ARCHAIC REVIVAL

4 star for the smooth and mostly reader friendly, way of writing. Mind altering concept which if true can change everything. That being said, people unfamiliar with terrence, hauxley, people exploring the mind-psychedelics might have a little uncomfortable twitch in their brains. And I saw a video on youtube, where TM admits to have worked for the govt, regarding some top secret project. So is this book some kinda prpoganda machine of the nwo? Well, who knows. As for the book itself it's paked with new and radical ideas.

Love Terrence...

I just recently finished this book, and i can say it has been one of the most profound pieces of literature i've ever had the pleasure of reading. The topics explored in the book (which are, i might add, VERY extensively explored) ask the reader to look outside of the narrow field of spiritual and philosophical vision that constitutes our cultural typic, and question things one might not have ever thought of questioning. McKenna seems very frank and straightforward through the whole book, not dancing around subjects or refraining from certain phrases that some would be self-concious to use (ie. get loaded). Instead of seeming to be written exclusively for futuristic scientists with an affinity for psychedelic drugs, the book seems to be aimed at the much wider crowd of anyone with an open mind and a vocabulary. The ideas described vary in topic from UFO abductions to a 15th century manuscript, and everything in between. most of the chapters have some common thread connecting them, the only exception being "The Voynich Manuscript." im not really sure where he was going with this chapter in relation to the rest of the book, but its interesting nonetheless. anyway, the book is nothing but a collection of speeches, essays, interviews, etc conducted by him over the years, and is really meant to be an introduction to his philosophy. His other books: The I Ching, and Food of the Gods, though i havent' read them, have been reviewed to be much more technically worded, hard to read, and aimed at students of mathematics and anthropology/ethnobotany. The Archaic Revival is more or less easy to comprehend, but he does use some terms over and over again that the average person wouldn't know (ie. phenomenology, entelechy, gnosis), so have a dictionary close by if you want to get the most out of the material as possible. Terrence McKenna has some very bizzarre ideas for sure, and not everyone will relate to all of the ideas expressed in his writings, but i think that most ppl can find something about it they find interesting, and for the psychedelic crowd, McKenna's ideas sound like solaces from beyond, as he so easily verbalizes concepts that otherwise seem impossible to explain. His ideas of social reform and reverting to imitating plants as the role models of human life and civilzation, rather than animals, are so insane that they make more sense than anything i've ever heard. As far as his idea of the end of human history and the transcendence of physical existence into cyber-spiritual entities, all happening by the year 2012, i think he was a little off with the exact figures of time, as im writing this on Oct. 30, 2005 and it doesn't look like the world is going through a historical apocalypse in the next 6 yrs., but oh well--when you're dealing with the entirety of history, you can give or take a couple thousand years w/out compromising the legitimacy of your idea. plus, who knows, maybe on Jan. 1, 2012, we'll all be sitting around watching our bodies dissapear and our souls externalize. I would reccommend this book to just about everyone, although i imagine it would be very hard for a 13 yr old to read, but im sure there are some very intelligent 13 yr olds out there who could comprehend it. for the open-minded, the book should be fascinating and engaging in its freshness, and for the rigid western thinkers--it should at least crack the shell and expose the possibilities of what's really out there. if anything, i'd say this is a book of non-denominational hope, derived and reported back from the past, and in McKenna's case--the future.

one of the the polymaths of all time discusses arguments from consciousness to time wave to tryptamine psychedelics, art history, politics and so much more....

Thanks Terence

We are so swimming in the sea of carefully bounded thinking and expression that we need examples of other, perhaps more productive ways to go about examining and talking about existence. The Archaic Revival is one hell of a good example! It is amazing what the brothers Kenna got up to as very young men, as are the unusual life-choices they made. An aspect of their originality was taking their subject matter perfectly seriously, holding to a rigorous, disciplined study of their subjects, while all the same choosing subject matter and making connections between subjects, totally outside of the mainstream thinking & boundaries of the day. Terence Mckenna was obviously brilliant-following his I Ching analysis may seriously hurt your head-and in a sense this is a short-coming of the book, too technical in places for the less than geek-level math student, but golly, gee-whiz, who else was "out there" drinking yage, throwing the coins & meditating on what its all about? Tim Leary, for one, and there are parallels worth noting. These guys were all brilliant but "normal" until they "turned on". After that there was no going back to Kansas: Mckenna went to South America and stayed there while Leary stuck to HIS guns and went to jail for a while. This is relatively early but seminal work that laid the basis for an unusual career, with important approaches and discoveries by a prescient and very curious human being. Mckenna died young of a brain tumor. When he asked the surgeons if they were going to hammer on him for his life-long use of pot, they suggested that there were research indications that pot may actually shrink tumors. Terrance dryly replied to the effect that if that were the case they certainly wouldn't be having this conversation. Interesting to read this book at a time when there is a growing curiosity about ethnobotany, shamanism, mind/reality altering indigenous sacred hallucinogens, and even a possible return to respectable research for LSD.