Then (1992), Food of the Gods
The Archaic Revival: Has It Happened?
The Archaic Revival, the return of shamanic practices, plant medicine, non-rational epistemologies, and ecological consciousness, was already underway in 1992 and would accelerate. McKenna saw it as a cultural immune response to the pathology of the dominator system.
contested
Psychedelic use has reached historically unprecedented levels in Western cultures since 2015. The psychedelic renaissance in medicine is genuine. Ayahuasca tourism is a $100M+ global industry. Indigenous plant medicine practices are studied at major universities. However, the 'revival' McKenna envisioned has often taken the form of commodified spiritual tourism rather than the deep cultural reorientation he described. The extraction model, Westerners consuming indigenous knowledge and plant medicines without sustainable relationship to the communities that stewarded them, is itself a feature of the dominator system he critiqued.
Sources
- McKenna, Food of the Gods (1992)
- Holman, J. Psychedelic Studies (2021) [Source not found; under review]
- Carod-Artal, Neurología (2015)