Terence Kemp McKenna
1946-2000 · Esotericism · Prominent
McKenna was an American ethnobotanist who argued in Food of the Gods (1992) that hallucinogenic plants set off human self-reflection and speech, a claim his critics tagged the stoned ape. He treated the psychedelic realm as a place you travel to rather than something the brain invents. His timewave, a fractal model of time, had history ending on 21 December 2012. He owned that failure and flagged most of the rest as speculation.
Signature
The position McKenna is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent
- Time
- Process / Becoming / Eschatological
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (88 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (92 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (80 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature
- strongly leans Harmony (92 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- strongly leans Liberalism (90 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (19 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (15 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or McKenna refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- End of Things
- Transfiguration
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Other
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Time
- Process / Becoming / Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Self-Sovereignty
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Human Nature
- Symbol-Maker
What is human nature?