Synopses & Reviews
"Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman". -- Terence McKenna
In Pharmako/Gnosis, Dale Pendell continues his exploration of psychoactive plants begun in Pharmako/Poeia. This volume includes the stimulants, the hallucinogens, and other plants.
Pharmacognosy is the study of the composition, production, use, and history of drugs of natural origin, and Pendell covers these topics and more in his voyage around the world of plant teachers. Through poetry, chemistry, and a generous sprinkling of arcane lore, Pendell weaves and twists the many threads of tradition into a singularly bewitching brew.
Pendell's voyage is a true circumnavigation, and either volume can stand alone or be used as the starting point to the other hemisphere.
Pendell's combination of science, poetry, and the "occult" is unique. Perhaps Alien Ginsberg described Pendell's project best: "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 countercultural encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore that cuts through the present 'conservative' war-on-drugs psychobabble".
Pharmako/Gnosis is a witty and delightful read and an illuminating book -- a compendium, as Gary Snyder wrote, of "dangerous knowledge" that is a formidable weapon against "even more dangerous ignorance".
About the Author
Dale Pendell is a poet, software engineer, and longtime student of ethnobotany. His poetry has appeared in many journals, and he was the founding editor of Kuksu: Journal of Backcountry Writing. His work appeared in Entheogens and the Future of Religion. He has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Botanical Preservation Corps.