Terence McKenna
Paperback | Pages: 311 pages Rating: 4.16 | 7692 Users | 397 Reviews
Mention Books Conducive To Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
| Original Title: | Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge |
| ISBN: | 0553371304 (ISBN13: 9780553371307) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm |
Narration To Books Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
The book covers a very wide range of topics, from the description of legal and illegal synthesized drugs, natural drugs, history of drug use, and it´s influence on human evolution and history.Alternative ideas of how something might have developed are always interesting and in this case, two interesting questions come to mind. First how the whole human and before primate evolution, biochemistry, neurological functions, brain development, etc., might have been shaped by coincidence or by consciously consuming certain herbs, plants, berries, mushrooms, etc and second, how this might have influenced the development of all kind of faiths and beliefs.
You are what you eat, even if you are just a tiny rodent. That gets more interesting with bigger mammals and very exciting with primates, because a few hundred or thousands of years of consuming, especially during pregnancy, might have some impact. Much fresh seafood mixed with some vegetables and barely any red meat is something different than much carbohydrates, etc. That´s just the normal food and as everyone interested in what is the best fuel for ones´ engine knows, much depends on it.
And now take ten thousand or even more years in which apes and human ancestors consume certain mushrooms, herbs, fruits, weed, etc., just because of its effects on the mood or the hallucinations or, most probably, as many animals do, instinctively with a not understood sense or if certain health problems occur and they have memorized the cure. Or just because they wanna get high, probably it´s one of the many reasons why we are so weird.
A key element of faith might be that both, drugged shaman, witch doctor, god-emperor, whatever, and the believers experience real hallucinations, highs or, in the case of not so hard stuff, euphory and extreme happiness. No matter if they get secretly drugged by the shamans before a session or the witch doctor floats the room with psychoactive smoke, if they take it together in a ritual, they get welded together by this experience. Founders of sects could find many inspirations by getting high and getting in contact with whatever their already damaged, possibly already mentally ill and sober voice-hearing and vision seeing, minds wanted to imagine. This was often combined with climbing very high mountains, which gives extra weakening to the brain by a lack of oxygen so that the sh** can kick in like hell.
The future development can be used for boosting health and longevity by improving the nourishment of the body with as much precious and not hallucinogenic elements of all holy and healthy herbs from around the world, a kind of organic wonder powder from dozens or even hundreds of everything the planet can provide. The options for pimping epigenetics and brain development are the bigger topic, because they may lead to different brain evolutions, depending on what a culture, nation or government prefers to feed to its citizens. Of course, that´s already happening with each traditional diet.
Some questions kept rotating in my drug hating mind (works best when sober, although the brain is a vicious traitor who intrigues against us, look, a beer commercial, damn it ):
Did some civilizations destroy themselves by overuse of drugs?
How do natural substances and all those new food chemicals react with each other, let´s say a dietary mix of natural food with many ingredients, pure industry food with many additives and chemicals and some psychoactive substances out of both categories?
What could genetic engineering make possible, like combining the positive or mind-altering aspects in one single plant? A cancer-preventing superweed that makes the memory better, helps to stay slim, growing muscles without exercising, hulking out,…
What surprising results may the interdisciplinary field of ethnobiology find in the future both about our past development and the coming influences of what we are consuming right now, looking at you, eating or high reader.
What about medical and therapeutical applications?
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
Be Specific About Of Books Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
| Title | : | Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge |
| Author | : | Terence McKenna |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 311 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 1993 by Bantam Books (NY et al.) (first published 1992) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Philosophy. History. Spirituality. Science |
Rating Of Books Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
Ratings: 4.16 From 7692 Users | 397 ReviewsJudgment Of Books Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
What a great book! The decision to close out 2008 with this book was made easier by my last McKenna review. In Food of the Gods, McKenna takes a historical look at the relationship between plants and human beings. This relationship is described in four parts: I. Paradise II. Paradise Lost III. Hell IV. Paradise Regained?The first part of the book explains the conditions in place that forced human evolution. Namely, psylocybin mushrooms. Soma, a conscious-expanding, ecstacy-inducing drug ofThis book is great-much more than a treatise on "shrooms" and dope. Have you ever thought about the mind altering power of purified sugar, the politics of coffee, and the parallels between these and what we consider to be more dangerous drugs like cocaine?
I first encountered McKenna in a New Age bookshop in Brighton, whilst perusing for material to flesh out an essay on Shamanism I was writing. I came home with 'The Archaic Revival', which introduced me to ideas such as the Logos (a rather more funky formulation than the Christian use of the word), the Mayan Calendar and 2012. My humanistic psychology professor, Brian Bates, suggested that McKenna was rather difficult to deal with academically, but nevertheless I proceeded to give a talk on how I
One imagines there are two main audiences for this book: The skeptic looking for alternative narratives and the psychedelic faithful looking to justify their drug use.Both will find much to chew on.The book's thesis is bold: Drugs literally, evolutionarily, helped shape the unusual level of metacognition which appears to set humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.The narrative is plausible, but without even going into the weeds of the theory it's worth noting that the book was
There was a lot of really cool stuff in here about dominator culture and historical systematic oppression of minorities, immigrants and indigenous peoples via drugs and hallucinogenic plants (or the lack of). The writing itself was kind of boring, and sometimes hard to follow since its presented in a non-linear format. But over all, its good food for thought.
I picked this book off Michael Miley's shelves while visiting him in Sonoma having read previously McKenna's Archaic Revival. Since reading that and Food of the Gods I've enjoyed many hours of listening to recordings of McKenna's lectures.This book is a highly speculative, yet plausible, account of how human evolution may have been influenced by psychoactive mushrooms. McKenna's claims that low dosages of psychedelics enhance visual acuity and therefore confer reproductive advantage to those
I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you why this book is FUCKING AMAZING - so you'll just have to trust me. This guy is an ethno-biologist, meaning he studies the interactions of "substances" and world cultures (past and present), and how the two have influenced each other; both biologically, mentally, spiritually, and culturally. This is truly a mind-fuck for those in search of knowledge; even making the (well supported) case that the original "fruit of Eden" was something
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