Terrascope review
Now Playing: Rick Saucedo LP

Terrascope on-line, the digital mutation of the renowned psychedelic publication Ptolemaic Terrascope, recently published the longest and most detailed review of Psychedelia so far. Kudos to reviewer Jeff Penczak for his commitment to the task, which led to an excellent understanding of several vital aspects to the book.

 "...by addressing almost every walk of life, Lundborg has in effect created The New Psychedelic Bible... an early candidate for Book of The Year, one which I will return to often to feed my head, re-energise my mind, and rejuvenate my consciousness."

Right on! Here's the whole Terrascope trip.

"Psychedelia" reviewed at Psypress
Now Playing: Donovan "Jersey Thursday"

The fine Psypress website has been going for several years now, and I recall promoting it back in my Eternal Now daze. It's been expanded with several contributors and a professional look, while the contents feature a mix of academia and lysergic anarchy that I enjoy. An illuminated review of the Psychedelia book appeared in late February, courtesy Henrik Dahl. Check it out!

"...an impressive and highly enjoyable contribution to the expanding field of psychedelic literature."

McKenna reconsidered
Now Playing: Terence McKenna "Tryptamine Consciousness" (1982)

A dozen years after his untimely death, our perception of Terence McKenna is still up in the air, still very much in a formative stage. Very little has changed in the way Terence is revered (frequently) and criticized (rarely). His person and work are treated as though he was still alive, an impression no doubt strengthened by how hundreds of his hypnotic lectures are broadcast around the globe 24 hours every day. In addition, no new figure-head has emerged within the field to extend, update or replace St Terence's gospel. For reasons like these, the psychedelic underground has clung to the McKenna that he himself designed and presented, with very little in terms of clarification or questioning.

When Terence's brother Dennis in 2011 announced via Kickstarter that he was embarking on a book project that would tell the "actual" story of his life with Terence, including unknown details about the La Chorrera experiment, the excitement was obvious. Many people including myself contributed to the funding of Dennis' writing project, which reached fruition via the book Brotherhood Of The Screaming Abyss published in late 2012--amusingly, very close in time to Terence's famously prophesized 'end of history'.

Prior to this, updates leaked out from the ongoing project, most notably via an Esalen Institute event that was also podcast at the Psychedelic Salon in July 2012. The fallout from the sharing of this book excerpt and the related conclusions drawn by presenter Bruce Damer were more dramatic than those involved may have expected. Many psychedelicists popped up to comment on the information revealed, some notably hurt or even incredulous. While this response may not have been the main reason, the most crucial paragraph was ultimately removed from Dennis McKenna's finished book. In other words, this information can only be gathered from the Esalen event and the subsequent debate. Even this podcast was temporarily removed from the internet, but it is now available again, presumably without any editing of 'sensitive' passages.

So what, precisely, caused this brouhaha? Here is what Dennis McKenna wrote and later removed from his book manuscript:

"Terence's pivotal existential crisis came abruptly. Sometime in '88 or '89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I don't know exactly when it happened and I don't know exactly what happened. I am piecing it together from what Kat has told me and she has volunteered few details and I am reluctant to probe. It happened when they were living for a time on the Big Island and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was, "a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning." And this induced panic in Terence and probably, I speculate, a feeling that he was going mad. He couldn't deal with it. Kat's efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms and he took other psychedelics such as DMT and Ayahuasca only on rare occasions and with great reluctance."

Those well familiar with Terence McKenna's career will appreciate the loaded nature of this revelation. In case one fully does not realize the implications of it, Esalen speaker Bruce Damer goes to some length to high-light how Terence's terrifying shroom trip affects the impression of his last decade. What has upset and troubled many Terence fans is the realization that while the man travelled around the world advocating the use of 'heroic dose' psilocybin trips for crowds of thousands, he himself had been scared so badly by a mushroom trip that he gave up shrooms altogether. And this double book-keeping went on for 10 years. Privately Terence would question the value of his teachings and his role, but in public there is no notable shift whatsoever in his message before the terrifying trip in the late '80s, and after it. A person with a critical mindset could draw strongly negative conclusions from this, and even through the most benign lense, it is a troubling revelation.

But there is another aspect to this recent information that I personally find more troubling than the masquerade that has caused Terence fans to feel confused or betrayed. From a few additional comments made at the Esalen gathering, it appears that the theme of Terence's dramatic bad trip dealt with his emotional involvement with other people, a private conundrum which brother Dennis in his book traces back to an event involving their father in Terence's childhood. While charming and extrovert in his role as a bardic performer, Terence apparently strove to avoid any deeper private relationships, and the mushroom 'spirit' (or his own subconscious) presumably took him to task for this unfulfilled aspect of his life. This would be a fairly typical admonition towards self-improvement to receive under psychedelics, and any experienced psychedelicist--and this would certainly include Mr McKenna--knows that there's nothing to do but roll with the punches when you're getting roughed up for your shortcomings as a human being. Yet it seems that Terence could not accept or handle this one, and instead he did the classic beginners mistake of rejecting the warning message. Rejection, denial or other defensive responses will unfailingly trigger the negative spiral of a bad trip, at the end of which one may find an existential abyss like the one described above.

The crucial point of this scenario isn't that Terence had a bad trip, but that he couldn't handle the criticism that Innerspace levelled at him. Such a reaction is not something you would expect to find in a person with 25+ years of heavy psychedelic trips behind him. The psychodynamic cleansing of inner wardrobes and private skeletons is something you tend to deal with at the beginning of the psychedelic career, not towards the end. The question being raised, and this is what troubles me, is whether Terence McKenna had gone through all his psychedelic adventures without ever actually facing an inner confrontation of personality, defenses and hang-ups that is crucial to further spiritual growth on the path of the trip. Is it even possible to chew down 5 grams of dried Cubensis for two decades and never having to pass the rough crash course in self-improvement referred to as 'Gnothi Seauton [Know Thyself] 101' in the Psychedelia book? 

Terence McKenna repeatedly rejected LSD due to what he called its 'abrasively psychoanalytic' nature. I never quite understood what he meant, but the new information from brother Dennis & co suggests that what Terence referred to was not some intrinsic flaw in LSD, but rather that the acid kept bringing him to doors that he was not interested in opening. To whatever degree these things can be generalized, it seems that LSD per se offers a structured progression in which the psycho-dynamic baggage must be dealt with in order to reach further heights, or else it will be a meaningless experience of funny colors, emotional stalemate, or even a bad trip. The beloved Psilocybin and DMT however, while they insist on self-improvement just as strongly, will still offer plenty for the mind to work with, even if the door to Gnothi Seauton 101 remains closed. The Mushroom Voice ('the Logos') and the various entities will still be there and happy to impart wisdom and dialogue which has no bearing on the inner emotional imbalances of the tripper: even without cleansing there will be a show. And Terence, the self-confessed 'vision freak', was all about the impersonal presentations in Innerspace, from the sight of gigantic spaceships to conversations with little elfs about the future of language.

Is it possible that someone, a person of a brilliant mind, could spend 25 years in the farther reaches of Innerspace and never once face the forceful demands on inner cleansing and self-improvement? If this was the case with Terence McKenna, and it does seem to match the new insights that have emerged, then a plate loaded with food for thought has just been served. Not just concerning the man himself and the nature of his personality, but also about the long-term relationship between psychedelicists and Innerspace, the supposed aquisition of wisdom from these experiences, and the possible need for a more directed or explicit model for beginning acidheads. It is vital to go through Gnothi Seauton 101, the earlier the better, and the longer you try to evade it, the harsher it will ultimately become. As Terence McKenna seems to have learned the hard way.

Magic mushroom advise
Now Playing: Trees "Garden Of Jane Delawney"

This subject recently came up elsewhere and reminded me of something that was scheduled for inclusion in the Psychedelia book, but dropped in the final editing. It addresses a familiar problem that anyone home-growing mushrooms will face; which is the wildly uneven ratios of psilocybin and psilocyn in different 'flushes' (harvests). Not only that, but even within one flush there will be large differences in how potent the individual shroom specimens are.

This inserts an unwanted element of hazard into the sacred mushroom culture. You simply cannot be sure what the right dosage is, and once you've made the decision and chewed the little devils down, there is little in the way of turning back. However, there is a way to handle this dilemma which is particularly fitting for those handling larger volumes of psilocybian matter. As follows...

To work around the dosage problem that is inevitably there with mushrooms, do as follows; first cut and grind the entire stash into a pile of tiny, crumb-size pieces, and mix and turn the pile over thoroughly. Using appropriate household tools, you then stuff these ‘mushroom crumbs’ into clear plastic capsules, preferrably 00 size. Make sure that each capsule is jam-packed with shroom. You now have a number of psilocybin capsules of (statistically) identical strength. To determine what that strength is, you eat one of the capsules, i e: you take a trip. Prepare yourself carefully for the experience, as always. Take note of the effects during the trip, i e; how stoned am I? After coming down, you should be able to judge whether you need 1, 2 or 3 capsules to get the high you desire, and the dosage will be the same each time. The larger batches you use, the more advantage you will have of this method. The capsules are also convenient for long-time storage in the freezer.

Four star review
Now Playing: "Saucerful Of Secrets" mono mix

The enthusiastic reviews keep pouring in, not least so from England where Psychedelia has always been a popular underground activity. Record Collector magazine delivered a well-written comment with a nice Monty Python undertone to it. Thanks chaps. And now...

 

Shindig magazine review
Now Playing: Derby della Madonnina

Thanks to Shindig magazine and Richard Allen in particular for the positive review of the Psychedelia book in the latest issue (February 2013). A "Golden Bough" for acidheads is much better than any of the PR lines I've come up with.

Support from a legend
Now Playing: "Drive, He Said"

Veteran researcher and psychedelic role model Ralph Metzner gives the Psychedelia book a powerful push in his newsletter, which goes out to many hallucinogenic big-wigs around the world. Thanks Ralph!

Psychedelia matters! (new Pop Matters review)
Now Playing: Byrds "Eight Miles High"

The hip website 'Pop Matters' delivered a long, serious and very useful review of the Psychedelia book, rating it as 'damn good' while making several sharp observations.

 "... a solid resource on what’s been too often left for silly flights of fancy or sophomoric pronouncements an ephemeral topic. Lundborg, as a diligent tour guide through psychedelia in theory and practice, keeps moving forward in time and space. But like his swirling subject, he cannot help pursuing byways, tracking trains of thought, and wandering off on rewarding detours..."

Much appreciated. Read John L Murphy's entire review here.

New York radio and Jungle television
Now Playing: Midwest vs Canada '60s garage comp

A radio station in upstate New York have begun reading the entire Psychedelia book over the air, in 10-minute instalments each week! One of the more unusual and thrilling forms of feedback we have received so far.

Earlier this month saw a brief mention of the book (+photo) in The Wire, who hopefully will come back with a complete review later on.

While waiting for that, I took the time to scan and re-format an old brochure on ayahusaca preparation which I picked up several years ago. It's professionally produced and obviously knowledgable, and has served me well. I shortened it a bit, but all the vital data needed to cook your own 'spirit elixir' is there. You can spot some of my handwritten comments, I left these in for a personal touch.

I had intended to included this recipe in the Psychedelia book, but the text was simply too long to fit into a footnote, so here it is instead. Turn on the stove, stir up the brew and kick back with what Jeremy Narby calls 'jungle television'.

Psychedelic Trip Model (from 'Psychedelia' book)
Now Playing: Liquid Downbeats Vol 1

This simple graphic representation of a 'model' psychedelic journey is invoked throughout the Psychedelia book, and may be useful as a stand-alone item. My 4-step model combines and streamlines a number of tentative trip charts proposed in the 1960s-70s. After finishing it I was pleased to discover that it aligned very well with a couple of additional models I ran across in ethnobotany-anthropology & elsewhere. It works primarily for the long-acting serotonergic hallucinogens, meaning LSD, mescaline and psilocybin. The ayahuasca journey tends to follow a similar trajectory, but due to its different length (3-4 hours instead of 10+) and strong shamanic footing, I designed a specific trip model for ayahuasca, which also appears in the book.

  

Major newspaper review (SvD) of 'Psychedelia' book
Now Playing: Barry Levinson's bizarre, accidentally psychedelic "Toys" (1992)

The first review of Psychedelia in a major daily paper arrived the other day, and somewhat unexpectedly it is Svenska Dagbladet ('Sweden's Daily Paper') who are first at bat -- almost all our PR is international and I wasn't even aware that SvD had received a promo copy. Based in Stockholm, this is Sweden's second largest morning paper. 

So that's pretty cool, but cooler still is that it's a rather enthusiastic review, I must say. Spread out across 1.5 page in the printed version of the paper, the review describes the book as 'knowledgable and well-written', and it mentions the cross-cultural approach which is one of the central aspects behind it. Similarly well-observed by reviewer Dan Backman is the comment that Psychedelia eschews the usual acid casualty rock star stories (such as Syd Barrett) to instead delve into a much lesser known world of chemists, smugglers, advocates and artists, whose 'stories are at least as spectacular'. The chapter on early Electronica & Exotica receives special praise as a 'wonderful collector geek' piece, and I guess that's true too!

Here is a link to the review, which is written in Swedish. I'm waiting to receive a copy of the printed newspaper, which featured a bunch of psychedelic images in addition to Backman's review.

This certainly ended the year 2012 on a high note! Imagine that a few months back we figured the world wouldn't even exist today (ho-ho).

Stay high & see ya on the other side.

A-Z book index in new, massively expanded version
Now Playing: Infinity Project "Flying"

A second draft of an A-Z index for the Psychedelia book, at 14 pages twice as big as the first one, has now been posted as a PDF file. You can print it as a hard copy or use it for digital searches. Please note that this is still not quite version 1.0, but it's getting pretty close. This replaces the earlier 0.9 version in its entirety.

Here is the latest version.

 

Sneak peek review previews

Here are some early reactions on the Psychedelia book from the learned men and women amongst us:

---

Clinic frontman Ade Blackburn in Magnet Magazine:
"[Psychedelia]...promises to be something special. Out through Subliminal Sounds, it looks at the many facets of psychedelia over time and not just the ’60s. Military acid tests, Philip K. Dick, Exotica, CIA research, Goa Trance, poster art, etc., all get a look in. Patrick wrote the immense Acid Archives book, which shed a light on many great but unheard private-press releases. His new book should do the same for psychedelic culture."
Thanks man. Clinic's latest album is just out, dig it!
Here is the original appearance of Blackburn's comment.

---

Richard Allen, music writer and founder of Freakbeat and Delerium:
"...a detailed and thorough academic study that examines psychedelia and psychedelic culture in the West. I haven't yet read anything about the rather more blood thirsty Mayan and Aztec branch of the family. What it does do is go beyond Western pop cultures brief, exciting coalescence with psychedelics and its a work that might in the future be regarded in the same way that Sir James George Fraser's The Golden Bough has become a reference point for those studying religion folklore and mythology. A stunning achievement." (a full-length review by Richard will appear in Shindig in the near future)

---

Mother Mushroom
Now Playing: Plastic Cloud LP

The Psychedelia book does not go into great detail with regards to the Greek myth of Demeter's search for her daughter Persephone, abducted by Hades. This myth bears marks of having been derived from an even older fertility-agricultural myth, in which the seasonal changes and coming harvests were focal points for deity worship and offerings. In an interesting development, this Greek goddess myth then went through another cycle of transformation, where the old paraphernalia (such as symbolic grain spikes) was retained, while the symbolic purpose of the rite now had become oriented towards the spiritual enlightenment of each participant. As described in Psychedelia, the hallucinogenic kykeon provided the psycho-active catalyst for this revelation of a higher, eternal world.

This ancient fresco of Persephone and Demeter is curious as it shows the goddesses holding up and admiring what clearly looks like mushrooms. However, the kykeon brew is today believed to have come from ergot infested barley (much like the ergot rye that led to LSD-25), from which an LSD analogue such as LSA was derived.

Except for the hallucinogenic connection, the presence of psycho-active mushrooms in the Great Mysteries is not known at all, which makes the fresco image puzzling. Carl Ruck, in his Sacred Mushrooms Of The Goddess (2009) speculates that psycho-active mushrooms may have been used in the Lesser Mysteris that preceded the night in the Great Temple by many months, and whose purpose may have been to screen out mentally unstable candidates. In any event, the image of the goddesses and shrooms provides an intriguing of another, perhaps yet unknown, hallucinogenic tradition in the old high culture of the Mediterranean.

Original artwork used for Psychedelia book cover
Now Playing: silence

Here is the complete "Sinfonia Shamanica" painting by Andy Debernardi that he kindly licenced for us to use for Psychedelia. As you can see, the image was cropped in order to fit the book's dimensions. The printed book cover came out slightly more green and less blue than the original work, which enhanced the rain forest feel. High quality giclee reproductions of this and other Debernardi paintings can be purchased at his website. If you're lucky, you may get a chance to buy an original piece (I happily did)!

Interview about the "Psychedelia" book
Now Playing: psyradio.org

Klemen at the highly active and popular It's Psychedelic Baby website did an interview with me recently concerning the Psychedelia book and other hallucinogenic delights. Check it out here:

Interview with Patrick

On a general front, the book has definitely hit European retailers now, as I've heard from several people who have purchased it in the last week. Next week it should be available in the US as well, but I believe you can already order it from several mail-order dealers, such as Forced Exposure.

Psychedelia Across America
Now Playing: Byrds "Younger Than Yesterday" mono LP
The official publishing date for the Psychedelia book in the USA has been set to 4 December 2012.

Psychedelic creativity experiment in the 1950s
Now Playing: BLO "Chapter One"

The Psychedelia book is basically a text-based work, but it contains a 16-page color inlay, and some more images scattered about. Here is a full color page which didn't make it into the final manuscript. It is a late '50s magazine clipping which illustrates Oscar Janiger's famous experiment in which dozens of artists were given LSD and were asked to paint a small indian Kachina doll that Janiger had. The result was very varied and interesting, and has been followed up in recent times. Read more about this in Psychedelia, below is the original c1959 report.

 

Psychedelia release date
Now Playing: Roky Erickson "The Evil One"

The official publishing date for Psychedelia-An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life has been set to 26 November 2012. The book is now printed and worldwide distribution is in progress. For wholesale and dealer inquiries, contact Subliminal Sounds .

More soon!

The 'Psychedelia' site is an on-line appendix to the 2012 book of the same name, written by Patrick Lundborg. Questions and comments are encouraged. Stay high!