It seems that in early-1990, there was a particular concern among certain circles of the American evangelical Christian milieu regarding the rising popularity of ‘New Age’ beliefs and practices. Evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson denounced the “blatant demonism” of the ‘New Age’ (not dissimilar from other, not entirely unrelated, ‘satanic panics’). Among those called upon to offer talking points in defense of the general ‘New Age’ orientation was Terence McKenna. The particular article that was selected for the Random Item today was written by friend of the TM Archives, Don Lattin (who has a new book out that you would do well to check out). It appeared, in a truncated form, in the Daily Breeze newspaper of Torrance, CA (May 12), but I also found the same article in the San Francisco Chronicle (April 25, where it originally appeared in full), the Daily News of Los Angeles (April 28), the Sun Sentinel (April 28), and the Daily News of Los Angeles again (June 2, with a slightly different edit), with respective titles, ‘Christians Balk as New Age Gains Acceptance’, ‘Warning of New Age Threat’, ‘New Age Thinking Seen as Threat to Christianity’, ‘New Age Beliefs Worry Christian Leaders’, and ‘Conservative Christianity, New Age Beliefs’.
In response to the attack on his general community (though, many will be familiar with his distaste for the ‘New Age’ and many of its denizens as well–Terence did once say, after all, “I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own.”), Terence is quoted as having retorted, “We have a different approach to nature… The Judeo-Christian ethic is that man is the lord of creation and can do as he wishes. The pagan, archaic revival point of view is biological, ecological, and stresses co-adaptive relations. We are in a global, suicidal crisis — and Christianity has a lot to answer for.”
Today’s random item from the McKenna archives is a fairly brief one. As I mentioned in the first Random Item post, I actually use a random number generator to determine which items from the archives will end up in these posts. In this case, there’s not much to say. It’s a book review from American Herb Association Quarterly Vol. 30 No. 4 (December 2015) of a book by Peter Fritz Walter called Terence McKenna and Ethnopharmacology: Short Biography, Book Reviews, Quotes, and Comments. The review is 6-lines and tells us nothing about the contents of the book or whether it is recommended. Walter is a prolific self-publisher and this seems to be both a sort of compilation of quotes and also Walter’s own reviews and commentary on Terence’s books and ideas. If someone wants to donate or purchase a copy for the archives, this is something that we don’t currently have — email terencemckennaarchives@gmail.com.
An interesting array of items came into the Terence McKenna Archives this week. I’ll just get straight into it:
Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal by Tom Shroder includes a couple of passages mentioning Terence in two separate sections on Ricks. One chapter is on Rick Doblin includes a story that Rick also conveyed to me when I interviewed him about Terence regarding the origins for funding an MDMA study as a sort of opposition to Terence’s general cautioning against the promotion of that substance. Another chapter is on Rick Strassman, who I’ve been meant to interview for some time now about his own interactions with Terence but keep losing track of time (soon enough).
2. Eric Cunningham wrote his PhD dissertation, Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and The Psychedelic Eschaton, in the Department of History at the University of Oregon largely as a comparison between the eschatological ideas of early 20th century Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida and those of late 20th century American psychedelic spokesperson Terence McKenna. Nishida’s work incorporated Zen Buddhism with contemporary Western philosophy, taking on the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel with his own unique philosophy which would become the foundation of the highly influential Kyoto School in Japan. As is often the case with Humanities PhD work, Cunningham’s dissertation was subsequently published as a book. It would be nice to also have a copy of the actual dissertation, as, no doubt, some edits were made between the completion of the dissertation and publication of the book manuscript (so, if you’re reading, Eric, and have a digital copy that you’d be willing to send…). There’s obviously huge sections devoted entirely to McKenna, so I will only post some evocative snippets here just so you can get a sense of the territory.
3. I found some well-priced copies of Thomas Lyttle‘s Psychedelic Monographs & Essays volumes and so ordered them in partial use of some recently acquired birthday money–for the general psychedelics library, not the TM Archives. I wasn’t expecting anything from Terence, as I had looked through most of these before in other people’s libraries and hadn’t noticed anything, and nothing is listed for PM&E on Terence’s bibliography. So far, I’ve only received #5 and that expectation largely holds up. However, there is a review, by George Root, of The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Tributes to Gordon Wasson. Roots review is quite long but only mentions McKenna among a list of contributors and doesn’t explicitly mention or discuss his chapter called ‘Wasson’s Literary Precursors’.
4. Aftershocks: The End of Style Culture by Steve Beard includes several mentions of Terence and an event report/review of True Hallucinations (the latter of which I’m hoping to be able to use as part of a document I’m creating for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign and so won’t post here). Beard, too, includes reference to Terence’s appearance at Fraser Clark‘s London club, Megatripolis as well as comparisons between Terence, Tim Leary, and Hakim Bey.
5. For those of you who have been actively paying attention to the blog, you may recall a couple weeks ago, I came across a book, Cam Cloud’s Acid Trips, which contained some black & white copies of photos of Terence, shot by Chip Simons, at his home in Occidental, California. They came from the same shoot as this well-known photo which accompanied an interview by David Jay Brown. Well, to update you on the situation, I have received a folder in the mail from Simons which contains film positives of many more snaps of Terence from the same photoshoot. All I can say for now is that they are truly delightful! I have an appointment on campus next week with the Image Resource Center on campus to digitize them. Of course, these photos belong to Simons, and I don’t have any immediate plans or permissions to share them at present. But, I’m hoping to be able to use some of them as part of the upcoming crowdfunding campaign (but I’ll need to discuss those details with the photographer). Eventually, they will come out, but for now they need to stay private–I will keep you updated.
6. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (the Revised & Updated edition, 2006, is what I got–the 1st ed. is 1999), Nina Luttinger and Gregory Dicum briefly mention Terence’s comments about the relationship between the rousing effects of coffee and the labor-intensive raison d’être of the Industrial Revolution, although they (understandably, given their focus) leave out his query about why the ubiquitous workplace 15-minute coffee break is not replaced with a cannabis break.
7. Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends & Heroes, edited by Roy Christopher, contains a favorite interview of mine with Terence by the ever-insightful and barbed culture critic Mark Dery. Dery’s interview is preceded by a long introductory text (also by Dery), which is also a favorite treatment of Terence and his life and work. The interview and its lengthy introduction will be featured in the ‘Companion Guide to Terence McKenna’ feature that I am creating for the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. I had previously had scans of this but finally added a hard copy to the collection.
8. The material in A Magical Universe: The Best of Magical Blend Magazine (1996) was selected by the magazine’s editors, Jerry Snider and Michael Peter Langevin. Terence appeared in the pages of Magical Blend on many occasions, offering essays and interviews alongside reviews of his books and advertisements for his products. Robert Anton Wilson called Magical Blend “a quiet revolution.” The selection that is included in this edited volume is an essay that Terence wrote for Magical Blend #26 (April 1990) and was later reprinted in The Archaic Revival. I already had a copy of this in the archival holdings but received a few copies to use as incentives for crowdfunding.
9. A couple weeks ago, I received a copy of Matthew Pallamary‘s Spirit Matters: A Memoir, which, among other delightful reminiscences, describes the story behind the photo below, in which Pallamary sent along the first printed copy of the first edition of his novel Land Without Evil to be gifted to Terence at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference, shortly before his death. Well, this week, I received a copy of Land Without Evil, which is dedicated to Terence. I’ll get the archives copy signed when I meet with Pallamary in a couple weeks when he comes to town as a workshop leader at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
Terence McKenna and girlfriend Christy Silness at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference. Terence is holding the copy of ‘Land Without Evil’ that Matt Pallamary sent to be gifted to him at the conference, which was the last place most people saw Terence before his death.
10. Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History by Mary Kilbourne Matossian was one of the books in Terence’s library and is among the books cited in Food of the Gods, where it is used as part of an argument against “the Wasson-Hofmann theory” that the kykeon beverage of the Eleusinian mysteries was a form of ergotized beer (of course, Terence, following Robert Graves, wants to push the possibility of a psilocybin mushroom).
11. The following items were added to the general collection and don’t include any specific material related to Terence McKenna, but I thought that they might be of general interest, so thought I would include them as well. So, here’s the ‘Supplemental Haul’…
Today’s random item from the McKenna Archives is an item that I don’t actually have in a hard copy. It is a review of the film Strange Attractor, produced by the media duo Rose X, who also did the visuals and produced the film for Terence’s Alien Dreamtime performance (Ken Adams, of Rose X, also more recently put out a film called Imaginatrix: The Terence McKenna Experience that you’ll also want to check out). I only have the digital content–not even scans of the actual newspaper, just the text. So, on the very off anyone has access to a copy of the Austin American-Statesman from May 9, 1996 (Section: XL Ent, Page 22), it would be great to add scans or an actual copy of the newspaper (page) to the archive, though for something like this, I typically wouldn’t expect that and am happy to at least have the text represented in the archive. The review is written by Harley Jebens and is titled, ‘It’s a Dream, It’s a Game, It’s a Film, It’s …`Strange Attractor’, a Psychedelic Web Experience Unlike Any Other. It’s an excellent and very comprehensive review and includes interviews with Ken Adams and Britt Welin as well as getting into technical detail about the process of creating the project, the inspiration and philosophical background, and where it fits into a larger scope of projects. It provides a lot of context for a multi-pronged multimedia effort that most McKenna enthusiasts will now only interact with as a video on YouTube or as a DVD. Unlike Alien Dreamtime, though, Terence McKenna is not a main feature of Strange Attractor, though he does make a notable appearance.
Today’s random item from the archives is a memorial article written by Irene Dalichow shortly after Terence’s death in April 2000 for the German alternative spirituality magazine Esotera: Das Magazin Für Neues Denken und Handelnand appears in their July 2000 issue. I would be greatly obliged to any capable German language readers who might be willing to provide a translation of the article in English (which would be much preferable to a Google Translate version)–please email translations to terencemckennaarchives@gmail.com or just post in the comments below.
The title for the piece is simply (translated) ‘Obituary on Psychedelic Researcher Terence McKenna’. The Google translation of the quote attributed to him in the opening photograph is a good example why translation by a real person is still preferable to translation by a computer. There are nuances and idioms that are difficult to translate literally: “I saw the light of eternity shining through every sheet.” I’m sure there is a more evocative rendering of whatever Terence said in English, which was then translated to German, and which we are now attempting to translate back into English. I wonder how close our final English renderings after going through that translation and reverse-translation process come to whatever Terence’s actual original words were. Anyway, there’s also some nice photos of Terence here that I don’t think are otherwise represented online at the moment. So, the community of TM-enthusiasts and meme-makers will no doubt be happy about the addition of those to the general corpus. Unfortunately, the magazine doesn’t give photographer credits. If you shot either of these photos, or know who did, please do get in touch.
[Update: a Facebook member was kind enough to crop and clean up the two photos of Terence, so I thought I’d add them here for your enjoyment. Thanks, Micki!]
Today’s random item from the archival holdings is a book which contains a brief extract from an interview with Terence McKenna. The Idler’s Companion: An Anthology of Lazy Literature (1997) is an edited volume which contains selections from the content-over-the-years of a British quarterly magazine called The Idler, which is dedicated to exploring and promoting the idle life:
Back in 1991, bored to tears by his job, 23 year old journalist Tom Hodgkinson lay on his bed and dreamed of starting a magazine called The Idler. He’d found the title in a collection of essays by Dr Johnson, himself a constitutionally indolent man. How to live, that was the question. How to be free in a world of jobs and debt? And curse this alarm clock…
In August 1993, the pair produced issue one of the Idler. It had the sub-title “literature for loafers”. Dr Johnson was the cover star and there was an interview with magic mushroom guru Terence McKenna.
In case there is anyone out there who happens to possess a copy of the The Idler No. 1, this is one of the items that does not yet exist as part of the archives. So, if you do have a copy, it would be a great boon to the archive if you would be willing to scan the cover, table of contents, and interview with Terence and send the files to terencemckennaarchives@gmail.com. Or, if you are feeling particularly generous, we would gladly accept a hard copy to add into the archival holdings.
The material contained in The Idler’s Companion was selected by founding editor Tom Hodgkinson and then Deputy Editor Matthew de Abaitua and only contains one question and one answer from the Terence McKenna interview, but it’s quite a nice little snippet. I’d very much like to see the whole interview. If you can help make that happen, please do get in touch.
TM: Institutions fear idle populations because an Idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that’s almost a substitute word for idle, “malcontent.” Essentially, we are all kept very busy, and if you do have a moment of leisure time, then you’re expected to imbibe the sanitized data stream that the cultural imprimatur has been placed upon.
I thought I’d start another new feature here at the Terence McKenna Archival Blog. In addition to the ‘Weekly Haul‘ and other featured items that I select from the archives, I decided that one way to get through some of the archives is to do a more regular ‘Random Item’. I’ve given each item in the archive a number (well, most of them, anyway) and will use a random number generator to choose which from among them to include in the blog feature.
The first item from the archives, randomly selected for your viewing pleasure, is from the third published volume (1995) of Alexandria: The Journal of the Western Cosmological Tradition, edited by David Fideler, published by Phanes Press (which Fideler sold to Red Wheel/Weiser in 2004), and funded by the members of the Alexandria Society. The theme of this volume is ‘Education’ with an aim, as Fideler notes in his introduction, “to reconsider and revision the role of education in contemporary society” as “a truly philosophical enterprise in a time when true philosophy, when true discussion, is only rarely to be found within the halls of Academe.” It is in this context that they reprinted a section of a trialogue at Esalen, originally published in Trialogues at the Edge of the West, by Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake, titled ‘Education in the New World Order’. Terence recommends that archaeology replace physics as the paradigm of the educational system in order to “release us from the post-industrial notion of history as a kind of trendless fluctuation or class struggle or some other very dreary model of the human journey through time.” Echoing his Whitehead-inspired Novelty Theory, Terence suggests that “[i]n reformed education, people must be taught that history is a system of interlocking resonances in which we are all imbedded [sic].” He continues, “Without some knowledge of history from the birth of the universe down to yesterday’s headlines, we’re not in a position to act in our own best interest. I define education broadly as the inculcation of attitudes that cause us to act generally in the interest of all.”
Between April 16 – 19, 1993, communities in three distant locales (San Francisco, Basel, and Tokyo) coordinated a series of events intended to celebrate the semicentennial (or 50th anniversary) of the discovery of the psychoactive effects of LSD by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in his lab at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel (there was also a large event at Hyde Park, London and probably elsewhere–if you know of celebrations elsewhere in 1993, please do leave a comment). Although the event was organized around that moment of discovery that led to Hofmann’s famous ‘altered’ bike ride home, it was, of course, more importantly, the chain of history that followed in the wake of Hofmann’s discovery–the potent effects of the chemical on the minds of others the world over–that was really being commemorated. Had his unintended experiment been a one-off event that never moved beyond Basel and the confines of his own mind, we would not be paying attention. But, as an origin story, it’s a fairly compelling one–everyone can get into a bike ride, and people like to imagine themselves in his, unexpectedly stoned, shoes. Indeed, for the Basel celebration, a select 25 lottery winners actually got to participate in a bike ride along the exact route (see image below) that Hofmann is supposed to have taken on that fateful April day in 1943. In commemoration of the worldwide coordination of events, a newspaper called Lysergic World was created.
The newspaper contained a variety of LSD-related features for its readers, including a world map of locations of important events in the life of LSD (created, in part, by Kat Harrison), an essay by Madonna about a “24-hour orgasm under LSD,” a list of slang terms, a horoscope for the birth of LSD, a cartoon history, and bios of important figures:
Lysergic World also included a list of recommended music with the list topped off by Terence McKenna’s Re-Evolution track with The Shamen:
And, in a section documenting a variety of views on LSD, Terence McKenna is quoted:
There’s a part of the newspaper, however, that I am a bit at a loss to explain and hope that somebody can account for. I would very much like to know exactly what it means that an anthropomorphized LSD molecule welcoming readers to the publication says “I’m very happy that you white humans are celebrating the 50th anniversary of your ‘discovering me” [emphasis mine]. How are we supposed to interpret that? Where did it come from? If a typo, it’s a rather odd one….if a purposeful entry, it’s something that needs some explaining!
This week’s intake at the Terence McKenna Archives was much more modest than last week’s substantial haul. The only hard copy publication that arrived just came in today:
Disinformation’s Book of Lies.
The Book of Lies, as most of these large Disinformation Guides, consists of dozens of chapters by a smorgasbord of authors from a wide swath of the countercultural milieu, this time ‘focusing’ on “Magick and the Occult.” The small section on “Chemognosis” contains only two chapters (it’s the heading with the least number of contributions in the volume), one of which is an edited transcript of Terence McKenna’s first talk at Esalen during the Lilly/Goswami [that’s John and Amit] Conference on Consciousness and Quantum Physics, titled ‘Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness’. There seems to be some dispute about when this conference actually took place. Anyone who was there or has a photo or scan of an original catalog can help with this. Both The Book of Lies and Jeffrey Kripal in his book, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion describe the event as taking place in December 1983. However, as you can see here, the actual tape (not published by Dolphin Tapes until 1997) lists it as taking place in 1982, as does Erowid, though citing the Dolphin Tapes published version. I have tended to favor the 1982 dating, though I can’t now remember all of my reasons for doing so (most, like Jesse Jarnow and Graham St. John, have gone with the 1983 date–it would be great to clear this up, as, historically speaking, it’s not entirely insignificant when this took place–you can see this same issue playing out on the Psychedelic Salon page for the talk).
Even though this is among Terence’s most well-known and most-published talk, I thought it would still be worth including some of the selected quotations for your edification and amusement:
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2. This week, in a conversation with R. Michael Johnson (one of the movers behind the excellent RAWilsonFans website–you can read a good chunk of his introduction to the brand new edition of Robert Anton Wilson’s Email to the Universe by Hiliritas Press on Amazon), he took me through his list of a great many places where he knew Terence cropped up in various literature. Most of the items he mentioned are already represented in the archives, but he definitely gave me several significant leads that I hadn’t had on my radar (thanks, Mike!). The most embarrassing of the items he mentioned was Robert Anton Wilson’s Everything is Under Control, because it has been sitting on the same bookshelf as most of the McKenna archive for quite a long time without my realizing it contained both an entry on Terence himself as well as an even longer entry on Food of the Gods (which is distinct from RAW’s review of the book which appeared in his Trajectories Newsletter #10, 1991 and is reprinted in Chaos & Beyond: The Best of Trajectories).
3. Beyond that, I rediscovered that Google Books allows you to also search through magazines (whichever ones they have in their database). This caused me to come across some magazine articles that mentioned Terence which I hadn’t encountered before as well as a whole slew of advertisements.
Last summer (2016), I had the pleasure of attending an event called Earth Consciousness & Lore of the Amazon at the Synergia Ranch in Santa Fe. Presenters included Dennis McKenna, Rick Doblin, Allan Badiner, Ralph Metzner, Valerie Plame Wilson, Michael Garfield, and Gay Dillingham (Don Lattin was also present). I had already been on a long road trip from Santa Barbara, stopping through the Blythe Intaglios on the way to present at the American Academy of Religion/Western Region conference in Tucson, then winding through Tombstone, Alamogordo, and Roswell on my way to Albuquerque to do archival research at the University of New Mexico in their Frank Waters collection…and would be headed onward through Chaco Canyon and Taos up toward Boulder where I would be doing further research at Naropa University, interviewing John Major Jenkins about his relationship with Terence McKenna, and, finally, heading back through Paonia (Terence’s and Dennis’ hometown) to familiarize myself with the feel of the place and to locate the places where various antics described in Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss and many of Terence’s talks and writings took place (I will write a separate blog post about this trip rather than try to squeeze it in here). So, the Synergistics event was a nice midway point in the overall journey. It was also a great opportunity to finally connect with Dennis, Terence’s brother, in person after previous conversations by email and Skype. I was also able to score a late-night interview with Rick Doblin about his remembrances of Terence and perceptions about his legacy.
The big dome at the Synergia Ranch (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Dennis McKenna (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Dennis McKenna’s presentation (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Dennis McKenna (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Rick Doblin presenting at Synergia Ranch (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Rick Doblin’s presentation at Synergia Ranch, April 2016 (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Ralph Metzner’s presentation at Synergia Ranch, April 2016 (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Ralph Metzner @ Synergia Ranch 2016 (Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Panel #1 @ Synergia Ranch 2016 (Dr. George Greer?, Rick Doblin, Dennis McKenna, and Ralph Metzner)(Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
Panel #2 @ Synergia Ranch 2016 (Allan Badiner, Gay Dillingham, Valerie Plame Wilson, Ralph Metzner, Dennis McKenna, and Michael Garfield)(Photo credit: Kevin Whitesides)
However, that event is not the focus of this post…it is only the proximal cause for the circumstances leading up to the topic of this particular blog post. Following the event, I was intending to head back to Albuquerque for more research in special collections at UNM the following day. It just so happened that one of the presenters needed a ride to Albuquerque in the morning to catch a flight, and so I stayed the night at the ranch near Santa Fe and made my way back to Albuquerque in the morning, recording another engaging dialogue during the car ride. After a day of successful document scanning (relating to Frank Waters’ role in the development of the ‘2012 Phenomenon’), I checked my Facebook and noticed that my wife had posted an article on my wall about a place in Santa Fe that had just opened called Meow Wolf.
The article made it seem like the ultimate psychedelic, interactive, mystery play house… walk into the refrigerator of a two-story family home and exit into a crystalline hyperdimension (as one example). It would take too much space for me to express how impressive the full-scale virtual reality that the creators of Meow Wolf have built actually is. I would recommend that you read articles such as this one (and this brand new windfall) to get a clearer sense of what this installation, funded by George R. R. Martin, in a refurbished and extended bowling alley in Santa Fe consists of. But, more importantly, if you’re ever in Santa Fe, you should just go!! Even the bathroom is a trip…
One of the features of the storyline at The House of Eternal Return (the name of the world that you enter) is that some of the family members have learned how to use a combination of drugs and sound to get access to travel between dimensions. You have access to their entire house, including the individual rooms and offices of the family members, a living room, a kitchen, etc. They actually built an entire house that you can walk around and inspect every detail of–you can read their mail, watch their videos, pull books off of their shelves, read diaries, check the files on their computers, root around in their medicine cabinets…and, more significantly, find the hidden portals into other worlds even more expansive than the house which is the entry point.
Once you arrive at the house, it’s entirely up to you what you explore and where you end up–it would take days (maybe weeks) to find everything. But, it’s definitely a case of “the further in you go, the bigger it gets.” (Apologies for the poor quality of the photos–I took most of them with my phone)
The soundtrack throughout is spectacular, by the way, and there are several areas that are delightful chill spaces that one could easily just kick back for a while (including a fog-and-light-filled room with a laser-harp).
To finally come closer to the point of the blog post, there is definitely an aspect of the cultic milieu spread throughout the experience even beyond the general “trippy” nature of the whole thing (much more so than I can get across here). One of the most obvious places where this shows up (for those capable of noticing) is in the personal libraries of the family members. One office in particular has a metaphysical and conspiratorial bent (you can see that I spent some time rooting through the desk drawers).
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And, on the bookshelves were a couple of familiar friends…Food of the Gods and (though it may be difficult to read the spine in the photo), a first edition (1975) of The Invisible Landscape. Terence McKenna is part of the set decoration at Meow Wolf, and, in fact, his work definitely thematically ties into the story.
Food of the Gods (to the left)
1st edition of The Invisible Landscape (middle-ish)
And, in the bedroom, near the device that creates the tones that, in concert with drugs, one uses to enter other worlds, there are even more subtle hints at what we are to understand is on the minds of our protagonists in the House of Eternal Return… Solomon Snyder’sDrugs and the Brain is out on the desk and on the bookshelf is a 2nd edition of The Invisible Landscape adjacent to Jim Fadiman‘s Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and near Tim Leary‘s Your Brain is God, among other evocative titles.
After having spent hours wandering through the alternate reality of Meow Wolf and realizing that I had only just scratched the surface of a fully-interactive creation chock-full of ‘easter eggs’ for someone with an eye for the esoteric, I suddenly found myself back in the dining room of the house staring at its large fireplace when suddenly I noticed someone crawling out of it from the inside. To my complete shock, this emerging fireplace gnome suddenly stood up and turned into Ralph Metzner. I had already succumbed to the strangeness of the world I was inhabiting, but for 1960s psychedelic pioneers to suddenly and unexpectedly manifest out of the interiors of fireplaces seemed somehow beyond incredulous. I came to find out, as I greeted Ralph and made my own way into the bowels of the hearth, that the house was now crawling with psychedelic luminaries who had, unbeknownst to me, also made their way down from the Synergia Ranch to check out the new local feature. It was a surreal experience that I will not soon forget, that I’m eager to repeat (there’s so much that I missed/didn’t find), and that I recommend to anyone of any age. And, as I made my way through the House of Eternal Return, it was a great pleasure to find that Terence was already there waiting to greet me.
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