Terence McKenna: Psychedelics, Novelty Theory, & the End of History
The life & philosophy of one of the most influential psychonauts of the 21st century | Stoned Ape Theory | Novelty Theory | DMT Machine Elves | & More.
Few figures have left as profound a mark on the psychedelic landscape as Terence McKenna.
His visionary ideas around consciousness, technology, the nature of reality, human coevolution with psychedelics, language, and the passage of time remain as provocative and relevant today as they were 30 years ago.
Professionally, McKenna was an ethnobotanist and ecologist. He spent most of his time traveling to exotic regions of the world to study the use of entheogenic plants and fungi, writing books, and giving lectures.
He was a huge proponent of the use of psychedelic substances for self-exploration and spiritual growth and used psychedelics as a vital source of inspiration for his philosophy on life, his writing, and his work on the origins of human consciousness.
He’s one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He and his brother, Dennis McKenna, are credited with the formation of the “stoned ape theory” and authored one of the first-ever magic mushroom grow guides (which remains my personal favorite grow guide to this day).
This is the extraordinary life of the late Terence McKenna — the unofficial godfather of psychedelics.
The Life of Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, California. He was passionate about science and psychology at a very young age through his experiences hunting for fossils with an uncle. He also developed a deep interest in consciousness after reading Carl Jung’s book — Psychology & Alchemy.
McKenna first became interested in psychedelics at the age of 14 after reading an essay in LIFE magazine titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom by R. Gordon Wasson. He later read two psychedelic-inspired books by Aldous Huxley — The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell — which served as the catalyst for his future academic study.
Terence began his academic journey in art history at the University of California, Berkeley. He eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in ecology and conservation and dedicated much of his life to studying shamanism and the conservation of natural resources. He took several breaks from his studies to explore Southeast Asia and South America.
His first trip was to Nepal in 1969, where he studied the Tibetan language and learned about the traditional use of psychedelic plants and mysticism.
During this time, he was smuggling hashish from Nepal and India to the US. When things started to get heated, McKenna fled to Indonesia, where he became a butterfly collector.
In 1972, Terence and his brother, Dennis McKenna, went to South America to look for an entheogenic plant preparation they had heard about called oo-koo-hé (yopo).
After arriving in Colombia, they discovered large swaths of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms (magic mushrooms) while venturing through the Amazon rainforest. The duo then decided to abandon their initial goal and study the mushrooms they found instead.
The brothers brought samples of the mushrooms and their spores home with them for further study. While in the rainforest, they learned about cultivation methods from the locals, which they used to develop a new cultivation technique that they highlighted in their book — Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide (1976).
Up until this point, nobody had successfully been able to cultivate magic mushrooms outside their natural habitat. The McKenna’s are credited with bringing the production of psychedelics into the hands of the general public. The techniques the duo had innovated and adapted remain some of the most effective methods of magic mushroom cultivation used today.
Terence McKenna got married to fellow ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison after meeting at a conference. Together, they formed Botanical Dimensions and bought land on the big island of Hawaii, which they dedicated to the collection, protection, and propagation of ethno-medically significant plant species.
Terence McKenna spent his time studying entheogenic plants and fungi, exploring the origins of consciousness, writing books, and performing various studies and experiments with his brother, Dennis McKenna, and others.
Terence and Dennis McKenna even speculated about the potential of harmine — a compound found in Banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca vine) — to interact with human DNA in ways that could unlock access to ancestral or collective memory.
Terence claimed experiments on this front put him in touch with Logos — the divine voice. He refers to this voice often in his lectures, which he sometimes calls “the mushroom” or “the teaching voice.”
The revelations Terence experienced from the voice led him to deeply explore the I Ching — AKA The Book of Changes — which is a Taoist divination tool and philosophical text.
This research is what led to the formation of what he calls “novelty theory” (more on this later).
Terence McKenna's Death
Terence McKenna died in 2000 at the age of 53 from a rare form of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforma.
After suffering from a seizure, brain scans found a large tumor in his brain, after which he was given only a few months to live.
In one of his final interviews, McKenna was quoted as saying:
“I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you’d have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say it’s a kind of blessing. It’s certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. […] It makes life rich and poignant.”
The Philosophy of Terence McKenna: Psychedelics, Time, & Consciousness
McKenna had a TON of interesting theories and philosophies that are still discussed today in the field of psychedelics. Some have been debunked (such as the Timewave Zero theory), but others remain widely debated (such as the stoned ape theory).
Terence was a strong advocate for the use of psychedelic plants and fungi for the purpose of personal and societal growth and expansion. He believed psychedelics acted as a doorway to the “Gaian mind,” — which suggests the planet has a form of intelligence that can channel information to humans. This communication is facilitated through the use of psychedelic plants and fungi.
He also had some wild ideas on the importance of psychedelic states for advancing technology. For example, he believed DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and other psychedelics enabled trans-dimensional travel.
He believed the visions experienced by psychedelics were taking place in another dimension. Here, he would often encounter “higher dimensional entities.” In some of his lectures and books, he refers to these beings as “self-transforming machine elves.”
Here are some of Terence McKenna’s most prominent and fascinating philosophies:
1. Psilocybin Panspermia Speculation
Terence McKenna believed magic mushrooms were an intelligent entity that migrated to Earth through space. Once arriving on Earth, they sought a symbiotic relationship with humans.
He believed intelligence (not intelligent life, but intelligence itself) migrated to Earth on these spores. This theory leads to his stoned ape theory.
He pointed out several qualities of mushroom spores that make them well-suited for space travel:
The encasing on a spore (a substance called sporopollenin) is one of the hardest organic materials ever discovered (✅ CONFIRMED).
The spore casing is surprisingly electron-dense — which makes it more akin to metal than other biological materials (✅ CONFIRMED).
Psilocybe spores are purple in color — which is the ideal color for reflecting radiation in the far UV spectrum, which damages genetic material (❓UNCONFIRMED).
The genetic instructions inside the spores encode a generalized organic matter decomposer — they can live off virtually any nondescript organic material they may encounter in the universe (❌ DEBUNKED | Fungi have evolved specific mechanisms to decompose organic matter tailored to their ecological niches.)
Fungi spores exhibit Brownian motion — the randomized movement and percolation of spores throughout the planet and universe is statistically increased by the release of billions of spores from each mushroom body. (✅ PARTIALLY CONFIRMED | While spores are small enough to experience some Brownian motion, their global dispersal is primarily driven by environmental forces rather than random molecular motion.)
2. The Stoned Ape Theory
One of the most intriguing theories Terence and Dennis McKenna put forward was the stoned ape theory — which is highlighted in detail in one of Terence’s books, Food of the Gods.
The McKennas’ suggested that early apes’ ingestion of magic mushrooms led to the increased brain size and evolution into humans (Homo sapiens). Mushrooms, in this context, were an “evolutionary catalyst” — directing and speeding up the evolution of apes into early humans.
Here’s how the theory goes in a nutshell: Pre-human apes used to live in the large swaths of rainforest on the African peninsula. As the rainforests dried up and formed deserts and savannas, the apes were forced to venture outside the forest and forage in the surrounding grasslands. Psychedelic mushrooms growing in the dung of grazing animals living in these fields were ingested by the apes, fundamentally changing the path of brain development over the course of several thousand years.
The McKenna brothers believed the psychedelic experience brought on by the mushrooms caused the ape’s brains to increase in size. This led to improved visual acuity, more advanced language centers of the brain, and created “brave leaders” of the group. These leaders established stronger social and societal structures within the ape communities.
They also believed the ingestion of these mushrooms dissolved the ego, leading to the formation of the earliest forms of religion.
3. Novelty Theory
Novelty theory was suggested as a way to predict the ebb and flow of “novelty” in the universe. The idea was that time is not a constant but instead has tendencies towards exhibiting either “habit” or “novelty.”
Habit = entropic, repetitive qualities.
Novelty = creative, random, chaotic, or progressive qualities.
He believed that the universe is an engine for generating novelty, and as novelty increases, so does the speed and density of events. According to McKenna, this is why technological, cultural, and biological evolution appears to accelerate over time.
To quantify this, he developed a mathematical model called Timewave Zero using the King Wen Sequence of the I Ching (an ancient Chinese divination system). He claimed this pattern mapped the rhythms of history, showing peaks of novelty and eventual convergence toward a singularity of infinite complexity.
McKenna predicted that this final point of maximum novelty — where all historical trends would reach a climax — would occur on December 21, 2012, aligning with the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar. He suggested that this might coincide with a major transformation in human consciousness or even an event beyond comprehension.
This theory is highly criticized. British mathematician Matthew Watkins of Exeter University performed a mathematical analysis of the program and concluded there were many flaws in the math used for the formula.
Terence McKenna on Psychedelics
Terence McKenna was an outspoken advocate of psychedelics during a time when it was unpopular to do so (the 90s).
McKenna was particularly fond of natural psychedelics and considered DMT and ayahuasca to be the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience.
When asked about the use of synthetic psychedelics, his response was this:
“I think drugs should come from the natural world and be use-tested by shamanically-orientated cultures … one cannot predict the long-term effects of a drug produced in a laboratory.”
He was a proponent of taking heroic doses of magic mushrooms. He believed the messages of the mushrooms only become clear after someone has been “slain” by their power.
One of his first psychedelic experiences involved the morning glory seeds (LSA), and he smoked marijuana on a daily basis since his early teens.
Despite recommending large doses of psychedelic substances, Terence was upfront and often stressed the importance of safety when using psychedelic plants:
“Experimenters should be very careful. One must build-up to the experience. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power and beauty. There is no set rule to avoid being overwhelmed, but move carefully, reflect a great deal, and always try to map experiences back onto the history of the race and the philosophical and religious accomplishments of the species. All the compounds are potentially dangerous, and all compounds, at sufficient doses or repeated over time, involve risks. The library is the first place to go when looking into taking a new compound.”
Terence McKenna’s Books
Terence McKenna was an avid writer — releasing more than a dozen books on the topics of mushroom cultivation, philosophy and metaphysics, ethnobotany, and shamanism.
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, & the I Ching (1975)
The Archaic Revival (1992)
History Ends in Green (1992)
True Hallucinations (1993)
Best Terence McKenna Lectures
Terence McKenna gave countless lectures throughout his life. He often spoke about psychedelics but also covered other topics, including metaphysics, language, technology, environmentalism, Eastern philosophy, culture, alchemy, the I Ching, and more.
Here are some of the best Terence McKenna lectures to get started:
A Crisis in Consciousness (1995)
Best Terence McKenna Quotes
On Ego & Morality
Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.
We’ve been to the moon, we’ve charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.
Unexamined cultural values & limitations of language have made us unwitting prisoners of our own assumptions.
Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.
If you’re not the hero of your own novel, then what kind of novel is it? You need to do some heavy editing.
You don’t want to become so open-minded that the wind can whistle between your ears.
My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.
It’s pretty simple: the ethical life. It’s just demanding.
On Consciousness & Ontology
You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.
Only psychos and shamans create their own reality.
Half the time, you think you're thinking you’re actually listening.
There is a transcendental dimension beyond language… It’s just hard as hell to talk about!
The real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control. Absolutely no one.
Nowhere is it written that anthropoid apes should understand reality.
Take it easy man, but take it.
The real tension is not between matter and spirit, or time and space; the real tension is between information and nonsense.
Nothing lasts but nothing is lost.
On Death
You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.
I’ll try to be around and about. But if I’m not, then you know that I’m behind your eyelids, and I’ll meet you there
The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.
On Society & Policy
If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.
Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.
The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation.
What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation.
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third-story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Authority will lead you into ruin.
The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious.
The way you stretch the envelope of culture is by creating language.
On Ecology
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
Nature is not mute; it is man who is deaf.
Further Reading
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