The premise doesn’t even make sense, the tree of knowledge is a Bad Thing in the Genesis story. Even if it was a magic mushroom, how could you possibly come to the conclusion that it’s being depicted in a positive light?
Knowledge of good and evil is a "Good Thing", and one interpretation of the reason God put the tree in reach of Adam and Eve is that he wanted them to eventually partake of its fruit, but they did it early and without whatever other prep was necessary. Think of it as a child slowly learning concepts instead of being immediately presented with complex knowledge and not having the necessary foundation to process it. Not sure about the positive light depiction, but I could see hallucinogenics being viewed as something that expands your knowledge/mind especially since people report out of body experiences when using them.
Ditto. Also in traditional doctrine it was good because the fall led to jesus. Look up felix culpa on wikipedia. As for the mushrooms, it's not as if medieval clergy didn't have a good time.
You can't mention Felix Culpa though without mentioning Original Sin. Like most things in traditional Catholicism, there is a duality and a paradox. You can't get one without the other. Mentioning the Fall as a strictly good thing is simply ridiculous. That does not find any ground in traditional Catholicism, which also believed (and still believes frankly) that all the bad things in life, including the pain of childbirth, disease, sin, and destruction, are directly attributable to the sin of Adam and Eve.
Plus, there are several translations of it. The common rendition into English is 'happy fault', which may be too positive. The other translations include 'lucky mistake', 'happy mistake', blessed fall, etc. Note again the duality, the paradox, and that the fundamental noun (fault, mistake, fall) is negative. It's a paradox, a mystery, meant to get you to think deeper, not some stunning endorsement of listening to Satan.
> the tree of knowledge is a Bad Thing in the Genesis story
Not at all. I'm certain that it differs between faiths, but in mine (Judaism), the tree of knowledge was not A Bad Thing.
Eating the forbidden fruit / fruit of knowledge exposed Adam and Eve to evil things; tarnishing their purity. After they ate the fruit, they awakened. They desired to wear clothes, possess things, have children, etc.
What we learn from this is that knowledge is not good or bad; it's how we use it that makes the difference. And from the standpoint of an "awakening" and mystical experience, the connection to psilocybin deserves further study.
Except, this is a christian fresco, and this is not how Christianity interprets the Genesis story. I understand that Judaism was the source religion of Christianity, but the two religions are substantially different. Christianity has very different interpretations of the Old Testament compared to the Jews.
The Tree of Knowledge is not the “bad thing” (sin is a better vocabulary choice) in the book of Genesis. The sin is the defiance of God’s instruction by Adam and Eve avoiding the fruit from the Tree of Life.
The gnostic view is that the tree opened people up to the knowledge that the creator of earth was a flawed god, and not the good one up at the top of the heirarchy. In my understanding.
Something else to consider is that some early Christians (like the so-called Gnostics) believed that there was an esoteric (or secret) meaning or teaching in Christianity.
The esoteric meanings were often mirror images of the exoteric (or plain/obvious/surface) meanings. So where eating of the Tree of Knowledge might be viewed as "bad" in the exoteric interpretation, in the esoteric interpretation it could be viewed as good.
Similar inversions happen with the snake in the Garden of Eden, who is similarly viewed in a negative light in the exoteric interpretation, but as good in the esoteric interpretation. The same thing happens with Judas, and even the creator God himself.
I'd encourage reading up on the Gnostics for more details on exactly what those views were.
True, and early Christian cults were often mixed up in offshoots of the mysteries traditions as well.
So while the article mixes up which storied tree that image is supposed to represent, there's a real question of whether or not the similarities to the amanita mushroom were intentional or not. When placed in the context of esoteric traditions, it's a worthwhile question.
The book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn includes a retelling of genesis in this mirrored sense: the devil has adam and eve convinced that the garden is paradise and there's no need to leave. god has to sneak in to convince eve to eat the apple and become free. (paraphrase from 10 yrs ago, I should pick that book up again...)
The serpent wrapped around the tree indicates that this is to represent the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, not the Tree of Life. So, even if this were depicting hallucinogenic mushrooms, if anything it would mean that Christians viewed them as forbidden.
As soon as I saw the "snake", I made the assumption on my own that this was just a crudely drawn tree with the dots representing fruits/"apples" as the story is commonly known.
Stretching this into an article about psychedelic mushrooms is quite a reach.
I guess I've never given much credence to this theory. Why would they beat around the bush and use symbols and other words for it. Why wouldn't they just say "eat this mushroom"? Was there even a stigma against it back then?
The idea that there is secret knowledge that only the elect should know goes back to classical times, and probably to the time the old testament was put together. So it might not have to do with stigma per se.
That's not the elect as you described. Priests are no more deserving of heaven than any other baptised catholic.
The 'knowledge' in the archives is not religious in nature. You don't need to have access to it to know God or achieve the ultimate goals of catholicism.
The 'elect' as a Christian concept is a bit different from ordinary uses of the word. In context, the concept from Calvinism seemed to be under discussion until someone came into the discussion using 'elect' in the normal meaning.
So I think it's important to keep track of which definition of 'elect' is in use here or you'll just be talking past each other without realizing that you're not talking about the same concept at all:
I mentioned elect in the context of classical times and the Old Testament. I wasn’t referring to whatever Christians consider the elect, but a more general term describing insiders with the secret teachings that aren’t to be mentioned in front of the masses because they might be led astray. This was certainly not an unknown idea throughout the Greek speaking philosophical world, including the early Christian church. There are no doubt Christians today who still adhere to such an idea.
I don’t want to be misunderstood here: I think the mushroom idea is hogwash.
Also it appears that I may have touched a nerve here, I certainly wasn’t intending to call anybody’s religion into question.
Fair enough, I agree that the mushroom thing is quite a stretch. The word 'elect' has a bit of a history in Christianity, though.
There certainly were gnostics of all stripes (not only Christian gnostics, but various other purveyors of secret knowledge, etc.). And while the canonical Bible contains an invective against 'so-called knowledge' which seems to be a dig at gnosticism, there were other gnostic sects and works early on persisting for some time even after it was declared heretical.
Non-priests view the archives frequently and there is a slow process of digitizing them now. It just so happens that the Vatican has some of the oldest documents still in existence and don't want them damaged by people or light.
It’s entirely possible for people who call themselves Catholic to have beliefs that are not in accordance with official dogma. And Catholic dogma is not a static thing, either, though some pretend it is.
It absolutely is, but the idea he put forth... that the elect (presumably meaning those who are getting into heaven) are deserving of secret knowledge is not really something that anyone can say ever existed in the church. They had a whole separation and heresy to address that.
I’ve long been thinking about how things like this are in the Bible:
> They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel ... Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
— Ezekiel 1:15
And I’ve been thinking, that these kinds of things could have their explanation in people having ingested plants or been stung by insects or something, that altered their perceptions of reality. Or even maybe just hallucinating because of hunger, or from having been born with a brain that was producing these types of hallucinations on its own.
Or they experienced an out-of-context problem. Saw something which didn't fit into what they knew.
Yes, I really do mean ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS, or something like that.
Imagine someone from pre-industrial society. No matter where. And then something is touching down from the heavens above. Like some big fucking rocket. Or some tilt-rotor thingy. Or something with Ion-drive. Unloading a remote controlled all terrain rover with really strange wheels.
How to describe something for which you have no concept of understanding it at all?
>Or they experienced an out-of-context problem. Saw something which didn't fit into what they knew.
While I don't think aliens are responsible for the Bible, something along what you've said here is a good explanation for the burning bush Moses saw, even from a believer's perspective. Specifically, before modern times the only common sources of light were the sun and fire. If an ancient person saw something emitting light the only points of reference they would have to compare it to would be the sun, a campfire, a torch, a lamp, or something to that effect. So if light was coming out of a bush they would assume it was on fire, and the fact that it wasn't being consumed would be a reason to marvel at it (like Moses did in Exodus 3).
There are several problems with this article. To start with, it mixes up the Tree of Life[1] and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil[2].
Second, the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries. And most importantly, early Christians were Jews first. Post-Pauline times, pagan or Gentiles in the Roman empire did join the growing movement that was soon to be called Christianity, but they were weren't dragging in any pagan rituals they may have had prior to their conversion. Three hundred years later, with the conversion of Constantine and the co-optation of Christianity for Roman imperial designs, certain pagan rituals and practices were papered over with Christian beliefs (cf Easter, Christmas), but not the other way around.
There is no evidence of roman paganism being the origin of either holiday. Easter and Christmas were celebrated before the romanization of Christianity. The only thing that was added were pagan symbology to the existing feast days, which is typical, as the church is happy to incorporate pagan traditions. The issue here is that in America we see a myopic view of Christianity from Europe. We note that during Easter, many European pagan symbols are incorporated, and mistakenly apply that to all Easter celebrations.
In reality, Christianity is not a european religion. In other centers of christianity, like Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India, European pagan symbology for easter was not adopted until recently. For most of history, there would either have been local rituals incorporated, or none at all.
This does not contradict the fundamental idea of Easter or Christmas though, because the Church explicitly desires that local rituals be incorporated. Catholic missionaries are happy to include anything non-contradictory with the Christian religion into Catholic practice. For example, it is the official policy of the church, after much deliberation, and much back and forth, that Chinese Catholics who desire to do their ancestor veneration rites are allowed to do so, with certain changes made to ensure that the rites fit the Catholic understanding of prayers to ancestors. But for the most part, Catholic Chinese are allowed to partake in these confucian rituals, and can even do so in the context of Catholicism. There is no contradiction.
To support my claims, here is an article on a traditional Syro-Malabar (Indian) Catholic celebration of easter. The Syro-Malabar Church has existed for 2000 years since the times of Thomas. If easter was a European pagan incorporation, we'd expect to see lots of European pagan symbology, like Easter bunnies, eggs, etc. Except we don't. The traditional syro-malabarese feast is a celebration of passover, but with Indian food instead of the middle eastern stuff.
That is not to say that European traditions haven't been incorporated (american cultural hegemony is an unstoppable force), but the rituals that are traditional are nothing close to them.
I can speak to this myself, as an Indian Catholic. I didn't know what the Easter bunny did (apparently he brings candy to little American boys and girls? -- I was clearly short-changed and am still somewhat bitter haha) until middle school. Although my family mentioned the Easter bunny in passing, it was not part of our celebrations at all. Although we dyed eggs with other people in our church because that's what they did, we didn't really do it at home. It was just a social thing.
It also comes down to a matter of linguistics. English uniquely changed the name of the holiday to match up with local celebrations. If you're not thinking to hard about it, it's very easy to go from "Easter is named after a forgotten pagan goddess" to "The entire Easter tradition is stolen from old pagan rituals."
They’re talking about a late thirteenth century fresco in France, not Roman art by protochristians in the first few centuries CE. As christianity spread or was forced across europe, there was plenty of mixing religions.
But this whole thing is a pretty big stretch, you can’t tell if it’s a tree or a mushroom then maybe it’s just the artist wasn’t the greatest and trying to shoehorn psychedelics into it isn’t at all a worthwhile way to spend your time.
Analysing the fresco leaves us with more questions than answers. Is there a connection between 13th century Christianity and psychedelics? How far back could such a connection go? What would such a connection mean for us today? Maybe the artist's fresco would have sent a clearer message if they hadn't eaten so many mushrooms before making it.
Yes but the article doesn't speculate on the practices of late 13th century French Christians, it's speculating that the mural is referring to "early Christians" depicting a story that "Christianity itself had derived from a fertility cult whose members ingested hallucinogens". How late middle ages Christians knew so much about 1st century protochristians is left unexplained.
Yeah, the guy drew Eve with no breasts and what appear to be gills running up to her collarbone. I don't think we can safely assume that anything in the image is an accurate representation of a real-world object.
"the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries"
But the fresco the article is about is from the 13th Century. Christians at that time or even earlier might have re-interpreted the Genesis story in light of psychedelic experiences.
However, on the subject of psychedelic use in early Judaism, there is an interesting article titled "Strange Fires Weird Smokes and Psychoactive Combustibles Entheogens and Incense in Ancient Traditions"[1]:
"The incense cults of Israel have been the subject of a wide variety of theological and academic treatments. Researchers have speculated on the use of entheogens of a
variety of species in the Bible (Shanon 2008; Merkur 2000; Allegro 1 970) as well as linking a shared entheogenic heritage with Persia in such crucial texts as the Book of
Ezra, which sheds much light on foreign influences on Jewish cultic practices (Dobroruka 2006). A number of scholars have discussed the psychoactive incense used in the
temple with various theories as to ingredients (Ruck, Staples & Heinrich 200 I ) and cannabis has been suggested as the kaneh bosom (appearing throughout the Old Testament
with the first mention in Exodus) that eludes -- along with the other ingredients of the holy incense -- positive or at least complete identification (Benet 1976). ...
...
The exact recipe of the Old Testament incenses (Levitical and foreign), if there ever was an official recipe that persisted with exact continuity, will likely never be
known. Some of the ingredients may be deduced from other examples in the ancient world of incense cults and their psychoactive aromatics. A starting point would logically
be Egypt, from which the Israelites made their Exodus, and their various temple incenses and magico-medical fumigants, which included benzoin, cannabis, Hyoscyamus,
bitumen and arsenic sulphide (Shehata 2006). Psychopharmacologists link Egyptian plants found in the various Greek writings and Egyptian medical papyri with the soma/haoma
of the ancient world and Peganum harmala, which is still used as a magical incense to this day. Linked with the nybt of the Papyrus Ebers (Flattery & Schwartz 1 989) Peg
anum is also mentioned by Dioscorides as being used by ancient Syrians as besasa, or "Plant of Bes" and that it was burned in Egypt before the statue of Bes. The ancient
kyphi has been speculated by some scholars to have contained cannabis as well as other psychoactive plants such as Acarus calamus and from sixteen to fifty other
ingredients, many of which are unidentified."
have no doubt that some christians likely dabbled with these things, as did their jewish forbears, and certainly some sects of paganism where this was explicitly allowed/incorporated
but it's one thing to acknowledge these various strands as ever having existed, and quite another to take fragmentary evidence out of context and use it as a basis to spin a whole narritive that all of the historical understanding is somehow fundamentally incorrect, and that there is some 'hidden teaching' (which incedentally and conveniently is almost always more permissive w/r/t intoxication/sexuality)
there's also the detail that this misunderstanding is also predicated on a false notion that medieval people were as hostile to medicinal plants as we have become after the advent of the pharmaceutical industry - if these plants are not 'evil' and 'suppressed', then it is less 'shocking' and 'world changing' to find references to them in what we might think are surprising places to our modern mind
I saw a Ron Howard movie that starred Tom Hanks which told me the Holy Grail is really a metaphor for the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I read a book by Immanuel Velikovsky that told me that around the 15th century BC, the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object and passed near Earth. Venus is made of up hydrocarbons which spewed out and fell to earth, turned to carbohydrates and fell as manna, then Venus on a later flyby caused the earth to stop turning (and the sun to appear to stand still) and the walls of Jericho to fall. Somehow, not only did Joshua and his armies not get knocked flat on their asses when the earth stopped, but the entire earth did not become magma as the energy of rotation turned to heat.
People have been speculating about the "science" of the bible since the scientific method was a thing, and there's a shitload of absolute insane woo.
There are probably "some scholars" that have argued for just about anything, but certainly the majority of knowledge on these treats them as different topics.
Exactly. Some "scholars" say that Genesis, along with the other four books of the pentateuch, was literally written by Moses and recounts actual facts as they happened. Wikipedia's NPOV utterly fails on topics like faith and belief.
Note, it would be against wikipedia policies to say "Some scholars say X". You're not supposed to use weasel words, and npov does not mean you have to give equal weight to all.
Case in point, wikipedia doesn't say that some scholars believe genisis was written by moses. Instead they say:
"Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars, especially from the 19th century onward, see them as being written hundreds of years after Moses is supposed to have lived, in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[7][8] Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, most scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical. Biblical literalists do interpret it as actual history, giving rise to beliefs such as Young Earth creationism."
"Tradition credits" seems like as much weasel words as "some people say". Whose tradition? Since when? Where does the tradition come from?
> Note, it would be against wikipedia policies to say "Some scholars say X"
But.. that's exactly what the linked wikipedia article says! I'm not vested enough to care to change it, but if you're right, that is a violation of policy.
I think its pretty clear in context that they mean the traditions of the people who view the book as holy, particularly Jews and Christians. They go in more detail if you click the link.
The big difference is that "Some scholars believe X" and "Some scholars believe not X" are basically true for most X. The traditional view of Jews & Christians being that moses wrote genisis is a fact about the world. It can be either true or false. They either believed that traditionally or they did not. Both it and its negation cannot both be true.
>The traditional view of Jews & Christians being that moses wrote genisis is a fact about the world. It can be either true or false. They either believed that traditionally or they did not. Both it and its negation cannot both be true.
How so? If there was more than one early Jew/Christian they could have held different beliefs about that. If you want to be exact, you can't state any facts about the beliefs of somebody, living or dead.
And if there's more than one person you can't say they all held the same belief.
> The Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries. And most importantly, early Christians were Jews first.
How so? Jesus and the apostles, or any historical figures which they inspired, didn't think of themselves as "Christian", nor did they even imagine they were creating a new religion. They were Jews who didn't toe the Second Temple Judaism line.
According to the Bible, Christians started using the word Christian to describe themselves while the Apostles were alive (Acts 11:26). Prior to this they generally would refer to themselves as followers of The Way. The idea that they didn't think of themselves as Christian is incorrect.
I posted in a sibling response, but basically, you are correct. Jesus and the apostles were not out to create "Christianity". They believe that they were Jews who were following the messiah outlined by the Jewish scriptures. I just found that the notion "X predates this group, but also this group was that same group anyways" was funny, despite being a bit pedantic.
There is no contradiction here: Jews (descendants of Judah, son of Jacob=Israel) were living at least 15 centuries before Jesus Christ. Jesus was also a Jew and his first followers were also Jews, later non-Jews (=pegans) joined the "movement"...
Many Christian denominations believe that they are the "true Jews" because they have followed Jesus who was fulfilling scriptural prophecy. Since the divergence, Christians have adopted the books of the New Testament as part of their sacred scripture. Meanwhile, Jews (that is, modern Jews, not the Judeans that have been translated as "Jews") have adopted the books of the Talmud. Saying that one is older than the other is like saying that homo sapiens are homininae that are older than gorillas because the names are similar when that's simply where both began.
And just before that: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Jews were originally God's chosen people, but since the coming of Jesus, which fulfilled their scripture, the rules changed to make the faithful God's chosen instead
> Second, the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries.
The Genesis story is much older than that and rooted in Babylonian creation myths.
We don't know that much about the early Christians. But we do know that there was a lot of competing branches of Christianity and cross-pollination between Jewish traditions, Hellenistic traditions, and pagan traditions. The branch that Constantine favored was the one that won out and suppressed all other branches. It's not beyond the pale to speculate about early Christians mixing "standard" Christianity and rites from fertility cults and using psychedelics. Although there is zero evidence.
That's highly debatable. See The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity[1] for a good, detailed counterexample. The reformation and counter-reformation have been likened to a re-Judaization of Christianity with good reason. Based on my reading, though, the pagan roots of Christianity run much deeper; for example, the concept of three gods, separate yet one, is completely alien to Judaism, but integral to Indo-European religion. It's not found in the Bible, but was made use of to explain the relationship between the three divinities found in the New Testament.
> Eve’s ribs are bold slash marks, as if the artist wanted her to appear almost skeletal.
The artist probably wanted to highlight the fact that there are an even number of them, in contrast to Adam's odd number, since the story is that one of his was taken (to make Eve).
Everything religious has a reason until you point out why that doesn't make sense, and then the response is, "it's a metaphor, don't take it seriously".
I'm going to extend that pattern to it's logical conclusion and conclude that none of it makes sense and nobody should take any of it seriously.
The main problem of this article is that it uses modern cultural and artistic norms to interpret ancient art.
Traditional Catholic and Christian iconography was not meant to be accurate, but rather to symbolize meaning.
For example, in my church, the priest recently pointed out there is a dog in every single stained glass window depicting scenes of Jesus's life. In particular, the dog is a dalmation.
If we were to apply this same line of reasoning in the article to these windows, we'd be forced to make ridiculous conclusions that Catholics of 20th century Portland believed Dalmations were holy holy dogs alive at the time of Christ.
In reality, the dalmation is a symbol of St Dominic (it's a dominican church), whose mother had a dream she gave birth to a dalmation (St Dominic) with a torch in his mouth who lit the world on fire. The symbology is obvious, since Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers, did indeed spread the gospel message throughout large portions of the world at the time. The dalmation symbolizes St Dominic's following of Jesus's example. At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic.
So if that's true of 20th century Catholic art, made by people alive at a time when art is expected to portray reality, then even more so should we not interpret this fresco as realistic, since it was made at a time when people couldn't even paint realistically (perspective was an enlightenment / renaissance invention IIRC).
"At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic."
Well, except that, say, Jesus is supposed to be Jesus. Adam and Eve are supposed to be Adam and Eve. The garden in which Adam and Eve are depicted is supposed to be the Garden of Eden in the Bible. In the various depictions of the Last Supper, Jesus is depicted as having supper with his disciples, and that is supposed to depict exactly that. Jesus is shown as breaking bread in those paintings, just as he does in the Biblical story, etc, etc, etc...
Not to say there isn't a lot of symbolism in Christian art, but it's not all symbolic.
I suppose it's realistic in the sense that Christ is depicted as a human as are adam and eve, instead of something else, but there is no presumption that christ actually looked like the way he was drawn.
Except if they were familiar with christian mythology they would not.
You cannot view the image and then ascertain the mythology without reference to both written documents and traditional culture.
You have to first study the documents and the existing culture and only then interpret the image. I am accusing the author of not having sufficiently studied the cultures traditions or it's written words.
"Realistic art" does not mean "represents something". You can represent things and not be realistic, majority of drawings made by humans are in this category.
If you want to go down a rabbit hole, look into biblical and other references to how important and common the acacia tree was, and then consider that it's thought to be a significant source of DMT. (The second fresco in the article has what appears to be an acacia tree in it). One can only speculate what someone could have imagined if they were around one while it was burning and they inhaled it. The analog feedback patterns one sees when their senses are impaired are by almost all accounts, geometric patterns like fractals, and so the discovery of geometry and association of it with mysticism could have a common chemical origin. If there was something to be known or learned from psychedelic experiences, a national security service would need to know and understand its boundaries. Given radio was only recently discovered, people new to the idea of communicating over long distances using invisible energy would have had to consider whether there was some chemical connection. I'm not saying it's aliens...but it may very well be all drugs.
The notion that scholars have “debunked” the mushroom hypothesis is ludicrous given that they don’t postulate a hypothesis that is any more reasonable. The idea that it is a “stylized” tree seems preposterous to me given each branch ending in a cap. If it was just the top, ok. But every branch? It looks like a clump of mushrooms growing out of the ground, Occam’s razor and what not.That doesn’t mean it’s a magic mushroom, but maybe mushrooms had some sort of significance to the artist/church/region etc.
Wow mostly unrelated, I had no idea that _Amanita Muscara_ was considered to be psychoactive (usually is described as poisinous in field guides). Also frequently considered to be edible (after treatment) in some places. Fascinating!
(for those unfamiliar, the amanita genus as a whole contains a variety of extremely toxic mushrooms and is often avoided by novice edible collectors for that reason)
FWIW, I wouldn't recommend trying to get high off of Amanita Muscaria. By all accounts it can be a rather unpleasant (and long) high. Best to stick with psilocybin.
This is a far cry from an evidence-grade source, but https://ambrosiasociety.org/ is a pretty wild site to explore.
Someone has put quite a lot of work into mapping the phenotypic traits of Amanita Muscara onto Christian iconograhy (the lamb of god being the wooly mycelium, and the living cup having to do with the way it colonizes wooden containers, etc). They've also got instructions on preparing it for consumption.
It's possible that manna from heaven and the bread at communion are mushrooms. that many of the experiences seem to by psychadelic: the burning bush, the transfiguration, etc. And that it was all gotten rid of during the black death.
Another one: guess why Jesus rites on birth and resurrection are highly related in time to Winter and Spring which is seeding time and later harvesting time.
I remember Hatsis elsewhere referring to a chemical study of the pigments used in the Plaincourault fresco revealing the red was originally green. I can't find the mention atm.
I know people say Amanita muscaria is hallucinogenic, but my understanding is that it is pretty poisonous. Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata), on the other hand, is also common in Europe at least, and of course is well known to be very hallucinogenic and not poisonous. So if you were gonna depict a hallucinogenic mushroom wouldn't you choose Liberty Cap?
The liberty cap is not a distinctive mushroom (small, round cap, brown). The amanita muscaria is beautiful and distinct enough that we recognise it in paintings hundreds of years later.
Perhaps the painter chose it for its beauty, or perhaps because it was both distinctive and psychedelic. No way to know. But the academics claiming that "the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms" are embarrassing.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadPlus, there are several translations of it. The common rendition into English is 'happy fault', which may be too positive. The other translations include 'lucky mistake', 'happy mistake', blessed fall, etc. Note again the duality, the paradox, and that the fundamental noun (fault, mistake, fall) is negative. It's a paradox, a mystery, meant to get you to think deeper, not some stunning endorsement of listening to Satan.
Not at all. I'm certain that it differs between faiths, but in mine (Judaism), the tree of knowledge was not A Bad Thing.
Eating the forbidden fruit / fruit of knowledge exposed Adam and Eve to evil things; tarnishing their purity. After they ate the fruit, they awakened. They desired to wear clothes, possess things, have children, etc.
What we learn from this is that knowledge is not good or bad; it's how we use it that makes the difference. And from the standpoint of an "awakening" and mystical experience, the connection to psilocybin deserves further study.
The esoteric meanings were often mirror images of the exoteric (or plain/obvious/surface) meanings. So where eating of the Tree of Knowledge might be viewed as "bad" in the exoteric interpretation, in the esoteric interpretation it could be viewed as good.
Similar inversions happen with the snake in the Garden of Eden, who is similarly viewed in a negative light in the exoteric interpretation, but as good in the esoteric interpretation. The same thing happens with Judas, and even the creator God himself.
I'd encourage reading up on the Gnostics for more details on exactly what those views were.
So while the article mixes up which storied tree that image is supposed to represent, there's a real question of whether or not the similarities to the amanita mushroom were intentional or not. When placed in the context of esoteric traditions, it's a worthwhile question.
And, anyway, one need not be a gnostic in order to believe there is a hidden side to Christianity.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathars
Stretching this into an article about psychedelic mushrooms is quite a reach.
The 'knowledge' in the archives is not religious in nature. You don't need to have access to it to know God or achieve the ultimate goals of catholicism.
So I think it's important to keep track of which definition of 'elect' is in use here or you'll just be talking past each other without realizing that you're not talking about the same concept at all:
https://www.learnreligions.com/five-point-calvinism-700356
I don’t want to be misunderstood here: I think the mushroom idea is hogwash.
Also it appears that I may have touched a nerve here, I certainly wasn’t intending to call anybody’s religion into question.
There certainly were gnostics of all stripes (not only Christian gnostics, but various other purveyors of secret knowledge, etc.). And while the canonical Bible contains an invective against 'so-called knowledge' which seems to be a dig at gnosticism, there were other gnostic sects and works early on persisting for some time even after it was declared heretical.
I've seen such.
The "religious institution" becomes all about authoritative literature.
Consuming it, digesting it, debating it. Who's read the books. Who hasn't read enough books. Who's the top certified holy-book-interpreter.
An airtight power hierarchy.
Real experience just threatens the bubble.
> They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel ... Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
— Ezekiel 1:15
And I’ve been thinking, that these kinds of things could have their explanation in people having ingested plants or been stung by insects or something, that altered their perceptions of reality. Or even maybe just hallucinating because of hunger, or from having been born with a brain that was producing these types of hallucinations on its own.
Yes, I really do mean ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS, or something like that.
Imagine someone from pre-industrial society. No matter where. And then something is touching down from the heavens above. Like some big fucking rocket. Or some tilt-rotor thingy. Or something with Ion-drive. Unloading a remote controlled all terrain rover with really strange wheels.
How to describe something for which you have no concept of understanding it at all?
While I don't think aliens are responsible for the Bible, something along what you've said here is a good explanation for the burning bush Moses saw, even from a believer's perspective. Specifically, before modern times the only common sources of light were the sun and fire. If an ancient person saw something emitting light the only points of reference they would have to compare it to would be the sun, a campfire, a torch, a lamp, or something to that effect. So if light was coming out of a bush they would assume it was on fire, and the fact that it wasn't being consumed would be a reason to marvel at it (like Moses did in Exodus 3).
Second, the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries. And most importantly, early Christians were Jews first. Post-Pauline times, pagan or Gentiles in the Roman empire did join the growing movement that was soon to be called Christianity, but they were weren't dragging in any pagan rituals they may have had prior to their conversion. Three hundred years later, with the conversion of Constantine and the co-optation of Christianity for Roman imperial designs, certain pagan rituals and practices were papered over with Christian beliefs (cf Easter, Christmas), but not the other way around.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(biblical)
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_...
There is no evidence of roman paganism being the origin of either holiday. Easter and Christmas were celebrated before the romanization of Christianity. The only thing that was added were pagan symbology to the existing feast days, which is typical, as the church is happy to incorporate pagan traditions. The issue here is that in America we see a myopic view of Christianity from Europe. We note that during Easter, many European pagan symbols are incorporated, and mistakenly apply that to all Easter celebrations.
In reality, Christianity is not a european religion. In other centers of christianity, like Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India, European pagan symbology for easter was not adopted until recently. For most of history, there would either have been local rituals incorporated, or none at all.
This does not contradict the fundamental idea of Easter or Christmas though, because the Church explicitly desires that local rituals be incorporated. Catholic missionaries are happy to include anything non-contradictory with the Christian religion into Catholic practice. For example, it is the official policy of the church, after much deliberation, and much back and forth, that Chinese Catholics who desire to do their ancestor veneration rites are allowed to do so, with certain changes made to ensure that the rites fit the Catholic understanding of prayers to ancestors. But for the most part, Catholic Chinese are allowed to partake in these confucian rituals, and can even do so in the context of Catholicism. There is no contradiction.
To support my claims, here is an article on a traditional Syro-Malabar (Indian) Catholic celebration of easter. The Syro-Malabar Church has existed for 2000 years since the times of Thomas. If easter was a European pagan incorporation, we'd expect to see lots of European pagan symbology, like Easter bunnies, eggs, etc. Except we don't. The traditional syro-malabarese feast is a celebration of passover, but with Indian food instead of the middle eastern stuff.
https://homegrown.co.in/article/802431/a-traditional-easter-...
That is not to say that European traditions haven't been incorporated (american cultural hegemony is an unstoppable force), but the rituals that are traditional are nothing close to them.
I can speak to this myself, as an Indian Catholic. I didn't know what the Easter bunny did (apparently he brings candy to little American boys and girls? -- I was clearly short-changed and am still somewhat bitter haha) until middle school. Although my family mentioned the Easter bunny in passing, it was not part of our celebrations at all. Although we dyed eggs with other people in our church because that's what they did, we didn't really do it at home. It was just a social thing.
For example,
French: Paques Spanish: Pascua Romanian: Pasti Russian: пасха (Paskha) Chinese: fùhuójié (resurrection festival) Danish: paske
Only the german languages adopted a Germanic goddess name due to the coincidental timing.
And not even one anyone actually remembered, just one whose name was still around to denote that time of year.
Yes, that's exactly what I said: papered over.
But this whole thing is a pretty big stretch, you can’t tell if it’s a tree or a mushroom then maybe it’s just the artist wasn’t the greatest and trying to shoehorn psychedelics into it isn’t at all a worthwhile way to spend your time.
This seems likely, especially given that Eve's thighs are larger than her torso in the painting.
Christianity is all about gods, spirits etc.
We have here a Christian illustration featuring what looks like a famous psychedelic.
It takes very little shoehorning to connect those dots.
But the fresco the article is about is from the 13th Century. Christians at that time or even earlier might have re-interpreted the Genesis story in light of psychedelic experiences.
However, on the subject of psychedelic use in early Judaism, there is an interesting article titled "Strange Fires Weird Smokes and Psychoactive Combustibles Entheogens and Incense in Ancient Traditions"[1]:
"The incense cults of Israel have been the subject of a wide variety of theological and academic treatments. Researchers have speculated on the use of entheogens of a variety of species in the Bible (Shanon 2008; Merkur 2000; Allegro 1 970) as well as linking a shared entheogenic heritage with Persia in such crucial texts as the Book of Ezra, which sheds much light on foreign influences on Jewish cultic practices (Dobroruka 2006). A number of scholars have discussed the psychoactive incense used in the temple with various theories as to ingredients (Ruck, Staples & Heinrich 200 I ) and cannabis has been suggested as the kaneh bosom (appearing throughout the Old Testament with the first mention in Exodus) that eludes -- along with the other ingredients of the holy incense -- positive or at least complete identification (Benet 1976). ...
...
The exact recipe of the Old Testament incenses (Levitical and foreign), if there ever was an official recipe that persisted with exact continuity, will likely never be known. Some of the ingredients may be deduced from other examples in the ancient world of incense cults and their psychoactive aromatics. A starting point would logically be Egypt, from which the Israelites made their Exodus, and their various temple incenses and magico-medical fumigants, which included benzoin, cannabis, Hyoscyamus, bitumen and arsenic sulphide (Shehata 2006). Psychopharmacologists link Egyptian plants found in the various Greek writings and Egyptian medical papyri with the soma/haoma of the ancient world and Peganum harmala, which is still used as a magical incense to this day. Linked with the nybt of the Papyrus Ebers (Flattery & Schwartz 1 989) Peg anum is also mentioned by Dioscorides as being used by ancient Syrians as besasa, or "Plant of Bes" and that it was burned in Egypt before the statue of Bes. The ancient kyphi has been speculated by some scholars to have contained cannabis as well as other psychoactive plants such as Acarus calamus and from sixteen to fifty other ingredients, many of which are unidentified."
[1] - https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/...
but it's one thing to acknowledge these various strands as ever having existed, and quite another to take fragmentary evidence out of context and use it as a basis to spin a whole narritive that all of the historical understanding is somehow fundamentally incorrect, and that there is some 'hidden teaching' (which incedentally and conveniently is almost always more permissive w/r/t intoxication/sexuality)
there's also the detail that this misunderstanding is also predicated on a false notion that medieval people were as hostile to medicinal plants as we have become after the advent of the pharmaceutical industry - if these plants are not 'evil' and 'suppressed', then it is less 'shocking' and 'world changing' to find references to them in what we might think are surprising places to our modern mind
People have been speculating about the "science" of the bible since the scientific method was a thing, and there's a shitload of absolute insane woo.
Alternatively, some scholars have argued that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is just another name for the tree of life.
Case in point, wikipedia doesn't say that some scholars believe genisis was written by moses. Instead they say:
"Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars, especially from the 19th century onward, see them as being written hundreds of years after Moses is supposed to have lived, in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[7][8] Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, most scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical. Biblical literalists do interpret it as actual history, giving rise to beliefs such as Young Earth creationism."
Which seems entirely fair to me.
> Note, it would be against wikipedia policies to say "Some scholars say X"
But.. that's exactly what the linked wikipedia article says! I'm not vested enough to care to change it, but if you're right, that is a violation of policy.
The big difference is that "Some scholars believe X" and "Some scholars believe not X" are basically true for most X. The traditional view of Jews & Christians being that moses wrote genisis is a fact about the world. It can be either true or false. They either believed that traditionally or they did not. Both it and its negation cannot both be true.
How so? If there was more than one early Jew/Christian they could have held different beliefs about that. If you want to be exact, you can't state any facts about the beliefs of somebody, living or dead. And if there's more than one person you can't say they all held the same belief.
Just thought this contradiction was amusing.
Jews were originally God's chosen people, but since the coming of Jesus, which fulfilled their scripture, the rules changed to make the faithful God's chosen instead
This is silly. Its shared by a number of religions since abrahamic religions generally have a common root.
The Genesis story is much older than that and rooted in Babylonian creation myths.
We don't know that much about the early Christians. But we do know that there was a lot of competing branches of Christianity and cross-pollination between Jewish traditions, Hellenistic traditions, and pagan traditions. The branch that Constantine favored was the one that won out and suppressed all other branches. It's not beyond the pale to speculate about early Christians mixing "standard" Christianity and rites from fertility cults and using psychedelics. Although there is zero evidence.
That's highly debatable. See The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity[1] for a good, detailed counterexample. The reformation and counter-reformation have been likened to a re-Judaization of Christianity with good reason. Based on my reading, though, the pagan roots of Christianity run much deeper; for example, the concept of three gods, separate yet one, is completely alien to Judaism, but integral to Indo-European religion. It's not found in the Bible, but was made use of to explain the relationship between the three divinities found in the New Testament.
1. https://www.amazon.com/Germanization-Early-Medieval-Christia...
edit: I misunderstood you. The statement I thought I was responding to was that christianity absorbed pagan practices but not beliefs.
The artist probably wanted to highlight the fact that there are an even number of them, in contrast to Adam's odd number, since the story is that one of his was taken (to make Eve).
I'm going to extend that pattern to it's logical conclusion and conclude that none of it makes sense and nobody should take any of it seriously.
[1] - Starting at around 9'50" in "Psychedelics - In Spirituality and Religion (by Aware Project)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEkF2ER0Zwc
Traditional Catholic and Christian iconography was not meant to be accurate, but rather to symbolize meaning.
For example, in my church, the priest recently pointed out there is a dog in every single stained glass window depicting scenes of Jesus's life. In particular, the dog is a dalmation.
If we were to apply this same line of reasoning in the article to these windows, we'd be forced to make ridiculous conclusions that Catholics of 20th century Portland believed Dalmations were holy holy dogs alive at the time of Christ.
In reality, the dalmation is a symbol of St Dominic (it's a dominican church), whose mother had a dream she gave birth to a dalmation (St Dominic) with a torch in his mouth who lit the world on fire. The symbology is obvious, since Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers, did indeed spread the gospel message throughout large portions of the world at the time. The dalmation symbolizes St Dominic's following of Jesus's example. At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic.
So if that's true of 20th century Catholic art, made by people alive at a time when art is expected to portray reality, then even more so should we not interpret this fresco as realistic, since it was made at a time when people couldn't even paint realistically (perspective was an enlightenment / renaissance invention IIRC).
Well, except that, say, Jesus is supposed to be Jesus. Adam and Eve are supposed to be Adam and Eve. The garden in which Adam and Eve are depicted is supposed to be the Garden of Eden in the Bible. In the various depictions of the Last Supper, Jesus is depicted as having supper with his disciples, and that is supposed to depict exactly that. Jesus is shown as breaking bread in those paintings, just as he does in the Biblical story, etc, etc, etc...
Not to say there isn't a lot of symbolism in Christian art, but it's not all symbolic.
You cannot view the image and then ascertain the mythology without reference to both written documents and traditional culture.
You have to first study the documents and the existing culture and only then interpret the image. I am accusing the author of not having sufficiently studied the cultures traditions or it's written words.
Neither adam nor eve could plausibly look like this: https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvYX... - altrough proportions are roughly right.
(for those unfamiliar, the amanita genus as a whole contains a variety of extremely toxic mushrooms and is often avoided by novice edible collectors for that reason)
See also: https://www.bayareamushrooms.org/education/further_reflectio...
https://www.npr.org/2010/12/24/132260025/did-shrooms-send-sa...
Someone has put quite a lot of work into mapping the phenotypic traits of Amanita Muscara onto Christian iconograhy (the lamb of god being the wooly mycelium, and the living cup having to do with the way it colonizes wooden containers, etc). They've also got instructions on preparing it for consumption.
https://psychedelictimes.com/the-secret-psychedelic-mushroom...
https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1037.htm
Another one: guess why Jesus rites on birth and resurrection are highly related in time to Winter and Spring which is seeding time and later harvesting time.
Mushrooms (and some other devices) are how you see God etc.
I mean, it wasn't always just about reading old books. It had to start somewhere. With some kind of real observation.
And studying that stuff without the shrooms etc. Well, that's like studying microbiology without a microscope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium#/media/File:Silphium....
The Fungi-Pareidola of The Psychedelic Gospels by Chris Bennett https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2021/08/05/__trashed...
Mushroom Trees Debunked by Thomas Hatsis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrfeNp1FSUY
I remember Hatsis elsewhere referring to a chemical study of the pigments used in the Plaincourault fresco revealing the red was originally green. I can't find the mention atm.
Also, it is not 6 feet tall.
Perhaps the painter chose it for its beauty, or perhaps because it was both distinctive and psychedelic. No way to know. But the academics claiming that "the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms" are embarrassing.