“Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution”
A journey is some of the Earth’s most endangered people in the remote Upper Amazon. . . . a look at the rituals of the Bwiti cults of Gabon and Zaire. . . . . a field watch on the eating habits of ‘stoned’ apes and chimpanzees – these adventures are all a part of ethnobotanist Terence McKenna’s extraordinary quest to discover the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He wonders why, as a species, we are so fascinated by altered states of consciousness. Can you reveal something about our origins as human beings and our place in nature? As an odyssey of mind, body and spirit, Food of the Gods is one of the most fascinating and surprising histories of consciousness ever written And as a daring work of scholarship and exploration, it offers an inspiring vision for individual fulfilment and a humane basis for our interaction which each other and with the natural world. ‘Brilliant, provocative, opinionated, poetic and inspiring. . . . . Essential reading for anyone who ever wondered why people take drugs.
“The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the i Ching “
A thoroughly revised edition of the much-sought-after early work by Terence and Dennis McKenna that looks at shamanism, altered states of consciousness, and the organic unity of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.
True Hallucinations
Terence Mckenna (1946-2000) was a psychonaut, an ethnobotanist with an interest in philosophy and, of course, a writer. The combination of which gives Mckenna a solid basis for writing some of the key components of psychedelic literature and at the same time acts as a signifier for this sub-genre of psy-lit. His interpretation of the psychedelic experience is bound up with a pre-existing conceptual framework i.e. academia. So we may categorize his work as ‘academic psy-lit’.
TH is a narrative of the events that happened to Mckenna and a group of friends (including his brother Dennis) in La Chorrera, in the Colombian Amazonas, when they went in search of the shamanic hallucinogen of the Witoto known as oo-koo-he. However, the primary hallucinogen soon turns out to be the psilocybin mushroom ‘Stropharia cubensis’, which is growing in abundance in the area.