Machine elf
Encyclopedia
Machine elves is a term coined by the late ethnobotanist, writer and philosopher Terence McKenna
to describe the apparent entities that are often reported by individuals using tryptamine
-based psychedelic drug
s, especially DMT
. 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.
' book The Invisible Landscape (published 1975):
At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum
-like mandala
, and find:
) in 1958 under the title “Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics”, researcher Stephen Szara
(the chemist who first synthesised DMT) talked about how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced “strange creatures, dwarves or something” at the beginning of the trip.
In a book entitled Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Volume 5, 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". Meyer believes that the objective space that one may enter on DMT, and the faerie world described by Evans-Wentz, are one and the same.
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 a 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"
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.
James Kent has put forth a different explanation for machine elves. Kent postulates that the DMT landscape is simply disrupting or "editing" our processing of visual information and causing a chaotic interpretation of it inspired by hyperactive phosphene
activity. The brain may fill in the blanks and since we all have an affinity for anthropomorphic things, a humanoid entity may appear out of all this chaos. Our "imaginal workplace" will take the center stage in brain activity, allowing internal data to be interpreted as external stimuli.
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...
to describe the apparent entities that are often reported by individuals using tryptamine
Tryptamine
Tryptamine is a monoamine alkaloid found in plants, fungi, and animals. It is based around the indole ring structure, and is chemically related to the amino acid tryptophan, from which its name is derived...
-based psychedelic drug
Psychedelic drug
A psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...
s, especially DMT
Dimethyltryptamine
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in several plants, and also in trace amounts in humans and other mammals, where it is originally derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and ultimately produced by the enzyme INMT...
. References to such encounters can be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
to indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
and African tribes, as well as among Western
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
users of these substances.
Description by McKenna
McKenna's first published mention of the machine elves is in his and his brother DennisDennis McKenna
Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, author and brother to well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna.-Profile:...
' 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.
At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...
-like mandala
Mandala
Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point...
, 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 eggFabergé eggA Fabergé egg is any one of the thousands of jeweled eggs made by the House of Fabergé from 1885 to 1917. Most were miniature eggs that were popular gifts at Eastertide...
s, 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 glossolaliaGlossolaliaGlossolalia or speaking in tongues is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables, often as part of religious practice. The significance of glossolalia has varied with time and place, with some considering it a part of a sacred language...
. 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 vuDéjà vuDéjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined...
! Deja vu!".
Other mentions of the DMT elves
McKenna was not the first to experience or report DMT elves, even if they probably owe most of their popularization to him. In an article published in The Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of PsychiatryBritish Journal of Psychiatry
The British Journal of Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed medical journal published monthly by the Royal College of Psychiatrists containing original research, systematic reviews, commentaries on contentious articles, short reports, a comprehensive book review section, and a correspondence column...
) in 1958 under the title “Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics”, researcher Stephen Szara
Stephen Szára
Stephen Szára is a Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist who has made major contributions in the field of pharmacology.Szára was the first to scientifically study the psychotropic effects of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine , performing research with volunteers in the mid-1950s...
(the chemist who first synthesised DMT) talked about how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced “strange creatures, dwarves or something” at the beginning of the trip.
In a book entitled Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Volume 5, 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
Walter Evans-Wentz
Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz was an anthropologist and writer who was a pioneer in the study of Tibetan Buddhism.-Biography:...
, 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". Meyer believes that the objective space that one may enter on DMT, and the faerie world described by Evans-Wentz, are one and the same.
Psychiatrist Rick Strassman
Rick Strassman
Dr. Rick Strassman is a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry with a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research. Strassman was the first person in the United States after twenty years of intermission to embark in human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, or entheogenic substances...
, 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
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, his first guess was that this was a 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"
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.
James Kent has put forth a different explanation for machine elves. Kent postulates that the DMT landscape is simply disrupting or "editing" our processing of visual information and causing a chaotic interpretation of it inspired by hyperactive phosphene
Phosphene
A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye. The word phosphene comes from the Greek words phos and phainein...
activity. The brain may fill in the blanks and since we all have an affinity for anthropomorphic things, a humanoid entity may appear out of all this chaos. Our "imaginal workplace" will take the center stage in brain activity, allowing internal data to be interpreted as external stimuli.