Pharmako/Gnosis
- 398pages
- 14 heures de lecture
Dale Pendell est l'auteur d'une histoire littéraire fondamentale explorant les plantes psychoactives. Il distille méticuleusement des connaissances interdisciplinaires complexes, puisant dans la pharmacologie, les neurosciences, l'ethnobotanique, l'anthropologie, la mythologie et l'économie politique. Pendell examine comment ces domaines s'entrecroisent avec l'expérience humaine directe de l'usage psychoactif. Son œuvre offre une perspective unique sur la relation profonde entre l'humanité, le règne végétal et la conscience.







"Ancient Greek herbalists used the term pharmakodynamis to refer to the intrinsic powers of plants. Pendell charts a voyage around the world of plant teachers and allies. Applying poetry, chemistry, pharmacology, and a generous sprinkling of arcane lore, Pendell wends a course through the realms of plant powers, potions, and herbcraft."--BOOK JACKET.
In Pharmako/Poeia, Dale Pendell offers a mesmerizing guide to psychoactive plants, from their pharmacological roots to the literary offshoots. "This is a book," writes Gary Snyder, "about danger: dangerous knowledge, even more dangerous ignorance." Against the greater danger, ignorance, Pendell strikes a formidable blow, as he proves himself a wise and witty guide to our plant teachers, their powers and their poisons. "Pharmako/Poeia is 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 paen to cosmic consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a counterculture encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore." -Allen Ginsberg poet"Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman." -Terence McKenna author of True Hallucinations
"Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft focuses on familiar psychoactive plant-derived substances and related synthetics, ranging from the licit (tobacco, alcohol) to the illicit (cannabis, opium) and the exotic (absinthe, salvia divinorum, nitrous oxide). Each substance is explored in detail, not only with information on its history, pharmacology, preparation, and cultural and esoteric correspondences, but also the subtleties of each plant's effect on consciousness in a way that only poets can do. The whole concoction is sprinkled with abundant quotations from famous writers, creating a literary brew as intoxicating as its subject." (éditeur)
***WINNER, Best Science Fiction, 2010 Green Book Festival Based in scientific reality, Dale Pendell presents a powerful fictional vision of a fast-approaching future in which sea levels rise and a decimated population must find new ways to live. The Great Bay begins in 2021 with a worldwide pandemic followed by the gradual rising of the seas. Pendell’s vision is all encompassing—he describes the rising seas’ impact on countries and continents around the world. But his imaginative storytelling focuses on California. A “great bay” forms in California’s Central Valley and expands during a 16,000-year period. As the years pass, and technology seems to regress, even memory of a “precollapse” world blends into myth. Grizzly bears and other large predators return to the California hills, and civilization reverts to a richly imagined medieval society marked by guilds and pilgrimages, followed even later by hunting and gathering societies. Pendell’s focus is on the lives of people struggling with love, wars, and physical survival thousands of years in California’s future. He deftly mixes poetic imagery, news-reporting-style writing, interviews with survivors, and maps documenting the geographic changes. In the end, powerful human values that have been with us for 40,000 years begin to reemerge and remind us that they are desperately needed—in the present.
Kniha o nyvyzpytatelné moci rostlin a cestě jedů.
Velký záliv, novela amerického básníka a etnobotanika Dalea Pendella, je dystopickým, a přesto optimistickým pohledem na svět po zhroucení civilizace, tak jak ji dnes známe. Poté co dojde ropa, lidstvo zdecimují epidemie a potopy a nastane oteplení prostřídané novými dobami ledovými, poté co vymře většina světové populace, musí nečetní přeživší napnout veškeré síly k přežití a pod nánosy trosek vyhledávat pohřbené zbytky vědomostí. Ke slovu se dostanou hluboko ve vědomí zasuté pradávné mýty, šamanská moudrost a léčitelství přírodních národů. Jaký osud bude mít nešťastné lidstvo? Dojde k vytvoření civilizace podobné té naší, nebo vznikne něco úplně nového, neméně vzrušivé, ba lepší uspořádání?