The Ghost of Terence McKenna

Before going to bed, a lot of Terence McKenna mp3s came up on the random shuffle. I'd also been listening recently to his brother Dennis on the Art Bell radio show. Especially after this dream, I'm realizing how much I miss this man (he passed away last year from a brain tumor), despite the fact that I never met him.

  • I'm invited by a new friend to a meeting of the psychedelic underground. It takes place in a sun-lit conference room at some resort hideaway. There, a man begins a speech, with a bandana masking the lower half of his face and a glittery black panel of molded plastic covering his eyes. He gives a stirring and uplifting talk on the power of psychedelics to transform society from the patriarchal, egotistic, self-destructive dominator style of the present to the communal, Gaia-conscious, egalitarian partnership-style of the transcendental future. After he refers to this as the Archaic Revival I am sure that I know who this masked prophet is. I would recognize that perpetually eloquent voice anywhere: it is Terence. After the meeting I talk to him and he confesses to have faked his own death in order to slip underground and organize the revolution. He un-masks himself and I stare at last into those brilliant blue eyes that stare so unwaveringly into the numinous and the unspeakable.
I awaken with a song in my head: Phish's "The Story of the Ghost".

Thanks, Terence. See you December 21, 2012.