Machine elf
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Machine elves (also known as fractal elves, self-transforming machine elves) is a term coined by the late ethnobotanist, writer and philosopher Terence McKenna to describe the apparent entities (described as "elves") that have been reported by users of dimethyltryptamine.[1] References to such encounters can be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of native Americans to indigenous Australians and African tribes, as well as among western users of these substances.[2]
Description by McKenna
McKenna's first published mention of the machine elves in his and his brother Dennis' book The Invisible Landscape (published 1975):
We especially refer to the apparently autonomous and intelligent, chaotically mercurial and mischievous machine elves encountered in the trance state, strange teachers whose marvelous singing makes intricate toys out of the air and out of their own continually transforming body geometries.[3]
Later, McKenna describes the experience in more detail. The following is a partial transcription of a workshop titled "Time and Mind" - The Tykes.[4][5] At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum-like mandala, and find:
There's a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying "How wonderful that you're here! You come so rarely! We're so delighted to see you!"
They're like jewelled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you're being presented with thousands of details per second and you can't get a hold on [them ...] and these things are saying "Don't give in to astonishment", which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say "Don't do that. Pay attention to what we're doing".
What they're doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying "Look at this! Look at this!" and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you're being shown is impossible. It's not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it's impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be the Fabergé eggs, but these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery inside a U.F.O., celestial toys, and the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive and can sing other objects into existence, so what's happening is this proliferation of elf gifts, which are moving around singing, and they are saying "Do what we are doing" and they are very insistent, and they say "Do it! Do it! Do it!" and you feel like a bubble inside your body beginning to move up toward your mouth, and when it comes out it isn't sound, it's vision. You discover that you can pump "stuff" out of your mouth by singing, and they're urging you to do this. They say "That's it! That's it! Keep doing it!".
We're now at minute 4.5 [of the trip] and you speak in a kind of glossolalia. There is a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called "meaning". After a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they begin to physically move away from you. Usually their final shot is that they wave goodbye and say "Deja vu! Deja vu!".
Other mentions of the DMT elves
In a book entitled Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Volume 5,[6] Peter Meyer, a philosopher, mathematician and developer of Terence McKenna's "Timewave Zero" software, spoke about the DMT elves. He reported a subject's experience of the elves after ingestion of DMT: "The elves were dancing in and out of the multidimensional visible language matrix". Meyer associates this experience with that talked about by Walter Evans-Wentz, who expressed that a world of entities such as fairies and elves exists "as a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions".[7]
Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, who made extensive research on DMT, encountered many DMT smokers who had experienced beings similar to McKenna's machine elves. Since, at the time, all of the subjects were from California, his first guess was that this was just a "West Coast eccentricity". In Strassmans words, "Also surprising were the common themes of what these beings were doing with so many of our volunteers: manipulating, communicating, showing, helping, questioning. It was definitely a two-way street".[1]
The subject of machine elves is one that occupies the works of author and scientist Cliff Pickover and has been a major theme in his book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves.[8]
See also
- Apparitional experience
- Astral projection
- Ayahuasca
- Dökkálfar and Ljósálfar
- Ego death
- Fairy
- Near-death experience
- Out-of-body experience
- Shamanism
References
- ^ a b Rick Strassman (2001). Dmt: the Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of near-Death and Mystical Experiences. pp. 187–8, also pp.173–4. ISBN 978-0-89281-927-0.
I had expected to hear about some of these types of experiences once we began giving DMT. I was familiar with Terence McKenna's tales of the "self-transforming machine elves" he encountered after smoking high doses of the drug. Interviews conducted with twenty experienced DMT smokers before beginning the New Mexico research also yielded some tales of similar meetings. Since most of these people were from California, I admittedly chalked up these stories to some kind of West Coast eccentricity
- ^ Ayahuasca: Hallucinogens, Consciousness and the Spirit of Nature. ISBN 978-1-56025-160-6.
{{cite book}}:|editor1-first=missing|editor1-last=(help) - ^ The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching Terence McKenna, 1975
- ^ Larger transcript available at erowid.org. Fetched 2013-01-13.
- ^ Audio recording, youtube. Fetched 2013-01-13.
- ^ Lyttle, Thomas (1991). Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Volume 5. P M & E PUBLISHING.
- ^ Evans-Wentz, Walter (1990). The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. New Page Books. ISBN 1-56414-708-8.
- ^ Pickover, Cliff (2005). Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence. Smart Publications. ISBN 1-890572-17-9.
External links
- Terence McKenna: Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness
- Rodriguez, M.A., “A Methodology for Studying Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced Alternate Reality,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, volume 21, number 1, pages 67–84, Society for Scientific Exploration, ISSN:0892-3310, 2007.