“Kevin has put an incredible amount of time and effort into this exciting and important archival project. From his careful collection, preservation and transcription of the vast material that is my father’s work to his thoughtful and extensive interviews and biographical sleuthing, he has shown himself to be skilled, effective, respectful, meticulous and utterly devoted to the many facets that a project of this depth requires and for this I am most grateful. Not only is his dedication profound but he has also been a good friend to me and my family through this process and I place complete trust in his abilities and intentions. I am excited and honored that he has taken such care with this endeavor and I look forward to great things resulting from this including but not limited to future publishing projects and the necessary advancement and growth of Terence’s online presence. I urge anyone who appreciates Terence’s ideas to help us make this happen by contributing to this monumental project.”
-Finn McKenna
The goal for this blog is to share the process of acquisition and research with you for the Terence McKenna Archives, to give you an insight into the process, as well as to share some of the interesting items encountered as part of the hunt. Please sign up to follow the blog and keep an eye out for new posts.
For a summary list of the categories of items held in the archive see the Welcome post.
If you have materials that you would like to donate to the archive (whether physical copies or digital scans or files), please email: terencemckennaarchives@gmail.com.
If you would like to provide monetary support to assist with the acquisition process, please visit our ongoing crowdfund.
Terence’s ideas are free, but his words and works belong to his children and legal heirs. People who wish to use Terence’s words for must seek permission through Lux Natura.
While all requests for permissions should go through Lux Natura, I am open to assist with any research-related requests for projects. Besides, if you do have a project that involves Terence (even in a relatively minor way), I would love to know about it, so I can keep record of it in the archive. So, even if I can’t specifically help in some way, please do let me know about your TM-related projects…and you will become part of the archive (that means authors, artists, performers, musicians, photographers, whatever).
Kevin Whitesides is a PhD student in the department of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara; his dissertation will focus, in part, on the biography and influence of Terence McKenna. He completed a research-based Masters degree in the department of Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh where his dissertation focused on the development of the 2012 Phenomenon (including a chapter on McKenna), a continuation of the research he began as an undergraduate in the department of Religious Studies at Humboldt State University. Kevin has written for both academic and popular publications including Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Archaeostronomy, Zeitschrift fur Anomalistik, and Fortean Times (among others), has been interviewed by PBS, The North Coast Journal, The Pod Delusion, and Psychedelic American, and was an editor and regular contributor at The Religious Studies Project. His academic CV is available here.
We’re pouring glass and gold and silicon down the micro-tubules of the species imagination and as it were making a kind of casting of the state of the human imagination at the close of the millennium, and to what degree this imaging of ourselves in silicon will ever reach a limit is hard to tell. I mean, we’ve begun with the past. You know, we’re archiving it. We’re virtualizing it. We’re creating databases that allow us to stroll around in it, but more and more, time will be consumed and eventually the only choice will be to allow it to flow over into the present… –Terence McKenna (Permitting Smart People to Hope)