The Chrysanthemum

The Chrysanthemum is one of the most distinctive and reliably-reported visual phenomena of the DMT experience — 'a gigantic, often spinning, kaleidoscopic fractal flower with a domelike appearance that turns into a doorway,' as the DMT-Nexus Hyperspace Lexicon describes it. Depending on the traveller's state and readiness, the Chrysanthemum either welcomes them through into full breakthrough hyperspace or blocks the way.

The name is borrowed from the ornamental flower — perennial herbaceous plants of the family Asteraceae native to East Asia and celebrated in Chinese and Japanese cultural traditions for centuries — whose complex layered petals radiate outward from a central disc in the same visual pattern the hyperspace Chrysanthemum takes. The visionary version, however, is not a flower but a fractal: each petal is itself constructed of smaller petals, which are constructed of smaller petals, and so on beyond the resolution of any attention that tries to hold it steady.

Experiencers commonly report the Chrysanthemum in the very first moments after inhalation, spinning slowly against a dark or luminous background, growing to fill the entire visual field. The 'domelike' quality is characteristic: it is not merely two-dimensional but curves outward toward the visitor as though the surface of a hemispherical vault. As the effects intensify, the fractal detail becomes more elaborate, the spinning accelerates, and — at a certain threshold — the flower opens along its central axis into a portal or corridor through which the traveller is drawn.

Whether the portal opens or stays closed appears to be one of DMT's more reliable diagnostic signals. Travellers who describe the Chrysanthemum spinning indefinitely without opening — sometimes called being 'stuck at the flower' — usually report a session that did not fully break through into the entity-rich realms beyond. Those who report the flower opening usually report meeting whichever inhabitants of the hyperspatial pantheon were waiting on the other side.

The lexicon lists a companion form, the Glass Chrysanthemum, whose surface reads as brittle and transparent rather than organic. Both are widely enough reported that the imagery has become one of the shared reference points of the DMT psychonaut community.

Sources:
Wikipedia — Chrysanthemum (the botanical namesake)
DMT-Nexus Hyperspace Lexicon — Chrysanthemum, The