Terence McKenna - Psychedelic Psychopomp and Meta Trip-Sitter, by Graham St John

A man sits cross legged atop a giant mushroom. One hundred people surround him, listening closely. The scent of DMT wafts in time with the pulsating and hypnotic sound of a didgeridoo. From his giant mushroom, Terence McKenna rants his third rave of the evening, speaking nonsense and the most sense at the same time.

“What they meant was use your voice to make an object, and as I understood, I felt a bubble kind of grow inside of me, and I watched these little elf tykes jumping in and out of my chest (they like to do that, to reassure you) and they said, ‘do it!’ and I felt language rise up in me, that was unhooked from English, and I began to speak, like this… ”

In our new video, Graham St John shares stories from his forthcoming biography of ‘America’s Shaman’, Terence McKenna. From stumbling upon Psilocybe cubensis in the Amazon, to Carl Jung, TimeWave Zero, machine elves, circus carnies, psychedelic mothballs, fairies, pied pipers and Ireland.

Terence’s words live on and are continually re-imagined through psytrance playlists around the world.