Mushrooms in Post-traditional Culture: Apropos of a Book by Terence McKenna
Journal for Cultural Research October 1, 2011 David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel
Terence McKenna's book Food of the Gods attempts to rewrite human evolution around hallucinogenic-mushroom consumption, arguing that liberated use of natural drugs would reconnect humanity to the Gaian mind of the planet and solve most of the world's ills by restoring harmony with a feminized nature. Although McKenna's commitment to drug use as a solution reveals its 1960s countercultural roots, the reinvention of tradition his work entails is characteristic of the proliferation of reinvented traditions defining post-traditional society. McKenna's vision misrecognizes both the character of the sacred and the nature of the unconscious, but read symptomatically it reveals contemporary culture's New Age beliefs as a tale of lost innocence underlying searches for arcane knowledge.