. . . working on episode 4 of the podcast. . .

and I thought I'd share this with you...

First of all, here is a fascinating interview with Dennis Mckenna conducted by Alexander Price in conjuction with Reality Sandwich.

Here is an excerpt,

“During that time Terence underwent a period where he did not sleep at all. He would stay up all night and all day, just stay there in the hammock next to me while I'm off traveling in the cosmos, looking after me and trying to be sure that nothing happened. I had a tendency to want to get away from the camp and wander out because, you know... I had to be out there healing people, man! I had these powers!” He laughed. “In shamanism it's very common, when the shaman undergoes transformation or the shaman becomes a shaman – in many, many traditions, not just South America – what happens is you get blown apart. You literally get torn to pieces, and then you're put back together as a transformed person.”

In The Invisible Landscape Dennis and Terence quoted a description of shamanic initiation in a Siberian tribe:

“Before a man becomes a shaman he is sick for a long time... The shamanistic ancestors of his clan come, hack him to bits, tear him apart, cut his flesh in pieces, drink his blood. They cut off his head and throw it in the oven... [etc.]” I think we all know what that's like!

“You literally get torn to pieces,” Dennis said, “and then you're put back together as a transformed person. You're not human anymore, you're something more than human. And you're healed in that process. It's a process of controlled self-transformation. That was the model that fit more than anything else, was this process of being completely deconstructed and spread all over Hell's Half Acre, literally, and then slowly condensing back together into a whole person again, with most of my faculties more or less intact but still with the experience of this transformation under my belt.

“We understood this process as a process of condensation, collecting all the cosmic energy and reconcentrating it back into some form which we still conceived to be a physical object that we would be able to see and manipulate. You would both see it and be it at the same time."

It was exciting to read Dennis speak of him and his brother's adventures and life affirming experiences in La Chorrera.