Terence McKenna Quotes
For unknown reasons, there is a tremendous concentration of psychoactive plants on the South American continent. The South American continent has more known hallucinogens than the rest of the planet combined.
McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. Bantam Books, 1992, p. 257.
The political conflict between the right of the slave to liberty and the right of the slave owner to his property made the immediate abolition of slavery very difficult after the Spanish had been overthrown in South America.
This is an interesting quotation in that we see that the Federal Government actually distributed the hallucinogen, mescaline, to some physicians and psychologists to experiment with. Historically, morphine, cocaine and opium were not only legal at this point but were commonly sold as medicine. President McKinley gave an endorsement for Mariani Wine—Bordeaux wine laced with cocaine. The slogan “Good for what ails you” was used to sell patent medicines, so laced with narcotics that people with almost any ailment would “feel good” for a while and many would refrain from needed medical treatment. It would take over a decade more for policy makers to learn of the addicting properties of narcotics and other drugs as well as their other deleterious properties.
South America, invaded and colonized by Spain was a brutal combination of slavery and repression. Even the European colonists suffered under the terrible combination of exploitation, militarism and religious dictatorship. Independence from Spain was equally bloody as unlike in North America where the fight was against British rule, in South America the black slaves, the indigenous Indians and the white colonists all had scores to settle with the Spanish rulers. And the Spanish in turn realized that and brutally repressed all rebellion attempts. Atrocities were common, and committed by almost all, including even idealists like Bolivar.
Terence Kemp McKenna was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".
