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Terence McKenna
Summary
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated 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, ethnomycology, 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".
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, proposing that this predicted the end of time, and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012. His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about the 2012 phenomenon. Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.
Terence McKenna was born and raised in Paonia, Colorado,
with Irish ancestry on his father's side of the family.
McKenna developed a hobby of fossil-hunting in his youth and from this he acquired a deep scientific appreciation of nature. He also became interested in psychology at a young age, reading Carl Jung's book Psychology and Alchemy at the age of 14. This was the same age McKenna first became aware of magic mushrooms, when reading an essay titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" which appeared in the May 13, 1957 edition of LIFE magazine.
At age 16 McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, California. In 1963, he was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of The Village Voice which published articles on psychedelics.
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