F R O M A L E C T U R E B Y

Persephone. Another example that should be mentioned are the incubi

and succubi of medieval mythology. These were male and female spirits
which were thought to come to people in the night and have intercourse
with them. This was though! to Ns ~ery bsd fer health, andgeneralwasting
away diseases were often explained by invoking this phenomenon .
I want to talk about something similar, but with a uniquely modem
cast. The flying saucer phenomenon has begun to take on a new char-
acter-an erotic dimension. There is no hint of this kind of thing in the
early literature, meaning from 1947 through 1960 . Butnow itseems to be
arising theme. I am interested in it because, though it is the darling of a

A L
Forced into . ..The
Close Encounters Sex Aboard What is the Darling of a
of the Fourth Kind a Flying Result? A Screwoall
- the X-rated Saucer New Breed of Fringe ...
kind Humanoids?

screwball fringe, I think it represents an interesting developing folkway

from which we can learn.
It's only in the last sixty years, since the discovery of DNA and the
discoveryof the Hertzspring-Russell diagram, that we have begun to get
an idea of the true size and complexity of the Universe. Until then, the
notion of extra-terrestrial life and extra-terrestrial intelligence could not
even be coherently framed . Before that time, humanity's relationships
with transhuman intelligence tended to occur with those categories of
beings which occupied hierarchical levels above and below us in the
structureof being-demonic or angelic. These beings were allterrestrial
in some sense. Butscience, by clarifying the non-uniqueness of biology
and giving us an idea of what's going on in the galaxy and beyond, has
validated the notion that life is ubiquitous and that intelligence is a
property which accompanies life and is also, therefore, common in the

T
Universe . This legitimizes fantasy about the existence of extra-terrestrial
his evening's conversation is called Alien Love, and it might life . In the last half of the twentieth century the mythological outlines of
have been called Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind - the X- what the alien must be are now being cast ; the expectations of people
rated kind . I don'tknow how many of you read journals like The living now who have been given rudimentary knowledge of biology and
National Enquirer, but this mentality is reflected in an adver- astronomy allow the alien to be conceived. Their expectations are casting
tisement which appeared in that publication. It says, "FORCED INTO the extra-terrestrial archetype into a mold that will hold until it is
SEX ABOARD A FLYING SAUCER, WHAT IS THE RESULT-A confirmed or denied by true extra-terrestrial contact, whatever that
NEW RACE OF HUMANOIDS?" The article goes on to say that for means . In other words, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
S10.95 a vanity press will send you a self-published book that will further We now know enough to fantasize realistically about what the alien ,
explore this . This is not the only book that has recently dealt with this would be like, and this sets up polarities in the collective psyche that
subject previously we have only seen at the level of the individual. What the
The idea of sexual relationships between human and non-human developing archetype of the extra-terrestrial "other" means, and is the
beings is a persistent sub-themeoccuring throughout much of mythology. source of ourfascination with it, is that, collectively, for the fast time we
Ralph Metznerreminded me that in theOld Testament it says, "...and the are beginning to yearn.This newcollective yearning is what's happening
gods found the daughters of man fair." The Persephone myth is a good in religion on a very broadscale. The previous concerns of salvation and
example of this, wherethePlatonic demiurgc of the underworld ensnared redemption are shifting into the background for the great majority of

18 MAGICAL BLEND-A Transforrnative Journey

 people and, what is driving religious feeling is a wish for contact-a historical impact of some sort, and I think this is it : we are actually
relationship to The Other. The alien then falls into place in that role ; the positioned to attemptsomething whichhasneverbeen attemptedbefore,
alien fulfills it I believe that if religion survives into the long centuries to open a dialogue (as a collectivity) with the Other and to use that
of the future, this is what will be its compelling concern: an attemptto synergy to bootstrap ourselves to a new cultural level. This potential is
define acollective relationship with The Otherthat assuages ouryearning now hidden in the psyche. There isn't a great deal of talk about it ; it only
and our feeling of being cast out or, as Heidigger says, "cast into matter, arises at this totally screwball folkloric level. None of the managerial or
alone in the Universe :" analytical elements in this society are looking at this at the moment But
It is as though by passing into the psychedelic n;^--.-the space- I think it is forming and crystallizing. I think that the peculiar animate
faring phase-the entire species is passing icic. zdc!e;,-ence and be- quality of psilocybin is probably a major cata!yst for this.
coming aware of the possibility of something i:k : a sexual completion In my opinion contact witltextra-terrestrials and voices in the head
with an Other, with an intelligent, non-human This is an idea and Logos-like phenomena are not a part of the general mythology of
which had previously been masked for us in our collective prepubes- LSD. Certain exceedingly intense individuals on a combination of
cence, where we were self-absorbed. Freudians call this the polyrnor- hashish, mcthedrine, and LSD may achieve this intermittently, but it is
phically perverse phase, meaning occupied in the exploration of the ego not something which is attached to the notion of what LSD does . With

The flying saucer Freudians

phenomenon has begun to Cast into call this the
take on a new character matter . alone potymorohically
an erotic dimension in the perverse phase
Universe.

and the body. The present culture crisis, which is talked about in many
different ways but never this way, also has this dimension; there exists a
psychological, erotic drive for a connection with the Other.
To sum up what I've said aboutreligion, it is as though the Father--God
notion were being replaced by the peer-alien notion - androgynous,
hermaphroditic, transhuman ; it is all these things which the unconscious
chooses to project upon it until we have more information to define what
it might actually be .
We are now in the pubescent stage of forming an image of the thing
desired, and the image of this yearning will eventually cause that thing to
come into being. The appetite for fusion is what is propelling the
historical process toward an apocalyptic transformation. It isn't recog-
nized as that in the culture yet, but it is this fascination with the Other O
G
which propels us forward.But it is notion inevitability. In otherwords, this c
could slip away from us . It is a potential which has swum near to the
historical continuum and, if it is invoked by enough people, it will become
a fact But it could also slip away. We could harden ; there arc fascist,
hypertechnological futures that we could sail toward and realize that
would eliminate this possibility of opening to the Other.
Still, forthe moment, man'scultural direction is being touched by this w
notion of alien love and it comes, I think, through the rebirth of the use
of plant hallucinogens, because they seem to be the carriers of this O
pervasive intellect which speaks and which can present itself in this t:C
u-
particular way. What is the historical importance of psychedelics? We O
know chat shamans have use these things for millennia and have plumbed O
2
these depths as individuals. I always have the intuition that there was a a

T E R E N C E M C K E N N A

MAGICAL BLEND-A Transformative Journey 19

., psilocybin, on the other hand, it dcfinitciy is . Our survey showed
that as strained, secretive and religious about our psychic experiences, panic_
people's doses increased, their susceptibility to this phenomenon
in- early the psychedelic experiences . He was suggesting this to me as an e
creased markedly. I think the issue of contact with the extra-terrestrial
for planation for why it is so hard to get people to describe their dr :
alarge number oIpeople has been broached by that phenomenon . It's
very experiences-why the literature is so barren of any richness of descri :
puzzling to people because our expectations are always that we are cells
in avast societal animal and that the news of anything truly important Lion when theexperience is the culmination of richness and intricacy ar
will beauty. Though I don't take this idea as gospel, I think it's very intcres
be conveyed electronically to us . That if flying saucers land, the
President ing. We are much more open with each other sexually and in ourprose_
and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, or somebody,
will of examining our libidinal consciences in the confines of ourown mind
convey the word to us . But the challenge of psychedelics is to realize
that but the taboo has now moved to this interior world where we have the
the potential for the alchemical wedding with the alien, though it is
a adolescent sensitivity about this developing relationship to The Other
collective phenomenon, is inherently tribal . It will happen as an
experi- Now all these things are elements which are going together to mak
ence for individuals at the individual level.
People in the confines of their own apartments are becoming the emerging human future, and it is a human future that is proceedir
Ma- exponentially. It is not a mere linear propagation of the present, becaus
gellans of the interior world, reaching out to this alien thing, beginning
to map it and bring back stories that can only be compared to these peculiar factors are impinging on it. Things like psychedelic sue
the kind of stances, the ability to erectlarge structures in deep space, the presence c
stories that the chroniclers of the New World brought back to Spain
atthe the alien Logos in the mind of the collectivity, the presence of th
close of the fifteenth century: Cities of gold, insect gods,
spaceships of cybernetic network that is developing-all these things are going towar
vastextent, tremendous wealth, endless wastelands ; we'rejust
beginning releaseof maninto the imagination.So far, thecultural engineers have nc
to map this area . Many times I've spoken of it as a landscape and many
stressed enough that the erotic element be included in the engineering
times I've spoken of it as a confidante-a kind of Girl Friday c
who tells the human future .
you things. Butanotherfacetof iris thecrotic element. It inspires a
feeling Eric Jantsch was a good friend . Many of you may know his books; t-
of opening and merging that is, in our cultural conditioning,
what we and I used to argue about space colonies and whether this was a viab,
associate with love.To distinguish it from ordinary love I always thinkof
way to go . He sensed this problem by saying to me, "SUCTcrence,
it as "Iuv ." It's the kind of love that you get with the alien. What whe-
it means will they get nature spirits? How will they induce nature
is that the relationship to the alien can be thought of as modeled on spirits to inhab
the the space colonies 2"Anotherway of saying it-a way that brings it
rnicrorelationships to the Other that each of us form through relating to muc
closer to home-is howcan Eros be invoked in space, carried with us, an
other people.
expanded?
The Conunctio is a useful notion here ; this is where two people get
I tried to do my part to help this processalong by spreading the
together and try to function as alchemical mirrors for each other. rums
Tanua that the Soviet lady cosmonauts sustained five forty-minute
and Taoist sexual practices, all these things have to do with orgasms is
fusing into weightlessness and that they were sitting on this information becaus
dyads. What is happening in that situation is that each party to the :
fact they didn't want panic. Maybe it's true; I'll say it's true.
is taking on the quality of the other. In a non-erotic context When the
that's called monkeys find out what sex in zero gravity is like, I won't have to
becoming what you behold. We are uniquely susceptible to mak,
becoming hard pitches like this one.
what we behold. This is why we have always been led into
the future by Let me sum up by saying that there is an emerging Zeitgeist
the nose by our imaginations - because we dream and then realize the c
dreams . This fact about our monkeyhood, when put in hyperspace . I call it a Zeitgeist of hyperspace because as man leaves the
combination with earth, another dimension is added and that crude metaphor
a relationship with an alien mind, means that we will become will re
what we verberate atevery cultural levelbecause we will begin to live in a hyperd
behold . This is what I think is happening. The curious intimation of the :
deepening contact with the Other makes it seem probable to me mcnsional collectivity, not only of earth and space, butof information c:
that we past and future, of conscious and unconscious . This will come
are in love, but we're just slowly realizing it because we've never been about bl,
in love before . So articulating this kind of stuff, one person navigating between these places on psychedelic substances . And, even-
saying it to tually, the technological culmination of this is the projection of humar.
another and discussing it, is actually an attempt to conjure this into
being-to call it forth and make this supposition become fact . Because all consciousness into whatever form it seeks to take . And the Zeitgeist o ;
facts are the suppositions of very large numbers of people, and this hyperspace which is emerging, which is heavily freighted with tech-
archetype now hangs in the balance. There is much tension about the nology and cybernetics, requires that it be consciously tuned to an erotic
ideal . As I said before, it is important to articulate the presence
flying saucer, aside from theerotic connotation, because the flying saucer of this
represents a tremendous challenge to science, perhaps the ultimate erotic ideal of the Other early, in order that this process notgo sour
or si is
challenge to it. It may be as confounding to science as the resurrectionof away and leave us with one of the barren futures that some kind of very
Christ was to Greek empiricism and Roman imperialism . In otherwords, flat behaviorist or Marxistanalysis of history could leave us with .
This is
the flying saucer is definitely an agent of cultural change. On the levelof a chance, an opportunity to fall in love with The Other and elope to the
the machine, it bids distress for our most cherished explanatory schema, stars; but it's only an opportunity and not evolutionarily necessary.
In
but on the level of the alien as flesh, it presents a much more basic and otherwords, if we only live with the ideal of the Otherand never find tine
fundamental challenge, because the erotic complex is being redefined by fuse with The Other, we can still evolve along whatever pathways lie
this phenomenon . ahead of us . But if the opportunity is seized, if we take seriously the
I was talking with someone about how many people take LSD and experience of the fast ten millennia and complete the modem program of
how it's very difficult to get precise numbers on this matter because realizing the ideals of the archaic, (recognizing that what the twentieth
people don't talk about it. Yet in the last fifteen years sexual researchers centuryreally isaboutis an effort to establish and perfect the ideals of late
have had a field day because people are very, very willing to discusstheir Paleolithic shamanism) then we will have integrity in relating to this
bizarre sexual peculiarities and to pour out their hearts to people with opportunity and we will have a very peculiar historical
clipboards . So we now know a great deal about human sexuality and this adventure. . . which I cheer for.
suggests that the taboo is moving . The taboo is moving so that as we Once we set ourselves the task of describing the psychedelic experi-
become more sexually polymorphic and open with each other and less ence, it will become more accessible, because if we each gave our best
ego-identified with our sexuality, we become very private and con- metaphor and then all used that metaphor, and used it to produce a better
metaphor, we eventually would retool our language so that we would be

MAGICAL BLEND-A Transformative Journey MAGICAL BLEND-A Transformative Journey

WORKS MENTIONED
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths, New York, New Direction Press. 1962. Photo from
Dick, Philip K. Valis, New York, Bantam Books, 1981 . The AIGgator People
Goodman, Felicitas 0. Speaking in Tongues, Chicago University Press 1971 .
Graves, Robert. The White Goddess, New York, Creative Age Press, 1948.
Guenther, Herbert V. Tibetan Buddhism Without Mystification, Leiden . E.J. Brilf. 1966 .
Joyce, James. Finnegan's Wake, London, Faber & Faber, 1939.

able to handle these modalities. This will happen . Historically, the back information andoneneeds to have
psychedelic experience is a new object for the Western languages. It a natural inclination or technique. It
will be very interesting to see what English, the language of Milton, doesn't matter whetherone uses plants or
Chaucer and Shakespeare, will be able to do with the psychedelic yoga or drram-manipulation . It's a matterof
experience. In William Blake one gets the feeling that English could exploring the mind by whatever means works.
do staggering things with the psychedelic experience. There are Studies show that in the deepest part of sleep is
places in Andrew Marvell ... but all this remains to be done. The the high point of production of cndrogcnous hallu-
relationship of the psychedelic experience to literature is a whole field cinogens in thehuman brain, like DMT and that sort
unto itself ; there arecertain momentswhere great literature haspassed of thing. Nevertheless, it's only in the wildestdreams,
near it . Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony touches it, very suc- which are necessarily the most difficult to recover, that
cinctly.J. K. Huysman's Againrt the Grain is an amazing novel about one passes into places which are like DMT and psilo-
an aesthete, a manwho is so sensitized to perception that he can't leave cybin intoxication states. Yoga makes theclaim that it can
his apartments . He has his walls covered in felt and he keeps the lights deliver one into these spaces . i spent time looking into
very low. He collects Redon when nobody had ever heard of Redon. that-not a lotof time-but people have difrerent proclivi-
He buys turtles and has jewels affixed to their backs. Then he sits in ties for these altered states of consciousness. i don't; it's
a half-lit room and smokes hashish and watches the turtles crawl very hard to move me off the base-line of consciousness . I
around on his Persian rugs . Let's all go home and do this . am very stolid and set in the here and now. So hallucinogens work
I think dreaming and states of psychedelic intoxication, possibly better than anything for me . I scoured India and could not convince
the afterdeath state, possibly the post-apocalypse state for the col- myself that it wasn't a shell game of some sort or that it was as real as
lectivity, are all related to each other. Certainly dreaming is the natural the states manipulated by the various schools of New Age psycho-
access point because it's a part of one's experience every day. But therapy and that sort of thing. But in the Amazon and other places
these places are what is called state-bounded. It's very hard to bring where the use of plant hallucinogens is understood one is conveyed

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 WORKS MENTIONED
McKenna, Terence & Dennis . The Invisible Landscape, New York, Seabury Press . 1975 .
OSS, O .T . & OERIC, O .N . Psilocybin : Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide. Berkeley, And/Or Press, 1975 .
Scholem, G.S . Zohar The Book of Splendor, New York, Schocken Books, 1949 .
Shulgin, Alexander T . Stereospecific Requirements for Hallucinogenesis, J . Pharm . Pharmaccl, 1973 .
Smythes, John . The Chemical Nature of the Receptor Site, International Review of Neurobiology, 13:181-222, 1970.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality, New York, The Free Press, 1969 .

into worlds that are appallingly different from of present science. They cannot even offer a clue about how that
ordinary reality. Their vividness cannot be happens . The chemistry of muscle contraction is understood . It's the
stressed enough . They are more real than initiating phenomenon ; what is it that decides "I will close my hand"?
real . And that's something which one They know as much about that, perhaps less than, Western philosophy
senses intuitively. They establish an onto- knew in the twelfth century. And it is at the level of the body
logical priority. Once you get that under experience and the mind experience, that we operate . You can live in
your belt and let it rattle around in your the social and religious atmosphere of Hellenistic Greece and offer
mind, then the compasses of your life begin sacrifice to Demeter, or you can live in twentieth century America and
to spin and you realize thatyou art notlooking watch the evening stews, but you can have no faith that you are getting
in on it; it's looking in on you. This is a tremen- the true story on reality. These are just historical contexts that can only
dous challenge to the intellectual structures that be transcended by the acquisition of gnosis-of knowledge that is
have carried us so far the last thousand years . We experienced as true . It's hard for people to even realize what I am
can do tricks with atoms ; there's no question talking about because they believe that something like logical
about that. But these tricks immolate us . consistency is how the efficacy of an idea is judged. Actually, this is
Higher order structure molecules, let alone what led us into this extremely alienated state. We haven't demanded
t. onllnd thakindofrg ng, are terra incognito that the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works confirm
to us ; we have no notion of how these things worst or what is going on . our direct experience of how it works . And the psychedelic sub-
Yet it is from those leveis that the constituent modalities of reality are stances, by focussing attention on the rnind/body/brain interactions,
being laid down. One can understand all this fine nuclear chemistry are refraining these questions . And not a moment too soon, because
about the atom, but where does it put one?The story we tell ourselves the cybernetic and technical capabilities of this society demand that
about how the world works can't explain to us how forming the wish this all be looked at very clearly or we're going to sail off the moral
to close your open hand into a fist makes it happen. This is the status edge of things and into the abyss .

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