Terence McKenna

American author and explorer who spent 25 years in the study of the ontological foundations of shamanism and the ethno-pharmacology of spiritual transformation. His deepest explorations were into the mysteries of conscious and unconscious reality and mind alternations, which endlessly fascinated him.

After graduating from UC Berkeley, he traveled extensively in the Asian and New World Tropics, specializing in the shamanism and ethno-medicine of the Amazon Basin. With his brother Dennis, he wrote "The Invisible Landscape" and "Psilacybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide." His "Food of the Gods" is a study of the impact of psychotropic plants on human culture and evolution. His last book was "True Hallucinations," a narrative of spiritual adventure in the jungles of the Colombian Amazon.

He was noted for his Novelty Theory, a type of fractal dynamics he invented. He gave talks and seminars, most recently in upstate New York, the Naropa Institute of Boulder and at Esalen in Big Sur, CA.

In the autumn of 1975, after parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year, McKenna began a relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children, Kathleen Harrison. They divorced in 1992.

His girlfriend Christy Silness wrote to Erin Sullivan, "Terence fell ill with GBM on 22 May 1999." He had his first seizure in Hawaii in 1999.

He died of a brain tumor in San Rafael, California on 3 April 2000 at 2:15 AM, aged 53.