Dennis McKenna
Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas curated by Steven F. White and Jill Pflugheber uses the tools of science, in this case confocal microscopy, to provide a unique perspective on the major psychoactive plants of the New World shamanic traditions. Just as these plants, through their unique pharmacology, open the vision screens to inner worlds of wonder, the confocal photographs in this collection reveal that each of these plants is a cosmos in itself, no less wondrous. The images are as many-layered and deep as the inner landscapes revealed in the interactions between plant chemical messengers and human neurobiology. Demonstrating, once again, what we know to be true but sometimes forget: each time we focus the lens of curiosity on Nature, whether through direct experience of plant pharmacology or through the tools of science, we rediscover that the Universe is astonishing and marvelous beyond measure.
Dennis McKenna, President and Principal Founder, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, Host of the symposium Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs 55.
