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    Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
    Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
    Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
    Audiobook8 hours

    Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

    Written by Terence McKenna

    Narrated by Jeffrey Kafer

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Terence McKenna hypothesizes that as the North African jungles receded, giving way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our arboreal primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began living in the open areas beyond. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to the environment. Among the new foods found in this environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing near dung of ungulate herds occupying the savannas and grasslands. Referencing the research of Roland L. Fisher, McKenna claims the enhancement of visual acuity was an effect of psilocybin at low doses and suggests this would confer adaptive advantage. He argues that the effects of slightly larger doses, including sexual arousal, and in larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations glossolalia-gave selective evolutionary advantages to members of those tribes who partook of it. There were many changes caused by the introduction of this psychoactive to primate diets. He hypothesizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of sensory boundaries) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds. About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed psilocybin-containing mushrooms from human diets. He argues that this event resulted in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to the previous brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 28, 2012
    ISBN9781452680033
    Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
    Author

    Terence McKenna

    McKenna was a scholar of shamanism, ethno-botanist, psychedelic researcher and author of many books.

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    Reviews for Food of the Gods

    4.5/5

    116 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Though the main subject of this book is the psychedelic mushroom, he elaborates extensively on modern culture and its "Dominator" mindset. He mentions the book "The Chalice and the Blade" by Riane Eisler, which describes how there was a culture that existed around the area of Greece that was a Matriarchal society. This society lived without war or poverty for around a thousand years. McKenna uses this culture as an example of how humans can and did live in perpetual peace, while at the same time not having a hierarchical system like our culture has now, which is of course Patriarchal. The mushroom, he explains, helps humans really "see" reality for what it is, and in that state is able to both communicate with the environment and with our fellow humans, in harmony. He also puts forth a theory that psychedelic mushrooms contributed directly to human cognitive evolution, that they changed our brains to what they are now. The mushroom gave us an edge in our survival hundreds of thousands of years ago by being able to, like I said before, "see" the real world better, and therefore giving us an advantage in survival and changing our brain structure in the process.All this leads to the idea of how the "Tree of Knowledge" was actually the mushroom. Since the downfall of the Matriarchal mindset, or true harmony, we have become the violent, Patriarchal, God-fearing, we-are-above-nature-so-therefore-it's-ours, system. Mentioning, of course, how the mushroom and all the other mind-altering compounds like LSD, DMT, and the like, are extremely illegal in our society. How these ideas of harmony, the sacred feminine aspects, have been and still are being suppressed, and that a return to these more ideal ideas will save us from future violence and destruction.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      An eye-popping history of mind-altering plants.McKenna eloquently advocates a new type of relationship with psychedelics: one of wonder, mystery and discovery. I was profoundly inspired and changed by this book.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Just why are cattle so important to humans worldwide? Is it really all about mushrooms?

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Terrence McKenna weaves a new kind of story about the human adventure, out of a collection of facts that he has gleaned from his prodigious research into the hidden history of human psychedelic use. He makes a strong case that psychedelic use played a role in the evolution of spiritual consciousness as well as perhaps even human language. He also argues persuasively about the roles that various kinds of drugs and foods have played within societies of the past and present, correlating the chemicals we ingest and have ingested, with apparent changes in our individual and collective consciousness.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Book was great reader was good but not Terrance Mckenna

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This is an incredible book but the narrator's voice is so awful. It sounds like AI. Nasal, with weird inflection and way too high pitched. I'll just have to read this again the old fashioned way or find another recording of it because this "guy's" voice is insufferable.
    • 4/5
      An interesting look at the relationship between plants and human evolution, both past and future. I especially enjoyed the idea that as wild plants became less important parts of our lives, the more patriarchal, and controlling, human cultures became. There is a relationship between the foods cultures consume and the amount of equality between the sexes. It is past time for us to work to create healthy human cultures, and perhaps the foods we consume is a more important part of that work than I thought.
    • 2/5
      You wanna see something really, really interesting about Novelty Theory? Take a look at the chronological history of the universe. So we have the big bang, rapid inflation, then re-normalization, and a very long period of very very little expansion in the universe, like 14 billion years, right? At some point around 1-2 billion years ago, the solar system started to form, and suddenly the expansion of space begins speeding up again, for the first time in 8 billion years. Then you have life emerge here on earth, about 3.5-4 billion years ago...and suddenly the expansion accelerates again. And since the emergence of life here on earth, the universe has been expanding exponentially, so much so that the disc is getting flatter and flatter and wider and wider. Terence would talk about this relationship of density of the universe vs. amount of information that had been articulated, or how much complexity it had achieved at any point. The more complexity brought into being, the thinner and more stretched out the universe would get. And of course the complexifying would start to increase exponentially at some point, leading to an inevitable singularity moment. His model said it would be 2012, just like the Mayans (his model also showed repeating fractal time but that's another story). Others have said 2017. The Hermetic tradition has said 2020 for a very long time. You can even look at a deck of Hermetic tarot cards, card XX (card 20, and it's 2020), the Aeon... it's called judgement day. I know we're talking science here, but credit where credit is due. The point being people have been pointing to this decade for thousands of years as being when the next universal singularity would occur. And the blueprint to understanding perpetual repeating cycles on countless levels in the universe. And it would take me a month to list out all of the different belief groups form antiquity til now that all believe in different cycles of varying lengths of time having a finish/restart point right now. Carl Jung said this decade would be when his Aeon took shape. People have known this would happen for longer than we probably have records of. I just hope people understand, all of this shit is interconnected, everything is interconnected, all of us, all matter, all space, and all time. The modern world forgot this and its held us back scientifically for 3 centuries. I said held back...lol, I guess really, we're right on time.I’m going to take 4g of mushrooms then meditate alone in a safe place to prepare myself for enlightenment.
    • 4/5
      This is where "The Stoned Ape Theory" comes from, if that helps anyone.

      2 people found this helpful