HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/schultes.review

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 4KB

From: [e-mail] (Dan Levy)
Newsgroups: alt.psychoactives
Subject: R.E. Schultes on McKenna's _Food of the Gods_
Date: 18 Jan 1994 23:23:52 -0500
Message-ID: <2hicko$[e-mail]>

A recent, and not well-circulated, review of _FotG_ from _American Scientist_,
by this century's most important ethnobotanist, Richard Evans Schultes of
Harvard University:

A masterpiece of research and writing, this volume should be read by every
specialist working in the multifarious fields involved with the use of
psychoactive drugs--even though many readers may not accept its message.
It is a venturesome call to review or even reassess our prevalent
thoughts, customs and laws concerning drugs.

The main theme is succinctly stated in the author's introduction: "A
Manifesto for New Thought about Drugs." "A specter is haunting planetary
culture--the specter of drugs.  The definition of human dignity created by
the Renaissance and elaborated into the democratic values of modern
Western civilization seems on the point of dissolving... This situation is
not new, but it is getting worse..."

Terence McKenna's 313 pages are overflowing with well-ordered and
skillfully written cultural, sociological, historical, legal and moral
discussions on the political future of drug uses.  In the epilogue,
McKenna ends with the conviction that "our breach of faith with the
symbiotic relationship to the plant hallucinogens has made us susceptible
to an ever more neurotic response to each other and the world around us...
We can now move toward a new vision of ourselves and our role in nature."

The book includes an introduction, four sections and an epilogue.  The
first section is entitled "Paradise," and includes chapters called
"Shamanism: the Magic in Food," "Search for the Original Tree of
Knowledge," Plants and Primates--Postcards from the Stoned Age," "Habilu
as Culture and Religion," and "The High Plains of Eden." The second
section, called "Paradise Lost," includes "Searching for Soma," "Twilight
in Eden, Minoan Crete and the Eleusinian Mystery," "Alcohol and the
Alchemy of Spirit," and "The Ballad of the Dreaming Weavers, Cannabis and
Culture."  The third section, called "Hell," includes "Complacencies of
the Peignoir: Sugar, Coffee, Tea and Chocolate," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes:
Opium and Tobacco," and "Synthetics, Heroin, Cocaine and Television." The
fourth section, called "Paradise Regained?" includes a "Brief History of
Psychedelics" and "Anticipating the Archaic Paradise." Finally, the
epilogue is called "Looking Outward and Inward to a Sea of Stars."

The body of the book is followed by highly detailed notes on the foregoing
sections; a glossary, containing structural formulae of the principal
hallucinogens; a bibliography of 151 sources; and 11 pages of an extremely
complete index.

This volume will long be consulted by researchers and others who may not
be convinced by McKenna's scholarly venture into a highly controversial
realm of thinking.  It is, without question, destined to play a major role
in our future considerations of the role of the ancient use of
psychoactive drugs, the historical shaping of our modern concerns about
drugs and perhaps about man's desire for escape from reality with drugs.
McKenna concludes by suggesting a plan supposed to solve the drug problems
of today in the developed countries.

The book is beautifully produced, a credit to Bantam Books, and
considering the vast amount of expertly organized material in its pages,
it is very reasonably priced.

Richard Evans Schultes
Biology and Harvard Botanical Museum (Emeritus)
Harvard University


_American Scientist_
September/October 1993
Vol. 81, No. 5
page 489