Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind by Graham Hancock. New York, NY: The Disinformation Company, 2007. Biblio.; illus.; index; notes; 466 pp.; $18.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Timothy White. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 76.

British author Graham Hancock has been described appropriately as a “do-it-yourself sleuth” who writes “intellectual whodunits.”  Indeed, in Supernatural:  Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, Hancock utilizes a literary style that is reminiscent of a detective novel, leading readers through a series of intriguing clues toward his hypothesis that shamanistic encounters with supernatural beings have played seminal roles in the cultural and spiritual development of humankind.  After noting that many religions and cultures claim their greatest spiritual, cultural, and technological advancements were inspired by visionary meetings with gods or helping spirits, Hancock asks whether these deities, spirits, and supernatural beings could exist independently of our minds in other dimensions, as indigenous shamans have often claimed.

Hancock develops his central thesis about the otherworldly reality of supernatural teachers by stringing together provocative notions from many disciplines.  First, he indicates that humans have used many means—including fasting, meditation, and psychoactive plants—to access altered states of consciousness and connect with transpersonal entities.  Then, he revisits an entheogenic paradigm—popularized by mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, ethnobotanist William Emboden, and anthropologist Weston LaBarre—which posits that shamanic plants and practices have been directly implicated in the genesis of many of the great historical religions.  Later, he examines cross-cultural motifs and themes that suggest that the spirit teachers encountered in shamanic states frequently seem to act as independent, transpersonal beings.  Finally, he explores some radical theories that propose our ability to communicate with these enlightened beings may be mysteriously encoded into our DNA.

When I first glanced through the chapter titles, subheadings, and graphic captions of Supernatural, I was put off by Hancock’s seeming preoccupation with esoteric subjects.  However, I found his enthusiastic efforts to understand the nature and source of human encounters with spirit teachers provide much stimulating and entertaining reading. His initial chapters explore an eclectic melange of topics, ranging from accounts of his personal encounters with several psychoactive plants (including iboga and ayahuasca) to his interpretations of ancient rock art sites in Europe.  In other chapters, he examines otherworldly themes prevalent in Gaelic fairy abduction stories and in modern accounts of UFO abductions, comparing them with classic shamanic initiation motifs.  Later, he calls attention to possible shamanic journey themes depicted in Mayan hieroglyphic art and Egyptian metaphysical images.  Finally, he explores some parallels between key shamanic journey themes and the “trip” narratives collected by American psychologist Rick Strassman during his government-sanctioned clinical studies of DMT hallucinations.  Although Hancock’s eclectic interest in UFO-abduction accounts, Celtic folk stories, psychonautic substances, and cutting-edge scientific paradigms initially activated my skeptic’s alarm, I must concede that he is a circumspect researcher who artfully evolves a revolutionary hypothesis regarding the ontogeny of our spiritual natures.

Hancock’s interest in supernatural realities seems to have been sparked by what he calls the “greatest riddle of archaeology”—the mystery of what prompted our Neolithic ancestors to start painting dramatic scenes of supernatural beings on the walls of certain almost inaccessible caverns at Pech Merle, Lascaux, and Chauvet in France.  Drawing on research compiled by various prestigious scholars—including French archaeologist Jean Clottes, South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams, and North American rock-art specialist David Whitley—Hancock adopts the viewpoint that Neolithic cave art may depict mankind’s first and oldest notions of the supernatural.  He contends—rightly, in my opinion—that the prehistoric rock paintings depict motifs that seem to parallel certain visionary themes experienced by shamans within altered states of consciousness.  However, I think he reads too much between the lines when he concludes—based largely on the presence of entoptic patterns and therianthropic figures in Neolithic rock art—that “our ancestors placed a high value on hallucinations, and made extensive use of psychoactive plants to induce them.”  As an advocate of entheogenic shamanism, I would welcome proof that Neolithic cave art was inspired by the use of entheogenic plants, but I found little direct evidence in Supernatural to support that hypothesis.

In the process of pursuing his provocative theories, Hancock calls attention to much stimulating research.  Unfortunately, he also has a habit of piling speculations upon assumptions, and then drawing questionable conclusions.  For example, Hancock notes that there was a long gap between the emergence of anatomically modern humans, about 200,000 years ago, and the first appearance of Neolithic cave art in France, around 40,000 years ago.  Although he admits it is possible that older cave art may be found eventually in Africa or elsewhere, he assumes that the unprecedented abundance of supernatural themes in Neolithic cave art had to be due to a quantum leap in human consciousness, which must have been sparked by something.  Then, he introduces a hypothesis in the form of a suggestive question:  “Did our ancestors experience their great evolutionary leap forward of the last 50,000 years not just because of the beneficial social and organizational by-products of shamanism but because they were literally helped, taught, prompted, and inspired by supernatural agents?” (pp. 97-98). 

For Hancock, the million-dollar question is:  Where do those visions of supernatural beings come from?  Although he offers no hard evidence that the Neolithic people of Europe actually used psychoactives, he repeatedly posits that they experienced a shift in consciousness due to the discovery of psychoactive plants.  He suggests that various Old World psychotropic plants—such as datura, henbane, and belladonna—could have produced visions of a spirit world similar to those depicted in the cave paintings.  Then, based on the entoptic patterns and therianthropic figures in the paintings, he jumps to the conclusion that “anatomically modern humans present in Europe around 40,000 years ago encountered a potent natural hallucinogen—perhaps the mushroom Psilocybe semilanceata, or perhaps another native Old World mushroom containing psilocybin.” 

The first flaw in Hancock’s logic is that there is no need to assume the Neolithic paintings were inspired by a sudden shift in human consciousness.  The sudden appearance of supernatural motifs and shamanistic themes in Neolithic cave art could have been due to any number of influences.  Environmental shifts or technological advances could have given Neolithic “shamans” more leisure time to explore visionary states and to paint their visions on cavern walls.  Alternatively, the chance discovery of deep, womblike caves could have led to use of those caves in archaic fertility rituals.  It is quite possible that other older, more exposed paintings may have faded away over time, eroded by weather or obliterated by vegetation.  All we know for sure is that landslides and rising water levels serendipitously turned some Neolithic caves into sealed vaults, preserving the impressive images for posterity.

The other major flaw in Hancock’s logic is that entheogenic plants aren’t the only way people can “tune in” to supernatural energies.  I agree that the relative inaccessibility of the Pech Merle and Lascaux caves suggests that the cave paintings were created intentionally by initiates or shamans involved in some type of shamanistic ceremony or otherworldly vision quest.  However, until someone discovers more direct evidence of psychoactive use within the European caves, it is presumptuous to assume that the shamanistic themes painted on their walls were necessarily inspired by the use of psychoactives.  As Hancock mentions, anthropological records reveal that humans have encountered supernatural entities in many contexts—in dream states, during certain illnesses, as a result of fasting, and in near-death experiences, as well as under the influence of psychoactives.  Hancock even acknowledges that some humans seem to have the ability to enter spontaneously into deep trance states, and such persons could have experienced spontaneous hallucinations that could have inspired the cave paintings.  Given the ubiquity of religious records and anthropological reports that describe prophets and shamans being inspired by numinous dream visions, I find it curious that Hancock never seriously considers whether the cave paintings might have been inspired by dream visions. 

Although I must question Hancock’s hypothesis that psychoactive plants necessarily inspired the shamanic themes depicted in Neolithic paintings, I think he is correct in assuming that psychoactives can play pivotal roles in helping people tune in to supernatural spirit worlds.  For example, Hancock perceptively observes that when we use psychedelics or other shamanistic methods to induce altered states, we often seem to encounter supernatural beings, who often gift us with astute teachings and who sometimes grant us supernatural gifts, such as miraculous healing powers and prophetic precognitions.  Based on the prevalence of such accounts, he suggests that the reason human societies have so consistently opted for these particular beliefs is that the supernatural beings exist in alternative realities. 

In order to develop his hypothesis about the independent reality of visionary realms, Hancock perceptively challenges certain neuropsychological theories that assume that psychedelic hallucinations are generated by pharmacological stimulation of the brain, and that “the brain is some sort of factory that simply manufactures hallucinations.”  He points out that in the case of normal perceptions, “we tend to think of the brain more as a receiver picking and processing relevant data from the outside world,” and he argues—correctly, in my opinion—that the visionary brain operates in the same way.  Instead of viewing hallucinations as distorted and disturbed perceptions, he concludes that “hallucinogens and other means of inducing altered states of consciousness work by temporarily ‘retuning’ the brain to pick up frequencies, dimensions and entities that are completely real in their own way but that are normally inaccessible to us” (p. 94).

Hancock hinges his belief in the independence of shamanic spirits on the fact that certain key shamanic motifs and themes—such as initiatory dismemberment, contacting spirits in caves, ascending to the heavens, and encountering therianthropic allies—can be found in many physically isolated and temporally separated cultures.  Based on the structural consistency of these shamanic themes across various methodologies, along with the seemingly independent attitudes and behaviors of the spirits, Hancock suggests that these beings exist independently of our mental projections.  Then, he proposes that the supernatural beings encountered by entranced humans may, in fact, exist in non-human, alien realms.

Like a lawyer leading jurors to a preconceived verdict, Hancock often advances his speculative theories through the use of leading questions.  For example, at one point, he asks, “Why should spirits in one part of the world and at one period of history, and aliens in another part of the world at another period of history, both abduct men and women, insert mysterious objects into their heads, stick lances or massive needles into their necks and skulls, implant crystals into their bodies, count their bones, take out their eyes and brains, etc., etc.?” (p. 119).  While he acknowledges that there are cultural variations in these abduction patterns, Hancock reaches a sweeping conclusion:  “I could see how ludicrous it was to imagine that people from such different backgrounds as shamans and UFO abductees could have independently invented what were essentially the same utterly bizarre entities and the same utterly inexplicable medical/surgical procedures” (p. 119).

In my opinion, Hancock fixates too much on initiatory abduction scenarios at the expense of other types of shamanic experiences.  For example, he does not consider that shamanic vision quest accounts reveal that prolonged fasting may induce profound visionary encounters with spirit beings, which may or may not involve abductions.  Fasting can shift a person’s consciousness in a way that allows the person to feel and relate to the life energy flowing through creation.  In a similar way, I have found that the entheogenic cactus peyote may occasionally catalyze visions of supernatural beings, but, more frequently, it enhances one’s ability to relate empathically and communicate telepathically with physical beings within our normal world.  In short, initiatory abductions are only one of many possible types of shamanic and entheogenic experience.

Hancock bases his cartography of alien realms heavily on descriptions of DMT-inspired visions recounted in several prominent books on entheogenic explorations—Ayahuasca Visions by Pablo Amaringo and Luis Luna, The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby, and DMT:  The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman.  Significantly, the first two books deal with visions experienced under the influence of the South American visionary sacrament ayahuasca, which contains a synergistic mix of MAO-inhibiting beta-carbolines and psychedelic DMT.  The third book reports trip accounts drawn from Strassman’s clinical studies on the effects of intravenously delivered synthetic DMT.

Since Hancock relies on Strassman’s research, I feel called to summarize their joint observations about DMT.  As they point out, DMT is a potent tryptamine psychedelic that acts on serotonin receptor sites in the brain—sites involved in mood, perception, and thought.  Based on scientific evidence that the brain aggressively transports DMT across the blood-brain barrier, both Hancock and Strassman argue that our receptivity to DMT indicates that it must have had great survival value for ancient humans.  Noting that the pineal gland seems to produce psychedelic amounts of beta-carbolines and DMT at certain extraordinary times in our lives—such as birth and death—Strassman nicknamed DMT “the Spirit Molecule.” 

Strassman also observes that the pineal gland produces DMT and beta-carbolines during REM sleep.  Considering that dreams play an essential role in maintaining our psychological health, I propose that the human brain’s appetite for DMT may be connected to its role in catalyzing dreams and visionary states. Even in today’s world, dreams can enhance our survival by helping us “field test” the outcome of impending actions, allowing us to check out potential actions against the wisdom of accumulated experiences.  For this reason, I contend that DMT might be better named “the Dream Alkaloid”—in recognition of its role in facilitating dreams.  Based on my experiences working with DMT in the form of ayahuasca, I propose that DMT accelerates our ability to generate and process metaphoric symbols, which could, in turn, enhance our problem-solving abilities during times of stress and rapid change.  In addition, various ethnographers have noted that the DMT and beta-carbolines contained within ayahuasca seem to enhance our telepathic and precognitive abilities—abilities that could help humans survive during challenging times. 

Based on the strange, otherworldly realms experienced by many of Strassman’s research subjects, Hancock endorses a paradigm, raised by Strassman, that DMT opens portalways to alternate worlds.  While I appreciate Hancock’s hypothesis that psychoactives change “our channels of perception,” I question his assumption that the programs originate in parallel worlds inhabited by alien beings. There is not space enough here to describe and explain my beliefs regarding the source and nature of supernatural entities, but I propose that there are several potential alternatives to Hancock’s assumption about parallel universes.  In my experience, entheogens and other shamanic methodologies help us to consciously tune in to subtle energies that exist around us but that normally elude our awareness.  In some cases, those energies seem to be connected to specific living beings or physical places, and appear as animal spirits or numinous beings.  At other times, they seem to be cosmic spirits or deities embodying archetypal energies.  I suggest that these entities are real at an energetic level, but they exist within pure cosmic consciousness—what some theorists call “field consciousness.”  In order to help us make sense of those subtle energies, our cognitive minds find it expedient to relate to them in the form of metaphoric symbols—using whatever metaphors we can dredge up that best fit our perception. 

At one point, Hancock attempts to see if he can replicate the alien encounters experienced by some of Strassman’s DMT research subjects by smoking some “ruby-red” DMT resin extracted from an unspecified tropical tree bark (possibly Anadenanthera sp.).  Incidentally, I couldn’t help but notice Hancock’s psychonautic zeal when he confides, “I would have preferred to be like Rick Strassman’s very fortunate volunteers and to receive my DMT in the form of injections” (p. 235).  In any case, Hancock explains that his DMT trip initially carried him off into some “serpentine internested wave patterns” that were “filled with an extraordinary and indescribable sense of menace” (p. 237).  After some brief encounters with “fast-moving little entities zipping around,” he was drawn deeply into submicroscopic pairs of colorful, writhing snakes, “as though I were being allowed to peer deep into the nucleus of a cell and to witness the dance of DNA—the ultimate ‘Master of Transformations’” (p. 239).  While it is conceivable Hancock’s revelations were totally spontaneous, I can’t help but wonder if they could have been unconsciously inspired by Amaringo’s fantastic paintings or Narby’s DNA revelations.

In a subsequent chapter, Hancock explores the pharmacological nature of DNA coding mechanisms, and he proposes that our DNA may have been programmed by super-intelligent alien beings and that “the DNA code may conceal purposeful intelligent messages for us, emanating from whichever ‘clever entities’ invented the technology in the first place.”  Hancock theorizes that DMT beings and other supernatural beings are encoded in our DNA, and that entheogens work by activating those hidden encoded patterns.  It is possible that ancestral or archetypal energy patterns are stored directly in our DNA codes and noncoded patterns, but I think it most likely that the alien encounters experienced by Strassman’s volunteers were inspired by the sterile, technological hospital settings used in his study.

Interestingly, Hancock mentions that pharmacologically similar psychoactives may produce different results.  Comparing several of his own psychedelic experiments, he states:  “For whereas the ayahuasca worlds seemed rich, luxurious, and abundant in the transformations of organic and supernatural life, DMT brought me to a world—or to some aspect of a world—that appeared from the outset to be highly artificial, constructed, inorganic, and in essence technological”  (p. 240).  Given that DMT was present in both of Hancock’s experiments, I suggest that the contrasting content of those experiences could have been shaped by a variety of factors.  First, the organic themes that he perceived under ayahuasca could have been prompted by his exposure to ayahuasca literature, by the jungle setting of the session, and/or by the morphogenetic spirit of the plants.  In contrast, the technological content of his DMT trip could have been inspired by Strassman’s DMT reports and/or by the fact that he smoked his DMT in a highly artificial urban setting. 

It wasn’t until the last several chapters of Supernatural that I realized that some of the most radical themes raised by Hancock vaguely resemble theories popularized by the late psychonaut Terence McKenna and others.  The realization came to me while reading a section where Hancock examines some radical scientific theories proposed by Francis Crick, a brilliant but eccentric British biologist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the double-helix shape of DNA (allegedly inspired by an LSD vision).  Hancock reports that Crick once assumed that a primitive version of DNA might have arisen on Earth by chance.  Later, faced with the incredible complexity of DNA, Crick decided that it couldn’t have arisen by chance, and that it must have been seeded on Earth as a bacteria carried by spaceships sent by some super-intelligent alien civilization, fleeing from a supernova explosion.  Despite Crick’s more erudite language, I was reminded of McKenna’s old psychonautic speculation about the otherworldly origin of psilocybe mushrooms.  McKenna once promoted an intuitive notion, based on the ability of fungi spores to survive long journeys through outer space, that psilocybe mushrooms were super-intelligent life forms that had traveled across the universe in order to stimulate the consciousness of Earthlings.  In fact, Hancock states, “It does not surprise me at all that the late great Terence McKenna was the first to suggest this extraordinary fertile idea—or that he conceived it in the Amazon after a month spent drinking ayahuasca supplemented by ‘heroic’ doses of psilocybin mushrooms” (p. 271).

Hancock doesn’t directly mention the most controversial of McKenna’s theories: the idea that the evolution of human speech and consciousness may have been sparked by the discovery and consumption of psychoactive mushrooms in ancient Africa (based on his liberal interpretation of mushroomlike images in the Paleolithic rock art of Tasilli, Africa).  Nonetheless, based on the prevalence of DNA-helix motifs in DMT visions, Hancock proposes that DMT may help us read hidden messages encoded in our so-called junk DNA eons ago by highly intelligent extraterrestrial beings.  He mentions that the noncoded sequences in our DNA seem to exhibit certain random structural patterns similar to language patterns identified by linguist George Ziff.  Based on the statistical reality that each DNA strand contains millions of DNA base pairs that conform to Ziff’s language patterns, Hancock proposes that the noncoded sequences could be memory banks stuffed with vast quantities of information.

Blending together Crick’s and Ziff’s theories, Hancock creatively concludes that spirits may be alien-inspired motifs encoded within our DNA:  “In this case we would be dealing not with visions of ‘real’ spirits seen by Upper Paleolithic shamans, but with the teaching devices of some sort of guidance and control system for intelligent beings, installed like a time-bomb in DNA at the moment that life began on earth, to await activation billions of years later by a combination of the right sort of brain with the right sort of electrochemical trigger” (p. 275).  Then, after devoting numerous pages to speculating about the messages encoded in our DNA, Hancock interjects a few last-minute objections to his own theory.  For example, while recognizing that even primitive single-celled bacteria have long sequences of these noncoded sequences, he acknowledges that “the more complex an organism is, the more non-coding DNA it will have” (p. 299).  In other words, even if we assume the noncoded sequences store genetic memories, we must recognize that those memories have evolved over the last four billion years.  Hancock briefly considers that our so-called junk sequences could contain messages embedded by natural selection or by the intervention of gods or spirits.  Then, for scientific skeptics, he suggests that “Francis Crick’s theory of directed panspermia provides what looks like a thoroughly reasonable, ‘nuts-and-bolts’ alternative” (p. 301).

Ironically, after amassing a book’s worth of research on the subject, Hancock can’t seem to decide if supernatural teachers exist in other dimensions or if these beings are alien memories embedded in our DNA.  On the one hand, he suggests:  “It may be, in other words, that the ancient teachers of mankind have been inside us all along but that we must enter altered states of consciousness in order to hear what they have to say” (p. 303).  However, after acknowledging that shamans and “drug users” emphasize the perceptual independence of these teachers, Hancock later comments, “After all we know now, who are we to say that they were wrong?” (p. 396).

All in all, I can recommend Hancock’s Supernatural as an entertaining, trail-blazing guide to psychonautic realms, but I was disappointed that it ultimately raises more questions than it answers.  While Hancock enlivens his review of existing resources with descriptive observations from personal experiences, he offers surprisingly few original insights into the nature of supernatural beings and their role in shamanic practices.  In short, although Hancock delights in writing about popular occult subjects, he does not seem to be heavily invested in applying his research.  For example, while he attended a few sessions working with ayahuasca and iboga, he shows little interest in applying those practices within his life.   

I found it revealing that Hancock closes his final chapter by introducing another of his psychonautic experiments:  taking a heroic dose of Psilocybe semilanceata within the five-thousand-year-old megalithic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire, England.  To my surprise, he reduces the results of that trip into a single, ambiguous ellipsis.  I can’t help but wonder if that ellipsis is an intentional teaser—a classical theatrical cliff-hanger—designed to promote a possible sequel to Supernatural.  If so, the book’s two appendixes may provide some clues as to the possible focus of a sequel.  The first is a short article by British mycologist Roy Watling arguing that Psilocybe semilanceata may be native to Europe.  The second is a short interview with Rick Strassman, which explores the notion that DMT might serve as a portal into alternative dimensions of reality.  If I were placing bets, I might be tempted to wager that Hancock’s next book could explore evidence pointing to the use of mushrooms in European shamanism.


Timothy White, the founding editor of Shaman’s Drum, has practiced entheogenic shamanism for more than thirty years.

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