Customer Reviews

Pharmako/Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Pharmako/Gnosis" is the crown jewel of Pendell's superb trilogy, and indispensable reading for anyone interested in psychedelics, botany, anthropology, and earnest inquiry into the nature of existence. Covering LSD, mescaline and peyote, DMT, psilocybin mushrooms, esoterica like Syrian rue and even xenon inhalation, as well as other signposts on what he calls "the Poison Path," Pendell continues his profound investigation of mankind's relationship with plants and chemicals that can seem like helpful teachers, demons, pernicious addictions -- or all three at once. (The truly addictive substances are mostly discussed in the previous two volumes of the trilogy, "Pharmako/Poeia" and "Pharmako/Dynamis.")

Even if you never touch the stuff yourself, Pendell's trilogy is worth reading as one of the most graceful and powerful breakthroughs in prose in many years. Combining poetry, deep history, science, psychological insight, and Zen-style humor in the face of "the Great Matter," Pendell has created a voice that is wholly his own. He can be radiantly tender in one passage, saltily irreverent in another, and certain sections of this book -- such as "Splitting the Hair" and "The Two-Dragon Problem" -- come as close to saying the Unsayable as any literature I know, outside of such Zen classics as "The Blue Cliff Record." A section called "The Hallucinogenic Properties of Maize" is a brief tour-de-force that should bring a knowing smile to fans of "The Matrix" and other works that suggest that what we call normal waking consciousness is worthy of closer scrutiny.

Like the Poison Path itself, Pendell's books are not for everyone. They may be difficult reading at first for those who are totally unfamiliar with botany or Zen, and their frequent flights into personal witnessing of altered states may piss off readers who are expecting an "objective" textbook or how-to-get-high cookbook. But stick with them -- these sly books instruct even as they tease or confound expectations, and will still be whispering in the inner ears of shamans and potential initiates many generations from now, long after most so-called drug books of our era have been forgotten. And Pendell's Coyote-like wit -- taking the narrator to task for his own pomposity in italicized sections that the author calls "the back channel" -- never allows him to wallow in the kind of self-importance or vacuous yakking that afflicts so many self-appointed psychonauts.

At the level of book design, Pendell's luminous and subtle use of images is nothing short of revelatory. The sudden appearance of Walt Whitman's youthful face after a particularly lovely passage, for example, says more than another ten pages of prose could have. Mercury House has done an admirable job of bringing the author's hard-won mapping of the other world into this one.

In some of the book's most memorable passages, the author seems to step aside to let the spirits of the plants themselves speak -- no easy trick without seeming ridiculous. Bravo to Pendell for creating a guide to uncovering essential experience (with the help of potent allies) that will be, in the words of Allen Ginsberg, "good to eat a thousand years."

This book, last part of the beautiful, highly recommended "Pharmako-" trilogy is dedictated to Pendell's traveling companions. And what an artful lot they are. "Pharmako/Gnosis" covers what the author defines as "Phantastica" and "Daimonica", bringers of visions and darkness, respectively. Interspersed are fragments relating to the walk down the Poison Path, intricate tales of supernatual encounters and the social dynamics of drug use.

Do not expect hard science here, this book is all about the transcendental, the unspeakable, the heart. Or, do expect at least some degree of science, shoulder to shoulder with personal opinion and the voices of plant spirits themselves. The way the author weaves a holographic contextual web of ideas on the subject of plants and their constituents is in my view unprecedented. The book is truly in a class of its own, the views Pendell offers his readers are original and sometimes highly evocative.

Do not buy this book if you are looking for Erowid-style trip reports (there are however, to my delight, some references to online drug culture hidden in here). Instead this book offers so much more for the experienced traveller or fans of poetic psychedelia. It has buddhism, history, economics, chemistry, botany, poetry. And a ridiculous but completely adorable comparison of drugs to sexual positions.

As the verbal flow seems a little less inspired to me than in the other two volumes, his nonetheless brilliant book deserves four stars. Buy it together with its sisters and you'll be the prowd owner of fifteen stars worth of textual Medicine.

I have read, from the bible, the koran, the bagdavad gita and many other religious tomes
Dale Pendels trilogy is the first to have touched my soul and I'm not even sure that was his intention in the first place. I have purchaced two sets of these books, one to lend out and one set to have close by. I loved them. Great work Mr Pendell. Should be in the school curriculum.
Skeet

I bought all three books, so I was able to read them consecutively without a break in between and I was enraptured for the entire time. Couldn't put them down. The third volume is perhaps the most exciting.

Highly, highly recommended.

For mad men and women only.

Sex and Light: How to Google your way to Godhood

This book is great. Highly recommend to "experienced travellers" - it'll most definitely bring familiar (mostly pleasant) memories back to life. But even more I'd recommend it to people who are still thinking about taking the plunge and are afraid for one reason or another.

As far as style goes... it reminded me very much (surprisingly, somewhat) of Cortazar's Hopscotch - fragmented poetry, broken story, yet the whole is so much greater than the sum of the fragments. Excellent!

Well, I just finished the first time through on this book and I can't say it's as good as his first one in this series (or the 2nd one for that matter.) I mean, it's alwright and I'll read it again, but it's a little more flowery and rambling than the previous two. It seemed like he was relying more on data gathered from others in writing this one as opposed to the stong impression of personal experience I gandered from the others in this series. I'm a little dissapointed, but then I had very high expectations and a strong interest in the subjects he discusses. He just left out alot of things I would have considered important maybe, but overall a good book.