DIMITRI AND THE MACHINE ELVES

What a great title for a short story, no? Rife with potential, I can just take that title, and run an imaginative gauntlet that perhaps even I could not predict where it ended, until the finish.

This, however, is a real life scenario, I kid thee not.

Dimitri is short for dimethyltryptamine, which the answers.com entry lists as: "Dimethyltryptamine, also known as Dimitri, and N,N-dimethyltryptamine, not to be confused with 5-MeO-DMT, is a psychedelic tryptamine, similar in structure to the neurotransmitter serotonin. DMT is created in small amounts by the human body during normal metabolism^[1] by the enzyme Tryptamine-N-methyltransferase. Pure DMT at room temperature is a light pink, orange, or yellow waxy or crystalline solid. DMT was first chemically synthesized in 1931. It also occurs naturally in many species of plants. DMT-containing plants are used in several South American shamanic practices. It is one of the main active constituents of snuffs like yopo and of the drink ayahuasca."

(snip)
"Hallucinogenic properties

DMT is a powerful psychoactive substance. If DMT is smoked, injected, or orally ingested with an MAOI, it can produce powerful entheogenic experiences including true hallucinations (perceived extensions of reality). A trip sitter is often employed to assist the drug user in staying physically and mentally healthy, and, in the case of smoked DMT, to catch the pipe when the user loses awareness of it."

And the purpose of this psychedelic? To see Machine Elves, which the Wiki entry describes as:

"Machine Elves (also known as fractal elves and self transforming machine elves) is a term coined by the writer and philosopher Terence McKenna to describe the entities that he claims one becomes aware of after having taken tryptamine based psychedelic drugs, especially DMT. According to McKenna, their constant dance creates the reality as we perceive it. By following their dance, one can stay in contact with the Logos, a subconscious world of spiritual and other information. The description is similar to the Hindu Dance of Shiva.

Many people have claimed to have encountered such entities, and have described them as abstract beings existing in the universe created from human and animal mental space. The term "DMT Space" has also been used.

There are numerous references of such encounters that could be found in many cultures ranging from shamanic traditions of Native Americans to Indigenous Australians, to African tribes, to the modern day "Urban Shamanism" like Santeria and Vodoun and the "new breed." This is something that Timothy Leary used to describe the rising generation of urban shamans, who would, he claimed, augment the spiritual awareness of the modern world.

This concept may be related to a tendency for the brain to imagine living entities during certain altered states. The best example of this is the extremely common feeling of a living presence during sleep paralysis (which has been theorized as the origin of the succubus, as well as a common theme in many alien abduction stories). Another example would be the widespread experience of a "Salvia Goddess" encountered by users of Salvia Divinorum. However, Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman have both asserted the sense of reality of the experience is distinct from ordinary hallucinatory experiences, leading both researchers to speculate that perhaps the physics of many worlds is involved."

I am much reminded of Castaneda, who in one of his books, ingests Jimsonweed (written in the pre-'drugs are bad' era) in order to commune with some wild entity. If memory serves, he said that 'Datura is the one plant only two animals will eat: pigs and men."

Of course, there's an online comic for this particular venue, via goats.com. Here is a particular strip that I enjoyed.

Clicking on the prior link will take you to this particular strip, where our intrepid youngsters eventually confront the Big Kahuna (aka YHVH, or any other name you'd prefer). It's good, clean, honest,...surreal fun. Well, at least the last adjective fits. So enjoy.

Till the next post, then.