Palenque Norte is a long-running speaker series and gathering place at Burning Man devoted to big ideas, unconventional thinkers, and conversations at the edges of science, culture, consciousness, and human experience.
Our roots reach back to the legendary Entheobotany Seminars held near the ancient Maya ruins of Palenque, Mexico, where Terence McKenna, Jonathan Ott, Sasha and Ann Shulgin, and other pioneering thinkers gathered to exchange ideas about ethnobotany, psychedelics, consciousness, culture, and the mysteries of the mind.
In 2003, members of that community carried the spirit of those conversations north to the Black Rock Desert. Palenque Norte—“Palenque North”—was born as an on-playa forum where Burners could step out of the dust and into an exchange of ideas.
More than two decades later, that conversation continues.
Today, from our home at Camp Soft Landing, the Palenque Norte tent hosts dozens of speakers, artists, researchers, activists, scientists, technologists, storytellers, and beautiful weirdos each year. Our programming has grown beyond its psychedelic roots to explore art, science, technology, medicine, ethnobotany, community, social change, artificial intelligence, spirituality, altered states, and the endlessly strange question of what it means to be human.
Over the years, the Palenque stage has welcomed many influential voices from psychedelic and visionary culture, while recordings of its talks have carried conversations born in Black Rock City far beyond the playa.
Palenque Norte isn’t a conventional conference. There are no credentials required and no velvet ropes. It’s a place to wander into, sit down, listen, question, disagree, discover something unexpected, and leave seeing the world a little differently.
In a city built around participation and radical experimentation, Palenque Norte is our experiment in the free exchange of ideas.
Come in from the dust. Take a seat. Stay curious.