Terence McKenna

{{Short description|American ethnobotanist, lecturer, and writer (1946–2000)}} {{For|the Canadian documentary filmmaker|Terence McKenna (film producer)}} {{protection padlock|small=yes}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2014}} {{Use American English|date=October 2025}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Terence McKenna | image = Hanna jon 1999 mckenna terence.jpg | alt = | caption = McKenna in 1999 | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1946|11|16|mf=yes}} | birth_place = Paonia, Colorado, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|2000|4|3|1946|11|16|mf=yes}} | death_place = San Rafael, California, U.S. | resting_place = | occupation = Author, lecturer | ethnicity = | citizenship = | education = BSc in ecology, resource conservation, and shamanism | alma_mater = University of California, Berkeley | period = 20th century | genre = | subject = Shamanism, ethnobotany, ethnomycology, metaphysics, psychedelic drugs, alchemy | movement = | notableworks = ''The Archaic Revival'', ''Food of the Gods'', ''The Invisible Landscape'', ''Psilocybin Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide'', ''True Hallucinations''. | spouse = {{marriage|Kathleen Harrison|1975|1992|end=div}} | partner = | children = 2 | relatives = Dennis McKenna (brother)  | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | website = | portaldisp = | module = {{Listen|pos=center|embed=yes|filename= McKenna on the First Three Minutes.ogg|title=McKenna's voice|type=speech|description=On Steven Weinberg's book, ''The First Three Minutes''<br/>Recording date unknown}} }}

'''Terence Kemp McKenna''' (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American philosopher, ethnobotanist, lecturer, and author who advocated for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants and mushrooms. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, ethnomycology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s",<ref>{{cite book |last= Znamenski |first= Andrei A. |title= The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination |year= 2007 |publisher= Oxford University Press |isbn= 978-0-19-803849-8 |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=JFgelrgGSIMC&pg=PA138 138]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last= Horgan |first= John |author-link= John Horgan (American journalist) |title= Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment |year= 2004 |publisher= Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |isbn= 978-0-547-34780-6 |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=7dYV9UJszlUC&pg=PT188 177]}}</ref> "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism",<ref name=Mavericks>{{cite book |title= Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations for the New Millennium |year= 1993 |publisher= Crossing Press |location= Freedom, CA |isbn= 978-0-89594-601-0 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/mavericksofmindc00brow/page/9 9–24] |editor1-first= David Jay |editor1-last= Brown |editor1-link= David Jay Brown |editor2-first= Rebecca McClen |editor2-last= Novick |chapter= Mushrooms, Elves And Magic |chapter-url= https://archive.org/details/mavericksofmindc00brow/page/9}}</ref> and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".<ref name="Partridge2006">{{cite book |last=Partridge |first= Christopher |author-link= Christopher Partridge |title= Reenchantment of West |chapter= Ch. 3: Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Contemporary Sacralization of Psychedelics |series= Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture |volume= 2 |year= 2006 |publisher= Continuum |isbn= 978-0-567-55271-6 |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=iIfdkgicKhIC&pg=PA113 113]}}</ref> Critical reception of Terence McKenna’s work was deeply polarized, with critics accusing him of promoting dangerous ideas and questioning his sanity, while others praised his writing as groundbreaking, humorous, and intellectually provocative.

Born in Colorado, he developed a fascination with nature, psychology, and visionary experiences at a young age. His travels through Asia and South America in the 1960s and ’70s shaped his theories on plant-based psychedelics, particularly psilocybin mushrooms, which he helped popularize through cultivation methods and writings. McKenna became a countercultural icon in the 1980s and ’90s, delivering lectures on psychedelics, language, and metaphysics while publishing influential books and co-founding Botanical Dimensions in Hawaii. He died in 2000 from brain cancer.

Terence McKenna was a prominent advocate for the responsible use of natural psychedelics—particularly psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and DMT—which he believed enabled access to profound visionary experiences, alternate dimensions, and communication with intelligent entities. He opposed synthetic drugs and organized religion, favoring shamanic traditions and direct, plant-based spiritual experiences. McKenna speculated that psilocybin mushrooms might be intelligent extraterrestrial life and proposed the controversial “stoned ape” theory, arguing that psychedelics catalyzed human evolution, language, and culture. His broader philosophy envisioned an “archaic revival” as a healing response to the ills of modern civilization.

McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the ''I Ching'', which he called novelty theory,<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Jenkins /> proposing that this predicted the end of time, and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /> His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about the 2012 phenomenon.<ref name= "Krupp2009"/> Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.<ref name=bruce/><ref name=normark/>

==Biography==

===Early life=== [[File:Paonia.JPG|thumb|left|A 2006 photograph of Paonia, Colorado, where McKenna was born]] Terence McKenna was born and raised in Paonia, Colorado,<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5"> {{cite book |last= Pinchbeck |first= Daniel |author-link= Daniel Pinchbeck |title= Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism |year= 2003 |publisher= Broadway Books |isbn= 978-0-7679-0743-9 |pages= 231–38 |title-link= Breaking Open the Head}} </ref><ref name="tripzine"> {{cite web |url= http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=terence1 |title= Terence McKenna Interview, Part 1. |work= Tripzine.com |access-date= 2011-06-29 |last= Kent |first= James |date= December 2, 2003}}</ref> with Irish ancestry on his father's side of the family.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Dennis McKenna|title=The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna|date=2012|publisher=Polaris Publications |isbn=978-0-87839-637-5|edition=1st |type=ebook|page=71|ref= {{SfnRef|McKenna, Dennis|2012}}|author1-link=Dennis McKenna}}</ref>

As a youth, McKenna had a hobby of fossil-hunting from which he acquired a deep scientific appreciation of nature.{{Sfn|McKenna, Dennis|2012|p=115}} At the age of 14, he became interested in psychology after reading Carl Jung's book ''Psychology and Alchemy''.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /> At the age of 14, McKenna first became aware of magic mushrooms when he read the article "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" from the May 13, 1957 edition of LIFE magazine.<ref name="Vice Mushroom">{{cite web |last1=Lin |first1=Tao |title=Psilocybin, the Mushroom, and Terence McKenna |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/psilocybin-the-mushroom-and-terence-mckenna-439/ |website=Vice |access-date=12 July 2018 |date=13 August 2014}}</ref> He began smoking cannabis as a teenager.<ref name="NYT Obit" />

At age 16 McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, California.<ref name="tripzine"/> In 1963, he was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through ''The Doors of Perception'' and ''Heaven and Hell'' by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of ''The Village Voice'' which published articles on psychedelics.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name="tripzine"/>

McKenna said that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing."<ref name="tripzine"/> But it was his experience with DMT in 1967, introduced to him by his best friend Rick Watson, whom Terence described as his "greatest inspiration", that set his "auto compass for life".<ref name="When Terence McKenna First Smoked DMT">{{cite web |last1=St John |first1=Graham |title=When Terence McKenna First Smoked DMT |url=https://chacruna.net/terence-mckenna-first-smoked-dmt// |website=Chacruna |date=24 December 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=McKenna |first1=Terence |title=Under The Teaching Tree |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HpIyFQxzgU |publisher=Ojai Foundation|date=April 1985}}</ref>

===Studying and traveling=== In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley and was accepted into the Tussman Experimental College.<ref name="NYT Obit"/> While in college in 1967 he began studying shamanism through the study of Tibetan folk religion.<ref name=Mavericks/>{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|pp=204–17}} That same year, which he called his "opium and kabbala phase",<ref name=EsquireJacobson />{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=215}} he traveled to Jerusalem where he met Kathleen Harrison, an ethnobotanist who later became his wife.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name="NYT Obit"/>{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=215}}

In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism.{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=55–58}} He sought out shamans of the Tibetan Bon tradition, trying to learn more about the shamanic use of visionary plants.<ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" /> During his time there, he also studied the Tibetan language{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=55–58}} and worked as a hashish smuggler,<ref name=EsquireJacobson /> until "one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs."{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=22–23}} He then wandered through southeast Asia viewing ruins,{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=22–23}} and spent time as a professional butterfly collector in Indonesia.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name="LA Times Obit" /><ref name=Omni1993 />

After his mother's death{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=1–13}} from cancer in 1970,{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=23}} McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of ''oo-koo-hé'', a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT).<ref name=Jenkins />{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=1–13}}<ref name=shroom /> Instead of oo-koo-hé they found fields full of gigantic ''Psilocybe cubensis'' mushrooms, which became the new focus of the expedition.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" />{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=1–13}}<ref name=Wired /> In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, McKenna was the subject of a psychedelic experiment<ref name=Jenkins /> in which the brothers attempted to "bond harmine DNA with their own neural DNA" (harmine is another psychedelic compound they used synergistically with the mushrooms), through the use of a set of specific vocal techniques. They hypothesised this would give them access to the collective memory of the human species, and would manifest the alchemists' Philosopher's Stone which they viewed as a "hyperdimensional union of spirit and matter".<ref name=GyusEOTR/> McKenna claimed the experiment put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=194}} McKenna also often referred to the voice as "the mushroom", and "the teaching voice" amongst other names.<ref name="Vice Mushroom" /> The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar psychedelic experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the ''I Ching'', which led to his "Novelty Theory".<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /> During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically involved with his interpreter, Ev.{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=3}}

In 1972, McKenna returned to U.C. Berkeley to finish his studies<ref name="NYT Obit"/> and in 1975, he graduated with a degree in ecology, shamanism, and conservation of natural resources.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name= "LA Times Obit"/><ref name= "Omni1993">{{cite news |title= Terence McKenna |magazine= Omni |year= 1993 |volume= 15 |issue= 7 |pages= 69–70}}</ref> In the autumn of 1975, after parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year,{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=205–07}} McKenna began a relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children, Kathleen Harrison.<ref name=ScientificAHorgan>{{cite web |last= Horgan |first= John |author-link= John Horgan (American journalist) |title= Was psychedelic guru Terence McKenna goofing about 2012 prophecy? |url= http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/06/06/was-psychedelic-guru-terence-mckenna-goofing-about-2012-prophecy/ |publisher= Scientific American |type= blog |access-date= 2014-02-05}}</ref><ref name="NYT Obit" />{{sfn|McKenna|1993|p=215}}<ref name=shroom />

Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by their Amazon experiences, ''The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching''.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name="NYT Obit"/><ref name=Supernatural /> The brothers' experiences in the Amazon were the main focus of McKenna's book ''True Hallucinations'', published in 1993.<ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /> McKenna also began lecturing<ref name="NYT Obit" /> locally around Berkeley and started appearing on some underground radio stations.<ref name=EsquireJacobson />

===Psilocybin mushroom cultivation=== thumb|upright|''Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide'' (1986 revised edition) McKenna, along with his brother Dennis, developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms using spores they brought to America from the Amazon.<ref name="Vice Mushroom" /><ref name=shroom /><ref name=Wired />{{sfn|McKenna|1993|pp=205–07}} In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned in the book ''Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide'', under the pseudonyms "O.T. Oss" and "O.N. Oeric".<ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" />{{sfn|Letcher|2007|p=278}} McKenna and his brother were the first to come up with a reliable method for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms at home.<ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" /><ref name="NYT Obit" /><ref name=shroom /><ref name=Wired /> As ethnobiologist Jonathan Ott explains, "[the] authors adapted San Antonio's technique (for producing edible mushrooms by casing mycelial cultures on a rye grain substrate; San Antonio 1971) to the production of ''Psilocybe [Stropharia] cubensis''. The new technique involved the use of ordinary kitchen implements, and for the first time the layperson was able to produce a potent entheogen in his [or her] own home, without access to sophisticated technology, equipment, or chemical supplies."<ref>{{cite book |author=Ott J. |author-link=Jonathan Ott |title=Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, their Plant Sources and History |year=1993 |page=290| publisher=Natural Products Company |location=Kennewick, Washington |isbn=978-0-9614234-3-8}}; see {{cite journal |author=San Antonio JP. |title=A laboratory method to obtain fruit from cased grain spawn of the cultivated mushroom, ''Agaricus bisporus'' |journal=Mycologia |year=1971 |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=16–21 |jstor=3757680 |url=http://www.cybertruffle.org.uk/cyberliber/59350/0063/001/0016.htm |doi=10.2307/3757680 |pmid=5102274}}</ref> When the 1986 revised edition was published, the ''Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide'' had sold over 100,000 copies.<ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" />{{sfn|Letcher|2007|p=278}}{{sfn|McKenna|McKenna|1976|loc= Preface (revised ed.)}}

===Mid- to later life===

====Public speaking==== In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, becoming one of the pioneers of the psychedelic movement.<ref>{{cite book |title= Inner Paths To Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies |year= 2008 |location= Rochester, VT |publisher= Inner Traditions |isbn= 978-1-59477-224-5 |page= 149 |editor1-first= Rick |editor1-last= Strassman |editor1-link= Rick Strassman |editor2-first= Slawek |editor2-last= Wojtowicz |editor3-first= Luis Eduardo |editor3-last= Luna |editor4-first= Ede |display-editors = 3 |editor4-last= Frecska |chapter= Ch. 6: Magic Mushrooms |first= Slawek |last= Wojtowicz}}</ref> His main focus was on the naturally occurring psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms (which were the catalyst for his career),<ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /> ayahuasca, cannabis, and the plant derivative DMT.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /> He conducted lecture tours and workshops<ref name=EsquireJacobson /> promoting natural psychedelics as a way to explore universal mysteries, stimulate the imagination, and re-establish a harmonious relationship with nature.<ref name= "Toop1993">{{cite news |last= Toop |first= David |author-link= David Toop |date= February 18, 1993 |newspaper= The Times |title= Sounds like a radical vision; The Shamen and Terence McKenna |department= Rock Music}}</ref> Though associated with the New Age and Human Potential Movements, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /><ref name= "Sharkey2000">{{cite news |last= Sharkey |first= Alix |date= April 15, 2000 |title= Terence McKenna |type= Obituary |newspaper= The Independent |page= 7}}</ref> He repeatedly stressed the importance and primacy of the "felt presence of direct experience", as opposed to dogma.<ref>{{cite AV media |last= McKenna |first= Terence |type= lecture |chapter= 181-McKennaErosEschatonQA |title= Psychedelia: Psychedelic Salon ALL Episodes |date= 1994 |access-date= 2014-04-11|format= MP3 |time= 32:00 |editor-last= Hagerty |editor-first= Lorenzo |url= https://archive.org/details/PsychedelicSalon-all-}}</ref>

In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on a wide array of subjects,<ref name=shroom /> including shamanism; metaphysics; alchemy; language; culture; self-empowerment; environmentalism, techno-paganism; artificial intelligence; evolution; extraterrestrials; science and scientism; the Web; and virtual reality.

{{Rquote|right|It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war. But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior, and it's not easy. |Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double"|<ref>{{cite video |first=Terence |last=McKenna |title=This World...and Its Double |medium=DVD |time=1:30:45 |publisher=Sound Photosynthesis |location=Mill Valley, California |date=September 11, 1993a}}</ref>}}

McKenna soon became a fixture of popular counterculture<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name= "Toop1993"/> with Timothy Leary once introducing him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet"<ref>{{cite AV media |last=Leary |first=Timothy |author-link=Timothy Leary |type=Introduction to lecture by Terence McKenna |title=Psychedelia: Raw Archives of Terence McKenna Talks |chapter=Unfolding the Stone 1 |date=1992 |format=MP3 |time=2:08 |editor-last=Damer |editor-first=Bruce |url=https://archive.org/download/PsychedeliaRawArchivesOfTerenceMckennaTalks/UnfoldingTheStone1.mp3}}</ref> and with comedian Bill Hicks' referencing him in his stand-up act<ref>{{cite AV media |first=Bill |last=Hicks |author-link=Bill Hicks |year=1997 |orig-year=November 1992 – December 1993 |title=Rant in E-Minor |medium=CD and MP3 |time=0:58 |chapter=Pt. 1: Ch. 2: Gifts of Forgiveness |at=Track 8 |publisher=Rykodisc |oclc=38306915}}</ref> and building an entire routine around his ideas.<ref name=shroom /> McKenna also became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s,<ref name= "LA Times Obit"/><ref name=NobleSavage /> with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen,<ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=shroom /><ref name= "Toop1993"/> Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, documented in the book ''Tripping'' by Charles Hayes.<ref>{{cite book |title= Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures |last= Hayes |first= Charles |year= 2000 |publisher= Penguin |isbn= 978-1-101-15719-0 |page=1201}}</ref>

McKenna published several books in the early-to-mid-1990s including: ''The Archaic Revival''; ''Food of the Gods''; and ''True Hallucinations''.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /><ref name= "LA Times Obit"/> Hundreds of hours of McKenna's public lectures were recorded either professionally or bootlegged and have been produced on cassette tape, CD and MP3.<ref name=shroom /> Segments of his talks have gone on to be sampled by many musicians and DJ's.<ref name= "Partridge2006"/><ref name=shroom />

McKenna was a colleague and close friend of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, and author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. He conducted several public and many private debates with them from 1982 until his death.{{Sfn|Sheldrake|McKenna|Abraham|1998|loc=Preface}}{{Sfn|Sheldrake|McKenna|Abraham|1992|p=11}}<ref>{{cite web |title= The Sheldrake – McKenna – Abraham Trialogues |work= sheldrake.org |url= http://www.sheldrake.org/Trialogues/ |editor-last= Rice |editor-first= Paddy Rose |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131128060018/http://www.sheldrake.org/Trialogues/ |archive-date= November 28, 2013 |df= mdy-all}}</ref> These debates were known as ''trialogues'' and some of the discussions were later published in the books: ''Trialogues at the Edge of the West'' and ''The Evolutionary Mind''.<ref name=Mavericks />{{Sfn|Sheldrake|McKenna|Abraham|1998|loc=Preface}}

====Botanical Dimensions==== [[File:Botanical Dimensions ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii.jpg|thumb|Botanical Dimensions ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii]] In 1985, McKenna founded Botanical Dimensions with his then-wife, Kathleen Harrison.<ref name= "LA Times Obit"/><ref name= "BDP"/> Botanical Dimensions is a nonprofit ethnobotanical preserve on the Big Island of Hawaii,<ref name=Mavericks /> established to collect, protect, propagate, and understand plants of ethno-medical significance and their lore, and appreciate, study, and educate others about plants and mushrooms felt to be significant to cultural integrity and spiritual well-being.<ref name=BDPandP>{{cite web |title=Plants and People: Our Ethnobotany Offerings |website=Botanical Dimensions |url=http://botanicaldimensions.org/#/0/14}}</ref> The {{convert|19|acre|adj=on}} botanical garden<ref name=Mavericks/> is a repository containing thousands of plants that have been used by indigenous people of the tropical regions, and includes a database of information related to their purported healing properties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Nollman |first=Jim |title=Why We Garden: Cultivating a sense of place |year=1994 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |isbn=978-0-8050-2719-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whywegardenculti00noll/page/181 181] |url=https://archive.org/details/whywegardenculti00noll/page/181}}</ref> McKenna was involved until 1992, when he retired from the project,<ref name=BDP>{{cite web |title=Who We Are & Library Hours/Contact Info |website=Botanical Dimensions |url=http://botanicaldimensions.org/contact-botanical-dimensions/#/0/20}}</ref> following his and Kathleen's divorce earlier in the year.<ref name="NYT Obit">{{cite news |last=Martin |first=Douglas |date=April 9, 2000|title=Terence McKenna, 53, dies; Patron of psychedelic drugs |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/us/terence-mckenna-53-dies-patron-of-psychedelic-drugs.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090616041043/http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/us/terence-mckenna-53-dies-patron-of-psychedelic-drugs.html?pagewanted=print|archive-date=2009-06-16 |access-date=2012-09-12}}</ref> Kathleen still manages Botanical Dimensions as its president and projects director.<ref name="BDPandP"/>

After their divorce, McKenna moved to Hawaii permanently, where he built a modernist house<ref name="NYT Obit"/> and created a gene bank of rare plants near his home.<ref name="LA Times Obit"/> Previously, he had split his time between Hawaii and Occidental, California.

===Death=== McKenna was a longtime sufferer of migraines, but on 22 May 1999 he began to have unusually extreme and painful headaches.<ref name="Wired">{{cite news |last= Davis |first= Erik |author-link= Erik Davis |date=1 May 2000 |title= Terence McKenna's last trip |volume= 8 |magazine= Wired |issue= 5 |access-date= 2013-09-10 |url= https://www.wired.com/2000/05/mckenna/ | quote = Soon after McKenna arrived home, however, he was hit with ferocious headaches. He'd long suffered from migraines, but nothing in his 52 years could match the ice picks now skewering his skull. On May 22, after dragging himself to the john to vomit, McKenna's mind exploded. Hallucinations cut in like shards of glass; taste and smell were bent out of shape; and he was swallowed up by a labyrinth that, as he later put it, "somehow partook of last week's dreams, next week's fears, and a small restaurant in Dublin." Then his blood pressure dropped and he collapsed, the victim of a brain seizure.}}</ref><ref name="Bell1999" /> In addition to the headaches, he described entering a powerful altered state of consciousness with hallucinations and perceptual distortions in conjunction with multiple seizures.<ref name="Wired" /><ref name="Bell1999">{{cite episode | people = Art Bell (host), Terence McKenna, Stewart Best | title = June 16, 1999: Comet Lee - Stewart Best <nowiki>|</nowiki> Goodbye Terence McKenna | series = Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell | date = 16 June 1999 | time = 8:23–12:36 | url = https://artbellarchive.org/episode/june-16-1999-comet-lee-stewart-best-goodbye-terence-mckenna | transcript = Transcript | transcript-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20260323101258/https://ctxt.io/2/AAD4B_fSEQ | quote = So I went into the bathroom and then it was, you know and speaking as a psychedelic explorer, all hell broke loose. It was very confusing and it was confounding. I had no idea what was happening. I was having hallucinations I was not sure where I was or who I was. I had two or three more of these seizures as Christie wrestled me down the mountain. [...] It was like a tryptamine, but it was not like DMT which is what I know best. The quality of being indescribable and the quality of being visual were things I could only associate with psychedelics.}}</ref> Then, McKenna's blood pressure dropped and he collapsed.<ref name="Wired" /><ref name="Bell1999" /> McKenna was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.<ref name=Dery21C>{{cite web |first= Mark |last= Dery |author-link= Mark Dery |title= Terence McKenna: The inner elf |url= http://www.21cmagazine.com/Terence-McKenna-The-Inner-Elf |magazine= 21•C Magazine |access-date= 2014-02-07 |year= 2001 |orig-year= 1996 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140724101610/http://21cmagazine.com/Terence-McKenna-The-Inner-Elf |archive-date= July 24, 2014 |url-status= dead }}</ref><ref name="Pinchbeck2003pp232-5" /><ref name="Wired" /><ref name="Bell1999" /> For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment.<ref name="Wired" /><ref name="Bell1999" /> According to ''Wired'' magazine, McKenna was worried that his tumor may have been caused by his psychedelic drug use, or his 35 years of daily cannabis smoking; however, his doctors assured him there was no causal relation.<ref name="Wired" /><ref name="Bell1999" />

In late 1999, McKenna described his thoughts concerning his impending death to interviewer Erik Davis:

{{blockquote|I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, à la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://techgnosis.com/terence-mckenna-vs-the-black-hole/ |title= Terence McKenna Vs. the Black Hole |first= Erik |last= Davis |author-link= Erik Davis |website= techgnosis.com |date=January 13, 2005 |access-date=2012-09-12 |type= Excerpts from the CD, ''Terence McKenna: The Last Interview''}}</ref>}}

McKenna died at a friend's home in San Rafael, California, on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53.<ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /><ref name= "NYT Obit"/>

===Library fire and insect collection=== McKenna's library of over 3,000 rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire in Monterey, California on February 7, 2007. An index of McKenna's library was preserved by his brother Dennis.<ref>{{cite web |last= Frauenfelder |first= Mark |author-link= Mark Frauenfelder |url=http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/22/terence-mckennas-lib.html |title= Terence McKenna's library destroyed in fire |work= Boing Boing |date= February 22, 2007 |access-date= 2012-09-12 |type= group blog}}</ref><ref name="IA-techgno">{{cite web|last1=Davis|first1=Erik|title=Terence McKenna's Ex-Library|url=http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=journal&cat=&file=chunkfrom-2007-02-13-2307-0.txt|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004131122/http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=journal&cat=&file=chunkfrom-2007-02-13-2307-0.txt|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 October 2012|publisher=Internet Archive|access-date=19 February 2018}}</ref>

McKenna studied Lepidoptera and entomology in the 1960s, and his studies included hunting for butterflies, primarily in Colombia and Indonesia, creating a large collection of insect specimens.<ref name="vice.com"/> After McKenna's death, his daughter, the artist and photographer Klea McKenna, preserved his insect collection, turning it into a gallery installation, then publishing ''The Butterfly Hunter'', a book of 122 insect photos from a set of over 2,000 specimens McKenna collected between 1969 and 1972, alongside maps of his collecting routes through rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America.<ref name="vice.com">[https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-butterfly-hunter-by-klea-mckenna-874/ 'The Butterfly Hunter' by Klea McKenna] By Tao Lin, Sep 9 2014, 7:36pm, Vice</ref> McKenna's insect collection was consistent with his interest in Victorian-era explorers and naturalists, and his worldview based on close observation of nature. In the 1970s, when he was still collecting, he became quite squeamish and guilt-ridden about the necessity of killing butterflies in order to collect and classify them, according to McKenna's daughter, this led him to cease his entomological studies.<ref name="vice.com"/>

==Thought==

===Psychedelics=== Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances,<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=Supernatural>{{cite book |first=Graham |last=Hancock |author-link=Graham Hancock |year=2006 |orig-year=2005 Hancock |title=Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind |location=London |publisher=Arrow |isbn=978-0-09-947415-9 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=FpMhxNgf97YC&pg=PT217 556–57]}}</ref><ref name=NobleSavage/> particularly psychedelic mushrooms<ref name=shroom/><ref name=StametsPMOTW>{{cite book |first=Paul |last=Stamets |author-link=Paul Stamets |year=1996 |chapter=5. Good tips for great trips |title=Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An identification guide |page=[https://archive.org/details/psilocybinmushro00stam/page/n23 36] |location=Berkeley, CA |publisher=Ten Speed Press |isbn=978-0-89815-839-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/psilocybinmushro00stam |url-access=limited}}</ref> and DMT.<ref name=EsquireJacobson/> He was less enthralled with synthetic drugs,<ref name=EsquireJacobson/> stating, "I think drugs should come from the natural world and be use-tested by shamanically orientated cultures ... one cannot predict the long-term effects of a drug produced in a laboratory."<ref name=Mavericks/>

<blockquote>"People should be very careful. I said earlier in this talk that I was addressing experimentalists, psychologists, psychiatrists. I don’t mean to scare anyone off, but you should build up to it. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power and beauty, and I don’t believe there’s any set rule for acquiring [the] power to not be overwhelmed, but I think moving carefully, reflecting a great deal, always trying to map it back on the history of the race and the philosophical and religious accomplishments of the species — this should always be done. [...] All drugs are dangerous. All drugs, at sufficient doses or repeated over a sufficient amount of time, there are risks. The possibility of kindling epileptic effects is well known in ketamine. There’s a stack of literature on that, if anybody is intending to do ketamine who hasn’t done it. The first place you go when you’re going to take a new drug is the library."<ref>{{cite speech |last = McKenna |first = Terence |year = 1982 |title = Tryptamine Hallucinogen Consciousness |url =https://www.organism.earth/library/document/tryptamine-hallucinogen-consciousness |location = Esalen Institute |access-date = January 21, 2026 |type = Lecture |time = 46:11}}</ref></blockquote>

McKenna often described his practice of taking what he called "heroic doses" of psilocybin mushrooms: five dried grams,<ref name=Supernatural/><ref name=EsquireJacobson>{{cite magazine |first=Mark |last=Jacobson |date=June 1992 |title=Terence McKenna the brave prophet of The next psychedelic revolution, or is his cosmic egg just a little bit cracked? |magazine=Esquire |pages=107–138 |id=ESQ 1992 06 |url=https://archive.org/details/1992TerenceMcKennaEaquire}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Wadsworth |first=Jennifer |title=Federal approval brings MDMA from club to clinic |website=Metro Active |date=May 11, 2016 |publisher=Metro Silicon Valley |url=http://www.metroactive.com/features/MDMA-Molly-Drugs-Psychedelic.html |access-date=17 May 2016}}</ref> taken alone, on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, and with eyes closed.<ref name=shroom/><ref name=Wired/> He claimed that when taken this way one could expect a profound visionary experience.<ref name=shroom/>

Although McKenna avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel". He proposed that DMT sent one to a "parallel dimension"<ref name=ScientificAHorgan /> and that psychedelics literally enabled an individual to encounter "higher dimensional entities",{{sfn|Pinchbeck|2003|p=193}} or what could be ancestors, or spirits of the Earth,<ref name=invisible /> saying that if you can trust your own perceptions it appears that you are entering an "ecology of souls".{{sfn|Pinchbeck|2003|p=247}} McKenna also put forward the idea that psychedelics were "doorways into the Gaian mind",<ref name=NobleSavage /><ref name="Trip1993">{{cite news |last=Trip |first=Gabriel |date=May 2, 1993 |title=Tripping, but not falling |newspaper=New York Times |page=A6}}</ref> suggesting that "the planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being" and that the psychedelic plants were the facilitators of this communication.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Shamen |year=1992 |title=Boss Drum |medium=CD, MP3 |time=4:50 |id=Track 10 |chapter=Re: Evolution |publisher=Epic |oclc=27056837}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Terence |last=McKenna |title=The Gaian mind |website=deoxy.org |url=http://deoxy.org/gaia/g_mind.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990203035348/http://deoxy.org/gaia/g_mind.htm |url-status=usurped |archive-date=1999-02-03}} – Cut-up from the works of Terence McKenna.</ref>

====Machine elves==== {{See also|Dimethyltryptamine#Entity encounters}}

McKenna spoke of hallucinations while on DMT in which he met intelligent entities he described as "self-transforming machine elves".<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /><ref name=DMTspirit>{{cite book |author=Rick Strassman, M.D. |author-link=Rick Strassman |year=2001 |title=DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A doctor's revolutionary research into the biology of near-death and mystical experiences |publisher=Inner Traditions Bear and Company |edition=Later printing |isbn=978-0-89281-927-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dmtspiritmolecul00rick/page/187 187] |url=https://archive.org/details/dmtspiritmolecul00rick/page/187}}</ref>{{sfn|Pinchbeck|2003|p=213}}

====Psilocybin panspermia speculation==== {{See also|Panspermia|Francis Crick#Directed panspermia}} In a more radical version of biophysicist Francis Crick's hypothesis of directed panspermia, McKenna speculated on the idea that psilocybin mushrooms may be a species of high intelligence,<ref name=Mavericks /> which may have arrived on this planet as spores migrating through space<ref name=ScientificAHorgan/>{{sfn|Pinchbeck|2003|p=234}} and which are attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. He postulated that "intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have come here [to Earth] in this spore-bearing life form". He said, "I think that theory will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred years if people do biology they will think it quite silly that people once thought that spores could not be blown from one star system to another by cosmic radiation pressure," and also believed that "few people are in a position to judge its extraterrestrial potential, because few people in the orthodox sciences have ever experienced the full spectrum of psychedelic effects that are unleashed".<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Dery21C />{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|pp=204–17}}

====Opposition to organized religion==== McKenna was opposed to Christianity<ref name= "Rabey1994">{{cite news |last=Rabey |first= Steve |date=August 13, 1994 |title=Instant karma: Psychedelic drug use on the rise as a quick route to spirituality |newspaper=Colorado Springs Gazette – Telegraph |page=E1}}</ref> and most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening, favouring shamanism, which he believed was the broadest spiritual paradigm available, stating that: <blockquote>What I think happened is that in the world of prehistory all religion was experiential, and it was based on the pursuit of ecstasy through plants. And at some time, very early, a group interposed itself between people and direct experience of the 'Other.' This created hierarchies, priesthoods, theological systems, castes, ritual, taboos. Shamanism, on the other hand, is an experiential science that deals with an area where we know nothing. It is important to remember that our epistemological tools have developed very unevenly in the West. We know a tremendous amount about what is going on in the heart of the atom, but we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the mind.{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|p=242}}</blockquote>

====Technological singularity==== During the final years of his life and career, McKenna became very engaged in the theoretical realm of technology. He was an early proponent of the technological singularity<ref name=ScientificAHorgan/> and in his last recorded public talk, ''Psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines'', he outlined ties between psychedelics, computation technology, and humans.<ref name="Machines">{{cite AV media |last=McKenna |first=Terence |year=1999 |format=lecture |title=Psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines |medium=video |url=https://archive.org/details/TerenceMckenna_Seattle199Lecture}}</ref> He also became enamored with the Internet, calling it "the birth of [the] global mind",<ref name="NYT Obit"/> believing it to be a place where psychedelic culture could flourish.<ref name=Wired/>

====Admired writers==== Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Plato, Gnostic Christianity, and Alchemy, while regarding the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.<ref name="Stone2">{{cite AV media |last=McKenna |first=Terence |format=lecture |chapter=Unfolding the Stone 1 |title=Psychedelia: Raw Archives of Terence McKenna Talks |date=1992 |medium=MP3 |time=17:30 |editor-last=Damer |editor-first=Bruce |url=https://archive.org/download/PsychedeliaRawArchivesOfTerenceMckennaTalks/UnfoldingTheStone1.mp3}}</ref>

McKenna also expressed admiration for the works of writers Aldous Huxley,<ref name=Mavericks /> James Joyce, whose book ''Finnegans Wake'' he called "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century,"<ref name="SurfingFW">{{cite AV media |last=McKenna |first=Terence |format=lecture |chapter=Surfing ''Finnegans Wake'' |title=Psychedelia: Raw archives of Terence McKenna talks |date=1990–1999 |medium=MP3 |time=0:45 |editor-last=Damer |editor-first=Bruce |url=https://archive.org/download/PsychedeliaRawArchivesOfTerenceMckennaTalks/SurfingFinnegansWake.mp3}}</ref> science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who he described as an "incredible genius",<ref>{{cite book |last=McKenna |first=Terence |year=1991 |chapter=Afterword: I understand Philip K. Dick |title=In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the exegesis |editor-first=Lawrence |editor-last=Sutin |publisher=Underwood-Miller |isbn=978-0-88733-091-9}} {{cite web |title=Convenience copy |website=sirbacon.org |url=http://www.sirbacon.org/dick.htm}}{{Verify source|date=January 2014}}{{copyvio link}}</ref> fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, with whom McKenna shared the belief that "scattered through the ordinary world there are books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth"<ref name=ScientificAHorgan/> and Vladimir Nabokov. McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.

==="Stoned ape" theory of human evolution <span class="anchor" id="Stoned ape"></span>=== {{Main|Stoned ape theory}} McKenna's hypothesis concerning the influence of psilocybin mushrooms on human evolution is known as "the 'stoned ape' theory."<ref name="Vice Mushroom" /><ref name="NobleSavage">{{cite book |title= War and the Noble Savage: A Critical Inquiry Into Recent Accounts of Violence Amongst Uncivilized Peoples |year= 2009 |location= London |publisher= Dreamflesh |isbn= 978-0-9554196-1-4 |pages= [https://books.google.com/books?id=a9uCXbV90vMC&pg=PA63 63–66] |author= Gyrus|chapter= Appendix II: The Stoned Ape Hypothesis}}</ref><ref name=Telegraph8thingsMush />

In his 1992 book ''Food of the Gods'', McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans' early ancestors ''Homo erectus'' to the species ''Homo sapiens'' mainly involved the addition of the mushroom ''Psilocybe cubensis'' in the diet,<ref name=shroom /><ref name=Telegraph8thingsMush />{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|pp=56–60}} an event that according to his theory took place about 100,000 BCE (when he believed humans diverged from the genus ''Homo'').<ref name= "LA Times Obit">{{cite news |title= Terence McKenna; Promoter of psychedelic drug use |date= April 7, 2000 |newspaper= Los Angeles Times |page= B6}}</ref>{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|p=54}} McKenna based his theory on the effects, or alleged effects, produced by the mushroom<ref name=Mavericks /> while citing studies by Roland Fischer et al. from the late 1960s to early 1970s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1= Fischer |first1= Roland |last2= Hill |first2= Richard |first3= Karen |last3= Thatcher |first4= James |last4= Scheib |year= 1970 |title= Psilocybin-Induced contraction of nearby visual space |journal= Agents and Actions |volume= 1 |issue= 4 |pages= 190–97 |pmid= 5520365 |doi= 10.1007/BF01965761|s2cid= 8321037 }}</ref>{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|p=57}}

McKenna stated that, due to the desertification of the African continent at that time, human forerunners were forced from the shrinking tropical canopy into search of new food sources.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /> He believed they would have been following large herds of wild cattle whose dung harbored the insects that, he proposed, were undoubtedly part of their new diet, and would have spotted and started eating ''Psilocybe cubensis'', a dung-loving mushroom often found growing out of cowpats.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=NobleSavage />{{sfn|Znamenski|2007|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=JFgelrgGSIMC&pg=PA138 138–39]}}

[[File:Psilocybe Cubensis.JPG|thumb|left|Psilocybe cubensis: the psilocybin-containing mushroom central to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of human evolution.]]

McKenna's hypothesis was that low doses of psilocybin improve visual acuity, particularly edge detection, meaning that the presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack hunting primates caused the individuals who were consuming psilocybin mushrooms to be better hunters than those who were not, resulting in an increased food supply and in turn a higher rate of reproductive success.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Dery21C /><ref name="Vice Mushroom" /><ref name=shroom /><ref name=NobleSavage /> Then at slightly higher doses, he contended, the mushroom acts to sexually arouse, leading to a higher level of attention, more energy in the organism, and potential erection in the males,<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Dery21C /> rendering it even more evolutionarily beneficial, as it would result in more offspring.<ref name=shroom /><ref name=NobleSavage />{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|pp=56–60}} At even higher doses, McKenna proposed that the mushroom would have acted to "dissolve boundaries", promoting community bonding and group sexual activities.<ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /><ref name=NobleSavage /> Consequently, there would be a mixing of genes, greater genetic diversity, and a communal sense of responsibility for the group offspring.{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|p=59}} At these higher doses, McKenna also argued that psilocybin would be triggering activity in the "language-forming region of the brain", manifesting as music and visions,<ref name=Mavericks /> thus catalyzing the emergence of language in early hominids by expanding "their arboreally evolved repertoire of troop signals".<ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=shroom /> He also pointed out that psilocybin would dissolve the ego and "religious concerns would be at the forefront of the tribe's consciousness, simply because of the power and strangeness of the experience itself."<ref name=NobleSavage />{{sfn|McKenna|1992b|p=59}}

According to McKenna, access to and ingestion of mushrooms was an evolutionary advantage to humans' omnivorous hunter-gatherer ancestors,<ref name=shroom />{{sfn|Znamenski|2007|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=JFgelrgGSIMC&pg=PA138 138–39]}} also providing humanity's first religious impulse.{{sfn|Znamenski|2007|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=JFgelrgGSIMC&pg=PA138 138–39]}}{{sfn|Pinchbeck|2003|p=194}} He believed that psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst"<ref name=Mavericks /> from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang.<ref name=Dery21C /><ref name=ScientificAHorgan /><ref name=Wired />{{sfn|Znamenski|2007|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=JFgelrgGSIMC&pg=PA138 138–39]}}

====Criticism==== McKenna's "stoned ape" theory has not received attention from the scientific community and has been criticized for a relative lack of citation to any of the paleoanthropological evidence informing our understanding of human origins. His ideas regarding psilocybin and visual acuity have been criticized as misrepresentations of Fischer et al.'s findings, who published studies of visual perception parameters other than acuity. Criticism has also noted a separate study on psilocybin-induced transformation of visual space, wherein Fischer et al. stated that psilocybin "may not be conducive to the survival of the organism". There is a lack of scientific evidence that psilocybin increases sexual arousal, and even if it does, it would not necessarily entail an evolutionary advantage.<ref name=AkersApes /> Others have pointed to civilizations such as the Aztecs, who used psychedelic mushrooms (at least among the Priestly class), that did not reflect McKenna's model of how psychedelic-using cultures would behave, for example, by carrying out human sacrifice.<ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /> There are also examples of Amazonian tribes such as the Jivaro and the Yanomami who use ayahuasca ceremoniously and who are known to engage in violent behaviour. This, it has been argued, indicates the use of psychedelic plants does not necessarily suppress the ego and create harmonious societies.<ref name=NobleSavage />

===Archaic revival=== One of the main themes running through McKenna's work, and the title of his second book, was the idea that Western civilization was undergoing what he called an "archaic revival".<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=shroom /><ref>{{cite book |title= Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures |last= Hayes |first= Charles |chapter=Introduction: The Psychedelic [in] Society: A Brief Cultural History of Tripping |page=14 |year= 2000 |publisher= Penguin |isbn= 978-1-101-15719-0}}</ref>

His hypothesis was that Western society has become "sick" and is undergoing a "healing process": In the same way that the human body begins to produce antibodies when it feels itself to be sick, humanity as a collective whole (in the Jungian sense) was creating "strategies for overcoming the condition of disease" and trying to cure itself, by what he termed as "a reversion to archaic values". McKenna pointed to phenomena including surrealism, abstract expressionism, body piercing and tattooing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, rock and roll and catastrophe theory, amongst others, as his evidence that this process was underway.<ref>{{cite AV media |last= McKenna |first= Terence |type= lecture |chapter= 181-McKennaErosEschatonQA |title= Psychedelia: Psychedelic Salon ALL Episodes |date= 1994 |access-date= 2014-04-11| format= MP3 |time= 49:10 |editor-last= Hagerty |editor-first= Lorenzo |url= https://archive.org/details/PsychedelicSalon-all-}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title= The Importance of Human Beings (a.k.a Eros and the Eschaton) |first= Terence |last= McKenna |url= http://www.matrixmasters.net/podcasts/TRANSCRIPTS/TMcK-ImportanceHumanBeings.html |website= matrixmasters.net |access-date= November 29, 2013 |archive-date= August 6, 2013 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130806081121/http://www.matrixmasters.net/podcasts/TRANSCRIPTS/TMcK-ImportanceHumanBeings.html |url-status= dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite AV media |author1= Spacetime Continuum |author-link1= Jonah Sharp |last2= McKenna |first2= Terence |last3= Kent |first3= Stephen |author-link3= Stephen Kent (musician) |others= Visuals by Rose-X Media House |year= 2003 |orig-year= 1993 |title= Alien Dreamtime |url= http://deoxy.org/t_adt.htm#arc |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/19970706120819/http://www.deoxy.org/t_adt.htm#arc |url-status= usurped |archive-date= 1997-07-06 |access-date= 2014-02-01 |format= DVD, CD and MP3 |time= 3:08 |chapter= Archaic Revival |at= Track 1 |publisher= Magic Carpet Media: Astralwerks |oclc= 80061092}}</ref> This idea is linked to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of human evolution, with him viewing the "archaic revival" as an impulse to return to the symbiotic and blissful relationship he believed humanity once had with the psilocybin mushroom.<ref name=shroom />

In differentiating his idea from the "New Age", a term that he felt trivialized the significance of the next phase in human evolution, McKenna stated that: "The New Age is essentially humanistic psychology '80s-style, with the addition of neo-shamanism, channeling, crystal and herbal healing. The archaic revival is a much larger, more global phenomenon that assumes that we are recovering the social forms of the late neolithic, and reaches far back in the 20th century to Freud, to surrealism, to abstract expressionism, even to a phenomenon like National Socialism which is a negative force. But the stress on ritual, on organized activity, on race/ancestor-consciousness – these are themes that have been worked out throughout the entire 20th century, and the archaic revival is an expression of that."<ref name=Mavericks />{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|pp=204–17}}

===Novelty theory and Timewave Zero=== {{redirect|Timewave|the episode of ''Red Dwarf''|Timewave (Red Dwarf)}} Novelty theory is a pseudoscientific idea{{r|bruce}}{{r|normark}} that purports to predict the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time, proposing that time is not a constant but has various qualities tending toward either "habit" or "novelty".<ref name=Jenkins /> Habit, in this context, can be thought of as entropic, repetitious, or conservative; and novelty as creative, disjunctive, or progressive phenomena.<ref name=ScientificAHorgan /> McKenna's idea was that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty and that as novelty increases, so does complexity. With each level of complexity achieved becoming the platform for a further ascent into complexity.<ref name=ScientificAHorgan />

[[File:King Wen (I Ching).png|thumb| The 64 hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the ''I Ching'']]

The basis of the theory was conceived in the mid-1970s after McKenna's experiences with psilocybin mushrooms at La Chorrera in the Amazon led him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the ''I Ching''.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name=Wired />

In Asian Taoist philosophy, opposing phenomena are represented by the yin and yang. Both are always present in everything, yet the amount of influence of each varies over time. The individual lines of the ''I Ching'' are made up of both Yin (broken lines) and Yang (solid lines).

When examining the King Wen sequence of 64 hexagrams, McKenna noticed a pattern. He analysed the "degree of difference" between the hexagrams in each successive pair and claimed he found a statistical anomaly, which he believed suggested that the King Wen sequence was intentionally constructed,<ref name=Jenkins /> with the sequence of hexagrams ordered in a highly structured and artificial way, and that this pattern codified the nature of time's flow in the world.<ref name=GyusEOTR/> With the degrees of difference as numerical values, McKenna worked out a mathematical wave form based on the 384 lines of change that make up the 64 hexagrams. He was able to graph the data and this became the ''Novelty Time Wave''.<ref name=Jenkins />

thumb|A screenshot of the ''Timewave Zero'' software (written by Peter J. Meyer) showing the timewave for the 25 years preceding a zero date of December 21, 2012

Peter J. Meyer (Peter Johann Gustav Meyer), in collaboration with McKenna, studied and developed novelty theory, working out a mathematical formula and developing the ''Timewave Zero'' software (the original version of which was completed by July 1987),<ref>United States Copyright Office [http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=TXu000288739&Search_Code=REGS&PID=On67hJJKiUHbTI8fcg4Vui7_w&SEQ=20160922183840&CNT=25&HIST=1 Title=Timewave zero. Copyright Number: TXu000288739 Date: 1987]</ref> enabling them to graph and explore its dynamics on a computer.<ref name="Jenkins">{{cite book |last= Jenkins |first= John Major |author-link= John Major Jenkins |title= The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History |chapter= Early 2012 Books McKenna and Waters |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=M4Z5xOx1INcC&pg=PT76 |publisher= Penguin |year= 2009 |isbn= 978-1-101-14882-2}}</ref><ref name=Dery21C /> The graph was fractal: It exhibited a pattern in which a given small section of the wave was found to be identical in form to a larger section of the wave.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Jenkins /> McKenna called this fractal modeling of time "temporal resonance", proposing it implied that larger intervals, occurring long ago, contained the same amount of information as shorter, more recent, intervals.<ref name=Jenkins />{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|pp=104–13}} He suggested the up-and-down oscillation of the wave shows an ongoing wavering between habit and novelty respectively. With each successive iteration trending, at an increasing level, towards infinite novelty. So according to novelty theory, the pattern of time itself is speeding up, with a requirement of the theory being that infinite novelty will be reached on a specific date.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Jenkins />

McKenna believed that events in history could be identified that would help him locate the time wave end date<ref name=Jenkins /> and attempted to find the best-fit of the graph to the data field of human history.<ref name=Dery21C /> The last harmonic of the wave has a duration of 67.29 years.<ref name="Dynamics of Hyperspace" /> Population growth, peak oil, and pollution statistics were some of the factors that pointed him to an early twenty-first century end date and when looking for a particularly novel event in human history as a signal that the final phase had begun McKenna picked the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name="Dynamics of Hyperspace">{{cite web |first1= Ralph |last1= Abraham |author1-link= Ralph Abraham (mathematician)|first2= Terence |last2= McKenna |url= http://www.ralph-abraham.org/talks/transcripts/hyperspace.html |title= Dynamics of Hyperspace |location=Santa Cruz, CA |date= June 1983 |website= ralph-abraham.org |access-date= 2009-10-14}}</ref> This adjusted his graph to reach zero in mid-November 2012. When he later discovered that the end of the 13th baktun in the Maya calendar had been correlated by Western Maya scholars as December 21, 2012,{{efn|Most Mayanist scholars, such as Mark Van Stone and Anthony Aveni, adhere to the "GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation" with the Long Count, which places the start date at 11 August 3114 BC and the end date of b'ak'tun 13 at December 21, 2012.<ref>{{cite web |title= Who's Who in the Classic Maya World |publisher= Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies |url= http://research.famsi.org/whos_who/christian_dates.htm |author-link= Peter Mathews (archaeologist) |first= Peter |last= Matthews |year= 2005 |access-date= 2011-04-13}}</ref> This date was also the overwhelming preference of those who believed in 2012 eschatology, arguably, Van Stone suggests, because it was a solstice, and was thus astrologically significant. Some Mayanist scholars, such as Michael D. Coe, Linda Schele and Marc Zender, adhere to the "Lounsbury/GMT+2" correlation, which sets the start date at August 13 and the end date at December 23. Which of these is a better correlation remained unsettled.<ref>{{Cite web |title= Questions and comments |first= Mark |last= Van Stone |publisher= Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies |website= famsi.org |url= http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/comments.html |access-date= 2010-09-06}}</ref> Coe's initial date was "24 December 2011." He revised it to "11 January AD 2013" in the 1980 2nd edition of his book,<ref>{{cite book |last= Coe |first= Michael D. |year= 1980 |title= The Maya |series= Ancient Peoples and Places |volume= 10 |edition= 2nd |location= London |publisher= Thames and Hudson |page= 151 }}</ref> not settling on December 23, 2012 until the 1984 3rd edition.<ref>{{cite book |last= Coe |first= Michael D. |year= 1984 |title= The Maya |series= Ancient Peoples and Places |edition= 3rd |location= London |publisher= Thames and Hudson }}</ref> The correlation of b'ak'tun 13 as December 21, 2012 first appeared in Table B.2 of Robert J. Sharer's 1983 revision of the 4th edition of Sylvanus Morley's book ''The Ancient Maya''.<ref>{{cite book |last= Morley |first= Sylvanus |year= 1983 |title= The Ancient Maya |url= https://archive.org/details/ancientmaya00morl_0 |url-access= registration |edition= 4th |location= Palo Alto, CA |publisher= Stanford University Press |page= [https://archive.org/details/ancientmaya00morl_0/page/603 603], Table B2|isbn= 9780804711371 }}</ref>}} he adopted their end date instead.<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name="skepsis"/>{{efn|The 1975 first edition of McKenna's ''The Invisible Landscape'' refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed December 21, 2012 throughout, the date arrived at by the Mayanist researcher Robert J. Sharer.<ref name="skepsis"/>}}

McKenna saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a teleological attractor at the end of time,<ref name=Jenkins /> which increases interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity. He also frequently referred to this as "the transcendental object at the end of time."<ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=Dery21C /> When describing this model of the universe he stated that: "The universe is not being pushed from behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal that is as inevitable as a marble reaching the bottom of a bowl when you release it up near the rim. If you do that, you know the marble will roll down the side of the bowl, down, down, down – until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest energy state, which is the bottom of the bowl. That's precisely my model of human history. I'm suggesting that the universe is pulled toward a complex attractor that exists ahead of us in time, and that our ever-accelerating speed through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor."<ref>{{cite news |last= McKenna |first= Terence |title= Approaching Timewave Zero |url= http://www.fractal-timewave.com/articles/approaching_twz.htm |magazine= Magical Blend |issue= 44 |date= 1994|access-date= 15 June 2015}}{{verify source|type=reprint|date=February 2014}}{{copyvio link}}</ref> Therefore, according to McKenna's final interpretation of the data and positioning of the graph, on December 21, 2012, we would have been in the unique position in time where maximum novelty would be experienced.<ref name=Mavericks /><ref name=Jenkins /><ref name=Wired /> An event he described as a "concrescence",<ref name=Pinchbeck2003pp232-5 /> a "tightening 'gyre'" with everything flowing together. Speculating that "when the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection...It will be the entry of our species into 'hyperspace', but it will appear to be the end of physical laws, accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination."{{sfn|McKenna|1992a|p=101}}

Novelty theory is considered to be pseudoscience.{{r|bruce}}{{r|normark}} Among the criticisms are the use of numerology to derive dates of important events in world history,{{r|normark}} the arbitrary rather than calculated end date of the time wave<ref name=shroom /> and the apparent adjustment of the eschaton from November 2012 to December 2012 in order to coincide with the Maya calendar. Other purported dates do not fit the actual time frames: the date claimed for the emergence of ''Homo sapiens'' is inaccurate by 70,000 years, and the existence of the ancient Sumer and Egyptian civilisations contradict the date he gave for the beginning of "historical time". Some projected dates have been criticized for having seemingly arbitrary labels, such as the "height of the age of mammals"{{r|normark}} and McKenna's analysis of historical events has been criticised for having a eurocentric and cultural bias.<ref name=EsquireJacobson /><ref name=shroom />

====The Watkins Objection==== The British mathematician Matthew Watkins of Exeter University conducted a mathematical analysis of the ''Time Wave'', and claimed there were mathematical flaws in its construction.<ref name=shroom />

==Critical reception== Judy Corman, vice president of the Phoenix House of New York, attacked McKenna for popularizing "dangerous substances". In a 1993 letter to ''The New York Times'', he wrote that: "surely the fact that Terence McKenna says that the psilocybin mushroom 'is the megaphone used by an alien, intergalactic Other to communicate with mankind' is enough for us to wonder if taking LSD has done something to his mental faculties."<ref name="NYT Obit"/> The same year, in his ''True Hallucinations'' review for ''The New York Times'', Peter Conrad wrote: "I suffered hallucinatory agonies of my own while reading his shrilly ecstatic prose".<ref name="NYT Obit"/>

Reviewing ''Food of the Gods'', Richard Evans Schultes wrote in ''American Scientist'' that the book was "a masterpiece of research and writing" and that it "should be read by every specialist working in the multifarious fields involved with the use of psychoactive drugs". Concluding that, "[i]t is, without question, destined to play a major role in our future considerations of the role of the ancient use of psychoactive drugs, the historical shaping of our modern concerns about drugs and perhaps about man's desire for escape from reality with drugs."<ref name="American scientist food of the gods review">{{cite news |last= Schultes |first= Richard Evans |author-link= Richard Evans Schultes |title= Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge by Terence McKenna |department= Life Sciences |type= Book review |magazine= American Scientist |year= 1993 |volume= 81 |issue= 5 |pages= 489–90 |jstor= 29775027}}</ref>

In 1994, Tom Hodgkinson wrote for ''The New Statesman and Society'', that "to write him off as a crazy hippie is a rather lazy approach to a man not only full of fascinating ideas but also blessed with a sense of humor and self-parody".<ref name="NYT Obit"/>

In a 1992 issue of ''Esquire'' magazine, Mark Jacobson wrote of ''True Hallucinations'' that, "it would be hard to find a drug narrative more compellingly perched on a baroquely romantic limb than this passionate Tom-and-Huck-ride-great-mother-river-saga of brotherly bonding," adding "put simply, Terence is a hoot!"<ref name=EsquireJacobson />

''Wired'' called him a "charismatic talking head" who was "brainy, eloquent, and hilarious",<ref name=Wired/> and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead also said that he was "the only person who has made a serious effort to objectify the psychedelic experience".<ref name= "NYT Obit"/>

==Publications== ===Books=== * {{cite book |year= 1975 |title= The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching |last1= McKenna |first1= Terence |last2= McKenna |first2= Dennis |author2-link= Dennis McKenna|location= New York |publisher= Seabury |isbn= 978-0-8164-9249-7}} * {{cite book |year= 1976 |title= Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide |last1= McKenna |first1= Terence |last2= McKenna |first2= Dennis |author2-link= Dennis McKenna|others= Under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric |publisher= And/Or Press |isbn= 978-0-915904-13-6 |location= Berkeley, CA}} * {{cite book |year= 1991 |last= McKenna |first= Terence |title= The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History |publisher= Harper San Francisco |location= San Francisco |isbn= 978-0-06-250613-9 |url= https://archive.org/details/archaicrevivalsp00mcke}} * {{cite book |year= 1992a |title= Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge – A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution |last= McKenna |first= Terence |location= New York |publisher= Bantam |isbn= 978-0-553-07868-8}} * {{cite book |year= 1992b |title= Synesthesia |others= Illustrated by Ely, Timothy C. |last= McKenna |first= Terence |publisher= Granary Books |location= New York |oclc= 30473682}} * {{cite book |year= 1992 |title= Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World |first1= Rupert |last1= Sheldrake |author1-link= Rupert Sheldrake |last2= McKenna |first2= Terence |first3= Ralph H. |last3= Abraham |author3-link= Ralph Abraham (mathematician) |others= Forward by Houston, Jean |publisher= Bear & Company |isbn= 978-0-939680-97-9}} * {{cite book |year= 1993 |title= True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise |publisher= Harper San Francisco |location= San Francisco |last= McKenna |first= Terence |isbn= 978-0-06-250545-3 |url= https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780062505453}} * {{cite book |year= 1998 |title= The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit |first1= Rupert |last1= Sheldrake |author1-link= Rupert Sheldrake |last2= McKenna |first2= Terence |first3= Ralph H. |last3= Abraham |author3-link= Ralph Abraham (mathematician) |publisher= Monkfish Book Publishing |isbn= 978-0-9749359-7-3}}

===Spoken word=== * ''History Ends in Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival'', 6 audiocassette set, Mystic Fire audio, 1993, {{ISBN|978-1-56176-907-0}} (recorded at the Esalen Institute, 1989) * ''TechnoPagans at the End of History'' (transcription of rap with Mark Pesce from 1998) * ''Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines'' (1999) (DVD) HPX/SurrealStudio * ''Conversations on the Edge of Magic'' (1994) (CD & Cassette) ACE * ''Rap-Dancing into the Third Millennium'' (1994) (Cassette) (Re-issued on CD as ''The Quintessential Hallucinogen'') ACE * ''Packing For the Long Strange Trip'' (1994) (Audio Cassette) ACE * ''Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics'' (1994) (Cassette) Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc. * ''The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge'' (1992) (Cassette) Sounds True * ''The Psychedelic Society'' (DVD & Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''True Hallucinations Workshop'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Vertigo at History's Edge: Who Are We? Where Have We Come From? Where Are We Going?'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Ethnobotany and Shamanism'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Shamanism, Symbiosis and Psychedelics Workshop'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Shamanology'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Shamanology of the Amazon (w/ Nicole Maxwell)'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Beyond Psychology'' (1983) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Understanding & the Imagination in the Light of Nature Parts 1 & 2'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Ethnobotany (a complete course given at The California Institute of Integral Studies)'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Non-ordinary States of Reality Through Vision Plants'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Mind & Time, Spirit & Matter: The Complete Weekend in Santa Fe'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Forms and Mysteries: Morphogenetic Fields and Psychedelic Experiences (w/ Rupert Sheldrake)'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''UFO: The Inside Outsider'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''A Calendar for The Goddess'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''A Magical Journey: Including Hallucinogens and Culture, Time and The I Ching, and The Human Future'' (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound Photosynthesis * ''Aliens and Archetypes'' (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound Photosynthesis * ''Angels, Aliens and Archetypes 1987 Symposium: Shamanic Approaches to the UFO, and Fairmont Banquet Talk'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Botanical Dimensions'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Conference on Botanical Intelligence (w/ Joan Halifax, Andy Weil, & Dennis McKenna)'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Coping With Gaia's Midwife Crisis'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Dreaming Awake at the End of Time'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Evolving Times'' (DVD, CD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Food of the Gods'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Food of the Gods 2: Drugs, Plants and Destiny'' (Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Hallucinogens in Shamanism & Anthropology at Bridge Psychedelic Conf.1991 (w/ Ralph Metzner, Marlene Dobkin De Rios, Allison Kennedy & Thomas Pinkson)'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Finale – Bridge Psychedelic Conf.1991'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Man and Woman at the End of History (w/ Riane Eisler)'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Plants, Consciousness, and Transformation'' (1995) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Metamorphosis (w/ Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham)'' (1995) (Video Cassette) Mystic Fire/Sound Photosynthesis * ''Nature is the Center of the Mandala'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Opening the Doors of Creativity'' (1990) (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Places I Have Been'' (CD & Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Plants, Visions and History Lecture'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Psychedelics Before and After History'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Sacred Plants As Guides: New Dimensions of the Soul (at the Jung Society Clairemont, California)'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Seeking the Stone'' (Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Shamanism: Before and Beyond History – A Weekend at Ojai (w/ Ralph Metzner)'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Shedding the Monkey'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''State of the Stone '95'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Introductory Lecture: The Philosophical Implications of Psychobotony: Past, Present and Future (at CIIS)'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Workshop: Psychedelics Before and After History (at CIIS)'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Grammar of Ecstasy – the World Within the Word'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Light at the End of History'' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The State of the Stone Address: Having Archaic and Eating it Too'' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''The Taxonomy of Illusion (at UC Santa Cruz)'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''This World ...and Its Double'' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis * ''Trialogues at the Edge of the Millennium (w/ Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham) (at UC Santa Cruz)'' (1998) (Video Cassette) Trialogue Press

===Discography=== * ''Re : Evolution'' with The Shamen (1992) * ''Dream Matrix Telemetry'' with Zuvuya (1993) * ''Alien Dreamtime'' with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (2003) * "Reclaim Your Mind" with Mark Pontius (2020)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://awakeningod.fireside.fm/3|title=Literally What do You Want?}}</ref>

===Filmography=== {{Div col|colwidth=20em}} * ''Experiment at Petaluma'' (1990) * ''Prague Gnosis: Terence McKenna Dialogues'' (1992) * ''The Hemp Revolution'' (1995) * ''Terence McKenna: The Last Word'' (1999) * ''Shamans of the Amazon'' (2001) * ''Alien Dreamtime'' (2003) * ''2012: The Odyssey'' (2007) * ''The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work'' (2008) * ''Manifesting the Mind'' (2009) * ''Cognition Factor'' (2009) * ''DMT: The Spirit Molecule'' (2010) * ''2012: Time for Change'' (2010) * ''The Terence McKenna OmniBus'' (2012) * ''The Transcendental Object at the End of Time'' (2014) * ''Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations'' (2016) {{Div col end}}

==See also== {{Div col|colwidth=30em}} * Benny Shanon * David E. Nichols * Jeremy Narby * Jonathan Ott * Luis Eduardo Luna * Omega Point * Rick Strassman * Christian Rätsch {{Div col end}}

==Notes== {{notelist}}

==References==

===Citations=== {{Reflist|colwidth=30em|refs=

<ref name="skepsis">{{cite web|first= Sacha |last= Defesche |title= 'The 2012 Phenomenon': A historical and typological approach to a modern apocalyptic mythology |orig-year= January–August 2007 |date= June 17, 2008 |publisher= Skepsis |url= http://skepsis.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=131&sok=1 |access-date= 2011-04-29 |type= MA Thesis, Mysticism and Western Esotericism, University of Amsterdam}}</ref>

<ref name=Telegraph8thingsMush>{{cite web|last1=Mulvihill|first1=Tom|title=Eight things you didn't know about magic mushrooms|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/11289904/Eight-things-you-didnt-know-about-magic-mushrooms.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/11289904/Eight-things-you-didnt-know-about-magic-mushrooms.html |archive-date=January 12, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|website= The Telegraph|publisher=Telegraph Media Group Limited|access-date=14 June 2015}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

<ref name="Krupp2009">{{cite news |last= Krupp |first= E.C. |author-link= Ed Krupp |date= November 2009 |title= The great 2012 scare |magazine= Sky & Telescope |pages= 22–26 [25] |url= http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/Doomsday2012.pdf |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160418162238/http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/Doomsday2012.pdf |archive-date= April 18, 2016 |df= mdy-all}}</ref>

<ref name=bruce>{{cite book |last= Bruce |first= Alexandra |author-link= Alexandra Bruce (filmmaker) |year= 2009 |title= 2012: Science Or Superstition (The Definitive Guide to the Doomsday Phenomenon) |publisher= Red Wheel Weiser |series= Disinformation Movie & Book Guides |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=N-rVUCO4YyYC&pg=PA261 261] |isbn= 978-1-934708-51-4}}</ref>

<ref name=normark>{{cite web |title= 2012: Prophet of nonsense #8: Terence McKenna – Novelty theory and timewave zero |last= Normark |first= Johan |url= http://haecceities.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/2012-prophet-of-nonsense-8-terence-mckenna%E2%80%93-novelty-theory-and-timewave-zero/ |work= Archaeological Haecceities |date= June 16, 2009 |type= blog}}</ref>

<ref name=invisible>{{cite web |title= The Invisible Landscape |type= lecture |first= Terence |last= McKenna |url= http://www.futurehi.net/media/McKenna_The_Invisible_Landscape_1-A.mp3 |website= futurehi.net |publisher= Future Hi |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20051016224845/http://www.futurehi.net/media/McKenna_The_Invisible_Landscape_1-A.mp3 |archive-date= October 16, 2005}}{{Verify source|date=January 2014}}{{Copyvio link}}</ref>

<ref name=shroom>{{cite book|last=Letcher|first=Andy|title=Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom|date=2007|publisher=Harper Perennial|isbn=978-0-06-082829-5|pages=253–74|chapter=14.The Elf-Clowns of Hyperspace}}</ref>

<ref name=GyusEOTR>{{cite web|author1=Gyus|title=The End of the River: A critical view of Linear Apocalyptic Thought, and how Linearity makes a sneak appearance in Timewave Theory's fractal view of Time...|url=http://dreamflesh.com/essays/endofriver/|website= dreamflesh|publisher=The Unlimited Dream Company|access-date=19 July 2015}}</ref>

<ref name=AkersApes>{{cite web|last1=Akers|first1=Brian P.|title=Concerning Terence McKenna's 'Stoned Apes'|url=http://realitysandwich.com/89329/terence_mckennas_stoned_apes/|website=Reality Sandwich|access-date=12 August 2015|date=March 28, 2011}}</ref>

}}

===Books=== * {{cite book | last1=McKenna | first1=Dennis J. | last2=Luna | first2=Luis Eduardo | title=The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna | year=2012 | publisher = North Star Press of St. Cloud | isbn=9780878396368}} * {{cite book | last=St John | first=Graham | title=Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna | publisher=MIT Press | year=2025 | isbn=9780262382076}}

==External links== {{Wikiquote}} {{Commons category}} * {{IMDb name|1631555}} * [http://www.botanicaldimensions.org/ Botanical Dimensions] * {{Skeptoid | id= 4734| number= 734| title= The Stoned Ape Theory| date= June 30, 2020| access-date=}} * Erowid's [https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/mckenna_terence/mckenna_terence.shtml Terence McKenna Vault] * {{Official website|http://www.levity.com/eschaton/}} * [https://psychedelicsalon.com/category/people/terence-mckenna/ Psychedelic Salon], Over 100 podcasts of Terence McKenna lectures * [https://www.vice.com/series/tao-of-terence Tao of Terence] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160811101711/http://www.vice.com/series/tao-of-terence |date=August 11, 2016 }}, a 12-part series of essays on McKenna by Tao Lin at ''Vice'' * [http://www.terencemckenna.com/tmbib/index.php Terence McKenna Bibliography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150707025604/http://www.terencemckenna.com/tmbib/index.php |date=July 7, 2015 }}, list of references to books, articles, audio, video, interviews and translations by and about Terence McKenna * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG5gFtZ3U8&t=3293s&ab_channel=WePlantsAreHappyPlants/ ''Terrence McKenna's True Hallucinations''] Documentary by Peter Bergmann * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAlaRdrcQcY ''The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time''] Documentary by Peter Bergmann

Category:1946 births Category:2000 deaths Category:20th-century alchemists Category:20th-century American writers Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century mystics Category:American alchemists Category:American book and manuscript collectors Category:American cannabis activists Category:American critics of religions Category:American religious skeptics Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Antelope Valley High School alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Counterculture festivals activists Category:Dimethyltryptamine Category:American ethnobotanists Category:I Ching Category:Numerologists Category:People from Occidental, California Category:People from Paonia, Colorado Category:American psychedelic drug advocates Category:Psychedelic drug researchers Category:Public orators Category:Psychonautics researchers Category:Psychoactive fungi in culture Category:Deaths from brain cancer in California Category:Deaths from glioblastoma