THE DMT ATLAS
The Entities
Every recurring being reported in the DMT literature — who appears, how they behave, how often, and exactly who reported them. A field guide to the reported inhabitants of hyperspace.
Alien & 'Grey' forms
Classic sci-fi aliens — Greys with large black eyes, or silvery, towering, slender beings whose faces are 'jumbled, abstracted, and leaking colored light,' often in technological settings.
Animal-headed figures — Egyptian-styled beings
Humanoid bodies with animal heads in unmistakably Egyptian iconographic style: jackal-headed (Anubis-like), falcon- or ibis-headed, cat-headed figures, often with gold ornament, headdresses, and hieroglyphic or frieze-like surroundings. The Nexus lexicon's gods entry explicitly includes Egyptian archetypes and notes the beings 'tend to be more sci-fi than you would imagine them from only reading sacred books' — chrome, neon, and circuitry versions of temple iconography.
Aztec & Mayan-styled beings
Beings and environments in dense Mesoamerican style: stepped-pyramid architecture, interlocking angular glyph patterns, feathered-serpent motifs, jade, turquoise and gold, elaborate feathered headdresses. Experiencers frequently describe the visual geometry of the whole space as 'Aztec' or 'Mayan' before any being appears; the beings themselves wear the same interlocking patterning, sometimes indistinguishable from the living walls of their temples.
Child-sprites — hyperspace children
Small, quick, child-like figures — sometimes literal children, sometimes childlike sprites, cherub- or pixie-like forms — frequently encountered in bright, toy-like environments described as playrooms, nurseries, or playgrounds built from hyperspace geometry. Often plural and swarming with excited energy.
Composite & collective beings — the many-as-one
Entities visibly composed of other entities or minds: a figure whose body resolves into a crowd, several beings sharing one voice and intent, or a formation (the Nexus 'Triad' — 'a triad of beings, who I think was some sort of collective intelligence... three smallish floating sprites') that behaves as a single organism. Related presentations: beings made of many faces, and swarms that address the experiencer in the first person singular.
Dark entities & demons
Malignant, hostile, or shadowy forms — 'The Tormentor,' a tall, domineering figure shrouded in darkness; 'Cosmic Horrors'; or coolly amoral 'stylish, sexy demons' beyond good and evil.
Deceased loved ones & ancestors
Recognizable deceased people; in the field study humans appeared only as the deceased (no living humans).
Deities & god-like presences
Vast god-like presences — a supreme being, the Godhead, archetypal cultural deities (Egyptian, Hindu, Mayan), or a formless 'Universal/Gaian Mind' perceived through the visitor's own framework.
Embedded faces — faces in the walls
Faces emerging from, embedded in, or composing surfaces: walls, ceilings, tapestry patterns, and the geometric lattice itself resolving into eyes, noses, and mouths — from a single vast face occupying a wall to surfaces tiled entirely with small watching faces. Occurs at lower doses with eyes open (room surfaces animating) and within deep-state geometry (pattern-space populated by faces). One report in Meyer's corpus describes ceiling stucco becoming 'little eyes, pointed noses, and giggling mouths... poking out of the ceiling, waving and making faces'.
Fairies, sirens & seductresses
Female-presenting beings whose register is charm: classic winged fairies ('They resemble traditional fairies and often actually have wings... beautiful women who are overflowing with beauty and joy' — Nexus lexicon), dancers, and burlesque-flirtatious figures who 'squirm and pose, bat their eyelashes, wink and play'. Distinct from the Divine Feminine (goddess/mother) by scale and register: these are peers and performers, not enthroned powers. Dark variants exist: the lexicon's 'Succubus Twins' whose glimpsed true nature was crone-like and predatory.
Fractal humanoids — beings made of the geometry
Humanoid silhouettes constituted entirely of the surrounding visual geometry: bodies of tessellating pattern, filigree, lattice, or recursive fractal structure, continuous with — and often emerging out of — the pattern-field around them. Effect Index explicitly notes entities may be 'composed of either geometric structures or realistic materials'; these are the geometric pole. Their outlines hold while their substance perpetually self-transforms, kaleidoscopic and boundaryless at the edges.
Guardians & gatekeepers — 'the bouncer'
Often a sensed presence or imposing figure at a threshold / 'waiting room' rather than a fixed form — felt more than seen.
Hooded & cloaked figures
Humanoid figures defined by concealment: hooded robes or cloaks with faces hidden in shadow or simply absent. Usually dark-toned but sometimes luminous-robed; often encountered singly at thresholds or in silent groups (processions, semicircles, watchers at the edge of a scene). Effect Index lists 'hooded figures' among its documented entity archetypes; community guides class them with shadow people as a common humanoid form.
Impersonal geometric intelligences — 'the machine'
Not personified — animated sacred-geometric forms, lattices and structures that rotate, breathe, collapse and reform: a 'living mathematical intelligence.' Also discrete robot/machine beings.
Light beings & angels
Beings made entirely of light, so radiant that facial features are washed out; winged/angelic guardians.
Mantis & insectoid beings
Towering (often 6–9 ft) insect-proportioned beings — triangular heads, large black eyes, multi-jointed limbs; mantis, moth, or grasshopper-like.
Morphos — amorphous & protean intelligences
Intelligences without stable form: blobs, clouds, waves, and fields that are unmistakably alive and aware yet refuse fixed shape. The Nexus lexicon's 'Morphos' class 'tend to have fairly unstable forms and can rise and subside out of the Jim Jam like waves... capable of solidifying into phantastic phorms if they so choose', often condensing briefly into mythological shapes 'only far more colorful and multi-dimensional'. Others remain permanently nebulous — described as thinking fog, sentient liquid, or aware plasma.
Octopoid & tentacled beings
Beings with cephalopod features: radial tentacled bodies, boneless flowing limbs, iridescent color-shifting skin that displays patterns like a cuttlefish's chromatophores. Scale ranges from hand-sized curiosities to vast tentacled masses filling the visual field. Sometimes hybridized — a humanoid torso with tentacled lower body, or tentacles emerging from geometry itself. In dark encounters, tentacled true-forms are revealed beneath fair disguises.
Orbs & point-light beings
Discrete points, balls, or spheres of light experienced as individual conscious beings — from firefly-like sparks that dart and hover to the 'giant spheres' listed among Effect Index's entity archetypes. Often plural, moving with evident intention: circling the experiencer, clustering, dispersing, pulsing in rhythm. Distinguished from generalized light-being/angel forms by their minimal, geometric presentation — awareness with no body at all beyond luminous shape.
Plant spirits & devas
Intelligences that present as botanical: living vines that gesture, flowers with regarding faces, tree-like presences, or beings woven from leaf, root, and tendril patterns. The Nexus lexicon's 'Plant & Object Devas' are 'living, often hyper-intelligent, beings that often resemble plants or objects more than they do what we might normally recognize as sentient beings'. In the ayahuasca literature the plant intelligence often personifies as a maternal or serpentine figure; in vaped-DMT reports it is more often the vegetal architecture itself becoming aware.
Reptilian beings
Reptilian/saurian humanoids and serpents, sometimes 'jewel-encrusted'; green scaled skin, snout-like faces, large oval eyes.
Robotic drones & automatons
Explicitly mechanical beings: chrome or ceramic-surfaced humanoids, insect-machine hybrids (Meyer's corpus includes 'scarab creatures with mechanical elements'), hovering drone-forms, and articulated automatons. Distinguished from the ambient 'machine' intelligence by being discrete, embodied units — often multiple identical units — moving with precise, purposeful, repetitive motion.
Self-transforming machine elves
Small, hyperactive, jeweled and fractal beings in constant shape-shifting transformation; McKenna's 'jeweled self-dribbling basketballs' and 'self-dribbling Fabergé eggs,' made 'not of matter' but of 'syntax-driving light.'
The Choir — singing collectives
Groups of beings defined by their sound: ranked luminous figures singing in harmony, rings of small beings humming in unison, or voices without visible sources filling the space with structured song. Sometimes explicitly angelic in presentation (tiered hosts, radiance); sometimes abstract — the Nexus 'Triad' account describes three floating sprite-like beings that 'emitted a symphony of humming, cooing, hypnotic noises'.
The Cosmic Serpent
An enormous, often iridescent snake — sometimes paired 'twin' serpents or a coiled double-helix; felt as the indwelling 'mother' spirit of the ayahuasca vine.
The Council — tribunal of elders
A group — typically described as three to twelve beings — arranged formally: seated in a semicircle, arc, or raised bench, facing the experiencer. Individual members are variously robed elders, light beings, animal-headed figures, or featureless presences; what defines the type is the deliberate, convened arrangement and the experiencer's position as the one appearing before them.
The Divine Feminine
A huge, intensely bright feminine presence of light — maternal, nurturing, sometimes erotic; in ayahuasca personified as 'Mother Ayahuasca,' the sentient spirit of the vine. Often felt more than seen.
The Dream Wizards — robed magi of hyperspace
Classic wizard iconography rendered in hyperspace excess: 'Gandalf types with far more trippy and cool robes' (Nexus lexicon), long-bearded or hooded magi inhabiting 'monasteries, castles, and even Roger Dean-ish cities'. Encountered in their own architecture — towers, studies, libraries — surrounded by instruments and apparatus of an unreadable craft.
The generic 'Other' — guides, spirits & helpers
Often a sensed presence as much as a seen creature — sometimes humanoid, sometimes form-light. The catch-all gestalt the literature calls 'the Other.'
The Harlequin — card-dealer of hyperspace
Medieval harlequin or fool in diamond-patterned motley, ruff, and cap — visually kin to the jester but carried with poise rather than antics. The Nexus lexicon insists on the distinction: they 'truly resemble medieval jesters and harlequins, however, they are not silly or foolish in any way. They tend to be hyper-intelligent.' Often one figure rather than a troupe, holding or producing objects.
The Hive Queen — matriarch of the swarm
A singular vast female presence standing behind a multitude: presented either as an enormous insectoid queen attended by swarm-workers, or — in the DMT-Nexus lexicon's striking formulation — as the hidden identity of everything already seen: 'Seeing the Queen of the Machine Elves is akin to suddenly realizing that all the patterns and Machine Elves you have seen before are, in fact, Her.' Regal, central, and orders of magnitude larger or deeper than her attendants.
The Jester / Trickster / Clown
Clowns, jesters and harlequins in medieval-jester garb; sometimes mechanical clowns or top-hatted 'circus ringleaders' with coats, tails and a baton.
The Logos — the Voice
Disembodied — a voice rather than a seen form; distinct from the seen elves. McKenna distinguished the heard Logos from the visible elf-language.
The Mimic — wearer of familiar faces
An entity presenting as someone known — a friend, family member, deceased loved one, or famous figure — with something subtly wrong: eyes too knowing, expression a half-beat off, the 'essence underneath' not matching the face. The Nexus lexicon documents 'Strange Visitors' who 'presented themselves as humanoid, sometimes even wearing the faces of my friends or famous historical figures, but the essence underneath was anything but'; the same archive's 'Succubus Twins' posed as friendly fairy-like women whose glimpsed true nature was 'hideous, withered crones with wicked, unnaturally wide and serrated grins'.
The Operators — hidden technicians of the experience
Often barely glimpsed or entirely behind-the-scenes: figures at control panels, silhouettes adjusting dials, beings manipulating the visible scenery like stagehands or projectionists. When seen, they may appear as slender humanoids, elf-like engineers, or abstract presences 'behind' the visual field. Distinct from the machine elves in that their focus is the experience's machinery rather than the experiencer.
The Ringmaster — showman of the circus dimension
A theatrical master-of-ceremonies: coat and tails, top hat, sometimes a cane, wand, or baton, presiding over carnival- or circus-styled spaces. The Nexus lexicon describes Circus Ringleaders as 'all about showmanship... often with coat and tails and a ridiculously cool top hat to boot. They may even have a baton, wand or fancy cane they use to direct your attention.'
The Scanners — entry examiners
Beings encountered at or just after entry whose whole engagement is inspection: figures or apparatuses that sweep the experiencer with light, gaze, or instrument-like appendages; ushers in threshold spaces; machine-like examiners. Often minimally personified — the scan matters more than the scanner. The Nexus lexicon's 'Waiting Room' is 'populated with telepathic entities (ushers)', and Meyer's corpus records 'scanning and examination by machine-like entities'.
The Silent Witness — felt presence without form
No appearance at all: an unmistakable someone-is-here without image — location-specific (behind, beside, above) or pervading the whole space. Michael et al. (2021) coded 'presences with no imagery' in 17% of encounters and 'omnipresence' in 14%; Effect Index's Level 1 entities are 'vaguely defined presences' below the threshold of visible form. Distinct from every other entry in this taxonomy by being defined negatively — pure detected other.
The Surgeons — hyperspace medical team
Reported as clinical figures — sometimes explicitly humanoid in surgical or medical attire, sometimes insectoid, robotic, or featureless — arranged around the experiencer as a coordinated team. The setting is frequently described as an operating theatre, examination room, or laboratory rendered in impossible hyperspace materials. Instruments, probes, and glowing implements are commonly described; some reports describe the beings' hands or appendages passing directly into the body.
The Teacher — professor of hyperspace
Highly variable but consistently authoritative: a robed elder, a scholarly humanoid, a formless voice-with-presence, or an ordinary-seeming person radiating superhuman intelligence. Often appears singly, positioned as if the experiencer has entered a classroom, lecture, or tutorial. The DMT-Nexus lexicon records long-running relationships with a consistent 'Guide' personality across many sessions.