Terence McKenna - Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my friends and colleagues for their patience and encouragement in the writing of this book, especially Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Metzner, Dennis McKenna, Chris Harrison, Neil Hassall, Dan Levy, Ernest Waugh, Richard Bird, Roy and Diane Tuckman, Faustin Bray and Brian Wallace, and Marion and Allan Hunt-Badiner. Thanks also to correspondents Dr. Elizabeth Judd and Marc Lamoreaux who passed along useful information. Each made their own unique contribution to my thinking, though my conclusions are mine to defend.

Archivist and friend Michael Horowitz made a deep contribution to this work. He read and criticized the manuscript carefully and made available the pictorial archives of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, thus tremendously enriching the visual side of my argument. Thank you, Michael.

Special appreciation is offered to Michael and Dulce Murphy, Steve and Anita Donovan, Nancy Lunney, Paul Herbert, Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, and all of Esalen Institute for providing me with an opportunity to be the Esalen Scholar in Residence in June of 1989 and 1990. Parts of this book were written during those residencies. Thanks also to Lew and Jill Carlino and Robert Chartoff, patient friends who listened to parts of this book without, perhaps, realizing it.

My partner Kat, Kathleen Harrison McKenna, has long shared my passion for the psychedelic ocean and the ideas that swim there. In our voyages to the Amazon and elsewhere she has been the best possible companion, colleague, and muse.

Kat and my two children, Finn and Klea, supported me through writing this book, immune to my many moods and prolonged periods of writer's hibernation. To them I offer my deepest love and appreciation. Thanks for hanging in there, guys.

Very special thanks to Leslie Meredith, my editor at Bantam Books, and to her editorial assistant, Claudine Murphy. Their unflagging belief in the importance of these ideas was an inspiration to clarify and extend my thinking into new areas. Thanks also to my agent, John Brockman, who led me through the special initiation that only the Reality Club can give.

Lastly I want to acknowledge my deep debt to the psychedelic community, the hundreds of people that it has been my privilege to come into contact with during a lifetime spent in the pursuit of even a glimpse of the peacock angel. It is the shamans among us, both ancient and modern, those whose eyes have gazed on sights previously unseen by anyone, it is they who showed the way and who were my inspiration.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: A MANIFESTO FOR

NEW THOUGHT ABOUT DRUGS xiii

An Agonizing Reappraisal An Archaic Revival A New

Manifesto The Dominator Inheritance

I. PARADISE 1

1. SHAMANISM: SETTING THE STAGE 3

Shamanism and Ordinary Religion The Techniques of

Ecstasy A World Made of Language Higher Dimensional

Reality A Shamanic Meme Shamanism and the Lost

Archaic World

2. THE MAGIC IN FOOD 14

A Shaggy Primate Story You Are What You Eat

Symbiosis A New View of Human Evolution The Real

Missing Link Three Big Steps for the Human Race Steering

Clear of Lamarck Acquired Tastes

3. THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 31

Hallucinogens as the Real Missing Link Seeking the Tree of Knowledge Weeding Out the Candidates The Ur Plant

What Are Plant Hallucinogens? - The Transcendent Other

4. PLANTS AND PRIMATES: POSTCARDS

FROM THE STONED AGE 43

Human Uniqueness Human Cognition Transformations of

Monkeys The Prehistoric Emergence of Human Imagination

Patterns and Understanding Catalyzing Consciousness The

Flesh Made Word Women and Language

5. HABIT AS CULTURE AND RELIGION 57

Ecstasy Shamanism as Social Catalyst Monotheism

Pathological Monotheism Archaic Sexuality Ibogame

Among the Fang Contrasts in Sexual Politics

6. THE HIGH PLAINS OF EDEN 69

The Tassili Plateau The Round Head Civilization Paradise

Found? A Missing Link Culture African Genesis Qatal

Huyuk The Crucial Difference The Vegetable Mind

Gaian Holism

II. PARADISE LOST 95

7. SEARCHING FOR SOMA: THE GOLDEN

VEDIC ENIGMA 97

Contacting the Mind Behind Nature Soma-What Is It?

Haoma and Zoroaster Haoma and Harmaline The Wassons'

Amanita Theory Objections to Fly Agaric Wasson: His

Contradictions and Other Fungal Candidates for Soma

Peganum Harmala as Soma Soma as Male Moon

God Soma and Cattle Wasson's Doubts A More Plausible

Argument The Indo-Europeans

8. TWILIGHT IN EDEN: MINOAN CRETE

AND THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERY 121

Abandonment of the Mystery The Fall of Qatal Hiiyuk and

the Age of Kingship Minoan Mushroom Fantasies The

Myth of Glaukos Honey and Opium The Dionysus

Connection The Mystery at Eleusis A Psychedelic

Mystery? The Ergotized Beer Theory Graves's Psilocybin

Theory A Historical Watershed

9. ALCOHOL AND THE ALCHEMY OF SPIRIT 138

Nostalgia for Paradise Alcohol and Honey Wine and

Woman Natural and Synthetic Drugs Alchemy and

Alcohol Alcohol as Scourge Alcohol and the Feminine

Sexual Stereotypes and Alcohol

10. THE BALLAD OF THE DREAMING

WEAVERS: CANNABIS AND CULTURE 150

Hashish The Scythians India and China Cannabis as a

Cultural Style Classical Cannabis Cannabis and the

Language of Story Orientomania and Cannabis in Europe

Cannabis and Nineteenth-Century America Evolving Drug

Attitudes Fitz Hugh Ludlow Cannabis in the Twentieth

Century

III. HELL 167

11. COMPLACENCIES OF THE PEIGNOIR:

SUGAR, COFFEE, TEA, AND CHOCOLATE 169

Broadening Our Taste Life without Spice Enter Sugar

Sugar as Addiction Sugar and Slavery Sugar and the

Dominator Style The Drugs of Gentility Coffee and Tea:

New Alternatives to Alcohol Tea Brews a Revolution

Exploitation Cycles Coffee Contra Coffee Chocolate

12. SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES: OPIUM

AND TOBACCO 188

Paradoxical Attitudes Smoking Introduced to Europe The

Ancient Lure of Opium Alchemical Opium Tobacco

Redux Shamanic Tobaccos Tobacco as Quack Medicine

Contra Tobacco Tobacco Triumphant The Opium

Wars Opium and Cultural Style: De Quincey The

Beginning of Psychopharmacology

13. SYNTHETICS: HEROIN, COCAINE,

AND TELEVISION 207

Hard Narcotics Cocaine: The Horror of the Whiteness Pro

Cocaine Modern Antidrug Hysteria Drugs and

Governments Drugs and International Intelligence

Electronic Drugs The Hidden Persuader

IV. PARADISE REGAINED? 221

14. A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHEDELICS 223

The New World Hallucinogens Ayahuasca The Father of

Psychopharmacology The Pleasures of Mescaline A Modern

Renaissance Whispers of a New World Mushroom The

Invention of LSD - Pandora's Box Flung Open - LSD and the Psychedelic Sixties Richard Schultes and the Plant Hallucinogens Leary at Harvard Psilocybin: Psychedelics in the Seventies Psychedelic Implications Public Awareness of the Problem

15. ANTICIPATING THE ARCHAIC PARADISE 246

Real World Options The Case for Hallucinogenic

Tryptamines How Does It Feel? Facing the Answer

Consider the Octopus Art and the Revolution

Consciousness Expansion The Drug War Hyperspace

and Human Freedom What Is New Here The DMT

Experience Hyperspace and the Law Meetings with a

Remarkable Overmind Recovering Our Origins The

Fundamentalist Contribution The Legalization Issue

A Modest Proposal

EPILOGUE: LOOKING OUTWARD AND INWARD TO A SEA OF STARS 271 If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When? Finding the Way Out From the Grasslands to the Starship We Await Ourselves within the Vision

INTRODUCTION:

A MANIFESTO FOR NEW THOUGHT ABOUT DRUGS

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