{"id":9037,"date":"2018-02-09T13:40:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T20:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9037"},"modified":"2018-02-09T19:41:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T02:41:01","slug":"on-dale-pendell-1947-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9037","title":{"rendered":"On Dale Pendell (1947\u20132018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every plant is a teacher
\nBut as in every crowd
\nThere are always
\nA few loudmouths<\/p>\n

\u2013Dale Pendell<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I went to town this morning and drinking my Americano at the coffee house while reading the comments on Kocku von Stuckrad’s memorial to Michael Harner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But then the screen went all blurry, and I had to stand and walk over to the big window that looks out on Main Street, watching the cars and trucks go by.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Dale Pendell is gone too.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman. His Pharmako\/Poeia is a litany to the secret plant allies that have always accompanied us along the alchemical trajectory that leads to a new and yet authentically archaic future.<\/p>\n

\u2014Terence McKenna<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you are a plant person, a “doctor of the poison path,” a student of entheogens, or an herbalist, and you do not have these three books \u2014 Pharmako Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path<\/em><\/a>\"\", Pharmako\/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft<\/a>,<\/em> and\u00a0 Pharmako\/Dynamis: Stimulating Plants, Potions, and Herbcraft<\/em><\/a>\"\"<\/em> \u2014 you are missing out.<\/p>\n

They combine poetry, organic chemistry, alchemy, ethnobotany, mythology, plant shamanism, and art.<\/p>\n

If a forest fire were coming at my house, I would grab these three and leave the rest of the ethnobotany\/entheogen texts for the flames.<\/p>\n

And now there won’t be any more. But as Gary Snyder<\/a> wrote, sometimes “books are our grandparents,” and these can be yours and mine.<\/p>\n

There is more about his final illness on his blog<\/a>. Here is another tribute:<\/a><\/p>\n

He paced back and forth, his delivery measured and careful. But this was no timid circumspection. His slow pace tried to give space to the spontaneous, to create deeper spaces for his risk-taking to dive into. At the time I was getting more and more into James Hillman, whose fidelity to the \u2018Western tradition\u2019 (not to mention his sobriety) is both edifying and frustrating. Dale rooted around in the same ancient Greek soil as Hillman, but also branched out into Native American shamanic conceptions of \u2018soul\u2019, and traces of intoxicated wisdom submerged in Western tradition. I was hooked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every plant is a teacher But as in every crowd There are always A few loudmouths \u2013Dale Pendell I went to town this morning and drinking my Americano at the coffee house while reading the comments on Kocku von Stuckrad’s memorial to Michael Harner. But then the screen went all blurry, and I had to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[318,25,303,232,317],"class_list":["post-9037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ethnobotany","tag-herbalism","tag-herbs","tag-poetry","tag-shamism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2lL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1460,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1460","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":0},"title":"Thinking Magically about Corporations\u2014and Plants","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Writer Dale Pendell muses about the idea of a corporation as a magical creation. Pendell is the author of the three best-ever books on psychoactive and entheogenic plants: Pharmako\/Gnostis, Pharmako\/Dynamis, and Pharmako\/Poeia. New editions are forthcoming from North Atlantic Books. Here is his Web site.","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11375,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11375","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":1},"title":"“These Are Dangerous Books”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Dale Pendell, erudite writer of \"the poison path,\" author of Pharmako\/Poeia, Pharmako\/Gnosis, and Pharmako\/Dynamis, died two years ago, but I only recently found a video of his memorial service. I am starting this video at the 30-minute mark, because that is when Gary Snyder comes on. Quite simply, I think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/pharmakopoeia-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6321,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6321","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":2},"title":"Caffeine and the Sun God","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As a freezing fog swirls through the pines, I lift my coffee mug and think of the sun \u2014 and coffee! Thursday was a much warmer day: M. and I went to Pueblo for supplies, and after a stop at Hercules Liquor for beer and wine, had a late breakfast\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"winter\"","block_context":{"text":"winter","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=winter"},"img":{"alt_text":"solarroast","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/solarroast.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=220","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":3},"title":"The Poison Path and Fatal Fronds","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"While I was in England, M. was Web-searching and turned up the Duchess of Northumberland's \"poison garden,\" which I would like to see today. Part of a much larger garden complex that is under construction but still attracting busloads of garden-loving Brits, it has gotten a lot of press. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.icnetwork.co.uk\/upl\/nejournal\/mar2010\/4\/1\/duchess-of-northumberland-334905528.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2564,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2564","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":4},"title":"Occultism and Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Not necessarily psychotropic mushrooms. To learn more about them, read Andy Letcher's Shroom or the works of Paul Stamets, Dale Pendell, etc. These are metaphorical mushrooms\u2014or mushrooms as metaphor\u2014from an article by Wouter Hanegraaff on the German scholar of esotericism Will-Erich Peuckert (1895-1969): To me, [Peuckert's] book [Pansophie] breathed\u00a0 an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"occultism\"","block_context":{"text":"occultism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=occultism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8507,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8507","url_meta":{"origin":9037,"position":5},"title":"The Story of Three Athames","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I have owned three athames in my life \u2014 or more precisely two athames plus a new knife that may well become one. There is a story in here of changing Craft practice. Actually, the first athame was simply my wooden-handled Mora hunting knife, not in the photo.((Those wooden (birch?)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3-athames.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3-athames.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3-athames.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9037"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9049,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9037\/revisions\/9049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}