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 to guide the destinies of nations and people toward an unimaginable conclusion.”
“The alchemical spirit lives on. It never really died. It’s just that it has taken peculiar forms in our own day.”
Podcast 319 – “The Voynich Manuscript”
by Terence McKenna
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http://www.archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript
“Mullis reported an encounter with a glowing green raccoon at his cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985. He denies the involvement of LSD in this encounter.”
“Mullis, in his autobiography Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, insisted: ‘To say it was aliens is to assume a lot. But to say it was weird is to understate it … It’s what science calls anecdotal, because it only happened in a way that you can’t reproduce. But it happened.’”
“Believers in all manner of paranormal phenomena regularly argue that science can’t effectively test or falsify such experiences, precisely because it’s normal science. This argument doesn’t help their case among sceptical scientists, but normal science ought to know by now that almost everything has at one time been beyond its capacity to test. Maybe it takes a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to come up with the phrase ‘But it happened.’”
yup.
Ah OK, I was aware of Kary Mullis’ use of LSD, which he wrote about in his book Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (have yet to read it unfortunately). I was aware that he said that LSD helped him figure out PCR, but I’m not sure if that is the same as ‘the first to sequence DNA.’ I could be wrong.
Who was the first person to sequence DNA? Is there an article about them mentioning that they had taken LSD?
Thanks!
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: His name is Kerry Mullis, and this is a brief bit about his LSD usage from Wikipedia: Mullis details his experiences synthesizing and testing various psychedelic amphetamines and a difficult trip on DET in his autobiography. In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994, issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, “Back in the 1960s and early ’70s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took.”[35] During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, “Hofmann revealed that he was told by Nobel-prize-winning chemist Kary Mullis that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences.”]
Lorenzo thank you! Another great podcast from the bard, and great to hear your comments at the end. it always enriches our perspective of the great work which we are all a part of. The idea that unbounded hopelessness is the start of the alchemical transmutation rings true for all of us that look on to the current Human condition with wonder, what can be done? It seems that the message of alchemy is to increase heat in the retort of the human condition. This reminds me of Paracelsus quote, “Alchemy is the gentle acceleration of growth through the use of the fire of nature.”
I am deeply thankful to enhance the alchemical perspective of our current time, and deeply thankful to have met you and Mary c last week. Thanks for the shout out and the great conversation, and like all great works we began with the negredo of the trader joes burrito, which by the way I loved and thought was tasty. I hope to align our hearts and minds for more symbiotic works in the near future.
“Be well out there,”
Dandelion
http://www.returntonature.us