The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, Ufos, Evolut

by Terence McKenna

Book Overview

Cited by the L.A. Weekly as the culture's foremost spokesman for the psychedelic experience, Terrence McKenna is an underground legend as a brilliant raconteur, adventurer, and expert on the experiential use of mind-altering plants.In these essays, interviews, and narrative adventures, McKenna takes us on a mesmerizing journey deep into the Amazon as well as into the hidden recesses of the human psyche and the outer limits of our culture, giving us...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062506137
• ISBN13: 9780062506139
• Release Date: May 1992
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A New Trip Down an Old Rabbit Hole

I just recently finished this book, and i can say it has been one of the most profound pieces of literature i've ever had the pleasure of reading. The topics explored in the book (which are, i might add, VERY extensively explored) ask the reader to look outside of the narrow field of spiritual and philosophical vision that constitutes our cultural typic, and question things one might not have ever thought of questioning. McKenna seems very frank and straightforward through the whole book, not dancing around subjects or refraining from certain phrases that some would be self-concious to use (ie. get loaded). Instead of seeming to be written exclusively for futuristic scientists with an affinity for psychedelic drugs, the book seems to be aimed at the much wider crowd of anyone with an open mind and a vocabulary. The ideas described vary in topic from UFO abductions to a 15th century manuscript, and everything in between. most of the chapters have some common thread connecting them, the only exception being "The Voynich Manuscript." im not really sure where he was going with this chapter in relation to the rest of the book, but its interesting nonetheless. anyway, the book is nothing but a collection of speeches, essays, interviews, etc conducted by him over the years, and is really meant to be an introduction to his philosophy. His other books: The I Ching, and Food of the Gods, though i havent' read them, have been reviewed to be much more technically worded, hard to read, and aimed at students of mathematics and anthropology/ethnobotany. The Archaic Revival is more or less easy to comprehend, but he does use some terms over and over again that the average person wouldn't know (ie. phenomenology, entelechy, gnosis), so have a dictionary close by if you want to get the most out of the material as possible. Terrence McKenna has some very bizzarre ideas for sure, and not everyone will relate to all of the ideas expressed in his writings, but i think that most ppl can find something about it they find interesting, and for the psychedelic crowd, McKenna's ideas sound like solaces from beyond, as he so easily verbalizes concepts that otherwise seem impossible to explain. His ideas of social reform and reverting to imitating plants as the role models of human life and civilzation, rather than animals, are so insane that they make more sense than anything i've ever heard. As far as his idea of the end of human history and the transcendence of physical existence into cyber-spiritual entities, all happening by the year 2012, i think he was a little off with the exact figures of time, as im writing this on Oct. 30, 2005 and it doesn't look like the world is going through a historical apocalypse in the next 6 yrs., but oh well--when you're dealing with the entirety of history, you can give or take a couple thousand years w/out compromising the legitimacy of your idea. plus, who knows, maybe on Jan. 1, 2012, we'll all be sitting around watching our

You were......and still are....Ahead by a Century

first I would like to quote Tim Leary from his skymaster speech "Terence Mckenna means a great deal to me, he's deffinently one of the 5, 6 most impotant people on the planet......I can't even think of any others....lol....(short term memory loss)...by the way the role Terence is playing right now takes not only vision but it also takes f***ing courage!"Terence Mckenna is not just a scientist, philosopher, theorist, new age thinker, and shamman, he is someone who took it upon himself, at the cost of his own life, to teach humankind the truth, or something that came closer to truth than any other intellectual or prophet in human history. No one else of the 60's generation will likely go down in history as infamously as Terence will in the changing times we live in and will continue to change. Through the use of psychedelics, Mckenna has delved into the deepest levels of human consciousness and with the rigour and skepticism of a scientist. Deffinently a chalenge to those who think mind altering drugs dullen or stupify the intellect. Terence Mckennas intellect and thought processing speed capacity appear to have been accelerated by his use of DMT and psylocybin if you listen to him on interviews. Here is a person came into the world, underwhent formal schooling and academic training and managed to decondition himself evolving into genuine spiritual domains; surpassing the academic minds and spiritual models of his time and culture. Time-Wave Zero was his project, Novelty Theory his lifes work. Archaic Revival touches upon the ideas of novelty theory in relation to shammanism and extratterestrials, psychedelics and human cultural evolution into the surreal dimensions of hyperspace-spirituality. This is our future, our destiny as a species of absolute evolving consciousness.Novelty theory is based on the immediate experience we have with reality in which all things in history and science seem to coincide in ways that not only defy explanation, but continuously addapt to their own conservatives. Terence believed novlety was a universal and necessary constant of not only all living beings consciousness but also a binding and cohesive principle of material/physical nature. Cosmological and evolutionary processes occur in accordance to novelties, physical laws and the behaviour of atoms, cells, populations and genetics behave and abide the way they do because it is the most novel thing to do. Simillar to Leibniz conception of this world as the best of all possible worlds, novelty states that this is not necessarily the best nor the only world but it is possible and exists because it is the most novel world. Another one of Terences discoveries was that self-reflective human consciousness evolved from language that the brain facilitated and expanded from the primate because of their consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. In this less popular model, conspiracies of alien intervention and genetic tampering of "reptilian" with "homonid" DNA to for

Best Starting Point for McKenna

This book offers the best taste of all of McKenna's wild ideas. The book is a compilation of 18 or so interviews, speeches, essays and stories about magic mushrooms, shamans, UFOs, virtual reality, partnership societies and basically anything else that Terence McKenna mused on during his thirty year career as psychedelic spokesman. This will be a rewarding read for anyone who's ever though that there may be more to the world than what most of us experience in day to day life.

A VALUABLE and IMPORTANT book to read

The above one-star review proves why it is necessary to read this book. Dismissing ideas because we may be ridiculed for taking them seriously is what landed us in this undeniable global mess. Whether or not shrooms are ETs or artifacts of ETs is not the issue. A quote of Terence's: "I like to show people how things can be seen differently, and if things can be seen THAT differently, in what other ways can they be seen differently", because staying the course is not working. Open-mindedness is Terence's message, and his convincing proof of the viability of his "crazy" ideas will go a long way toward opening you up to new ideas. Another quote: "It doesn't do you any good to know that in some computer somewhere there are equations that perfectly model or perfectly don't model something else. The only understanding of the universe that will do you any good is your own understanding, because it's you you have to live with, and it's you you have to die with.... the last dance you dance, you dance alone"

Entertaining!

This is an excellent read. Mckenna has a beautiful command of the english language, perhaps as a result of his extensive use of entheogenic fungi. It is an entertaining and thought provoking book. I believe Mckenna strides on the edge of psuedo-science by offering a heavy dose of speculation, but since Western science turns its back on the entheogenic experience we have to start somewhere.