Psychedelic Salon 239
Terence McKenna Shamanism, Alchemy, and the 20th Century (1996)
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna ... recorded in 1996, however, it is current enough to have been given just last night ... maybe it was :-) .]
âAnd these angel-dealing, horoscope-casting, alchemy-pursuing visionaries of this Rosicrucian Renaissance became simply objects of historical curiosity, completely incomprehensible to the people who followed them, generation after generation after generation, until, I submit to you, the present. And in the present moment we, like they, inherit a world whose ideologies are exhausted and can only be refreshed from the margins.â
âIn our own time, through integrative sciences like ecology and animal behavior and psychology we have re-understood what was forgotten during the reduction centuries of modern science. Weâve re-understood that the world is one thing, and itâs a living thing. Itâs a thing with an intent and a spirit within it, and this is the key concept [of alchemy].â
âI think the entire message of the psychedelic experience, which is basically the sine qua non of the rebirth of alchemical understanding, the very basis of that understanding is that nature seeks to communicate.â
âShamanism is essentially a living tradition of alchemy that is not seeking the stone but has found the stone.â
âWithin the context of the alchemical vocabulary, the psychedelic experience, as brought to us through plants long in the possession of Aboriginal people, appears to be the identical phenomena [as alchemy].â
âAll of you who have been through high dose psychedelic experiences know that itâs very hard to carry stupid baggage through that keyhole. In fact youâre lucky if you just get your soul and yourselves through and intact.â
âThe psychedelics have brought us back to this alchemical mystery, shorn of any vocabulary for dealing with it, shorn of any real living notion of the spirit.â
âShamanism and alchemy are a seamless enterprise.â
âIf you look around you, the entire global civilization is undergoing some kind of meltdown. The planet itself is now to be seen as a kind of alchemical retort. The prima materia to be transformed are the nuclear stockpiles, the toxic waste dumps, the industrial wastelands, the populations devoid of hope, the populations in threat of infectious and fatal epidemic disease. There is a great deal of prima materia to be worked on at the historical level of the alchemical process.â
âIn the 60â²s, we thought that all that had to happen was that everybody would take LSD and the obvious right things to do would be done. And we expected no opposition to this because its rightness was so obvious. We didnât realize that every righteous crusade in history has marched into the waiting jaws of its oppressors. But the spirit doesnât die.â
âIn the 60â²s then, LSD was not sufficient, even coupled with rock and roll it only brought repression [oppression?]. It was like a failed alchemy. Instead of the dissolving and recrystallizing at a higher and more angelic level thousands of prisons were built, and the entire thing failed. But this spirit is THE spirit, the spirit of life itself, the spirit of novelty itself, and it will not be suppressed for long in any time or place. So now again it comes. ⦠Itâs a spirit of dissent that says we will not serve the values of materialism, the values of the ego, and the values that separate and break down the community. So here it is again.â
âWe are not an army. So our strategy must be stealth. Itâs an alchemical strategy, and what do I mean by stealth? I mean the house of constipated reason must be infiltrated by art, by dreamers, by vision. And what is new is that there are massive technologies available to us, not available in the 60â²s. They were not designed for us. They were not intended for us. It was never ever thought that such power should flow into the hands of freaks such as ourselves. Never-the-less, through the perverse nature of the unfolding of the world, we have such tools. And Iâm referring, as you probably anticipate, to the World Wide Web and the Internet.â
âWell now you can find the others, you donât have to stick a flower in your hair and go to San Francisco. You just go to the Web. Find the others. We all need to create affinity groups which are subsets of the much larger community that weâre part of. And then, using this technology, which was designed to keep track of us, to pick our pockets, and to sell us junk we donât want, use this technology to produce art, massive amounts of subversive art, and ALL art is subversive, Iâm not calling for an ideological agenda. All truth that springs from the individual is subversive, because culture is not your friend.â
âMy brother, years ago, invented this term. He called it extra-environmental. He said, âThis is what we want to be. We donât want to be Americans, or Germans, or English. We want to be extra-environmentalists. Always feel wherever you go that you are a stranger, the outsider, the one looking in. This is the viewpoint that makes all places the same to you.â â
âI think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I donât think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millenniumâ
âThis is what you are, you are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, âWhat is it?â In that moment art can be created. And it is the only form of immortality that I have any certainty of, and itâs available to everyone.â
âA great turning point is in the offing. The world is changing. Itâs changed before, but not for a long time in our lives, not since before our lives. But now itâs changing, and there are many many possibilities.â
âLaunch your meme boldly and see if it will replicate.â
âPart of what is wrong with our society, and hence with ourselves, is that we consume images, we donât produce them. We need to produce, not consume, media.â
âInevitably out of the psychedelic experience emerges not despair, not self-indulgence, but wild-eyed idealism, thatâs the inevitable product of any psychedelically driven social process.â
âIf you take psychedelics and the Internet and music and put all of that together you have the basis for a new community that is wider and deeper than you know. The people who are building the new machines, who are designing the new circuitry, who are writing the new code are ALL freaks. They work for capitalist dogs, of course, because we all do, but the creative thrust of these technologies is being driven by people just like you and me.â
Terence McKenna Shamanism, Alchemy, and the 20th Century (1996)
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna ... recorded in 1996, however, it is current enough to have been given just last night ... maybe it was :-) .]
âAnd these angel-dealing, horoscope-casting, alchemy-pursuing visionaries of this Rosicrucian Renaissance became simply objects of historical curiosity, completely incomprehensible to the people who followed them, generation after generation after generation, until, I submit to you, the present. And in the present moment we, like they, inherit a world whose ideologies are exhausted and can only be refreshed from the margins.â
âIn our own time, through integrative sciences like ecology and animal behavior and psychology we have re-understood what was forgotten during the reduction centuries of modern science. Weâve re-understood that the world is one thing, and itâs a living thing. Itâs a thing with an intent and a spirit within it, and this is the key concept [of alchemy].â
âI think the entire message of the psychedelic experience, which is basically the sine qua non of the rebirth of alchemical understanding, the very basis of that understanding is that nature seeks to communicate.â
âShamanism is essentially a living tradition of alchemy that is not seeking the stone but has found the stone.â
âWithin the context of the alchemical vocabulary, the psychedelic experience, as brought to us through plants long in the possession of Aboriginal people, appears to be the identical phenomena [as alchemy].â
âAll of you who have been through high dose psychedelic experiences know that itâs very hard to carry stupid baggage through that keyhole. In fact youâre lucky if you just get your soul and yourselves through and intact.â
âThe psychedelics have brought us back to this alchemical mystery, shorn of any vocabulary for dealing with it, shorn of any real living notion of the spirit.â
âShamanism and alchemy are a seamless enterprise.â
âIf you look around you, the entire global civilization is undergoing some kind of meltdown. The planet itself is now to be seen as a kind of alchemical retort. The prima materia to be transformed are the nuclear stockpiles, the toxic waste dumps, the industrial wastelands, the populations devoid of hope, the populations in threat of infectious and fatal epidemic disease. There is a great deal of prima materia to be worked on at the historical level of the alchemical process.â
âIn the 60â²s, we thought that all that had to happen was that everybody would take LSD and the obvious right things to do would be done. And we expected no opposition to this because its rightness was so obvious. We didnât realize that every righteous crusade in history has marched into the waiting jaws of its oppressors. But the spirit doesnât die.â
âIn the 60â²s then, LSD was not sufficient, even coupled with rock and roll it only brought repression [oppression?]. It was like a failed alchemy. Instead of the dissolving and recrystallizing at a higher and more angelic level thousands of prisons were built, and the entire thing failed. But this spirit is THE spirit, the spirit of life itself, the spirit of novelty itself, and it will not be suppressed for long in any time or place. So now again it comes. ⦠Itâs a spirit of dissent that says we will not serve the values of materialism, the values of the ego, and the values that separate and break down the community. So here it is again.â
âWe are not an army. So our strategy must be stealth. Itâs an alchemical strategy, and what do I mean by stealth? I mean the house of constipated reason must be infiltrated by art, by dreamers, by vision. And what is new is that there are massive technologies available to us, not available in the 60â²s. They were not designed for us. They were not intended for us. It was never ever thought that such power should flow into the hands of freaks such as ourselves. Never-the-less, through the perverse nature of the unfolding of the world, we have such tools. And Iâm referring, as you probably anticipate, to the World Wide Web and the Internet.â
âWell now you can find the others, you donât have to stick a flower in your hair and go to San Francisco. You just go to the Web. Find the others. We all need to create affinity groups which are subsets of the much larger community that weâre part of. And then, using this technology, which was designed to keep track of us, to pick our pockets, and to sell us junk we donât want, use this technology to produce art, massive amounts of subversive art, and ALL art is subversive, Iâm not calling for an ideological agenda. All truth that springs from the individual is subversive, because culture is not your friend.â
âMy brother, years ago, invented this term. He called it extra-environmental. He said, âThis is what we want to be. We donât want to be Americans, or Germans, or English. We want to be extra-environmentalists. Always feel wherever you go that you are a stranger, the outsider, the one looking in. This is the viewpoint that makes all places the same to you.â â
âI think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I donât think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millenniumâ
âThis is what you are, you are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, âWhat is it?â In that moment art can be created. And it is the only form of immortality that I have any certainty of, and itâs available to everyone.â
âA great turning point is in the offing. The world is changing. Itâs changed before, but not for a long time in our lives, not since before our lives. But now itâs changing, and there are many many possibilities.â
âLaunch your meme boldly and see if it will replicate.â
âPart of what is wrong with our society, and hence with ourselves, is that we consume images, we donât produce them. We need to produce, not consume, media.â
âInevitably out of the psychedelic experience emerges not despair, not self-indulgence, but wild-eyed idealism, thatâs the inevitable product of any psychedelically driven social process.â
âIf you take psychedelics and the Internet and music and put all of that together you have the basis for a new community that is wider and deeper than you know. The people who are building the new machines, who are designing the new circuitry, who are writing the new code are ALL freaks. They work for capitalist dogs, of course, because we all do, but the creative thrust of these technologies is being driven by people just like you and me.â
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