Pharmako BOX 1-3 – Pendell Dale (2025)

This boxed set contains Dale Pendell’s updated cult trilogy for “plant people”: Pharmako/Poeia, Pharmako/Dynamis and Pharmako/Gnosis. The three Czech-language books create a rich tapestry of botany, specialist chemistry, pharmacology and history, interwoven with poetic imagination, a suggestive blend of logic and mythological tradition. Alternatively, they can be read as an alchemical treatise by a writer who has personally embarked on the “path of poisons”, presenting readers with an experienced and mysterious world of plants and substances that alter human consciousness. They also offer postmodern reading for anyone fascinated by figures such as Terence McKenna and eager to go further. The structure is three-dimensional and holographic: begin anywhere or read backwards. Books are naturally linear, but that is only one possible perspective, and other connections may be more meaningful. The “path of poisons” is not for everyone, and the knowledge found here may be dangerous, although it is safer than dangerous ignorance. The trilogy ultimately invites reflection on the connection between stimulants and capitalism, as well as on Paracelsus’s idea that everything is poison and nothing is poison, depending on the amount, and that the alchemist’s task is to separate poison from the tree of knowledge. Pharmako/Poeia examines plant allies classified as thanatopathics, including tobacco and poisonous plants; inebriants, from yeast and beer to wine, alcohol and ether; rhapsodics, from wormwood to Calea; euphorics, from poppy and opium to heroin; pacifics such as kava kava; existents such as sage; evaesthetics such as cannabis; and metaphysics such as nitrous oxide. Pharmako/Dynamis covers stimulants, or excitants, including coffee, tea, cocoa, maté, kola, betel, ephedra, khat, coca and amphetamine, as well as empathogens such as nutmeg, ecstasy and GHB. Pharmako/Gnosis explores substances known as fantastics, including morning glory, magic mushrooms, LSD, pagoda tree, peyote, San Pedro, ayahuasca, jurema, harmala, toads, tryptamines and DMT, along with daimonics such as datura, elementals, ketamine, fly agaric and iboga. In the end, the trilogy points beyond words, suggesting that reality has a deeper structure connected more closely with time than with language.