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Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American psychonaut, ethnobotanist, lecturer, and author. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, culture, technology, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s",[1][2] "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism",[3] and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".[4]
McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the I Ching, which he called novelty theory,[3][5] proposing this predicted the end of time in the year 2012.[5][6][7][8] His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Mayan calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about 2012 eschatology.
After the partial completion of his studies, and his mother's death[25] from cancer in 1971,[26] McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT).[5][27] [25] Instead of oo-koo-hé they found various forms of ayahuasca, or yagé,[28] and fields full of gigantic Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, which became the new focus of the expedition.[5][6][12][29][25] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, McKenna was the subject of a psychedelic experiment[5] in which the brothers attempted to bond harmine (harmine is another psychedelic compound they used synergistically with the mushrooms) with their own neural DNA, through the use of a set specific vocal techniques. They hypothesised this would give them access to the collective memory of the human species, and would manifest the alchemists’ Philosopher’s Stone which they viewed as a "hyperdimensional union of spirit and matter".[30] McKenna claimed the experiment put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.[31] The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".[5][8][32] During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically involved with his interpreter, Ev.[33]
In 1972, McKenna returned to U.C. Berkeley to finish his studies[16] and in 1975, he graduated with a degree in ecology, shamanism, and conservation of natural resources.[3][22][23] In the autumn of 1975, after parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year,[34] McKenna began a relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children, Kathleen Harrison.
