Terence McKenna Archives

Terence McKenna Archives – Random Item #24 – A Buzz Perfect Enough to Make Terence McKenna Proud

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I’m back today with two short posts from newspaper references to Terence McKenna a decade apart. The first is from the Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2003 (three years after his death) and is largely unrelated to Terence, but he gets mentioned in a way gives some minor insight into his public perception. While it’s not always immediately clear what their use value might be, I find these little snippets an interesting insight into the wider reception of Terence and his work, a good way to see where people might have come across him, and sometimes even lead to valuable leads that produce fruit down the line.

In this case, the article is a profile of author Donnell Alexander and his, then, recently-released memoir, Ghetto Celebrity (Donnell also co-produced that audio narration to this well-shared short animation about baseball pitcher Doc Ellis’ LSD-saturated no-hitter). Near the end of the piece, Times writer Susan Carpenter refers to a regular series of events hosted by Alexander:

The author regularly hosts what he calls “Wet Daddy” events, which bring together the “best of young writers alongside the energy of live performance” with the goal of producing “a buzz perfect enough to make even Terence McKenna proud.”

You can find the full article on the Los Angeles Times website, here.

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Terence McKenna Archives – Random Item #23 – Robert Hunter

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Today’s random item is a brief article from The Kansas City Star newspaper of March 16, 1997 on former Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan lyricist, Robert Hunter (who wrote songs like ‘Truckin‘, ‘Darkstar‘, ‘Friend of the Devil‘, ‘Ripple‘, and many others). The article describes Hunter’s career, including a mention of his (at the time) recent correspondence “with psychedelic luminaries like Terence McKenna.” Many of you may have seen those correspondences, which are available online and worth checking out. This newspaper article only offers a brief mention of Terence but gives another interesting avenue through which his name appeared before the public and from which people might have been inspired to look into him more closely.

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A Correspondence Between Terence McKenna & R. Gordon Wasson: The Meeting That Wasn’t

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As promised, in honor of surpassing 1,000 followers on both Twitter and Facebook, with just a bit of further ado, here is the correspondence between Terence McKenna & R. Gordon Wasson. I will only give a brief prelude to set context and give what information I know…

As you’ll see, the letter (from Terence) is from May 27th, 1986, and he writes to Wasson saying that he will be in Rhinebeck, NY to teach a workshop in July (probably at the Omega Institute). It’s worth noting that this talk doesn’t appear to exist in the online corpus, so far as I can tell. It’s certainly possible that the workshop wasn’t recorded, but if anyone out there knows of a recording, please do let me know. He asks if he and Kat might visit the, then almost 88 year-old, mushroom icon at his home in Connecticut on July 21st of that year. To the best of my knowledge, through discussion with friends of Terence’s and a relative of Wasson’s, the meeting never took place. As Wasson’s response indicates, there were both health and travel plans which seemed likely to get in the way of the encounter, although Wasson was keen to indicate that if he were home and in good health, he would welcome a visit.

A couple brief notes on the contents of the correspondences (and then the ado will be over):

In Terence’s letter:

  • Terence mentions an encounter with Albert Hofmann at Esalen “two years ago” (so, roughly, 1984), which I also can’t quite place, so any help with that would be appreciated, too.
  • Terence mentions the “suggestive writings” of John Uri Lloyd and Herbert Moore Pim, which I won’t expand on now (maybe in a later post), but some time spent looking into these figures would certainly reward the inquiring mind.
  • Terence gives the wrong date for Wasson’s seminal LIFE magazine essay on the Oaxacan mushroom ceremony. It was the issue of May 13, 1957 (not May 14, as Terence writes in the letter).

In Wasson’s Letter:

  • Wasson mentions that his “final book” will be published later that year by Yale University Press. That book is Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, along with Stella Kramrisch, Jonathan Ott, and Carl Ruck, and in it Wasson double’s down on his original soma hypothesis, which he deems now “well beyond the stage of hypotheses.” In the opening to Chapter One, the air of palpable finality in Wasson’s letter is echoed: “As I am nearing the end of my days, I will draw up an account of our mushroom quest…”

[One final note: this correspondence is not housed in the Terence McKenna Archives. It is held by Wasson’s archivist, Mark Hoffman (no relation to Albert–different spelling), who is also the former editor of Entheos: The Journal of Psychedelic Spirituality and a current research collaborator with Carl Ruck. I visited Mark in Taos last year (if you’re ever in Town, look for Mark at his Eske’s Brew Pub), and he showed me his substantial psychedelic archive, and I snapped photos of a bunch of Terence-related material….including this correspondence. Mark gave me the go ahead to share it. I have removed all addresses and phone numbers from the images for privacy.]

So, now, actually without any further ado, here’s the correspondence:

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Finally, also in honor of the milestone of 1,000 followers on both Twitter and Facebook, I am offering readers of this blog 25% on the prints that we are offering for our crowdfund effort at our Etsy store. Just use the coupon code: MCKENNA25 to receive 25% of all prints, buttons, magnets, and bookmarks through the end of July. The first 10 orders received (for shipping within the U.S.) after I post this will receive two free bookmarks (they came out very nice!). Reminder: all proceeds go to support the acquisition, preservation, storage, and sharing of the Terence McKenna Archives. We are not personally profiting financially off of these sales. It all goes back into the Archive.

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Terence McKenna Archives – Random Item #22 – Dearly Departed in the Arts, 2000

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The San Francisco Chronicle, on the final day of the first year of the new millennium, published a long list of the ‘Dearly Departed’ to remember “those in the arts who died in 2000. Terence McKenna (d. Apr. 3, age 53) appeared on that listed under the heading ‘BOOKS AND LITERATURE’ between journalist Art Hoppe (d. Feb. 1, age) and novelist Penelope Fitzgerald (d. Apr. 28). The only other person in the list to have died on the same day as Terence was artist Ann Carter (age 31). Other “notables” who listed are cartoonist Charles Schulz (d. Feb. 12, age 77), bandleader Tito Puente (d. May 31, age 75), actors Walter Matthau (d. July 1, age 79), Alec Guinness (d. Aug. 5, age 86), Bill Barty, (d. Dec. 23, age 76), Jason Robards (d. Dec. 26, age 78), and, only 12 days after Terence, the wonderful artist Edward Gorey.

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Charles Schulz, cartoonist, creator of Peanuts
Band leader Tito Puente
Walter Matthau in ‘Earthquake’
Alex Guinness as Ben Kenobi
Billy Barty in ‘Willow’
Jason Robards on the set of ‘Magnolia’
Edward Gorey and his set for Dracula

Terence McKenna Archives – Random Item #21 – Erik Davis: Data Density Data-Dense

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Today’s random item from the Terence McKenna Archives is one that only mentions Terence in passing and, yet, feels more Terence-relevant than many of the items in the archives that feature him more heavily. It is a 1999 article in The Santa Fe New Mexican erikdavisnewspaper (Jan. 22) profiling Erik Davis (who Rob Brezsny apparently once called “the next Terence McKenna”) as prelude to a local event for the release of his book Techngnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information at Santa Fe’s Plan B Evolving Arts. The profile, by Antonio Lopez, includes sections of an interview conducted with Davis by phone. I think those who pay attention to Terence McKenna will find this to be an interesting read. It’s a well-done profile of a writer (and podcaster!) whose work is well-worth paying attention to. He was also potentially the last person to interview Terence–it’s a long interview that I still think of as one of the best. The article includes a discussion of Davis’ visit to the Cyberthon in San Francisco in 1991, discussed in a previous blog post (Esquire, Apr. 1991), at which Terence and Tim Leary spoke along with VR pioneer Jaron Lanier and others, including Debbie Harlow, who told those in attendance that she had “received a newsletter put out by the criminal justice department of the state of Hawaii that quoted McKenna and Mondo 2000 on virtual reality and alerted judges to the possible dangers of this new “drug” (Spin, Apr. 1991).

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Erik Davis speaking at Burning Man 2003 next to a picture of Terence McKenna, whose work provided the inspiration for the Palenque Norte theme camp.

The convergence of mysticism and pop culture is a niche journalist Erik Davis carved out one spoonful at a time.

Several years ago, in “Technopagans,” a story for Wired, Davis explored the neopagan world of Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) programmers and other Net practitioners and occult denizens in San Francisco [which features eventual Terence collaborator, and VRML co-inventor, Mark Pesce].

With the recent publication of his tome, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Harmony Books), Davis has become somewhat of a de facto expert on the strange, secret history bridging technological culture and the spiritual realm.

“Personally I have always been fascinated by weird religious ideas, psychedelia and the occult,” he said. Moreover, he said, “I’ve always been a pop-culture junkie.”

“In terms of looking at new technology, I always look at it through a science-fiction lens because I’m interested in the mythic and fantastic aspects that are always part of the discussion of technology rather than tracking the business and technological aspects,” he said. “I’m interested in where the machine and psyche meet.”

In the early ’90s, such a connection became real in Northern California, where the Information Age and Aquarian Age mingled, symbolized by psychedelic mentors Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary exchanging with technological visionaries Jaron Lanier (an early developer of virtual reality) and Howard Rheingold. The Berkeley-based magazine Mondo 2000 served as a forum for the kookier aspects of the psychedelic-computer convergence.

Davis set out for San Francisco, where he attended the Cyberthon festival and gathering. “It was an attempt to be the Woodstock of virtual reality,” Davis said. “It was that whole San Francisco mixture of psychedelia and computer technology. When I was there, I saw that this is real. I wanted to know how it was that these ’60s psychedelia ideas became mixed up with information technology.”
Although the event proved pivotal in sparking Davis’ exploration of the netherworld of information technology and mysticism, the rhetoric of the movement remains a dream. “It did not develop into some great alternative culture,” Davis said. “The record is very bad. As I wrote the book over the years, I became more and more critical of the way that people use utopian, mystical and psychedelic language in order to hype technology. “There was some genuine, authentic experimental space that was really there and is still there but what I’m afraid happened is basically a certain kind of capitalism absorbed those energies and language with a purpose to sell something to consumers, like psychedelic screen savers that are in the offices of Internet startup companies that don’t do anything. “This is a true consensual hallucination, like Gibson said,” Davis said. “It’s not so clear what’s going on. In the end, I was rather disappointed in how these utopian dreams played out.”

Davis juggled to address an eclectic readership, which includes a cyber-theoretical, cyber-critical audience, smart new-agers and what he called “new consciousness” people, and those interested in underground spirituality. In addition, Davis believes Techgnosis appeals to those interested in the history of technology and contemporary culture from a journalistic perspective. “In response to that, my voice jumps inside the text,” Davis said. “It’s a symptom of how difficult it is to explain the moment we live in. You have to become a kind of pragmatic schizophrenic.”

“I’m trying to articulate the collective dreamworld of contemporary technological culture rather than just analyzing it,” Davis said. “Even though I use academic material and scholarly questions, I’m also equally interested in expressing something strange and fantastic about the times we find ourselves in. “For example, when I write about UFOs, on the one hand I’m very interested in the sociology of UFO believers. But on the other hand, I’m interested in catching the bizarre side of whatever it is that compels people to be fascinated with UFOs and looking at these perceptions that don’t fit into ordinary reality. “I’m not interested in whether UFOs are real but how people come to believe they are real. What is that about? It’s trying to do both things at once.”

Asked if he follows a particular spiritual path, the author remained cryptic. “I’m very interested in mindfulness practice,” Davis said. “I think paying attention to attention is one of the key tools for facing the Information Age.”

Journey to the Mayan Underworld – John Major Jenkins Interview Item #2

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This is the second item in the series of annotations to my interview with John Major Jenkins.

51qLHmdd7+LAfter mentioning (6:11) that he cites The Invisible Landscape in his 1989 book Jouryney to the Mayan Underworld (“for the shamanism”), he mentions that it was through seeing an article by (or interview with) Terence in Magical Blend magazine during the same period when he was writing that book that he realized that this “put [Terence] on the map as some kind of cultural icon or something, a real guy that was out there, because of course, [in] the late ’80s, you couldn’t just go on Google and look people up.” This realization led to their eventual contact through an I Ching mailing network that they were both members of.

There are a couple of annotations to be made here.

  1. The first is that the Magical Blend article that JMJ refers to is almost certainly the ‘New Maps of Hyperspace’ article from issue #22 (April, 1989) that was featured in an earlier blog post. Since Jenkins refers to the period of “1988, maybe early 1989,” and since this is the only Magical Blend appearance in those two years, it seems likely. It seems even more likely, given that JMJ cites that very article in his (2017) revised edition of Journey to the Mayan Underworld. Without seeing his original (1989) manuscript, it’s difficult to know what changed (it’s clear that there have been significant revisions).
  2. The second is the specific nature of the reference that JMJ makes to The Invisible Landscape. I have to say, given his qualifier in the interview with me, that he was mostly interested in the shamanism, his actual use of The Invisible Landscape is actually more of an attempt to extend their argument about the “electron spin resonance” (ESR) of drug molecules and DNA storage of memories. This eventually does get back around to shamanism but only at the very end of the discussion, where he finally speculates that “shamanic journeys to the ‘spirit world’ may have access to these [ESR patterns fundamental to human DNA], resulting in the abstract art seen at Mitla, as well as the Sacred [Mayan] Calendar which reflects the same pattern.”

Since Jenkins passed away, I have attempted to fill in my collection of his work and have also tried to (very respectfully) be in touch with his family to discuss assistance with archiving and preserving his work and substantial amounts of historical documentation. The new edition of Journey to the Mayan Underworld (2017) is among those items, and it is also now one of the new items in the Terence McKenna Archives.

 

 

Foreword to ‘Maya Cosmogenesis 2012’ – John Major Jenkins Interview Item #1

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As I listened through the interview that I conducted with John Major Jenkins at his home in April 2016, I realized that there are a lot of very specific references layered into the interview, each of which would make a good post on its own. So, what I’ll do is go through the JMJ interview and create a series of annotations as individual blog posts, creating a link for each at the bottom of the original interview page, so that there is one page with the interview and links to each of the annotations.

The first reference, only 35 seconds into the interview is perhaps the most salient for people who know the connection between John Major Jenkins and Terence McKenna, namely that Terence wrote the Foreword to JMJ’s book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: the True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date (1998). Jenkins tells the A1nNahe94HLstory of how this came to be elsewhere in the interview. The short version is that the two had been corresponding since the early ’90s about material related to the Mayan calendar, as well as the I Ching (both had been members of an I Ching mailing list). Terence was giving a talk in Colorado in 1996, and JMJ went to the venue and ran into Terence who gave him a pass to the talk and the two ended up at lunch where JMJ asked about publishers for his book, and Bear & Company came up (with some reservations) as they had published the Trialogues at the Edge of the West book that contained transcripts of some of Terence’s conversations with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham at the Esalen Institute. As JMJ entered negotiations with Bear & Company, he suggested the possibility of having Terence write a Foreword, and the idea was met with enthusiasm. Although Terence and JMJ both wrote about 2012 and mutually influenced each other, there ideas were fairly different (particularly in that Terence placed the fulfillment of the eschaton in a single dramatic moment at the end of the Timewave, where Jenkins offered a 36-year window, “Era-2012,” that would be a slow passage and an cosmic opportunity for transformation and renewal). Nonetheless, because of Terence’s contribution to JMJ’s book, their views have often been conflated, to the point that Terence had to publish a written response distinguishing their views. Nonetheless, it was, in part, Terence and Dennis’ suggestions in The Invisible Landscape that led to Jenkins’ interests and it was also, in part, Jenkins’ research in the mid-to-late ’90s that strengthened Terence’s convictions that he was onto something significant. So, despite the differences in idea, they were important collaborators and co-contributors to the spread of the idea that there was something significant about the year 2012 that was somehow built into the clockwork of the cosmos.

Here’s Terence’s Foreword to John Major Jenkins’ Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, written in January 1998 (screenshots from Google Books):

Ask a Question About Terence McKenna…

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I’d like to open up a new potential feature on the Terence McKenna Archives blog, if there’s enough interest. I’d like to field your questions about Terence…via the archival holdings. Something about Terence you’ve always been curious about? Some thread of interest that you’d like to see explored further? Give me a prompt and I’ll work through the archives to see what light I can shed on that issue. If there’s enough interest, I’ll pick one interesting question per week and follow it through, wherever it takes me. This is your chance to direct some of the content of the archival blog and to get some insight on Terence or his ideas that maybe you couldn’t get elsewhere…or just to see what I turn up.

Another point worth making is that these could turn into interesting threads between items in the archive. Whereas the majority of posts here are about individual items from the archive, these explorations would allow me to make posts which draw broader probes across a variety of archival items, creating a richer tapestry of references between and across the items.

It’s up to all of you how frequent this will be and it will be a mutual collaboration between us to create something interesting out of your curiosities and my archives.

Send your queries too: terencemckennaarchives@gmail.com

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT TERENCE MCKENNA?

ASK THE ARCHIVES…

WE AWAIT YOUR INTERROGATORY…

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Terence McKenna Archives – Random Item #20 – ‘2013’ by Richard Grossinger

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51NnHJa89bL._SX317_BO1,204,203,200_Today’s random item is a book by Richard Grossinger called 2013: Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration (2010) that was both a part of and a response to the massive 2012 book publishing industry that was flourishing at the time. Grossinger is the founder and owner of North Atlantic Books. Terence was never published, himself, by NAB, although he and Grossinger were acquainted, but Terence did point his friend, anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, toward that publisher, which resulted in the well-known book of paintings of Pablo Amaringo’s Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman. Although he had many opportunities for discussions with Terence, it was not until Terence died that Grossinger really gave him the attention he now realizes that he had deserved.

There are 27 pages in Grossinger’s book that have mentions of Terence, and I will not post them all here since that would probably be beyond fair use and Richard is a friend, so I don’t want to step on his toes by publishing large chunks of his book without his permission. However, I do feel comfortable sharing the same sections which are already available on Amazon ‘Look Inside’, which, in fact, includes most of the material on Terence in the book. So, apologies in advance for any paragraphs, sentences, or trains of thought which get cut-off. There are only a few of the relevant pages which aren’t viewable on Amazon, so you’re actually get the vast bulk of Grossinger’s comments on Terence, some of which I don’t agree with and many of which I think are very astute and rarely said. I’ll pick out a few of my favorites below. Enjoy!

“Gunther Stent, when approached by McKenna later, commented: ‘these ideas are not even fallacious.'”

“For all my conversations with Terence over the years, I remember nothing of detail or content, just his florid dress and intense, exotic speech patterns. I was afraid of both drugs and proselytization then, and since Terence represented both in spades, I didn’t listen carefully to what he was saying beyond the surface poetry and thus didn’t realize how radical and astute it was. I never got into active dialogue with him, even though he offered it many times. My loss: Terence was on my wavelength but light years ahead.”

“To look at what the brothers McKenna did in and after Colombia and to understand its seminal relationship to 2012, one has to excavate its different levels, both at the time and in their subsequent evolution.”

“These boys [Terence and Dennis] didn’t want just visions; they wanted to find a transdimensional doorway and storm into hyperspace; they intended to get the universe’s mission statement and change history.”

“Using the detonation of the hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 as an anchor for his Timewave mapping the overall change-pattern of the universe and “the ingression of novelty into space-time,” McKenna initially keyed the Omega Point to November 17, 2012, but later revised it to the solstice.”

Grossinger quotes Terence in a nice summation of what I take to be the crux of his eschatological position: “If the universe is evolving deeper and deeper into complexity, faster and faster, and if now in a human lifetime we can see a small portion of this curve–we can actually discern the curve–we should logically conclude that we are very near, relative to the life of the universe, very near to the place where this ramping up of complexity will become so excruciatingly rapid that more change will happen in a single week than in the preceding thirteen billion years, and then there will become a point where more will happen in a single minute than happened in the previous thirteen billion years…
…Who are we in my story? In science’s story, we are nobody; we are lucky to be here; we are a cosmic accident; we exist on an ordinary star at the edge of a typical galaxy in an ordinary part of space and time, and essentially our existence is without meaning, or your have to perform one of those existential pas de deux where you confirm meaning–one of those postmodern soft shoes.
But, if I’m right that the universe has an appetite for novelty, then we are the apple of its eye. Suddenly cosmic purpose is restored to us. People matter, you are the cutting edge of a thirteen-billion-year-old process of defining novelty. Your acts matter, your thoughts matter.”

Terence quoted: “You say that it is a reduction of the psychedelic experience to be caused by drugs because drugs are material atomic systems and therefore we know all about them–I am going to try to convince you otherwise… Every electron is the yawning mouth of a wormhole that leads to quadrillions of higher dimensional universes that are completely beyond rational apprehension. Matter in not lacking magic. Matter is magic.”

“Carrying out their own indigenous science with ayahuasca, DMT, and psilocybin among tolerant and perplexed Witoto Indians of La Chorrera, the brothers McKenna won a hypothetical Nobel Prize by conjuring ‘magical excrement’: a violet “hologrammatic alchemical fluid,” a hyperdimensional form of matter–who said white boys can’t dunk?”

“Mirrors, wormholes, and skrying stones ahoy! Mages and lamas in cahoots across supercontinents and hyperspace! Counterspies spying psychically on each other! Hijinks galore! Thamaturgic mischief amok! O toil and trouble!”

“In McKenna’s indictment, the mushroom is not only ‘taken [but] heard.’ It uses ‘every though in our heads to lead us into telepathically induced scenarios of extravagant imaginings…in-depth meanings of strange places, times, and worlds…’ It makes its recipient ‘nothing more than a message-decipherer, hard-pressed to keep up with a difficult, incoming code.’ It binds molecules to DNA to ‘broadcast a totality symbol…that enter[s] linear time disguised in the presence of ordinary consciousness.”

“Go Terence, wherever you are!“

 

 

John Major Jenkins Passes Away — July 2, 2017

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I found out yesterday that John Major Jenkins, an important figure in the development of the 2012 phenomenon and a friend and collaborator of Terence McKenna’s, died of cancer on July 2, two days ago relative to this post. For me, it was rather unexpected, and the first thing I did was to relisten to the interview that I recorded with JMJ at his home in Windsor, Colorado in April of last year while on a roadtrip through Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado (during which I also visited Terence’s & Dennis’ hometown of Paonia). While I wasn’t planning on publishing the interview anytime soon, since I expected to have plenty of other opportunities to follow up with John and am also gathering quite a few interview with people about Terence, and since I plan to do something with them collectively. However, in light of his sudden passing, I thought it appropriate to share that conversation with you all.

The interview covers a range of historical information about JMJ, his awareness of Terence and his ideas, his interactions with Terence over the years, a variety of personal synchronicities between the two, and a final reflection on Terence’s legacy and significance (as well as absence) in the present world.

My primary recording device was dead at the time, and I had to record on my phone. So, I apologize in advance for any moments where either of us lean away from the table where the phone was sitting and the volume goes down.

John and I have a had a complex relationship over the years, often going back and forth between cordial sharers of information of mutual interest to antagonistic intellectual opponents. In the end, I’m incredibly glad that we met (for the second time) at his house last year, where he was a very kind host and offered me a place to stay for the night on my road trip. I certainly didn’t know it would be the last meeting would we have. As I’ve done for Terence (and for Jose Arguelles), I’m hopeful that I can be among those who help ensure that JMJ’s significant historical documentation (you’ll notice his very specific recollections, references, and references to documents he owns in the interview) can be preserved for future researchers. What John really wanted in life was for people to take his ideas seriously.

For an even longer and more recent interview, after he was diagnosed with cancer, check out this article and (5-hour) interview with Jonathan Zap at Reality Sandwich: http://realitysandwich.com/321420/john-major-jenkins-reflecting-on-a-life-of-discoveries-and-tribulations/

For my own scholarship on the 2012 phenomenon, including some public tussles with JMJ, visit my academia.edu page: https://ucsb.academia.edu/KevinWhitesides

And, without further ado, here’s my interview with John Major Jenkins, about Terence McKenna, from April 11, 2016:

Here’s my library of John’s work (I do keep archives of more than just Terence). I’ve got a lot more than this, but can’t find some of it just now and have a lot stored digitally:

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Annotations to the John Major Jenkins Interview:

  • (0:08) JMJ originally states the date as “August 11th” and then corrects himself to “April 11th.” This may seem innocuous but shows how much time he spent with his head in the Maya Long Count calendar. August 11th is (one of the candidates for) the base-date of the Long Count calendar, August 11, 3114 BC.
  • (0:31) JMJ mentions that Terence McKenna wrote the Foreword to his book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (1998).
  • (6:11) After mentioning that he cites The Invisible Landscape in his 1989 book Jouryney to the Mayan Underworld (“for the shamanism”), he mentions that it was through seeing an article by (or interview with) Terence in Magical Blend magazine that he realized that this “put him on the map as some kind of cultural icon or something, a real guy that was out there, because of course, [in] the late ’80s, you couldn’t just go on Google and look people up; where are these people? I don’t know, they don’t have a Facebook.” This realization led to their eventual contact through an I Ching mailing network that they were both members of.

    There are a couple of annotations to be made here.