Mystery School in Hyperspace

A Cultural History of DMT

By: Graham St John, Dennis McKenna - foreword

Narrated by: David de Vries

Since the mid-1950s, the psychoactive compound DMT has attracted the attention of experimentalists, prohibitionists, scientists, artists, alchemists, and hyperspace emissaries. Mystery School in Hyperspace is the first book to delve into the history of this substance, the discovery of its properties, and the impact it has had on poets, artists, and musicians.

DMT has appeared at crucial junctures in countercultural history. William Burroughs was jacking the spice in Tangier at the turn of the 1960s. It was present at the meeting between Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and Tim Leary's associates. It guided the inception of the Grateful Dead in 1965. It showed up in Berkeley in the same year, falling into the hands of Terence McKenna, who would eventually become its champion in the post-rave neo-psychedelic movement of the 1990s. Its indole vapor drifted through Portugal's Boom Festival and has been evident at Nevada's Burning Man, where DMT has been adopted as spiritual technology supplying shape, color, and depth to a visionary art movement. The growing prevalence of use is evident in a vast networked independent research culture, and in its impact on fiction, film, music, and metaphysics.

As this book traces the effect of DMT's release into the cultural bloodstream, the results should be of great interest to contemporary audiences.

©2015 Graham St John (P)2021 Tantor

Fun read - review of everything connected to DMT

This was a pleasure to listen through, as the author takes us through the major figures, eras and memes of DMT.

A multifaceted multiangled approach

I was dumbfounded by this books coverage. So many aspects contributed are things that only the niche individuals of the 90s and 2000s would know about. Put to audio put to print palatable and consumable for all those outside of those circles. Between this book and Andrew Galimore's Death by Astonishment you will know just about everything one could know about the Spirit molecule.

My favorite DMT book

A perfect history of DMT. His writing is beautiful, every sentence full of rich vocabulary, but it never seems forced. The scope is perfect. Though certainly not as important as Strassman’s ‘Spirit Molecule,’ this book has become my favorite on the subject and the first I’d recommend to someone.