Terrence McKenna Hermeticism and Alchemy

Call for outline by Lorenzo, in episode 226, workshop originally posted April 13-30, 2010, Psychedelic Salon episodes 223-6. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matrixmasters/iGAG/~5/UobxbcjJcqk/223McKennaExploreHermeticPt1.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matrixmasters/iGAG/~5/ZxVYO3d9Ar4/224McKennaExploreHermeticPt2.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matrixmasters/iGAG/~5/zMvQvl26pG8/225McKennaExploreHermeticPt3.mp3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matrixmasters/iGAG/~5/9zLLbZ6wBhM/226McKennaExploreHermeticPt4.mp3 Prepared by Jason Rizos Original audio from 1991 (?) denotes best-effort phonetic spelling for an unfamiliar term, email corrections to jrizos@gmail.com

PART 1
A return to a more orthodox education mode. Counterintuitive and heterodox, if not heretical to the POV of Christianity Middle age struggle between the magical schema and Christian viewstrongly marked by Mans Fall. Forced us into a secondary position in the cosmic drama, we are doing penance as we speak. We are cursed. Redemption through Christ, but not deserved, saving is a merciful God overlooking your wormy nature. Hermetica refers to man as the brother of God, an empowering attitude. You are no longer a worm (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God quoted, a worm suspended over an abyss, held only by the love of a merciful God.) Marcello Ficino sums it up: Man is the measure of all things. In a single affirmation you cast off the guilt trip and the view of ourselves as a flawed creature. It can go wrong. Faustianism is the pathological aspect, unbridled ego and faith in the intellect, so you proceed without self-doubt. Western Civilization can be seen as an accumulated series of misunderstandings.

Hermes Trismegistus The renaissance that Hermes Trismegistus was a great teacher of antiquity, older than Moses (add Orpheus for three great teachers). But they got it all wrong. Discovered that it (the hermetic corpus) was way more contemporary, late-Roman, debunked by Mric Casaubon. Hence the flaw is a nostalgia for paradise, the older the better, Classicism, a reverence for the ancient, and now that it was later it was dismissed. Misplaced dating has contributed to confusion and discarding of the material. For example, Rosicrucianism rests on phony dates, complicated political agendas in the 16th century. Asclepius The hermetic Corpus, the most important is the Asclepius. Enthusiastically destroyed by Christians, barely survived. A sudden interest in the Renaissance, council of Florence commissioned Pletho to bring these back and translate. BOOK: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition, by Dame Francis Yates. Reads a passage on the Imagination, Book 9: If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend god, for like is known by like, leap clear of all that is corporeal and make yourself to a like expanse to that greatness that is beyond all measure.think that for you too nothing is impossible, that you are immortal.find your homes in the haunts of all living creatures.bring together in yourself all opposites of qualitythink that you are in all places at once.then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul and your body and abase yourself and say I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven, I know not what I was or what I shall be, then what have you to do with God? Another, 2nd century AD: Would were it possible for you to grow wings and soar into the air, poised between earth and heaven, you may see the solid earth, the fluid sea, the streaming rivers, the wandering air, the penetrating fire, the courses of the stars and the swiftness with the movement heaven encompasses all. What happiness were that my son, to see all these born along with one impulse and to behold him who is unmoved, moving in all that moves, and him who is hidden, made manifest through his works. Highly poetic celebration of nature without sin, rings with confidence joy. (Another excerpt read.) Glories in the exercise of the mind, not doctrinal, not pietistic, magical, expansive. Not implying they used psychedelics, and probably they didnt. Western Europe is poor in psychoactive plants. Which is how Christianity forced its agenda. Some other traditions, like neo-platonism, survived into the dark ages. Plotinus, (others). Emanationists, series of declensions of material and multiplistic expressions of being after the unnamable. Created descending hierarchy of being, inspired concept of Angels. Which was hard to reconcile with pagan demons. ALCHEMICAL MAGIC Paganism was the belief that the power of the stars could be drawn down to earth through sympathetic magic, by setting up resonances in a ritual, you could draw the power of the

stars down into your projects and intentions. The Middle ages was an intense period of working out associations between minerals, colors, perfumes, plants, musical notes. So that you could bring together these things for magical evocation. Another Book: Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. We forget the transformative breakthrough that was represented for Western Europe by the recovery of this ancient literature that had been lost. ALCHEMY AND SUPERSTITION People think that the further back in time, the more superstitious people are, but this isnt the case. 10-12th century were periods of piety and intellectual cohesion. They stamped out paganism. That stuff came in the 16th century. Alchemy, conjuration, talismanic magic, sympathetic magic, all of this flourished not as throwback but as a prelude to modern science. Modern science is incredibly demonic. The goals of magic have been accomplished by modernity, but done in a secular metaphor. Homunculus dovetails into biology, genetics. The great chain of being of Aristotle is the Darwin-Wallace theory of Evolution. Merciliad (?) talks about this. But done in the worst Faustian way. Scientists serve a higher God than human beings. They serve the Golam of the Truth in a weird way that makes the truth o.k. even if it kills you. Studied philosophy from Paul Thagard (?) and he said at the beginning of his Epistemology 101 course, I will teach you to recognize the truth and I will teach you to ask the question, whats so great about it? 1460, date when these manuscripts found, Cosimo deMedici told Ficino to abandon Plato translation for these. Johannes Trithemius Created the Steganographia in order to preserve magical doctrines and encryption methods so it could be circulated within the church. BRUNO: Western magic then splits into the Giordano Bruno strain--was burned at the stake for having the revelation that the stars were all individual suns. Goes against Aristotle and eventually killed for a point of view we take for granted. DEE: The other strain from Trithemius is the John Dee strain, in English. Unified in one world view science, mathematics, magic, and astrology all together. Greatest magician and scientist of his age. Designed navigation for Sir Francis Drake. Cast horoscopes and made maps. Used Trithemius codes. Had the largest library in England, in 1582 he goes into his garden and finds an Angel who gives him an object. Its in the renaissance hall in the British Museum, a piece of polished obsidian. Shew stone. You could look into it and see a magical theater of Gods and demons. Edward Kelly came to Dee, who had

tremendous facility with the stone. Had to translate backward-read Latin given by angels in the stone. Dee has a diary of this available. A True and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. Dee and some spirits. (Question from audience, conversation turns to Opium and its discovery of addictiveness in the 18th century.) Paracelsus, 30 years after Dee. Inventor of Drugs. First person to extract herbs. Created Laudanum.

PART 2:
Fall of Eleusis Fertile plain outside of Athens, celebrated Greek Mysteries twice yearly, spring/fall. 2000 years, all over Greco-Roman world people came, all walks of life, just once per lifetime. Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Euripides. Telesterioninner cult area. Something drunk, something seen. 19th century thought it was female genitalia, a distillation of the Victorian mind, absurd. The Scandal of 415 B.C., Alcibiades busted for trying to serve the secret at a dinner. Book: The White Goddess by Robert Graves. Theorized people drank from the kykeon that the inclusion of water in the list of ingredients makes an augum (?) (acronym) of barley, honey, water, and something McKenna doesnt remember, spells out MYCOMUSHROOM. So Graves thought Psilocybin was involved. Wasson, Hoffman, Ruck, and Ott theorized later, BOOK: The Road to Eleusis. Theorized it was barley contaminated with Claviseps (Ergot)LSD alkaloid. Smut on the grain. People eat version of it today at pretentious art openings. Aside, drug of choice for migrainesErgotamine Tartrate, precursor for LSD. Highly controlled. Grown in Pakistan. Suggests somebody try to culture Greek ergot and make hallucinogenic beer. However, very dangerous. Anecdote, somebody on a drug delivery snuck a taste of ET after warning and dropped into convulsions. Doubts that 2000 years of ergotized beer serving would involve risk associated in history of the Mysteries. McKenna brought this up to Hoffman, who suggested hot oil could draw off convulsive alkaloids. Alaric the Visigoth smashed it all to pieces, who destroyed much of the world, even N. Africa. Minoa: Greeks mingled northern mentality meeting with very old mystical culture 10,000 years deep via Egypt. It was said what was celebrated secretly at Eleusis was celebrated publicly at Knossos in Mycenae. Minoan civilization was ancient, goddess worship, opium use, preserved archaic styles in Minoan Crete after bronze-age built up. Finished in 950 AD, to pirates. Archaic forms imported to Greece as mystery religions, cult practices. They worshipped anionic (?) pillarsmushrooms.

AFRICAN INFLUENCE We have a distorted view of what Classicism meant because 19th and 18th century distorted and erased debt of Greek Civilization to Africa, due to racism. BOOK: Black Athena by Martin Bernal. (question) 19th century Europe was an Old Boys Club. When it is all sorted out, it all happened in Africa. Language, religion, theater. From 20,000 BC to 9,000 BC in Saharan grasslands before desertification. Maybe Australian aborigines broke off early, but pretty specious. Theory of Eve, ability to trace maternal line through episome of mitochondria, believed all humans descended from one woman, whose prodigy was phenomenally successful. Now this is pretty solid evidence. Minoans were static for 1,000 years in late-phase. Mric Casaubon and Philology The Casaubons invented modern philology, which is interlocking textual reference, studying locution styles. A shock to Renaissance when 5,000 year old stuff was really 1,000 years old, which discredited, which was silly. Renaissance was imbued with ancient=better. (question) Wealth lead to this discovery, patronage of the arts, connoisseurship, funding of da Vinci, archeology. People had lived in the classical world but only eventually dug it up until this point. We are now celebrated 500 anniversary of Columbus voyage. We are still living in a Classical world, we still react against it. Buildings, clothing, notions of gentlemanly behavior, attitudes toward women, private wealth, all Classicism. Dead 1200 years until Italians dusted it off. MODERNISM: Modernism is the first movement to challenge Classicism. Art and literary movement prior to modern, Romanticism, Mannerism, Baroque, all facets of classical object. Modernism represents a return to the Archaic, deconstructs clarity of the Western eye. Begins with Impressionism, dissolving of the western eye. Columns and lines were narratives until Joyce and James showed that narrative could be broken up. Modernism is a form of Primitivism. Duchamp, Picasso, surrealists, tremendously influenced by African art, stuff unseen in Paris in 1905-15. Discovery of unconscious by Freud and Jung, deconstruction of the image seen, image imagined deconstructed through surrealism, dada, concentration on materials of art in Abstract Expressionism, about paint, not about paint in the service of the visual pictorialism. And all the post-modern stuff, running naked through the street aesthetic. DECADANCE IN ROME Those interested in Heidegger read Hans Jonas essay, The Gnostic Temperament. Attitude and psychology of late Roman empire, 150-400 AD was strikingly modern. But a profound exhaustion entered psychology. A definition of decadence: sophistication without feeling (Camille Paglia). Romans made Emperor a God. Imagine if we had to

light candles to George Bush, its not heresy to think of him a jackass. The world was integrated into the Roman Empire, ideals of Egypt, Celtic. CHRISTIANTY ROOTS Christians wouldnt allow worship of Caesar, political agenda, expectation of return, Romans hated it. People dont understand early Christianity and how shaped our notions are. Real mysteries surrounding birth of Christianity. Christmas story began with Caesar Augustus holding census, which was why pregnant Galilean woman was 100 miles from Jerusalem. Pontius Pilate in charge of Judea. But there is no record of a census. Nothing. Weird. Assumption Christ was born in 6 BC, crucifixion in 27 BC. No reference of Christ until AD 71, until Suetonius, Roman historian, says the Jews have come to Rome and caused disturbances at behest of Crispus. Some say Christianity was invented by zealots preparing uprising of 69 AD created mythical figure of a generation earlier and made him a symbol. Joe Hill, the engine of socialism is a-slippin back, come on all you workers shovel sand on the track. Joe Hill was a martyr to social reform, shot in Utah in 1913. We could use him to build a social reform movement. (question) Book: Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by Allegro. Take Mani, founder of Mandaeanism, born in 320. Christ Dionysus connection We know everything, we have his tax returns. Christ is no ordinary person, God incarnate. An idea that had been around, Dionysus, connected to Bacchus, weird figure, an androgyne, in company of women, ecstatic frenzy. Women were his followers, would intoxicate, hold hands, dance around the countryside. The Mandaeanism women were said to have eaten their own children. Dionysuss father was Zeus, but his mother Semele, mortal woman, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes, or sometimes immortal. In 8th month of pregnancy, struck by pregnancy, Zeus took and put the fetus in a cut in his thigh. Child born out of the wound. Something of a virgin birth, born of the father. The twice-born God. Dionysus impulse in the hands of mystical Jews became the doctrine of immaculate conception. Christ is a type of Dionysus, comparative religionists have been saying this for centuries. GNOSTICISM: Another system complementing the Hermetica was Gnosticism. Psychology or Roman empire was modern, Gnosticism was a modern impulse, though it may not seem so because of baroque angels and demon stuff, but stripped away, the philosophy is Modern Attitude. The idea that you are on your own, there aint no free lunch. If God did make the universe, he disappeared shortly afterwards. Has no interest in your fate, fears, hope. Gnostics were profoundly phobic of the world, were ascetic or libertine cults, springing from idea they did not belong in this universe. Whole concern was to escape, Earth an iron prison, didnt like having children, considered it trapping light in matter. Only approved of sex without conception.

CHRIST AND THE MUSHROOM (question). Allegro said zealots were using Amanita Muscaria and Christ was a coded symbol so only believers would know. Not entirely persuasive, needs more work. Climate changed now to where there are no mushrooms, but evidence getting strong of mushroom use. Mandaeanism forbids use of mushrooms, puzzling because none there today. Out of turmoil of religious speculation of Hellenistic world, Hedonic element of sexuality, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Caldaen Aracularism (?), Jewish Syncretism, and Christianity was one in the crowd. But with sense of organization it slowly worked into dominance. The real Christians were probably stamped out as Pagans. CHRISTIAN MILLENARIANISM AND MAGIC The message of Christianity was that the end of the world was immanent, also a modern ideal, 150 years after Christ, no serious organization got done, waited for end of world, practiced poverty, and then it slowly dawned on people it had been a long time. Certain mentalities said I think we should get some real estate under our control. Turned away from ecstatic millenarianism an organized for the long haul. Hermetic books produced out of this. Key part, invocation, ability to call stellar demons down to statues, which prophesized. Which is why Christians outlawed idol worship. (question) Singing songs, burning incense, performing rituals with astrological times, the conjured Decans Zodiacal demons, three Decans to each Zodiac sign. Modern Astrology has forgotten this. Would then extract knowledge from statue, sympathetic magics. Quite powerful. Book: Spiritual and Demonic Magic by Walker. Renaissance princes prescribed colors for buildings, special robes, magical invocations, incenses, fresh air and light. Not the stirring cauldron bat-faced familiar magic we know. They were angelic magicians. Evoking using sigils. Magical alphabets, such as Enochian. John Dee and his shew stone, with Kelly returned again and again to Enochian language, said the true language of Abraham and the Angels. 1950s episode of woman clairvoyant contacting flying saucers, the CIA investigated her, she said she saw a flying saucer outside the window of the CIA base, said it had a messageAFFA! AFFA! AFFA! McKenna looked it up and it meant Nothingness in Enochian. DMT AND LANGUAGE, ANECDOTE Why do these DMT creatures so concerned with language and alphabet. High water weirdness mark of McKennas life. Smoked DMT on Christmas vacation and a woman came home unexpectedly. McKenna took LSD and took DMT and it was turbocharged nuts, on and on. Woman banged on door to his room. Was in the elf space, when she banged on door, McKenna jumped and a sudden flash of adrenalin and movement broke up the ordinary division between trip and normality. Standing in the room, eyes open, but elf creatures came with him, everything jacked up and intense, rotating geometric things in the air, jerky metallic click, click, click, plastic triangle shaped chits, like floor tile, would fly across the room and each had a letter on it in an alien letter like Hebrew or Sanskrit. An elf hanging off each handHOLY SHIT! He flings the door open and says

(jumbled words) and she figured it out and retreated. First time the elves went literary and printed on the air. DMT (question) Had no ability to say anything about DMT at first, never saw it hit anyone as hard as him. Said he cant believe it, didnt believe it. Said this 200 times, blown out of the water. Everything-you-know-is-wrong experience. Like hitting the reset button on your whole cosmogonic myth. Its the convincer. You meet people who say you people who take drugs, youre hyping yourself up on this. I say, youve got 10 minutes, check this out. Its confounding, its dangerous if you fear death by astonishment. Mandaeanism (question) Mandaeanism, a baptismal cult around Jerusalem a couple centuries before Christ. Oldest continuous tradition of the ancient world, probably Jews, claimed John the Baptist as one of their own. Driven out to Lebanon, Persia, ended up in Iraq. (question. Someone in audience has Mandaeanist friend today.) Own language, text, 1847 Cholera epidemic wiped out 90% of priesthood, who were the only keepers of the language. We should all become Mandaeans, the most psychedelic, most ethically correct, great religion on a world-scale, into caring for the land, river nuts, built a hut called a Mandae for baptisms. Folk tales and beliefs are religion of biology. Highest God is Hibel-Ziwa referred to as they. Considered polluted to lay eyes on a non-believer, only silversmithing allowed as exception. Some still in Basra, Bagdad, Kirkuk. Drugs and Religion (question) If a religion makes something taboo, it means they were into it at some point, it means there was a reformist upheaval. Probably how soma was lost to the ancient Hindus, how Zoroaster was called the great reformer because he suppressed indigenous shamanic cults, maybe suppressed Haoma, the evestin (Iranian?) counterpart to Soma. BOOK: Haoma and Harmoline in Iranian Religion Flattery and Schwartz. Makes a case that Pegalum Harmala was Soma, not mushrooms. In pre-Zoroastrian phase of Iranian religion, drugs were not only used to access spiritual world, but also said there was no other way of doing it. Into the Menog, another dimension, can only obtain knowledge of it by use of drugs. The Menog existence is where the dead people are, you get to know your own soul through using drugs. You go and your soul comes and meets you at the membrane of our world, during life you must learn to recognize your soul, because if after death you cant pick it out of the soul swarm you will be incomplete in the afterlife. DMT ENTITIES (question) When you take DMT, the question is have I lived through it or not? (question) Explains what DMT is, neurotransmitter, etc. Describes experience. Not groked like a drug, an event coming from the outside, replaces reality, not with your unconscious but

with another dimension, space filled with entities busy about their other tasks, which notice you, like to treat with you, play with you, not entirely friendly. Like a hash buy in an Indian market, McKenna used to do. Welcome, welcome! Youre my friend! (question) Nobody knows what DMT does, science makes it impossible to pursue. Guess that it mediates attention. A number of pysioactive tryptamines, DMT not psychological, your heart races because youre scared. Made from Tryptophan. (question) On mushrooms you hear a voice, but on DMT all barriers are broken, the tykes jump into your chest and jump out. Amazon tribes using plants with DMT call the spirits Hekuli (?) say you let them jump in your chest and you try to trap them inside. Number of these indicates your power as a Shaman. Like you tunneled into a dimension all around and you came virtual and came across the energy barrier. Weird that it doesnt affect your mind, you arent gaga with ecstasy, not relaxed. The world has just been swapped out. (question on dosage). 50 mg. (question on MAO and DMT). Probably. Dont try this at home, some can inhibit for 6 weeks, this you dont need. Suggests Harmine/Harmaline, reversible in 4-6 hours. Try a regular one first and decide if you really want to spend more time there. 10 minutes in a holographic universe is indistinguishable from 50,000 years.

PART 3
(question on machine elves) Book The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, Evans Wentz. St. Patrick converted Pagan Irish by telling them that fairies were souls of the dead in a purgatory zone between heaven and Earth, brought back to Rome and adopted into canon. Genetic Sensitivity to Drugs Racial or genetic undertone to elf-stuff. Irish stereotypes. Exploring collective Celtic unconscious? Tendency towards same-ness in America. Anecdote, McKenna took a Shulgin taught class on Forensics where only 2/200 people could smell contents of a vial, a genetic sensitivity to odor. Aromatics are near relatives to drugs, reasonable to suppose that genetic differences in relation to drugs, not racial, but person-to-person. A race is a collection of related genes more frequently found together than not. A race is a quality of a group, not an individual. Society misrepresents drugs, pothead stereotype, inarticulate, dumb, hippy, McKenna is the opposite. DMT ELVES, FAIRIES, AND LANGUAGE 80s Santa Claus movie scene with elves running around Santas workshop the most DMT like reconstruction. Elf notions polluted by Disney, Tinkerbell phenomenon. BOOK: Blue Fairy Book, Andrew Lang. Original fairies weird, fairies steal babies and replace them with wizened deformed creatures. Fairies are language-oriented, like poetry. Reality is created by language, we are imprisoned in someone elses language. 90% of words and constructions are 19th century. Culture cant evolve faster than language, what

cannot be said cannot be done, put in place. Psychedelics empower language. Computers as an example of new words empowered by machine. LSD was the previous. Establishment heaped abuse on hippie-talk, now called west-coast talk, or LA-talk. Concept of ego-trip as an example. Vibes introduced people to emotion. Establishment suppresses this. Gay community as example, the love that dare not speak its name in the 19th century. NAACP as example. What are we? Pouring psychedelics into the mix opens the door for the Logos to define you. The experience of being loaded bonds this community. PURPOSE OF DMT SPACE Whats the purpose of elves? Entities want him to do what their doing, use sound to sing objects into existence. The DMT space is made purely of language. Elves more like sentences than organisms, like a pun. They are attempting a dimensional breakthrough into a language seen with the eyes. The breakthrough we are waiting for wont be political, but a shift in the body. Language is a behavior that has slowly insinuated itself into our being, a quantum leap of some sort that appeared very suddenly, other less dramatic things like this have happened. Like perspective being discovered in the 15th century. Also like St. Augustines brilliance, being able to read without moving lips. Another example of sudden behaviors emerging, BOOK: Difference Engine by William Gibson, oral sex discovered in England in the 19th century. Break dancing. Sudden emergence, with cultural utility it is stabilized. DMT elves, tykes, are saying there is a way to use your voice to activate a language that is not cultural but it is in the bone, a poetic language scripted in your genes, it is an ursprache a primal poetic speech, but also can be seen. LANGUAGE AND MEANING We use visual metaphors to convey clarity of words, trusting the eyes not the ears. Telepathy is not seeing what something things but what they mean, which is being them. Human world glued together by small mouth noises. Speaking is easy, effortless. Meaning requires congruence of dictionaries, words are heard, looked up, compared definitions. Impossible to explain to somewhat what was just said due to different definitions. VISUAL LANGUAGE AND OCTOPI Octopi are a model of visual communication as they change color and shape to communicate. Extremely divergent from human evolution, alien as possible. No culturally sanctioned dictionary, mind/language worn on the surface, syntactical creature. Virtual Reality is a striptease of the mind. If the mind can be made naked we can understand each other. Flesh, clothing, class differences, but with the mind naked the commonality would be reinforced and ego diminished. No ambiguity in visible language. Book of Revelations, a sword comes out of the mouth, a word that can be seen. Western Civilizations whole history is the birth of the Logos, the Logos is making its way toward self expression by claiming dimension after dimension of manifestation. Electronic

media, culture, drugs, mixing world cultures is empowering a visible Logos, beheld without ambiguity. MIND AND SOUL Mind is the visible manifestation of soul. Mind is the theater in which intelligence is manifested. Mind is heart. Everything goes on in mind, it is the light that goes on in the dark room, the light shed on the landscape of appearances. Consciousness happens inside the mind. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE A mirror shows you yourself. In psychedelic space, you not only perceive it, but create it with your expectations as well. Story of peasant having close-encounter supernatural experience, light in the sky, the year and place create the story. 18th century France, Virgin Mary, 1940s Kansas, UFOs. Cognitive dissonance causes the mind to rush forward and provide explanation. Some people its Jesus, some Matrea (?). Cultural expectations are inextricably woven into strange encounter phenomena. BOOK: Space Time Transients and Unusual Events--Persinger. Earthquake faults and quartz can create piezoelectric ball lightening. Can be artificially created, exposure to people with mess with mind, confusion, unease, panic. Out of the unconscious comes a projection. Mind goes to meet the unknown with baggage. SHAMANISM ENERGY BOLT ANECDOTE Anecdote of Ayahuasca ceremony with wife Kat in Peru. People created morphogenetic fields of gossip instead of confronting people who are disruptive. A beloved Shaman had a jerk of a nephew who came to a ceremony and sung his own belligerent song against the Ayahauasca ceremony group, about 30 people. Fardow, a word McKenna invented as a kid for a situation when somebody else fucks up and you feel embarrassment from the strength of the aura of it. Kat shot a bolt of energy at the nephew which was visually apprehendable as a red arrow of dotted lines moving slowly and then knocked him over. Singing stopped. One Shaman guy said, oh, the Gringa sends the [unintelligible]. THE JUNGLE AND LANGUAGE Peruvians would say to him the forest is like a dream. The boundary between wilderness and settled space. In the jungle, language becomes everything. When he first visited the jungle was the Big Green because he knew no plants. But on second trip, botanists recognized everything and the Big Green disappeared and he then knew the plants. Coming to terms with local language. You can never leave home, you bring an envelope of local association with you where you go, and you never see where you are. Its important to accommodate the local language because only it is appropriate to the place. France makes no sense if you dont speak French. Local language is part of the reality and we ignore all this. Psychedelics teach that NOTHING is straight-forward.

EVOLUTION Transcendental Object exerts attraction wherever it can. Evolution seeks to stop itself in a climaxed ecosystem, everyone has a seat, no empty chairs. Example, cockroaches, 200 million years ago reached their final status. Before humans, rivers were the greatest evolutionary force, movement over time exposed and inundated land. Sandbars between rivers, places nothing grows, volunteer or invader species make their way. Enormous trees and epiphytes in the jungle that flower once every 20 years, climaxed ecosystem. Weeds are plants that are annual and with enormous amounts of seed. Weed strategy is rapid invasion and claiming of empty land. Carl Saur, biologist, said man found the world a climaxed rainforest and will leave it a weedy lot. We create so much waste land that rapacious plants are replaced the products of climaxed evolution. UFO AND SCIENCE, ROME AND TODAY BOOK: The Messengers of Deception by Jacques Vallee. McKenna leafleted the crowd at a reading with an attack on it. He said flying saucers should be analyzed for their effect, not their purpose. Their effect will tell us their intent. UFOs are causing vast numbers of people to doubt science. The Roman Empire was vastly successful for exporting its imperial center, the problem was that it was an ethical disaster, slavery, for example, not a great civilization. What happened to it? Jews in the empire, considered barbarian primitives. Roman discussion surrounded by democrity, atomism, Epicureanism, stoicism, skepticism, in other words, modern and had advanced bullshit detectors. Turns out slave class got excited by a Galilean magician telling people he can rise from the dead and so can you! Romans looked down on this superstition. Within a century this irrational religion of redemption hammered on the gates of Rome, a century later, the Emperor has to make it the official religion. In other words, political and technological got way out ahead of ethics and the unconscious pulled the rug out from under the Roman dominator types. Unconscious said Im going to unleash a religious system that will be an informational virus thatll make them dead before they knew what hit them. Christianity is a religion of the displaced under classes and in 300 years took over and began its own pogroms and genocidal plans. FLYING SAUCERS AND COLLECTIVE UNCONCIOUS Flying saucer is a similar thing to Christianity. Our great technology achievements, yes, but morality and ethics have lagged behind. The same unconscious that sent us the virgin birth and resurrection has sent us the flying saucers. There is a force in this world, the unconscious, the cosmic giggle, when a society gets twisted and out of balance it can bring it down in a hurry. The psychedelic thing in the 60s was this. The dominator society is incredibly fragile. When somebody has to pile up guns they arent confident of their ability to control. Propaganda, social engineering, media manipulation, they do it all and they can still barely keep ahead. They hate unreason, psychedelic drugs, even dancing. Anything that isnt parlour English upper-class behavior. Iraq war brought up (Bush I) 100,000s dead and not a care. Dominator model doomed, assertiveness of racial, sexual, intellectual minorities are a sign. People are saying they arent going to take it

anymore. Imagine being the CEO of GM, every piece of data you get says your are in trouble, big trouble. UFO AGENDA UFOs from another dimension have a plan for the human race larger than those who run this society. Their plan (the human controllers of society) is to keep the world as much the same as possible. They are at war with the future since WWII. Trying to prevent the future from happening. But the future is like a logjam building up in a river. When it finally tears loose and overwhelms structures they have built it will be dramatic, sudden. The UFO is forcing the evolution of language. The cataclysmic future is not in the propagation of industrial material, the transformation of the future is in the rocks, ocean, animals. Not the human beings. No one is in control and this is very good news. Nobody. FALL OF ELEUSIS Alaric the Visigoth moving through the Peloponnesians, through burning Greece burned Eleusis. Just a military campaign. HERMETICISM, THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE AND UFO Philosophers stone concept. Hermeticism is the philosophy behind alchemy. The stone is a concept of a universal medicine, cures disease, brings immortality, happiness. Everything you want it to be. The UFO is the same idea. BOOK: Flying Saucers a Modern Myth of Things Seen in the SkyCarl Jung. Human mind has an appetite for totality symbols to complete itself, fix itself. Mandelas, symbols have a quality of indicating completion is underway. Before rise of science, people didnt know what was possible with matter, didnt have notion of fixed separation between mind and matter that we see as tremendously separate categories. Alchemists eventually entered into waking hallucination with their chemical mixes. They couldnt distinguish the alembic vessel from their imagination. Jung noticed alchemical descriptions were not recipes but descriptions of psychic processes leading toward individuation. The UFO is a modern rebirth of the philosophers stone, the universal panacea at the end of time. Weve swapped out the stone for the flying saucer. If we could obtain it, it would be equivalit. We are bound to the fixity of matter and its separateness that we rarely apply our imagination. Everything stands still for us. As an exercise, imagine if you had a material that could do anything. You could stretch it and it would fly, you could eat it, you could take a shower with it. We can do all these things, but we have solved each problem separately, but the computer is an interesting leap towards the philosophers stone. It can be anything. Balance your checking account, predict weather, play a game. The computer can simulate anything you can conceive of. The first in a long line of omni-purpose machines. We are moving to a time where you have one thing that does whatever you need to have done, voice programmable to do anything. A very hermetic ideal we are migrating toward. The secret to dematerialize culture, machines that can do thousands of things.

Part 4
ISAAC NEWTON AND RENEE DESCARTES Father of modern science, figured out calculus, which runs modern science. But he was a thoroughgoing occultist alchemist. Yet founded the Royal Society. Magical and Modern mentality welded. McKenna is writing a play about Michael Myer, alchemist implicated in the Rosicrucian enlightenment. Frederick of Bohemia wanted a Protestant alchemical kingdom in 1619. They wanted him named Emperor. But when word got back to Spain they raised an Army and destroyed it. BOOK: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Frances Yates. Hapsburg army siege on Prague. In that army, a 21 yo Renee Descartes, on the way home, in Ulm, Germany, same birthplace of Einstein, had a dream with an angel who said the conquest of nature is to be achieved through measurement and number. Descartes woke and founded modern science, scientific materialism. Science was founded by an angel! No different than Mormonism, for crying out loud! Could have been delayed by another century, if not for this, but this is not talked about. HERMETICISM AND SINGULARITY Time in moving toward a transcendent object, or a coming into awareness of a transcendental object. Connected to Hermeticism in that history itself is an alchemical process. Alchemists step in as natures helper and cause natural processes to occur quickly. Medieval notion that precious metals grew in the Earth, in a sense they do, alchemy was meant to speed time up so a million year process could be achieved quickly. The goal was the philosophers stone. The goal of human history is the same thing. Spirit into matter. History is the catalyst of nature. In this context, we are cast in the role of the elemental tykes (machines elves). In the alchemy of the redemption of the world, we are the elementals, causing a process to take place that will accelerate the emergence of the end state before it might have ordinarily happened. History is itself an evoking and moving to a fusion with the alchemical mystery. A coincidentia oppositorum, that is, the words used to describe the alchemical goal is the same as the historical. Union of opposites. Universal panacea. Diamond body. Metaphors of alchemical completion, if we would awaken to the spiritual dynamics of history we could annunciate these things as a goal. If the stated goal of universal society was a panacea, peace of mind, health and happiness for everyone.But Eschatological or Millenarian thinking has remained with us even though ideological styles have changed. Marxism is millenarian. We have transcended Christian eschatology, but secular utopianism is strong today. If we could raise to consciousness alchemical heritage, shamanism of the archaic, we could see the purpose of technology is to liberate, not enslave. Somehow we lost the thread, it does enslave. POPULATION CONTROL TO SAVE THE EARTH

Asked the mushroom how to save the world, said everyone woman have one natural child, creates collapsing demographic. 50% population fall in 40 years without war, epidemic, displacement. Woman on upper-east sides child will have 1000x greater environmental impact than a Bangladesh woman, who may say she wants to have 1000 children. Wed consider her a sociopath, but a Beverly Hills woman with 1 child is doing this. To change the world, reach these women, they are easy to reach, they are educated, socially concerned. If you had 15% compliance it would be an immediate easing on resources. Requires little input from men. Suggestion implies we can serve ourselves as well as humanity without conflict. You could have vastly expanded income, leisure time, and status as a hero in the battle to save the planet. Be rich, easy live, and be a hero! Why are we not hearing this? Because people think there are no solutions, and white guys cant figure out how to make a buck in collapsing populations. Capitalism sees us as consumers and it wants more for scarcity. The last barrels of petroleum will be $50k a throw. People have 2 children to accommodate this, but no society has ever halved this, an industrial revolution concept, a terrible idea, lets go to 1 child, save the Earth. McKenna dismisses Idiocracy question, smartness due to recessive genes. Capitalism in not in our interests. Going to one natural born child in everyones best interests. Escaping Apocalypse Once every person on Earth realizes we are in a battle for planetary survival, people will get with it, but things are not bad enough. Nanotechnology a possibility. People that dont believe a Paleolithic asteroid struck thought it was a sudden dying off. What if the solution to the 20th centuries problems was to create a reservation 65 million years in the past, 25,000 years long, and everyone lives there and the asteroid impact prevents the record from surviving and us being confused by its existence. We could escape into time, into quantum mechanical realms (nanotech). BOOK: Cities in Flight, James Blish, invent a spin-dizzy engine, leave the Earth. We are led by jackasses, we dont bother with politics, let the pressure come on and people will make better demands. McKenna cheers on the collapse, things must get worse before they get better. During Three Mile Island, cheered for the meltdown. If it makes D.C. uninhabitable, well get action! Environmental consciousness moved to the top of the agenda. Chernobyl turned things around for the Soviet leadership, war-fighting, 11 days after partial meltdown, measurable radiation in Auckland, NZ. Male dominators of the male dominators decided they were bankrupt. Not fit to throw guts down to a bear, any of our leaders. Knock off fantasy of citizens in a democratic state, we are propagandized masses in a fascist dictatorship. Create affinity groups, get goals defined, and do it. Wont come from democrats or republicans. Modern Catholic Church The third Reich was a Sunday school picnic compared to the Roman Catholic Church. Millions shoved into poverty, disease, death yearly for theological doctrine nobody understands. Would be arrested in a civilized society. How can they say pro-life when policies mean planetary death? More starvation, agony, war, destroyed land, toxicity. For pro-life? Frustrating thing about the 90s, compared to the 60s, people do not get pissed off. Maybe a switch will be turned, we need to confront evil. People who understand

must make their voices heard, to leave it up to anti-human institutions that hate the human race, ordinary people, we will be victims, marks. JAPANESE CULTURE Japanese are masters of careful resource management and long term planning, we understand neither. Chop it down, move on, thats our attitude. A yawning grave awaits. EDUCATION Education is the key. To not know history is to be amnesic. How many people know where Western Civ was between 900 and 1600 AD? They dont know, they can be fed any shit. To gain power it to reclaim a command of history. Vietnam war, a Berkeley professor said read Thucydides, Syracuse war. Destroyed Greek society, brought dictatorship, Athenian citizenry and leadership couldnt understand war aims, and the Vietnam war mistakes. First thing about the future, dont make the stupid mistakes of the past. New Age spiritual thinkers think the spiritual quest began with Madame Blavatsky. People give loyalty to gurus that are tax skates and jerks, you ask if theyve read Plato, nargarjun (?), Moses Maimonides? But people want flash. People come to McKenna workshops to hear it because its better than sitting at home and reading, but Plato said it better, so did others. Civilization is a storehouse of wisdom, if you dont avail yourself of it, you wont get far, and they trap you. FALL OF CLASSIC EDUCATION Conscious decision made by American establishment at the close of the 1960sthis idea of an educated citizenrywe dont like. Weve seen what happens when you educate the citizenry, they figure out the game and they come with plans for reform. McKenna one of the last to go through U of California where the goal was to educate you about the goal of Western Civilization. Now it is MBA, data entry, University as trade school. They give you TV, video games, and a skill. Make you a level 3 data enterer, $35K a year, please shut up about it, youve been brought inside, but were not interested in your opinion. You get a life, a trade, and later on some orders and youd better snap-to. This isnt democracy, its fascism. Everything is commoditized. People want to be secure these days. You need a critical mass to give that up, when you and your friends agree you dont care if you starve or not because youll have so much fun doing it, its hard reaching that alone. We are manipulated, not empowered, those who are in charge dont have a plan, only plan for another house, another Mercedes, a deeper swimming pool. Its up to creativity of ordinary people. The psychedelic experience augments creativity, to be the basis of a new political order. The mushroom said if you dont have a plan you become a part of someone elses plan. Only planners and plan-ees. KIDS AND DRUGS

Tell the kids the truth, there are good drugs and bad drugs, but it is the monkey doing the drugs. Inform yourself, if they dont believe me, there are others to listen to, shrinks, chemists. PSYCHOLOGY, DRUGS, HUMAN NATURE Lets unshackle psychotherapy and let it stop being a playpen game. Psychotherapists are an insipient Shaman class. They want to help people, have medical education, interested in dynamics of the mind. If we all came up through initiations, exposed to one drug and then another, educated, debriefed, thered be no problem. Weirdness about human nature. People barely knew where children came from until the 20th century, sex was chancy, occasional. Problem that destroyed Marxism was that they had wrong version of what a human being is. Western man is also a tremendously limited thing, we deny our roots in the animal world, in imagination, in sexuality, drugs. Drugs are about human nature. Its considered pathological, sin, crime to alter consciousness. We are at war with ourselves and losing. DRUG AS A WORD Dominator society learned to corrupt a word you define so broadly it defines nothing. Drug is everything from DMT to heroin to penicillin to aspirin. THE YOUTH Youth phobia. Youth is subversive, a standing army within society that belongs to a foreign power. The gap isnt driven by the young, but the old nervous about giving up power. They dont trust the youth, but they are driving the car over the cliff at 200 MPH. McKenna is fortunate, never had to take orders from anybody. They are always trying to get you down into the hole theyre in. SELF-DETERMINATION AND EXTRA-ENVIRONMENTALISM. We talk about the future and the past, but there are many pasts. Many pasts lead into this nexus of the present. You arent being borne along the current of an inevitable thing, you are able to steer from what brings you down, make alliances with what supports you. Personal empowerment means deconditioning from values of the society, putting your own values in place. Realize you must shoot for Extra-environmentalism. When people say they feel like a creature from outer space, thats not such a bad way to feel, it means you see the game, you dont buy in, they cant buy you with a Mercedes, business trips to Paris. Its a controlled alienation, where you cultivate extra-environmentalism. You are at home everywhere, you are always comfortable, you dont have to be with people of your class, culture, or earning capacity to feel alright. Terrence the poet, said, I am a human being therefore nothing human is alien to me. Thats the thing, you accept the human, but be comfortable to acclimate to any cultural styles. Its a magical thing, youre a performer, you move through these things knowing this is not who I am, what I am, merely a response to the demands of the moment.

DOUBT AND BELIEF Asked the mushroom, why are you telling me all this? Answer, you dont believe anything. Belief makes it impossible to believe the opposite, you just truncated your freedom, no matter how noble. You reject your ability to believe other things. Favorite gospel story is of Thomas. After crucifixion, resurrection, he asked to put his hand in the wound of Jesus and got to. Was the only one in all human history to touch the resurrection bodythe doubter! If you want to touch the resurrection body, be careful with where you commit your belief.