Title Food of the Gods

Author Terrence McKenna

Year Published 1992

Kind of Book Psychedelics/History

How strongly I recommend it 7/10 

My Impressions

This book was an interesting look at our evolutionary history with mind-altering plants. McKenna explores how we have influenced their evolution and how they have influenced our. At times he drifts down some esoteric rabbit holes, but for the most part the written is focused. The theories he puts forward at controversial amongst historians and evolutionary biologists, but if nothing else they are interesting to ponder.

**I read this book before I started taking detailed notes, so unfortunately I don't remember most of it. It is on my "books to re-read" list.

Date Read circa 2016

Big Ideas

• In many shamanic traditions it was the shaman who took the psychedelic substances in order to learn how to heal the patient

• In modern times it is usually the patient who take psychedelic in order to get learn how to heal themselves

• What today we refer today as ego might have been what people during Homeric times referred to as God-Julian Jayne's

• When Homeric people talk about God speaking to them they might have been referring to the experience today where our ego/conscience/damon/inner voice tells us to do something (or not to do something)-Julian Jayne's

• The ego emerged in environments where psychedelic mushrooms were scarce or unavailable

Because

• If our ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved through the use of psychedelics, we feel more and more like and isolated individual and lose our sense of being one with nature/everything

Surprising Facts

• The Inuit Indians have/had no first person pronoun in their language.