Pharmakon Essays

Essays

Theory · History · Phenomenology

A selection of essays exploring the ontology, history, phenomenology and theory of the field of entheogens and entheobotany.

Theory

Provisional theoretical, psychological, neuropharmacological and cultural frameworks for the ontology of shamanism and the generative nature of vision and meaning.

The Syntropic Mind: Contemporary Maps of Entheogenic Vision from Neural Entropy to Analytic Idealism

Daniel Mirante 40 min

Entheogenic plants and molecules can produce experiences of extraordinary organisation: recurrent geometry, articulated environments, apparently autonomous agents, autobiographical review, moral and affective sequences, and states interpreted as instruction or revelation.…

History

The ancient and modern anthropology and history of shamanistic phenomena.

Archaic Futures: Psychedelic Shamanism, Pangaean Entheobotany and the Cybernetic Counterculture, c. 1970–2000

Daniel Mirante 38 min

During the 1980s and 1990s, a dispersed Euro-American counterculture reactivated the psychedelic project through the languages of shamanism, entheogen, Gaia, archaic revival, cyberdelia and, by the end of the period,…

Phenomenology

Reports and explorations of the experiential, qualia-based nature of ecstatic experience.

Hyperreality, Meaning-Salience, and Presence in Entheogenic Phenomenology

Daniel Mirante 28 min

This essay examines three interrelated qualities through which entheogenic visions acquire epistemic and ontological force: meaning-salience, hyperreality and presence. Meaning-salience gives the experience the felt authority of disclosure; hyperreality establishes…

Creativity

Artistic integration of visionary experience — how vision becomes image, technique and transmissible form.

Ritual, Art and Visionary Experience

Daniel Mirante 45 min

This essay examines artistic practice as a technology for integrating psychedelic and transpersonal experience. Integration is understood here as the continuing formation of a workable relation to experiences that may…