DMT also commonly induces visions of elves (the so-called "machine elves"). Having tried DMT several times I can't say it's something that ever happened to me personally but lots of people report seeing elves on DMT.
DMT also commonly induces visions of elves (the so-called "machine elves"). Having tried DMT several times I can't say it's something that ever happened to me personally but lots of people report seeing elves on DMT.
For me, I was hit with a wall of metallic gems that warped into a wormhole that sucked me into the void. My body melted into a pool of crystalline jelly, and then a pair of indescribably massive entities with vortex heads that reached infinitely far into space stuck their hands into my liquified body and started rearranging my internals.
It was interesting. But I can't exactly recommend it because it felt like I stopped breathing and died.
yeah, this was my first thought -- it must have DMT in it. but surely Vice, the biggest and best of the erowid-aura-scrapers, would know this?
Curious what happens if you’ve never been introduced to the concept of elves.
I was before I tried. But I also remember that I didn’t remember that fact when I took it both times. The second time I was more primed for like organic shape.
The first time I saw something what one could call a giant machine elf I guess. Though the thought occurred to me much later. It looked a bit like Galactus from the Marvel comics, but friendly. I stood in the palm of its hand. The second time I saw a jester. I definitely didn’t think about seeing a jester beforehand as I wasn’t really aware that they could be a thing.
My first trip was very meaningful. My second trip was mostly interesting. In part because I kept one eye closed and the other open to see what would happen.
Machine elves as a specific is probably closer to a mass psychosis. Someone named them that at some point, then everybody talks about them, so everybody saw "machine elves" and future people interpret what they see that way because that's what they heard before they tripped.
Really, DMT trips kinda go like an acid trip but you've taken 100x times the dose and died in the process. Reality itself kind of dissolves away and you forget what you are frequently.
In that state, there's a lot going on, with a fair bit of synesthesia and trying to decipher exactly what's happening. Things breath in and out rapidly, but it feels like lifetimes.
Anyway, the "machine elves" aren't really elves... Or machines. Even on sub-breakthrough doses, you start seeing eyes and mouths in the spaces around you, you may even hear voices/singing - IME often a beckoning. Once you break through, those hallucinations have been ramped up and your brain is filling in so many gaps (at this point your eyes will have closed) they come across almost like deities that exist in between time and space. They don't have consistent forms; they speak in tongues / songs that you can sometimes "understand". They tend to be "neutral / neutral", so to speak.
It's profoundly difficult to explain, since language wasn't really designed to capture that state of mind and lacks the adjectives. But someone tried to make something relatable with "machine elves" at some point and it stuck because "yeah, that's weird enough to capture the essence of it".
Some people do take these experiences as more than what they are, though, and act like machine elves are "real" lore or that they are something that actually exists "beyond the veil" or whatever. And now that so many people learn about it well before tripping, they may be seeing more concretely "machine elves". But that's way more... Pedestrian(?) than what I experienced without that bias.
From the fine article:
>What makes this particular hallucinatory mushroom so unusual is that it causes the same kind of hallucinations in different people, across cultures.
The GP is talking about DMT, not the mushroom mentioned in the article.
For my two cents, I asked what my friend was seeing and he said “tin foil”. No elves - quite disappointing - but he enjoyed it
I was under the impression that the "machine elves" were very different from the tiny people described in this article.
Are they the ones that are claimed to be racist?