Plant student Dale Pendell established himself as one of the foremost popular exponents of shamanic ethnobotany with his unprecedented Pharmako trilogy. A noted poet, he was the founding editor of the avant-garde magazine Kuksu and a cofounder of the Primitive Arts Institute and has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Omega Institute. Pendell was part of the Oracular Madness theme camp at Burning Man for a number of years (his book Inspired Madness- The Gifts of Burning Man was published by Frog Books in 2006). Also an experienced computer scientist, he lives with his wife Laura in California's Sierra foothills.
“Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic
poet and the shaman. His Pharmako/Poeia is a litany to the secret
plant allies that have always accompanied us along the alchemical
trajectory that leads to a new and yet authentically archaic
future.”
—Terence McKenna, author of True Hallucinations
“Much of our life-force calls upon the plant world for support, in
medicines and in foods, as both allies and teachers. Pendell
provides a beautifully crafted bridge between these two worlds. The
magic he shares is that the voices are spoken and heard both ways;
we communicate with plants and they with us. This book is a moving
and poetic presentation of this dialogue.”
—Dr.Alexander T. Shulgin, University of California at Berkeley,
Department of Public Health
“Pharmako/Poeia is an epic poem on plant humours, an abstruse
alchemic treatise, an experiential narrative jigsaw puzzle, a hip
and learned wild-nature reference text, a comic paean to cosmic
consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a
counterculture encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore that cuts
through the present ‘conservative’ war-on-drugs psychobabble.”
—Allen Ginsberg, poet
“The great joy of Pharmako/Poeia lies in the simultaneous drawing
out of simplicity and complexity. Simple, so far as it draws
together the vast territory of the human-poison relationship into a
single, poetic alchemy; yet complex, in that it blows apart the
narrow simplistic understandings that stratify each bubble of
understanding. This is a truly excellent book and should be on the
shelves and minds of all poisoners, all students of life,
literature and ethnobotany. Whether your poison is Salvia
divinorum, tobacco, alcohol, Nitrous oxide, or bitter berry, or
even just the unquenchable thirst of a psychoactive knowledge, this
text should be a given.”
—Psychedelic Press UK
“Pendell demonstrates that the art of a cross-disciplined approach
is not only still alive, but has the power to augment
understandings above and beyond its parts. He reveals the depth to
which scientific/poetic dichotomies are often no more than
categorical fallacies.”
—Dose Nation
“Dale Pendell’s remarkable book will make it impossible to ever
again underestimate the most unprepossessing plant. This compendium
of how-to-get-high-by-eating-your-lawn ethnological data is
mind-boggling, useful, and serves as a fine end run around the
guardians of ‘official’ consciousness.”
—Peter Coyote, actor
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