The Weird Naturalism of the Brothers McKenna
Esoteric Media and the Experiment at La Chorrera
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31944Keywords:
New Age, Entheogenic Esotericism, Terence McKenna, mediaAbstract
When Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis performed the so-called “Experiment at La Chorrera” in Columbia in 1971, they staged what became one of the most legendary and storied trip tales in contemporary psychedelic culture. This paper diagrams the matrix of Jungian alchemy, Marshall McLuhan, and science fiction that underpinned the protocols and conceptual apparatus of the Experiment. These ideas are tied to McKenna’s early unpublished text Crypto-Rap, which is briefly summarized as an example of “weird naturalism.” In essence, it is argued that Terence and Dennis McKenna “esotericized” media theory into an occult apparatus of resonance, sympathy, and apocalyptic ontology.
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Beach, Horace. n.d. “Listening for the logos: A study of reports of audible voices at high doses of psilocybin.’” http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v07n1/07112bea.html
Brazil, Ben. 2104. “Making fantasy real: Youth travel culture and alternative realities in the 1960s and 1970s.” Paper presented at the American Academy of Religions, San Diego, CA.
Chu, Seo-Young. 2010. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Erlmann, Veit. 2010. Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.
Evans-Wentz, W. E. 1966 [1911] The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. New Hyde Park, NY : University Books.
Fuller, Robert C. 2000. Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Guattari, Felix. 1995. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2012. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2009. “‘And End History, and to the Stars’: Terence McKenna and 2012.” In Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honour of Professor Garry W. Trompf, edited by Carole M. Cusack and Christopher Hartney, 291–312. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004178809.iv-375.114
Jung, C. G. 1953. Psychology and Alchemy. New York: Pantheon Books.
Jung, C. G. 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Kent, James L. 2010. Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason. Seattle, WA: PIT Press/Supermassive.
McKenna, Dennis. 2012. The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna. Self-published.
McKenna, Terence. 1969. Crypto-Rap: Meta-Electrical Speculations on Culture. Unpublished manuscript.
McKenna, Terence. 1993. True Hallucinations. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco.
McKenna, Terence and Dennis McKenna. 1975. The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. New York: Seabury Press.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1969. “The Playboy Interview.” Playboy Magazine. http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/mcluhanplayboy.htm
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. 1967. The Medium Is the Massage. New York: Random House.
Melton, Gordon J. 2001. Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Detroit: Gale Group.
Monteith, Andrew. 2016. “‘The Words of McKenna’: Healing, Political Critique, and the Evolution of Psychonaut Religion since the 1960s Counterculture.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84(4): 1081–1109. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw010
Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyberobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Novak, William. 1980. High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans. New York: Knopf. http://www.psychedelic-library.org/high_culture8.htm
Partridge, Christopher. 2005. The Re-Enchantment of the West, vol 2. London: T&T Clark.
Schultes, Richard Evans. 1969. “DE PLANTIS TOXICARIIS E MUNDO NOVO TROPICALE COMMENTATIONES V: Virola as an orally administered hallucinogen.” Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 22(6): 229–240.
Sloterdijk, Peter. 2013. You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics. Cambridge: Polity.
Strassman, Richard, C. Qualls, E. Uhlenhuth and R. Kellner. 1994. “Dose-response study of N,N- Dimethyltryptamine in humans: II. Subjective effects and preliminary results of a new rating scale.” Archives of General Psychiatry 51: 98–108. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1994.03950020022002
Stuckrad, Kocku von. 2005. Western Esotericism: a Brief History of Secret Knowledge. London: Equinox.
Vallee, Jacques. 1969. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery
Van Tassel, George W. 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer!: The Mystery of the Flying Saucers Revealed. Los Angeles, CA: New Age Publishing.
Williamson, George Hunt. 1963. The Saucers Speak. A Documentary Report of Interstellar Communication by Radiotelegraphy. London: Neville Spearman.
Published
2017-02-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Davis, E. (2017). The Weird Naturalism of the Brothers McKenna: Esoteric Media and the Experiment at La Chorrera. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 7(2), 175-198. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31944
