Jimi Hendrix is widely considered one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of rock music. Hendrix was known for his innovative style of playing, his showmanship on stage, and his eclectic mix of genres including blues, funk, soul, and jazz. However, less known are Hendrix’s views on religion and spirituality.
Throughout his short but highly impactful career, Hendrix displayed an interest in various spiritual traditions and philosophical beliefs. He was exposed to Christianity as a child, later exploring Eastern religions, science fiction, and occult mysticism as influences. Hendrix often spoke about universal love, awareness, and transcendence in his lyrics and interviews. But determining his exact religious views has been a topic of much debate among fans and scholars over the decades since his untimely death.
Christian Upbringing
James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington in 1942. His mother Lucille was a struggling single parent who both Hendrix’s father Al and his stepfather abandoned in his early childhood.
Hendrix grew up with three siblings in a relatively poor household. As an African-American living in the Central District of Seattle, he faced racism and inequality. His shyness made him a target for bullying growing up.
During his childhood, Hendrix’s family life revolved around Christianity. His mother was a devout Baptist who made sure Hendrix and his siblings attended church.
In the 2010 biography Becoming Jimi Hendrix, it’s noted that:
Religion was an important part of their home life. Sundays were set aside for church activities, Bible study and prayer meetings. Grace, Lucille’s sister, was even more devout.
Hendrix attended Mount Zion Baptist Church with his family growing up. In the church choir, he sang gospel music and spirituals. This early exposure to the church shaped his lifelong relationship with faith and spirituality.
However, Hendrix became disillusioned with organized religion even as a young teenager. In some interviews later in life, he spoke critically of rigid dogma and hypocrisy he witnessed in the church.
Early Rebelliousness
As Hendrix blossomed into a gifted guitarist playing in local bands as a teenager, some began to view him as strange and dangerous. His emerging style didn’t fit rigid Christian morals.
Hendrix expert David Henderson wrote:
As young Jimi watched others his age attending church functions, he began finding himself unable to participate in organized religion. He saw church-goers as play-actors trapped in meaningless rituals. Jimi instead looked within himself for answers.
At 16 years old, it’s said that Hendrix was caught masturbating by his church’s pastor. After a humiliating scolding, Hendrix rejected Christianity outright for some time. However, he seemed to still have some lingering Christian guilt about sexuality that influenced him.
According to Hendrix friend Sharon Lawrence:
Jimi did have a great fondness for Jesus Christ…But Jimi like any natural-born mystic, had his own relationship with his creator, and he disliked man-made impositions.
So while Hendrix was drawn to the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness, he chafed at Christian dogma. This tension would flavor his spiritual journey.
Eastern Religion and Occult Influences
After a stint in the US Army, Hendrix focused full time on his music career. He moved to New York City’s vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s.
It was there that Hendrix first began exploring Eastern religion, occult mysticism, and psychedelic drugs. He read books about meditation, astral projection, numerology, and astrology. Hendrix was especially interested in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Friends said Hendrix carried around a Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture, during this period. He learned yoga poses and chanted in Sanskrit. Eastern spiritual concepts clearly influenced his thinking.
| Religion/Philosophy | Key Beliefs |
|---|---|
| Hinduism | Reincarnation, karma, meditation, non-dualism |
| Buddhism | Impermanence, middle way, enlightenment, mindfulness |
| Taoism | Interconnection, naturalness, flow, polarity |
This time in Greenwich Village also marked Hendrix’s early experiments with LSD and psychedelic drugs. Mind-altering substances seemed to offer spiritual insight to Hendrix. In interviews he praised the creative benefits of LSD for elevating consciousness.
But longtime Hendrix chronicler Charles Cross cautions reading too much into this phase:
Jimi’s interest in Eastern mysticism and acid was typical of any hippie in the Village at this time…He read just a scattering of writings and showed no disciplines of any established religion or meditation techniques.
So while open-minded, Hendrix was still very much searching for his path.
Science Fiction Influences
Another vital influence on Hendrix’s cosmic consciousness were science fiction books and movies. Biographer Harry Shapiro wrote:
Jimi was fascinated by sci-fi and the possibilities of space travel. He…believed there was life out there beyond the earth.
Writers that Hendrix mentioned enjoying included Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and Frank Herbert. Hendrix also praised the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still for its messaging about extraterrestrials coming to Earth to teach humans about peace.
The wonders of outer space and the possibilities of advanced alien civilizations seemed to inspire Hendrix’s views of transcending earthly troubles. As he told talk show host Dick Cavett:
There’s got to be some kind of outlet for the human. There’s got to be something, like space travel or something like that…Anything to get rid of the pressures of this earth.
While not overtly religious, these science fiction works clearly expanded Hendrix’s consciousness and imagination.
Lyrics and Themes
Analyzing Hendrix’s mind through his music provides the greatest insight into his spirituality. While not preachy, his lyrics grapple with universal themes about life’s big questions.
Love
Perhaps the most prominent spiritual theme in Hendrix’s music is the power of love. Songs like “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Little Wing,” and “Angel” all equate love to a transcendent force.
When the earth turns over
Love comes home to you
Did you know?
The earth really turns over
Love comes home to you
These poetic lyrics suggest Hendrix viewed love as an underlying energy guiding the universe.
Oneness
Many of Hendrix’s songs deal with the theme of oneness versus duality. He seemed to be contemplating ideas like monism from Eastern traditions of achieving mystical union beyond apparent separation.
For example, in “Bold As Love” he sings:
While my guitar gently weeps
The pain must go on
In you I’m lost…
We shall overcome
And whilst my guitar gently weeps
The pain must go on
Here Hendrix pairs opposites like joy and sorrow, suggesting a transcendent oneness behind all experience.
Nature
References to the natural world also frequently appear in Hendrix’s lyrics. He seemed to equate nature to the divine, seeing immense power in the elements:
The Wind Cries Mary
Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)
Rainy Day, Dream Away
Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Rather than traditional religious imagery, Hendrix used weather, seasons, and the cosmos to evoke spiritual ideas.
Transformation
Finally, Hendrix’s lyrics often dealt with themes of death, rebirth, and transformation. The title track of his album Axis: Bold As Love is a prime example.
Axis bold as love
You may be born again
Not ready to die yet
My heart can’t go on beating still
Reincarnation and impermanence seem to be on Hendrix’s mind here. For him, spirituality was about growth and cycles, not rigid doctrine.
Lifestyle and Persona
Beyond his lyrics, Hendrix’s persona and lifestyle also shed light on his relationship to faith and religion. While considered a psychedelic rocker, he rejected labels and sought universal human experiences.
Androgyny
Hendrix was known for wearing colorful silk blouses, scarves, and other garb considered feminine. This androgynous fashion was controversial but seemed to represent his transcending of gender norms. Hendrix told talk show host Dick Cavett:
I’m not male or female. I’m just me. I don’t think it’s proper just to be one thing. Everyone should be both.
This fluid identity aligned with Eastern ideas about the self being an illusion.
Promiscuity
Hendrix was also notoriously promiscuous, having countless casual sex partners despite being in committed relationships. While perhaps inconsistent with his Christian upbringing, this too embodies a non-rigid, Eastern view of sexuality as a natural force.
As Hendrix stated in an interview when asked about his many female fans:
Making love is natural. I don’t see why we’ve made such a big deal over it. Violence is what should be prohibited, not making love.
Intoxication
Despite struggles with addiction, Hendrix viewed drugs and alcohol as avenues for enlightenment rather than sin. Being sober was seen as keeping the mind narrowly confined.
As he told a Swedish interviewer:
I can explain everything better when I’m high, because it frees my mind. People have closed themselves off from each other and from reality and their brains are clouded by drink and drugs. Realize you can clear it.
So intoxication could serve a ritual purpose for Hendrix, albeit a dangerous one given his addictive tendencies.
Quotes on Spirituality
Looking at quotes directly from Hendrix also gives useful insight into his spiritual inclinations:
I’m not using electricity as a gimmick…It’s a way of expressing myself through electrical means.
This suggests Hendrix viewed playing guitar with amplifiers and distortion as a form of channeling energy, not just a musical technique.
He also saw his music as connected to forces larger than himself:
I’m the one that has to die when it’s time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to.
And in his poem “Electric Church Music” he wrote:
The electric Church music
Is in your mind
Only the music
Will set you free.
So while not predictably religious, Hendrix did view music as liberating the soul.
Relationship with Christianity
Given these varied influences, by his rock star years Hendrix seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with Christianity at best. In interviews he directly rejected it:
I was brought up in the Church but as I grew, gained knowledge and experience I realized just going to the building on Sunday wasn’t enough for me.
He also provocatively roasted the Bible in song lyrics:
The white collide with the black
Until no colors can be seen
And wipe out the Red man and the Yellow man
And make it look like they were never seen…
So read your Bible, ooh, and stay close to the book.
Clearly Hendrix had an adversarial stance toward Christian orthodoxy. But the church of his childhood still seemed to leave an impression.
Universal Beliefs
Rather than adhere to any specific faith, Hendrix seemed to synthesize his own set of universal spiritual beliefs. In interviews he talked about a “Universal Mind” or “Great Spirit” connecting all.
Biographer John McDermott wrote:
Jimi did believe in a god, but his spiritual home was the infinite universe and his temple, the stage.
Longtime girlfriend Kathy Etchingham also shared:
Jimi didn’t need drugs to hallucinate. He had his own inner world of music and poetry.
So Hendrix was inclined toward mysticism about underlying forces beyond physical reality. Music served as his gateway to honoring and channeling these energies.
Unrealized Potential
Of course, determining anyone’s true beliefs is complicated, perhaps even more so with Hendrix. His untimely death from drug complications at age 27 froze Hendrix’s spiritual evolution in time.
Who knows how his cosmic consciousness would have developed with more years on Earth? Would he have delved deeper into Eastern meditation practices? Turned back toward Christianity or some other revelation? There’s no way to know.
We only have hints and fragments of his inner worldview, captured in interviews, lyrics, writings, and recollections from those who knew him. Much has to be left open to interpretation.
Conclusion
In the end, labeling Jimi Hendrix’s beliefs under any one religious tradition seems limiting. Elements of his worldview certainly resonated with Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, occult mysticism, and science fiction. But he drew from these freely, forging his own eclectic brand of spirituality.
Above all, Hendrix seemed to have a reverence for the unseen forces of love, nature, and creativity. Music served as his form of worship, a ritual way to touch the infinite.
While an iconoclast resistant to dogma, Hendrix did appear to hold sincere metaphysical beliefs about humanity’s connection to powers larger than our earthly lives. His musical legacy and early departure have contributed to his mythic, almost spiritual status with fans today.