There is no hierarchy of elder knowledge in my social region of things. There are only people learning and sharing in a very complex environment.

The things I encounter that I call elves or gnomes, it's just a gloss. I mean, they're small, and they have the archetype. They're more like leprechauns, and this maybe raises a racial issue.

Just because you have a nut theory it doesn't mean that you agree with other nut theories. In fact, it often makes you very hostile to them. After all, there's a limited pool there that we're all after.

So part of what being psychedelic means, I think, is relentlessly living with unanswered questions.

In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.

Nature and the imagination seem to be the precursors to involvement in the psychedelic experience.

The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being.