Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What we would call manic depression, despair, and that chaotic, near psychotic state of unbounded hopelessness is the precondition then for the alchemical work.” “An angel chartered modern science. It’s the alchemical angel, which will not die. It returns again and again […]

Guest speakers: Rose Kiseato & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Rose Kiseato Shepherd Davis, who is a Navajo-Hopi water woman of the Native American Church of North America. She is from the tobacco clan and is a 5th generation grandmother in her maternal line. Rose is an […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Modern philosophy is a desert for my money, and who cares about it? Nobody cares about it. Who’s living their life according to the conceptions of modern philosophy, nobody as far as I can see.” “We live in a universe so alienated […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “A child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it.” “Buddhism would have gotten nowhere in America had not psychedelics created a context for Buddhist language to take root.” “Modernity has fixed our minds in the categories […]

Guest speakers: Veronica Hernandez & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features a conversation between Veronica Hernandez and Shonagh Home. Veronica Hernandez, is a clinical psychologist and shamanic practitioner. Born in Peru, since 2006 she has been trained on shamanic facilitation. She received her clinical training at the Institute of Rational-Emotive Therapy, New York, under […]

Guest speaker: Annie Oak PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features the 2015 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Annie Oak at the Burning Man Festival. In her talk, Annie takes us on a tour of the various factors involved in organizing events such as festivals, dance parties, and theme camps. As a co-founder of the Woman’s Visionary […]

Guest speaker: Emanuel Sferios PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features a conversation that Lorenzo had with Emanuel Sferios, the founder of DanceSafe and the producer of “MDMA The Movie”. In addition to discussing the movie that Emanuel is producing their conversation included a discussion of the way young people now perceive the differences between MDMA, Ecstasy, […]

Guest speaker: Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Rick Doblin.] “We need to move to a post-prohibition world.” “The spiritual/mystical experience has profound implications of the kind that we need now.” “Not in our studies only, but world wide there have now been over 1,100 people who have taken pure MDMA in […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features the final section of a Terence McKenna workshop that took place in February 1991. In addition to more stories about the machine-elves and DMT, Terence covers evolution, the imagination, virtual reality, shamanism, and falling in love. The title of today’s podcast comes from my favorite quote […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast begins with Terence talking about the elephant in the ayahuasca room: purging, puking, barfing, vomiting or whatever you want to call it. Fortunately he moves on and speculates that the human break with nature came about due to a change in the climate. And he ends this […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I don’t think you are going to spend very long involved with these things at a deep level without scaring your socks off eventually. One of the great things about these psychedelic teachers is that they are so gentle with beginners. And […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The great emphasis for the fall into history is this broken connection with this Mind in nature.” “We can move no faster than the envelope of language which we generate to describe our journey.” “We need to take the engineering of our […]

Guest speaker: Grover Norquist PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast comes in two parts. We begin with the Palenque Norte Lecture that Grover Norquist gave at the 2015 Burning Man Festival. This talk was actually in the form of a question and answer session in which the somewhat liberal audience found several areas in which they held […]

Guest speakers: Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Danny Sugarman, & Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features talks by Dr. Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, and Danny Sugarman, as well as audio from the trailer for DeepWebTheMovie.com. This is a podcast that you may want to listen to if you value your right to freely use the Internet, […]

Guest speaker: Alicia Danforth PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature the 2015 Palenque Norte Lecture by Dr. Alicia Danforth. In her talk, plus a question and answer session, Alicia describes some of the difficulties that a professional woman researcher may encounter in the area of sexism at work. She also discusses what has been called “the […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Boundary-dissolving internal hierophany does in fact reliably occur in the presence of these [psychedelic] plants and compounds.” “We have become so accustomed to seeking the answer that even as a community we have a lot of trouble figuring out how you just […]

Guest speaker: Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Shonagh Home.] “The mushroom has a wildness to it because it is wild, just as our minds once were wild.” “I see the mushroom as the ultimate test of the initiate because you’re on your own. There’s no shaman to guide you, and so […]

Guest speaker: Hamilton Souther PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Hamilton Souther.] “In the jungle, the ayahuasca is used traditionally to heal what are known as mystical, non-ordinary, problems.” “I came to look at it and realize that what we [North Americans] were looking for wasn’t specifically an experience that would produce healing, but […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today we pick up on the February 1996 Terence McKenna workshop that we began with Podcast 472. When he gets to his overview of habit and novelty and then moves into a discussion of time, his poetic language provides several interesting mental footholds from which we can expand on […]

Guest speakers: Borka Cafuk & Shonagh Home Today’s program features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Borka Cafuk, who is a remarkable medicine woman. Not only does Borka provide interesting details about plant medicines such as ayahuasca, sapo, and nu-nu, she also tells the fascinating story of her transition from working as an environmental journalist […]