The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reali

The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History

The Archaic Revival, published after The Invisible Landscape, during the concoction process of Food of the Gods, and True Hallucinations, is a poignant collection of potent writings and ramblings of the great Terence McKenna. A cacophony of ideology- occasionally unattainably complex though more commonly accessible- unfolds poetically across interviews with casual guests and guru-seeking psychonauts, essays on the concepts of 'ego-death' and the potential for extraterestrial communication, and literary analysis of Wasson, Huxley, and the infamous Don Juan. From a sports car careening down the Pacific Coast Highway, McKenna of personal trials and tribulations, ultimately revealing root causes for his desire for introspective exploration. A reference point for understanding McKenna's literature could not be more blunt, and accordingly the interviews and dissertations become increasingly specific as the aspiration for investigation becomes clarified. Occasionally floundering, McKenna's pseudo-dissertation is emphatically that, speculation on the correlations between psyche, cosmos, and the psychedelic experience. His commonly misconstrued intentions lead countless psychonauts to question the validity of his claims, begging for empirical displays of experiential information not yet known. The objective of Terence's speculative ramblings lie in their speculative nature, and the questions that arise as a result.

Terence has traditionally been praised for his radical ideology when expressed verbally, as his charismatic demeanor display a cognitive relationship unnameable by language. Traversing the gamut of media-outlet, he, commonly through the means of the interviewing author, finds suitable language to convey the immutable charm of his interview status, and in the process creates a fascinatingly humanistic dialogue.

As Tom Robbins explains in the characteristically prosaic metaphorical introduction,
"Radical problems call for radical solutions...
The first step...will consist mainly of cutting away the veils in order that we might see ourselves for the transgalactic Other that we really are and always have been."

Terence has an incontrovertible ability to dissect the preconceptions of the psychological 'veil', leaving even the most 'hard-headed' explorer stark-naked in the face of psychedelic confrontation.