High priest, on a happy vibe
November 8, 2018 8:01 AM   Subscribe

"The Psychedelic Gospels" was released back in 2006 by Santa Barbara residents Jerry and Julie Brown. This book claims that the use of psychedelic mushrooms was common in Christian cult in the early Middle Ages, and that in general most of the mystical experiences described in the bible, were under the influence of drugs. The study focuses on Christian iconography, and it brings quite a few examples of paintings of sacred ceremonies that are integrated into domed plants. Since the 15th century, the frequency of emergence of plants has dropped almost completely.

The whole book is kind of apologetics, so it breaks the myth that drug prohibition comes only on a medicalized basis and states that it comes a religious basis, so the connotation of drugs is negative, reckless and sinful just because it's associated with an undesirable religious practice.

Probably, back since the 15th century, the Inquisition tried to uproot the existence of witchcraft and sorcery. Following the discovery of America, the church saw the use of psychedelic mushrooms as a form of witchcraft and idolatry due to the use by the indigenous. And since they all died of disease en masse, they saw it as a punishment from God, just as god “sent the hornet which shall drive out the Canaanites”. In other words, the Western drug prohibition is rooted from a negative attitude toward non-Christian cultures.

The comparison between the psychedelic experience and the mystical experience was well described by two scholars which are indeed dealt in this book: John M. Allegro, who argued that early Christianity was a psychedelic sect, and Jesus did not really exist, but was only encoded in the Scriptures as a mushroom. And Gordon Wasson who claimed that the source of the religions is the psychedelic experiences of shamans and their attempts to explain what they experienced. Wasson claimed that the Soma in Rig Veda was actually the red mushroom with the white dots, the Amanita Muscaria. Note that Terence McKenna later claimed that it was Psilocybin, and just like Allegro, that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was a fungus.

A 2008 article that his author defined as speculative, is noteworthy. Benny Shanon claimed that according to the descriptions of the Torah and the botanical findings, it seems that Moses and the Israelites also used psychoactive substances in the Sinai desert. The burning bush, and the objects that have become snakes, he claims, are images that came back to many interviewees who told about their Ayahuasca experiences (including himself). The article appears in the bibliography of the book.

Personally, I suppose that because fungi were considered not only as a tool change states of consciousness but mainly as a toxicity, the attitude toward them was ambivalent. And as mushrooms were considered poisonous, venom of the snake was considered toxic, but on the other hand it was also considered as a symbol of the peak of consciousness in the gnostic terminology and so the psychoactive drugs.

That is, the association of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge with the serpent is because both it and the mushrooms were toxic for those who are not skilled in identifying, and superior for those that do. The Egyptians and the Hindus used to smoke venom, in these religions Cobra has a sacred status. Drug use had always been ambivalent because it is toxic. And the Western society apparently avoided drugs because of the medicalization process (or because of the biblical command “Watch yourselves very carefully”).
posted by avi111 (1 comment total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This is more a your-own-blog post than a metafilter post, sorry. -- restless_nomad



 
end-2016, not 2006. if I could edit it
posted by avi111 at 8:02 AM on November 8, 2018


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