Terence McKennas Suggested Reading List

Summary

This talk centers on a psychedelic reading list and a long reflection on Terence McKenna’s 1987 workshop material, especially the origin and meaning of the time wave theory. The host, Lorenzo, frames the episode as both a practical bibliography for psychedelic study and a meditation on how psychedelics can reshape one’s understanding of time, culture, and consciousness. The first major section is a curated survey of books relevant to psychedelics, ethnobotany, shamanism, and psychoactive plants. The speaker emphasizes that serious psychedelic work should be accompanied by library research and historical study. He recommends classic reference works such as Richard Evans Schultes’ botany and chemistry of hallucinogens, Peter Stafford’s psychedelic encyclopedia, Marlene de Rios’ cross-cultural perspectives on hallucinogens, Michael Harner’s anthology Shamanism and Hallucinogens, and Hoffer and Osmond’s Hallucinogens. He also highlights newer or less widely distributed works, including Anthony Ando’s The Science and Romance of Selected Herbs Used in Medicine and Religious Ceremony, William M. Bowdoin’s Narcotic Plants, and Rupert Sheldrake’s book on morphic resonance. Other notable titles include Rhian Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade, which the speaker interprets as indirectly supportive of psychedelic thinking through its critique of dominator culture and its attention to social transformation. He also praises a mushroom cultivation guide, noting that growing mushrooms can cultivate discipline, cleanliness, and attention to detail. The speaker further mentions the Codex Seraphinianus as a strange, imaginative, and expensive art book that evokes a psychedelic sensibility through its unknown language and impossible imagery. The second major section turns to Terence McKenna’s account of the time wave. The host explains that the 1987 workshop took place over Easter weekend and that the excerpt was selected because it reveals, in unusually detailed form, how McKenna believed the time wave idea emerged at La Chorrera in the Amazon. McKenna describes a psychedelic experiment involving ayahuasca, singing, and an attempt to saturate the body with psychedelic molecules. According to the account, the experiment did not produce the intended result, but it did trigger a profound experience in McKenna himself: a “teaching voice” that delivered a structured vision of time, novelty, and recurrence. This voice led him through the I Ching, asking him to examine the first-order differences between hexagrams and to graph the pattern, which produced a wave-like structure. McKenna interprets this as evidence that time is not linear but resonant, with each moment shaped by interference patterns from other moments scattered across history. McKenna connects this structure to DNA, arguing that the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams correspond to the 64 codons of genetic code. He presents the human organism as a molecular machine organized by deep formal patterns, and he extends this logic to society, history, and the cosmos. In his view, time is a topological manifold, and events unfold across it like water over terrain. He uses James Joyce’s Ulysses as an example of how a single day can also contain larger mythic and historical scales. The talk then broadens into a theory of novelty, process, and anxiety: if one understands the pattern of how things unfold, one can become less anxious about the future, death, relationships, and change. McKenna links this to Taoism, the I Ching, and the idea that the future is not random but patterned. A notable theme is the calendar. McKenna argues that the prevailing solar calendar is masculine and patriarchal, and that a different calendar could support a more feminine, transformative, and less anxious worldview. He cites the Chinese tradition of calendar reform and the I Ching’s Hexagram 49, Revolution, as evidence that calendar-making is a profound cultural act. He frames the time wave as a “totality symbol,” a complete but not absolute blueprint of how processes unfold. Rather than a mystical abstraction, he presents it as a practical model for understanding resistance, forward motion, reinfoldment, and the cyclical structure of life. The closing portion returns to the broader purpose of psychedelics. The speaker argues that psychedelics are tools for understanding reality, revising culture, and creating a more daoistic, feminine, and anxiety-free world. He emphasizes personal growth, but insists that the larger goal is cultural transformation. The episode ends with additional book recommendations, including works by Timothy Leary, Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna, Ram Dass, Robert Forte, Charles Grob, Albert Hofmann, Nina Graboi, Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Carl Ruck, Jonathan Ott, Jeremy Narby, Aldous Huxley, Christian Rätsch, and Paul Devereux. In response to a listener’s question about staying hopeful in the 21st century, Lorenzo says he focuses on family, reading, and changing culture one mind at a time, rather than relying on politics or news. The overall message is that psychedelic study, careful reading, and cultural imagination can help people live with greater clarity, resilience, and hope.