Psychedelic Wild Child: Coming of Age in The Source family Cult/ure

If you are a fan of The Source Family Documentary or other Source Family books, you must add this story to your shelf.

Dawn was part of a movement destined to change the way people think, act, and interconnect to seek truth, fairness, and cosmic consciousness. The culture of being a Jew had been grounding in her life, the religion left questions with no answers. While she had a large circle of family, the richness of her legacy was unknown before her great-grandparents after the Holocaust, giving Dawn a deeper sense of disillusionment, driving her to explore alternative spirituality.

Times were changing in the 60s & 70s. Equal rights for all people especially women were in focus. Watergate brought down a government that would no longer operate business as usual. Martin Luther King proved that black people deserved as much respect as any other human.

Dawn experimented with drugs, which opened her mind and lifted her boundaries. She found her way to the west coast encountering Father Yod and The Source Restaurant in LA. She knew The Source Family was her destiny and it began a 5 year trek with them through experimental living. They shared all their resources, everyone worked in some way either at the restaurant or taking care of their homes or children, and they practiced meditation daily alongside an organic vegetarian lifestyle. They learned to value the finer qualities of everything in life. And they all accepted Father Yod as their Spiritual Father.

Father Yod's deep intuition and study of varied spiritual practices led to an experimental lifestyle that could only be lived communally in total trust. Never dogmatic he often abandoned ideas after they proved unworkable. Seeking to live in harmony with nature he wished to create a utopian life for his spiritual children. He brought them to Hawaii after a world search for a home. It all unwound in there, and Dawn was left to take her experience and move on to find her own power.
Dawn is still the Wild Child she ever was.

"Engaging and sometimes-frightening observations of life in a controversial commune." - Kirkus Reviews

"Dawn Hurwitz’s story of her wild, idealistic, searching journey in the 1970s and her time with Father Yod and The Source Family is lusty, loving, raw, and real. Her utter lack of inhibition in her life and in her storytelling gives this book a feeling of deep authenticity that becomes its greatest power."
Jodi Wille, book publisher, author, and Director of The Source Family documentary

"In this astonishing narrative, Galaxy the Aquarian, a sexually, spiritually, and intellectually rebellious Jewish teenager of 16 boldly turns her back on mainstream life in the pursuit of cosmic love and enlightenment.

A deeply sensual memoir reveals how Dawn, like so many seekers, pays a high price for daring to step outside the confines that society imposed upon women of that era (and today). As we follow in her determined footsteps, we gain unprecedented and meticulously detailed insights into the inner workings of The Source—a social experiment where daily life was an intricate dance involving the quest for cosmic wisdom, wholesome living, and an ever-evolving, unconventional romantic paradigm.

Dawn emerges as an archetypal Icarus in feminine form, single-mindedly focused on one objective—to be as close as possible to her spiritual mentor.

She has no regrets, making a compelling case for reframing the group as less of a “cult” and more a "cultural reform movement.” She paints a vivid picture of a genuinely wild psychedelic ride, an adventure in communal living, one where love, trust, and the quest for ineffable truth—and not brainwashing—served as the binding forces that kept these beautiful dreamers together. "

-- Caroline Ryder, Journalist, LA Times, Dazed magazine.

Galaxy, now known as Dawn Hurwitz, hails originally from Chicago. On a seeker's journey at 16 years old, she awakened in the teepee at the back of the Source restaurant in the middle of the night to find Father Yod watching over her. Years later she became a clothing and costume designer, metaphysical bookstore cafe owner, and ran an IT business called Mac Assistance. Today she lives on the Big Island of Hawaii running the Puna Writers Workshops, editor of "Talk Story"on the PunaRising website, and soon to premiere her first memoir, "Psychedelic Wild Child"