History Ends In Green – Part 3

Summary

This transcript centers on a long-form discussion from the Psychedelic Salon featuring Terrence McKenna’s September 1990 workshop, introduced and contextualized by Lorenzo. The conversation ranges widely across psychedelics, language, culture, history, and politics, with McKenna using his characteristic speculative style to connect altered states of consciousness to broader patterns in civilization. A major theme is McKenna’s claim that history is not driven by heroic individuals alone, but by large, often unconscious social and technological forces. He argues that revolutions are frequently suppressed or absorbed back into “business as usual,” describing historical change as metastable and often blocked by centralized institutional control. He reflects on the 20th century as a period of dramatic but constrained transformation, citing fascism, World War II, suburbanization, the Cold War, and the social upheavals of the 1960s. In his view, the sixties represented a genuine opening, but one that was eventually contained. He contrasts this with a more hopeful vision of fragmentation, decentralization, and cultural diversity, suggesting that the future may not be a single global order but many local and semi-integrated systems, similar to the European model. Language and consciousness form another central thread. McKenna discusses Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar, but moves quickly toward his own psychedelic interpretation of language as something visual, sculptural, and embodied. He describes DMT experiences in which he encounters “self-transforming machine elves,” entities that appear as jewel-like, sentence-like objects in three-dimensional space. These beings, he says, seem to communicate through visual language, and he speculates that they may be related to the dead or to ancestral spirits. He connects this to Celtic fairy traditions, St. Patrick’s invention of purgatory as a Christianized version of fairyland, and the idea that the unseen world is crowded with spirits. He also links these experiences to the possibility of a future “iconic” or “glyphic” language, drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media bias, print culture, and the shift from manuscript to typography. McKenna repeatedly emphasizes that psychedelics are not merely chemical curiosities but tools for revealing future states of mind and possible evolutionary directions in consciousness. He argues that the most powerful psychedelics are often those closest to ordinary brain chemistry, especially DMT and psilocybin, and suggests that evolution may be visible most clearly in consciousness because it is where chemistry is most delicately poised. He discusses serotonin receptors, neurotransmitters, and the possibility that human consciousness is slowly changing through time. He also notes that psychedelics can be used to explore synesthesia, music, glossolalia, and the transformation of meaning into visible form. A substantial portion of the conversation concerns shamanism, ayahuasca, and mushroom use. McKenna describes ayahuasca visions as often involving snakes, cats, and dancing black people, and speculates about whether these recurring motifs reflect a collective informational field, a kind of formative causation, or the plant’s own consciousness. He compares ayahuasca to a visual language and mushrooms to a verbal one, suggesting that different plant medicines have distinct “presentational personalities.” He also discusses the importance of diet, set and setting, psychic weather, and bodily preparation, framing shamanism as an art and science of physiological transformation. He mentions practical details such as yawning, tearing, runny nose, visual streaming, and the use of cannabis to intensify a mushroom experience. He advises that difficult psychedelic states are best navigated by staying still, breathing, and singing through the experience rather than clenching up in fear. The talk also explores the relationship between psychedelics and art. McKenna links romanticism, symbolism, the Pre-Raphaelites, opium, synesthesia, and the idea that architecture is frozen music. He suggests that music and tone can shape hallucinations into large, vaulted, architectonic spaces, and that technology may eventually help humans build a more precise sculptural language of meaning. He imagines a virtual reality system in which words are paired with geometric forms, allowing speech to become visible and syntactically organized in space. Toward the end, the transcript shifts into a more grounded political and ethical register. Lorenzo closes with commentary about Standing Rock, indigenous resistance to an oil pipeline, and the role of militarized law enforcement and outside police forces in suppressing peaceful protest. He frames the struggle as a defense of sacred land, water, and indigenous sovereignty, and urges listeners to pay attention and become more active. This ending ties the psychedelic and visionary themes back to real-world responsibility, environmental justice, and solidarity with indigenous communities.