Kenneth A. Symington of Cañal was a British-Cuban civic leader and the last National Executive Commissioner of the Asociación de Scouts de Cuba (Scout Association of Cuba).

Born in Cuba of English and Cuban parentage. He lived in Cuba until he moved to the US to attend college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He subsequently worked as an executive for many years in several major American corporations^[which?]. After retirement, he lived in California, and owned and operated several small businesses. His credits include several books, some translated from Spanish to English and published in the USA.

Production Supervisor and Project Engineer in operations dealing with processing, industrial ceramics, and soap and detergents supervising production department while performing studies in manufacturing and methods engineering.

Production Superintendent—Directed plant start.up operations; organized, staffed, trained, and supervised a force of 200 plant workers. Experience in industrial ceramics. tile, ceramic fixtures.

Project Engineer - Prepared designs. and layouts for new plants and installations, prepared cost estimates arid feasibility studies Directed equipment and procurement, supervised work done by Outside consultants, denned contracts and schedules, and coordinated development projects from inception installation, Experience in 1006 processing, fermentation. Confectionery, tom pt«10CtS, distilled products.

Consolidated and expanded international division selling agricultural chemicals and equipment. Made market and feasibility Studies in foreign Countries: subsequently organized, incorporated and started four successful international subsidiary companies in Europe and in Latin America, to expand operations.

Held a number of positions of increasing responsibility, as International Manager, General Manager of a Division Assistant to the chairman and president a major division. Responsibilities covered International marketing expansion. incorporation and start up of overseas subsidiaries. and loss accountability, turn-around of troubled divisions, acquisitions, capital investment and long range planning programs, new product introductions, and public relations.

Purchased, secured site, and started four small businesses as an independent sole proprietor, which were profitably sold in 1992. Operations included forty employees and seven managers.

Ken travelled extensively throughout Europe, as well as middle and Latin America analyzing business conditions in these countries.

1953 Received scholarship from the US government for a summer of study at Michigan State College covering economic and small business development in Latin America.

1957 Served as executive director for a Boy Scout organization with special responsibility for public relations with government, churches, civic groups, and companies.

1983 Assisted Vendo Corporation in Fresno, CA in solving some of their manufacturing problems.

1987 Participated in Small Business Development Seminars in San Martin province (Peru) to assist and actual small business owners in modernization of their operations.

1988 Founded and became first president of La Manda Park Neighborhood Association in Pasadena and represented it in city and state affairs affecting the interests of the association. Won national sales increase award (38%) from a franchise organization covering one of the businesses he started.

Served as a Director in the executive board of Nature Friends, an outdoors conservancy organization, and head Its Building Committee.

1990 Received and recognition from the City of Pasadena for outstanding contributions in the organization of neighborhood associations and encouraging resident participations in City affairs,

1991 Worked with small business buyers in representing loan applications to the SBA and completing all necessary SBA requirements.

• Philadelphia Athletic Club
• Urban club
• International House
• Rotary Club
• Chamber of Commerce
• New York Athletic Club
• Sierra Club
• Nature Friends

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bachelor in Chemical Engineering, Phi Lambda Upsilon, 1953
• Michigan State College, U.S. Government Scholarship, Seminar on Industrial Development, 1953
• New York City College, Credit toward MBA Degree, 1962 – 1965
• Newark College of Engineering, Executive Development Conferences, 1966
• American Management Association, Courses in finance, mergers, acquisitions, and licensing, 1967 – 1971
• Drexel University, Seminar on long range planning, 1972

In his later years Ken organized and led expeditions throughout the Peruvian Amazon and the Andes to investigate ancient cultures, plant medicines, and indigenous shamanism. He co-founded the Botanical Preservation Corps, which produced entheobotany conferences, along with Terence McKenna, Rob Montgomery, and Jonathan Ott. The conferences took place every year from 1994 to 2001, held mostly at Chan-Kah resort near the Maya archaeological site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco in October 1996, the Maya ruins of Uxmal in the Yucatán Peninsula in 1998, and the Entheobotany Conference in Whistler, British Columbia in May 1991. He also produced the AllChemical Arts Conference in September 1999, which was also McKenna's last public appearance.

The stated aim of the conferences was to discuss the history, and latest research on: ayahuasca, psychoactive mushrooms, tobacco, iboga, LSD-type drugs, entheogenic snuffs and their contained tryptamines, peyote and the entheogenic mescalines. These discussions were well presented by an international array of anthropologists, chemists, art historians and neuroscientists, but the real importance of the conference extended beyond the podium where the presenters mingled with the audience and everyone shared information and experiences amidst exhibits of botanical plants and psychedelic artwork.

The entheobotany conferences helped promote a clearer and more accurate understanding of the distinction between addictive and abusive drugs and the spiritual, religious use of nonaddictive sacramental entheogens largely based on R. Gordon Wasson's unified field theory of anthropology, connecting shamanic ecstasy with the origin of all religion, from non-western shamanism to the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, stating that visionary experience is the primal heart and soul of religious revelation, but somewhere in the history of western civilization direct experience of the divine became the supreme heresy, taking all the religion out of religion, leaving an empty and hollow shell with no value or attraction to human kind. Contemporary drug prohibition can be seen as the modern secular expression of the ruling politics inquisition against direct personal experience of the divine. This taboo direct personal experience is what Wasson himself discovered in a quiet mountain top village in southern Mexico, which he aptly described as "religion, pure and simple, free of theology, free of dogmatics, expressing itself in awe and reverence." The entheobotany conferences explored the current state of shamanic plant sciences with evidence presented by scholars of art and culture which suggested that entheobotanical plants have played a far greater role in the development of our civilization than historians have previously suspected. From anthropology we see the roles that these plants still play in direct visionary experience used in healing, communion with nature and the Divine, and simply for ecstatic enjoyment. From chemistry and neuroscience attendees learned the bio-physical description of how these plants work in the human body. Their usefulness as a sacrament in religious practice is time honored and, as we are discovering, neurochemically valid.

Topics covered in the conferences primarily focused on the following:

• Botany, chemistry & cultivation of psychoactive plants.
• History of ethnopharmacology & ethnomycology
• New data on hallucinogenic snuff cults
• Field techniques for collecting ethnobotanical specimens
• Plant teachers of Amazonian shamanism; modern ayahuasca cults
• Uses and preparation of entheogenic plants; ayahuasca analogs
• Ethnobotany, chemistry and cultivation of entheogenic fungi
• Field trip to archaeology sites.

• "Caverns of St. Tomas", Antonio Nunez Jimenez and Kenneth A. Symington, Bulletin of the National Speleological Society - ISSN 0146-9517 Number 17: 2-7 - December 1955
• Symington, K.A. (2010). Hypomnemata: Stories, Fables, Memories. Xlibris US. ISBN 978-1-4628-1547-0.
• Symington, K.A. (2019). The Path Along the Way: Stories, Inventions, Incidents, and Encounters Along A Long Life. Rushmore Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-950818-26-6.
• Symington, Kenneth A. (February 7, 2020). The Invisible Theater: An Experiment in Group Stage Presentation. Dorrance Publishing. ISBN 978-1-64530-260-5.

• Calvo, César (1995). The Three Halves of Ino Moxo: Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon. Translated by Symington, Kenneth. Inner Traditions/Bear. ISBN 978-0-89281-519-7.
• Escohotado, Antonio (May 1, 1999). A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age. Translated by Symington, Kenneth. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-59477-579-6.

• Caverns of St. Tomas
• Terence McKenna, Entheobotany Seminars & Sierra Madre Talks
• Psychedelic History, Shamanic Exploration, and Palenque: An Interview with Matthew Pallamary
• Podcast 307 – "Palenque Entheobotany Seminars Remembered" – Psychedelic Salon Podcasts
• MAPS - Volume 7 Number 2 Spring 1997 - Plants, Shamanism and Ecstatic States - Robert Segal
• Crowdfund Acquisitions #3 – In Memoriam: Terence McKenna (April 3, 2000) – Excerpts from Esalen 1999 in 'Green Egg' Magazine
• Terence McKenna Ads in Magical Blend Magazine (June 1998)
• Search Results for "Terence McKenna" – Psychedelic Salon Podcasts
• Rob Montgomery, una historia personal | Ayahuasca News