farm. They want John to eliminate their business partner, which John completes, and he also cons Blythe to banish herself back to Hell. Suddenly, John sees his entire ghost entourage, and Gary Lester's ghost - who has tried to warn him since the beginning - tells him that Frank North's spirit had vanished completely, and something had been after John's ghosts. John tries to set up a scheme to lure and trap the entity which had been after his ghosts, by ramping up quite a number of ghosts from 'haunted sites'. The plan fails and Gary Lester's ghost is also taken by the being. After a few flashbacks and meeting with an old acquaintance named Georgie, John begins to unravel the true identity of the ghost-hunting entity, as his (and Georgie's) old time lover, Veronica. After releasing Veronica's soul, Constantine starts to notice (and is also warned by other beings whom he deems as 'friends') the increasing number of supernatural activities in New York city. Being part of Neron's grand scheme, John manages to con (after quite a bit of struggle) Neron into thinking the souls he had claim to be worthless, and leaves New York city for good. Albeit the cost of Oliver's soul which Blythe had claimed by previously blackmailing the latter and John with the souls of his daughters.


title: John Constantine

text: In "The Hellblazer: Rebirth", John gets back to London to remove the curse placed upon him (originally shown in "Constantine" #3, which makes him physically sick whenever he sets foot on London soil) and resumes his adventures in the new "DC Rebirth"-initiative "The Hellblazer". The series restores many of the traditional aspects of the original "Hellblazer" run while still remaining firmly in the larger DC Universe, restoring his original backstory and featuring old allies such as Chas, Mercury and the Swamp Thing.


title: John Constantine

text: John Constantine returns to England and is greeted by his old time friend, Chas Chandler, at the airport. He resolves to dispel the curse, set on him by a demon called "Laughing Boy" whom he once crossed in the past, by using a ritual that deflect the curse from him to 8 million souls in London. Shazam and Wonder Woman make an appearance - they notice the ravens in London dying and prepare to intervene, while the Swamp Thing appears before them and tells them that they should trust Constantine on this one. The "Laughing Boy" demon tells John that he will return Astra's soul if John agrees to cancel his spell. However, it turns out that John is buying time for the psychic Mercury, who is now a young woman, to arrive and tell him the real name of "Laughing Boy" (Nybbas). John takes control of the demon, cancels the curse and London returns to normal.


title: John Constantine

text: In the past, the djinn have tried to hide away the secret of their existence from human. One djinn, named Marid, was stopped by his brother when he tried to prevent the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which triggered World War I. In South London, present day, John Constantine is staying in Chas's house when he is contacted by Swamp Thing. Abigail Arcane, the Avatar of the Rot and the Swamp Thing's lover, is missing. John enlists Mercury's help, who is eager to help the Swamp Thing despite disliking John. Meanwhile, in Paris, Marid resurfaces and attacks his brother.


title: John Constantine

text: John tells Chas which horse to bet on and makes the cabbie drive him to the Tate Club. Clarice Sackville offers him a deal with "someone", but John flatly refuses. That "someone" turns out to be Marid, who is shown working with Clarice and Constantine seems to be an obstacle. John is tracked down by two djinns but manages to escape to the London Underground. He meets Map, who behaves oddly and warns John of an upcoming danger in town: the djinn, and that Clarice actually wants John to stop the djinn from finding the Swamp Thing. John returns home only to find Chas being tied and gagged by a gang of white supremacists, who manage to deduce Chas's winning bet was due to John, and force the con man to tell them how to win bets. While John is "doing magick", Marid and his djinns arrive and kill off the gang. John and Chas manage to escape.


title: John Constantine

text: Mercury and the Swamp Thing travel in the Rot to find Abigail Arcane. Mercury jumps into a "wormhole" while the Swamp Thing stays behind and battles the forces of the Rot. Mercury returns and rescues the Swamp Thing. When asked what she found, Constantine arrives and answer "djinn".


title: John Constantine

text: In another universe first seen in Books of Magic, Constantine is caught in the middle of a magical war that will destroy the universe at the hands of Timothy Hunter. Constantine sacrifices Chas to buy himself time, but is fatally wounded by Chas' taxi sign. Constantine encounters the prime Tim Hunter and tells him that all of this destruction is his fault and he wishes that he had listened to Mister E and killed him. After Tim leaves, Constantine meet an alternate, older version of himself who offers to save him for a price, which is that John has to be the best version of himself. As John starts to lose consciousness, he realizes that he is not ready to die yet and agrees to the deal. He later wakes up in Ravenscar Asylum, back in the prime universe.


title: John Constantine

text: Once in this new universe, John discovered that Chas is dying of lung cancer and is plagued by various demons and spirits, caused by spending so much time around John. Chas angrily renounced their friendship. After visiting Chandler, John tried to kill the Timothy Hunter of this universe to prevent Hunter's supposed descent to darkness, but stopped midway. He managed to gain the reluctant service of Vestibullan - a former angel who had refused to take side during the war between Hell and Heaven, and had been punished ever since.


title: John Constantine

text: After being thrown out of a bar for making jokes ridiculing the British Royal family, John made acquaintance with its bouncer, Nat, a Glaswegian girl who was an excellent martial artist. John was kidnapped by the "mob boss" called K-Mag, the leader of a street gang consisted of wayward immigrant youngsters. His henchmen, the "Ri-Boys", had been trying to sell drugs in a nearby park, but were killed by what they thought to be angels.


title: John Constantine

text: K-Mag employed Constantine, who he knew was a magician, to deal with these "angels", by blackmailing John over one of his gangster, Noah, 's life. John agreed, and discovered that these were not really angels, but magical beings created by a homeless man who was obsessed with William Blake. Constantine tricks the man into killing himself, hence destroying the "angels". He also managed to bring Noah out of the gang and made the young man his personal driver like his former friend Chas. However, the residual energy of the encounter was later revealed to be absorbed by the old Constantine.


title: John Constantine

text: John then met a fellow sorcerer, the hippie Tommy Willowtree (formerly Thomas Spugg), who tells him that the angels in the park were just one of a series of magical occurrences that have happened since John's return. Willowtree revered John and offered him back his "birthright" as the "Magelord of England". It turned out that due to Constantine's sudden disappearance, the Tate Club's leader, Clarice Sackville, and her associate resorted to find and brand the young Willowtree as their "champion". Together, the reluctant Constantine and Willowtree managed to solve a minor problem by one of Constantine's former associate turned enemy, and stopped the ravens of the Tower of London from attacking foreign visitors. Unknown to them, these events were caused by the alternate old John, who managed to attack and crucify the young Willowtree.


title: John Constantine

text: John visited Noah's mother, who had been comatose for seven years, in a hospital. He encountered a ghostly presence of a young xenophobic British woman who attacked and murdered all patients in the critical ward who had foreign background - but not Constantine, a British man. It turned out to be a hateful projection of an old lady who had been bedridden for three years and could do nothing but watched and directed her hatred, especially immigrants, which Noah solved by visiting her room and putting flower next to her deathbed.


title: John Constantine

text: John tried to track down his old version's signal, which led him to a fishing town. He discovered Freddie, an young fisherman who found himself out of luck with his business as well as being held with contempt by his fellow fishermen, all of whom were subscribing to xenophobic ideals from a British Conservative politician called Clem Thurso. The old John gave Freddie a whistle, which he used to summon a mermaid who was madly in love with him. Freddie used the mermaid to fish and to kill his rival French fishermen. When the fish resource started to dry up, Freddie turned to capture the mermaid and slice off her flesh to sell, as he found out she had self-healing powers, despite her pleas and her being pregnant with his offspring. John rescued the mermaid and waited until she finally delivered and died from childbirth, to catch Freddie and kick him down the river for his monstrous human-mermaid hybrid children to eat him alive.


title: John Constantine

text: The old John had also made acquaintance with a Duke (an allegory to Prince Andrew), who was desperate to gain the favor of his mother, the Queen. Old John supplied him with horse semen and promised of a majestic, fast, powerful being. The Duke ordered his men to bring Constantine in to help with the birth of the creature, only to capture the younger John. John warned the Duke of the creature but was ignored. The creature, supposed to be a beautiful unicorn, turned out to be absolutely grotesque; it stabbed its way out of its mother's womb and killed all the other mares at the stable. John explained that the creature was born purely out of an idea and was supposed to represent one thing: purity, and it could only be calmed down by purity of a barely legal virgin readily in the Duke's car, before John euthanized it. Later, John was chased down by one assassin sent by the Royal family due to fear of embarrassment by this scandal, but he thwarted the attempt on his life.