The nickname of the inland area in south-central California clustered around San Jose. One of the most intense nodes of tension in the psycho-sexuality of global capital. It’s suburbs include the farming community of Salinas, the resort town of Santa Cruz, and the upscale commuter village of San Francisco.
In his 1979 book Messengers of Deception, Jacques Vallee comments on his discovery that the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Menlo Park was using a hot-tub based ceremony to initiate students into the Order of Melchizedek. He writes:
This is taking place in the middle of Silicon Valley, California, the world’s major electronics manufacturing center, within a few miles of the headquarters of such high-technology companies as Memorex, Lockheed, Amdahl, Hewlett-Packard. A group of young people — perhaps the sons and daughters of scientists and managers in these corperations — take off their clothes and jump into somebody’s hot tub to renew the tradition of Melchizedek priesthood. The eccentric harmless writing of poor Hiram Butler and the innocuous teachings of Enoch Penn have found a powerful resonance in the most unlikely place of all: the first post industrial generation in the most advanced country on Earth.
(Messengers, 132)