View from the Far Side
THE VISIONARY BLOG BY DENNIS MCKENNA
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Haoma (Peganum harmala): Iran’s Sacred Visionary Plant
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide By McKenna Academy 8 min read In almost every Iranian home, dried brown seeds are still cast onto glowing coals to ward off the evil eye – and almost no one realises they hold the same kind of visionary chemistry as the Amazonian brew ayahuasca. This is espand, or Peganum harmala, the plant […]
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Haoma (Peganum harmala): Iran’s Sacred Visionary Plant
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide By McKenna Academy 8 min read In almost every Iranian home, dried brown seeds are still cast onto glowing coals to ward off the evil eye – and almost no one realises they hold the same kind of visionary chemistry as the Amazonian brew ayahuasca. This is espand, or Peganum harmala, the plant […]
Colin Domnauer on Bolete Mushroom Hallucinations: The Science of Lilliputian Lore
mycology ethnobotany course guide Bolete mushroom hallucinations — vivid visions of tiny people reported independently across Papua New Guinea, Yunnan, and the Philippines — are one of mycology’s most puzzling and least-studied phenomena. Colin Domnauer, PhD, an ethnobiologist at the University of Utah, has spent years on their trail. His McKenna Academy course, Lilliputian Lore, […]
The Stoned Ape Hypothesis: Psilocybin and the Origins of Human Consciousness
mycology consciousness and spirituality course guide Dennis McKenna’s stoned ape theory — more precisely, the Stoned Ape Hypothesis — is one of evolutionary biology’s most provocative ideas: that psilocybin mushrooms catalysed the explosive tripling of the human brain in under two million years. Ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, PhD, revisits the theory originally proposed by his brother […]
What Can Ancient Plant Wisdom Teach Us About Healing in the Modern World?
Imagine walking through a dense rainforest with an indigenous elder who can identify hundreds of plants by sight, smell, and touch—knowing precisely which leaf can cure a fever, which root can ease pain, and which bark can purify water. This profound relationship between people and plants lies at the heart of ethnobotany, a fascinating interdisciplinary […]
“Life is a journey, always with ups and downs. Sometimes one scales mountains, and sometimes one descends into the abyss. I’ve lived long enough to have done both, several times…”
Dennis McKenna Ph.D.
