Terence McKenna
c/terence-mckenna
The largest collection of talks by Terence McKenna — visionary ethnobotanist and advocate for the mindful use of natural psychedelics.
c/terence-mckenna
The largest collection of talks by Terence McKenna — visionary ethnobotanist and advocate for the mindful use of natural psychedelics.
…unthinkable, the unspeakable, the peculiar, the edge of meaning, beauty at its most baroque and almost, you know, the world of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. And some people don't like that. They like to be reassured. They like closure. They…
…and it was also sort of represented as an aesthetic aphrodisiac or something. You would take low doses and look at paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and van Gogh and have an insight into art, which to some degree this was true. But what was absent from that…
…was discussing two poems by Yeats which deal with final things. And then the thing which broke down our effort to talk about Bosch was that we didn't have an overhead projector. And I thought if the group was small enough. How many people are familiar…
…with some other dimension, possibly beyond death or possibly drug induced. It's not clear we don't have much of a context for Bosch. And what has always attracted me to him is that he's a symmetry splitter. I mean, Bosch is almost impossible, and yet…
…have much of a context for Bosch. And what has always attracted me to him is that he's a symmetry splitter. I mean, Bosch is almost impossible, and yet weirdly conservative at that. What you have in Bosch is a kind of fossilization of the late medieval,…
…that he's a symmetry splitter. I mean, Bosch is almost impossible, and yet weirdly conservative at that. What you have in Bosch is a kind of fossilization of the late medieval, its obsessions, its symbolic associations, many now lost except to Chaucer…
…of John of Patmos. So I wanted to go through that, and then I wanted to read, and this will lead us into Bosch, a somewhat different take, or maybe a different take on an entirely different subject. But to my mind, these two poems are clearly…
…would be terminated. It's interesting, you know, the only, like, example we have that maybe sheds light on this is Hieronymuse Bosch. Because Hieronymus Bosch paint lived from 1450 to 1516 and painted what look like hallucinogenic landscapes. And there is a…
…It's interesting, you know, the only, like, example we have that maybe sheds light on this is Hieronymuse Bosch. Because Hieronymus Bosch paint lived from 1450 to 1516 and painted what look like hallucinogenic landscapes. And there is a curious stress on…
…machinery of siege warfare, which was being perfected in the lowlands at that time. In a sense, it's a cyberpunk vision, Hieronymus Bosch. And so, I don't know, having taken ayahuasca a fair bit in the Amazon with fairly primitive people, you always wonder…
…unthinkable, the uncertainty, the peculiar, the edge of meaning, beauty at its most baroque and almost, you know, the world of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. And some people don't like that. They like to be reassured. They like closure. They…
…again. It's this thing. What would you have if you could have anything? I mean, sometimes I imagine it, you know? Hieronymus Bosch is great triptych, the garden of earthly delights, where men and women of all races mingle among giant wrens and strawberries…
…think there's a lot of western artists and philosophers who are crazy wisdom masters, of course, Nietzsche and the dadaists, Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch, Mark Twain you know mark twain's dark writings, so called dark writings are a wonderful sort of…
…a lot of western artists and philosophers who are crazy wisdom masters, of course, Nietzsche and the dadaists, Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch, Mark Twain you know mark twain's dark writings, so called dark writings are a wonderful sort of deconstruction, a…
…of it. It's sort of the lighter side of enlightenment, you might say. So you mean the great madmen of western history, Hieronymus Bosch Dali, Ensor Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, I mean there's a million of them and they're both western and eastern, and all…
…000 years with people running around trying to do weird things, writing polyphonic music and you know the rudolphine court and Hieronymus Bosch and all this stuff and right under the surface just a Niagara of peculiarity and strangeness. That makes no sense…
…as far as its image bank is concerned and because it's drawn like yours is, you know, it only stretches so far from Hieronymus Bosch to Andy Warhol and all the themes in between. Well so then when you turn on psylla Simon and you get these bursts…
…each one the most perfect delineation of the art deco aesthetic that you've ever seen. And then you say you know Hieronymus Bosch and you're there this kind of interaction with an invisible dimension of vast intelligence is coming to be. Now I think…
…one you know the most perfect delineation of the art deco aesthetic that you've ever seen and then you say you know Hieronymus Bosch and you're there. This kind of interaction with an invisible dimension of vast intelligence is coming to be now I think…
…they know best and it will be very good I'm sure I'm going to hand around. How many of you know the work of Hieronymus Bosch? Yes well I've been into Bosch since I was 11 years old but very recently I came across a astonishing book and what's…
…very good I'm sure I'm going to hand around. How many of you know the work of Hieronymus Bosch? Yes well I've been into Bosch since I was 11 years old but very recently I came across a astonishing book and what's astonishing about it is that the…
…have on their mind? You just had fair warning that if you don't have anything on your mind you're going to get Hieronymus Bosch so you better get cracking. Your rap this morning struck home something we've been discussing behind the scenes for a while,…
…moment: incredible fear everything is going to be destroyed the world is ending. Yet how could the fetus at that moment imagine Hieronymus Bosch, or nuclear physics, or global politics, or star flight or any of these things we are now in the birth canal…
…moment incredible fear everything is going to be destroyed the world is ending. Yet how could the fetus at that moment imagine Hieronymus Bosch, or nuclear physics, or global politics, or star flight or any of these things? We are now in the birth canal…
…there's a lot of western artists and philosophers who are crazy wisdom masters, of course Nietzsche and the dadaists. Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch, Mark Twain you know mark twain's dark writings, so called dark writings, are wonderful sort of…
…of western artists and philosophers who are crazy wisdom masters, of course Nietzsche and the dadaists. Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch, Mark Twain you know mark twain's dark writings, so called dark writings, are wonderful sort of deconstruction, humorous…
…it it's sort of the lighter side of enlightenment you might say. So you mean the great madmen of western history the Hieronymus Bosch, Dali, Ensor, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, I mean you name it there's a million of them and they're both western and…
…the mona Lisa live in real time. Now I bring the clicker down and I click on the temptation of st Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch. A camera is turned on in the national gallery in Lisbon in Portugal. Now I'm seeing the temptation of st Anthony. I'm not…
…brotherhood of the free spirit. If any of you are familiar with the altarpiece called the Garden of earthly delights by Hieronymus Bosch, It's thought that this was created by a commission for a congregation of the brotherhood of the free spirit and the…
…000 years with people running around trying to do weird things, writing polyphonic music and you know the rudolphine court and Hieronymus Bosch and all this stuff and right under the surface just a Niagara of peculiarity and strangeness. That makes no sense…
…as its image bank is concerned, because it's drawn like yours is from the culture you know. It only stretches so far, from Hieronymus Bosch to Andy Warhol and all the themes in between. Well so then when you turn on psilocybin and you get these bursts…
…say, well how come I'm not seeing a archetypes and b things which somebody else, you know I don't know Dali, Ensor, Caravaggio, Bosch, Somebody should have seen this stuff and gotten it down and there didn't seem to be a trail through the history of…
…history of western art of the presence of this dimension. So then I thought: wow is it that nobody knew about all this? I mean Bosch would have given his right arm for a sheet of blotter I would think. So it became for me like a mystery: where is…
…where is this stuff coming from and what does it say about our humanness? Yeah well there's a lot of ink instilled over Bosch because he is such a startlingly radical painter in the context of his time. Many of his conceits were picked up after his…
…of it. He may have been an alchemical Guinea Pig who let's see frager I think wrote a book called the millennium of Hieronymus Bosch in which he wanted to suggest that maybe detour a use that there was a cult called the brotherhood of the free spirit…
…for a congregation of the brotherhood of the free spirit. But this is all pretty murky stuff it's hard to get back to Bosch. He didn't leave any written records we have his birth is recorded in the parish church of the village where he was born.…
…back to is the felt presence of immediate experience. Not how do I feel as a feminist or a marxist or a devotee of Hieronymus Bosch or whatever how do I feel? Not through the filter of ideology. As I look back through history as you look back through…
…Uh what we've shipped for is not a voyage of discovery it's more like a ship of fools deal. It's something which Hieronymus Bosch or Peter Bruegel the elder uh could appreciate. It's uh it's probably best summed up in the work of Groucho Marx but…
…tall order. Where do you begin? But finding DMT, it's matter. It's an object in this world. If you wanted a print by Hieronymus Bosch, you'd know how to proceed. If you wanted to buy the Koh-i-Noor diamond, you'd know how to proceed. If you needed a…
…wasn't like Tibetan Tantric painting, it wasn't like amazonian bark cloth painting, it wasn't like Jan Van Eyck it wasn't like Hieronymus Bosch or Jackson Pollock or anybody else and I thought how extraordinary if you take the jungian view that the function…
…my faith will lead to the good. And the true and some beauty is. I mean I'm a fan of extreme forms of beauty, Hieronymus Bosch and redon and James Ensor I mean the beautiful can be grotesque. Of course this then opens up a whole aesthetic can of…
…you've hit the main vein of weird you know no more do you have to closet yourself in the attic with your copy of Hieronymus Bosch. You can now you know move out into the real thing. So that propelled me to a lot of traveling and traveling, I think…
…a little bit of overflow into aesthetic issues. So I remember in the early days we would stack our Abrams books on Hieronymus Bosch and Piero Della Di Francesca and Giotto, and then the idea following Aldous Huxley was that you would imbibe the meaning…
…had come to this, I thought, fairly intellectually prepared, you know I mean a kid, but nevertheless, double scorpio art history major, Hieronymus Bosch Fan, moby dick, William Burroughs you know. And it was, as I came down and this went on for like two…
…this world, in the carpets of Central Asia, in the myths of the maya, in the visions of an archambolo or a frangelico or a Bosch, there is not a hint not a clue not an atom of the presence of this thing and when you look at the religious…
…this, this whole first business is pretty straightforward. Well, let's talk about the first one, though, because this we will meet in Bosch. That is no country for old men, the young in one another's arms, birds in the trees, those dying generations at…
…is what I wanted to get to the artifice of eternity is an extraordinarily peculiar concept, western, kept alive, present in Bosch, in the strange mechanical devices and towers that we'll see here, but in the artifice, eternity. And then the entire fourth…
…twilight lassitude in the midst of incredible imperial opulence and sensual excess and exotic. I mean, in a sense. I mean, Bosch. Bosch's dates are 1450. I'm sorry? Yes, 1450 to 1516. And this painting arguably could have been painted while America was…
…been painted while America was being discovered. We don't know the exact dates of the painting of the garden of earthly delights. But if Bosch was born in 1450, then he would have been 42 in 1492, he would have been at the height of his artistic power.…
…moment before the drama of creation is set in motion. It has to be said, you know, we have no interpretation of Bosch. He's been much fought overdose. William Francher, who was an art historian, argued, I thought persuasively in a book called the…
…fought overdose. William Francher, who was an art historian, argued, I thought persuasively in a book called the millennium of Hieronymus Bosch, that Bosch was probably an adamite, a member of a sect of heterodox christians that practiced ritual nudity, a…
…Francher, who was an art historian, argued, I thought persuasively in a book called the millennium of Hieronymus Bosch, that Bosch was probably an adamite, a member of a sect of heterodox christians that practiced ritual nudity, a sect particularly…
…content of the work gives any support for these kind of speculations. We possess no writings by or about Bosch. The conventions that he developed to portray infernal regions, you know, fish mouths, vomiting souls, biomechanical creatures, graphic, piercing.…
…school of apocalyptic portrayal. The most famous student, not student directly, but the most famous later painter influenced by Bach or Bosch. Not a painter, but. Well, a painter, but in this case, in his etchings, was Peter Brueghel the Elder, who did…
…Peter Brueghel the Elder, who did a series of seven deadly sins that are. You can't tell whether what you see in Bosch is supposed to horrify or delight you. Grego is pretty explicitly horrific. These strange vegetable forms and animals fill this painting.…
…is one very suggestive panel, because this object might very well be the seed capsule of datura stramonium, which would have implicated Bosch in some kind of a Datura cult. And this was a plant known to european witchcraft. And there is a fairly rich…
…These things are fantastic. I mean, if you're familiar with the canon of imagery of the middle 15 hundreds, and then you come upon Bosch. If it's startling to us, you can barely conceive of the effect that it had on its viewers in the 1490s or around…
…painting. Yes. Here's the unicorn. What did you ask about it? What symbol was that? Well, when you go into the symbolism, Bosch is just an encyclopedia of late medieval symbolism. Most of it can be sussed out. It's conventional. Some of it doesn't make…
…telling you what they know, but a huge residuum is left over under the category anybody's guess, you know, I mean. And yet Bosch, by virtue of the length of his career and the fact that these paintings have survived and that they were very large…
…fire and ice where lost souls are being tortured and tormented in countless ways. But this is the great prophetic vision of Bosch. I mean, this is Bosch anticipating the 20th century. This is Dresden, this is Berlin, this is Coventry, this is Saigon. This…
…souls are being tortured and tormented in countless ways. But this is the great prophetic vision of Bosch. I mean, this is Bosch anticipating the 20th century. This is Dresden, this is Berlin, this is Coventry, this is Saigon. This is all the places…
…this man down. Well, that's enough of that. I just wanted to go through it. I didn't want to lecture entirely on Hirana, Mass Bosch, but I wanted to draw the point that this imaging of a trans historical future has been going on for a long, long time…
…to the fourth chapter of Daniel when brother David read it. We had talked about the apocalypse of John of Patmos, Hieronymus Bosch sailing to Byzantium, Finian's waves. All of these efforts to give a feeling, tone, picture to this trans historical state…
…It's part of this impulse back to the archaic that I talk about. And, you know, if you had to have a virtual reality, Bosch would be a good blueprint to begin from. The sensibility seems to be right. Well, anybody have anything to say about that or…
…to begin from. The sensibility seems to be right. Well, anybody have anything to say about that or anything else could give you Bosch. Like a seer, like most. Well, in a sense, a more interesting seer because less specific, more general. Yeah, I mean, I…
…less specific, more general. Yeah, I mean, I view it as prophetic painting. I don't know. You know, we can't talk to Bosch, so we don't know how he viewed it. Some art historians have seen him as incredibly conservative, backward looking, reflecting the…
…engaged in various brawls, the news stories of the day, the racehorses and movie queens that were fascinating people in the moment. Bosch, it's a similar pronoun, we're in danger of losing the context. What looks one way to us is something to somebody…
…he was born. We know he was born sometime around 1450, died in 1516 but the details are pretty murky. Well not to belabor Bosch. So what I thought would be a reasonable way to do this this morning is to take the most extreme psychedelic case and…
…to be an infinite number of these things, as different as the bronzes of the han dynasty are to a Dali or a pollock or a Bosch and then you can say to it: going beyond the Surprise me challenge is what I always say to it is: I want to see more…
…and there are a number of highly idiosyncratic artists scattered through the history of art: Gustave Moreau, James Ensor, we mentioned Hieronymus Bosch you know well Mati Klarwein, but I'm trying to think of older ones but these seem to be unique visions,…