Contents:
- The Failure of Scholars to Properly Discuss and Debate the Most Important Question, of Mushrooms in Christian Art: Summary of the Sordid Situation
- Victory in a Debate by Stating One’s Position then Declaring Victory
The Failure of Scholars to Properly Discuss and Debate the Most Important Question, of Mushrooms in Christian Art: Summary of the Sordid Situation
Recently, Jerry Brown printed Erwin Panofsky’s letter to Gordon Wasson, including the outrageously omitted (by Wasson) citation of Albert Brinckmann and his book.
Baumstilisierungen in der mittelalterlichen Malerei
(Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings)
Albert E. Brinckmann
http://amzn.com/3957383749
Entire book at Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_8AgwAAAAYAAJ/mode/2up
The plates are shown at the end.
Cyberdisciple then located Brinckmann’s 1906 book about mushroom tree representations, which Wasson withheld when quoting Panofsky’s letter. I was then able to perform a decoding of an Eden-tree scene from Brinckmann’s book, in my “Criteria” article.
Panofsky’s letter claimed that art historians have already considered and discussed whether mushroom-trees in Christian art represent mushrooms. Wasson omitted Panofsky’s citation of Brinckmann’s name and 1906 book, a monograph.
In Wasson’s quote which he copied from Panofsky’s letter into SOMA, Wasson replaced the citation of Brinckmann by ellipses, this providing no evidence at all to substantiate Panofsky’s claim that art historians have discussed and already resolved the matter with certainty, concluding with certainty that mushroom-trees in Christian art represent trees but not mushrooms.
In my Plaincourault article, I thought it was outrageous for Panofsky to simply assert “art historians have discussed this matter” with zero substantiation that they had discussed it; but that fault is Wasson’s, for censoring mention of Brinckmann’s name, in a cover-up.
Wasson was a banker who had private meetings with the Pope, so likely had a conflict of interest causing him to distort and censor the matter of mushrooms in Christian art and steer critical investigation away from this topic.
Wasson did a cover-up of the whole matter because around 1970, Allegro’s book was conducting a 4-pronged attack to discredit Christianity, one prong being showing of a single picture of a mushroom-tree, the Plaincourault Amanita tree, with no argumentation around it, silently implying that there is art evidence for Amanita in later Christianity.
Are we arguing about just Amanita, or both types of mushrooms? Are we arguing about mushroom trees, or all depictions of mushrooms? None of these most-basic distinctions were at all articulated and debated in an actual, 2-way discussion.
All-in-all, there was no actual debate or investigation of mushrooms in Christian art – not in 1906, nor in 1952, nor in 1970. The whole “debate” vanishes into thin air like egoic control power, upon testing and investigation.
Compounding the complete failure of scholarly investigation, Wasson failed to credit Graves for discovering mushrooms in religion, and in particular, failed to mention that in 1957, Graves found evidence that mushrooms were the basis for Greek religion and mythology.
Graves told Wasson he was offended that Wasson didn’t mention Graves’ seminal work on mushrooms in religion and mythology.
Until Heinrich’s book Strange Fruit in 1995, which was the first real treatment that at all covered the matter, the previous scholarly “treatment” of the topic amounts to nothing, in terms of an actual 2-way debate with articulated positions and 2-sided argumentation, supported by several types of evidence.
Despite the steadily accumulating evidence for mushrooms in Christian art, that sordid tradition of arbitrary, unscholarly waving-aside and explaining-away continues on, thanks to Letcher and Hatsis.
Letcher and Hatsis slip and slide among vague, shifting position on exactly what they are denying and affirming, changing their mind about what subject they are centrally debating about:
o The Secret Amanita Christian Cult theory?
o Amanita, or both Amanita and Psilocybe?
o Mushrooms in Christian art?
o Mushrooms in Christian practice?
o Mushrooms in Christian culture?
The Minimalist school (“there’s never mushrooms, there’s never evidence”) is vague about:
o On what basis each of those questions is to be explained away.
o Why their sometimes-chosen scope of question is the key issue to deal with and center all discussion around (silently, as it suits them from moment to moment).
o Why some types of evidence and readings of that evidence count, but others are to be ignored and discounted.
Wasson’s defense of the status quo in Christianity was to censor mention of Brinckmann’s name, and do a cover-up to make it look like the entire matter of mushroom depictions in Christian art has been firmly investigated and settled by the top art historians.
Don’t look behind this ellipses curtain; the top, most relevant authorities have already discussed and settled the matter.
Brinkmann, Panofsky, and Wasson didn’t address whether the many non-tree mushroom depictions in Christian art represent mushrooms, so these Minimalists (maintaining that there are no mushrooms in Christian art) have a weak argument and a vague position, by any measure.
The resulting argument (if you can call it an “argument”) that Wasson published in the book SOMA, to dismiss and explain-away the many mushroom-trees throughout Christian art, amounted to fallacious argument from sheer position statement (“mushroom-trees are not mushrooms, but trees”), and argument from authority (“Panofsky, the top art historian, says that art historians (unnamed) have discussed and concluded the matter, therefore it is settled.”)
Victory in a Debate by Stating One’s Position then Declaring Victory
Conclusion: Do not treat Hatsis as if he’s worth taking seriously on the question of mushrooms in Christian (or Greek) art, religious, or culture.
On this topic of mushrooms in Christian art/religion/culture, Hatsis is just an ignorant outsider who hasn’t done relevant research, though he thinks he has, and he writes nothing worth reading or replying to on this particular topic.
However, against that dismissal, it has been profitable for me to push back against his misreadings of eg the salamander bestiary image (like my pushing back against Brown’s off-base rebuttal of Irvin re: the Amanita-styled vial).
Read Hatsis on this topic, but read him as a fool on this particular topic.
Brinckmann/Panofsky think they’ve “discussed the matter” and “had a debate”.
No, the debate or question of mushrooms in Christian art(? or is it practice? or it is culture????? it’s all so vague!) hasn’t even started, until:
1. Side A states their position. (done? not done)
2. Side B states their position. (not done)
3. Side A argues against Side B’s position. (not done)
4. Side B argues against Side A’s position. (not done)
5. Judge who won. (not done)
Dumb-as-an ox is incapable in his book, of articulating what his position is.
His thinking is a thicket of muddle-headed confusion, on Eve and the Eden tree.
His writing here is a tangled confused incoherent mess with a SOLID WALL OF MISTAKES in the cista mystica serpent-basket caption, every word ignorant, wrong, and confused.
He is incapable of forming a coherent sentence on this topic.
He has failed to state his position with any coherency.
That is the bare minimum for a debate or investigation, to compare two competing theories or explanatory frameworks, by any definition.
You can’t just have 1 guy walk into the room, state his position and declare victory on the spot.
We haven’t even heard what the countering position is, much less (the 3-4 other steps above).
The Minimalists’ “victory” in the “debate” is a fallacy called “Argument by declaration of Victory”:
The debate court opens. 1 guy walks in. He says: “My position is x, I WON THE DEBATE!!!!”.
The next day, the newspaper headlines blast out: Guy 1 Wins Debate!
That is the TOTAL JOKE of alleged, “art historians already discussed” whether mushroom trees in Christian art represent mushrooms, and that mycologists are merely “ignorant” of the Art Authorities’ Unanimous [ie Unilateral] Declaration of Victory.
WHAT A JOKE!
They put forth only 1 book, by 1 man, in 1906, in German, only 86 pages, only 9 plates, restricted to mushroom trees — LET’S DECLARE VICTORY: THERE ARE NO MUSHROOMS IN CHRISTIAN ART!
Is that all you got? Could you possibly have any less?
You’re basing your entire declaration of victory on 1 book, by 1 author, in German, in 1906, restricted to mushroom tree forms; and a set of mytheme-illiterate attack-and-discredit articles by Hatsis — and we’re to think that the matter is so settled, that Hatsis’ book has no need to even summarize his purported slam-dunk disproof of all mushrooms in all Christian art?
I attempted on Nov 23 2020 to email Christian Ratsch, through his coordinator Erna, to read Brinckmann’s book in German and assess the case Br. makes.
GIVE ME A BREAK.
Oh, but very impressive letterhead,
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED COVER-UP
What an embarrassment; scholarly FAIL.
Hatsis’ total failure of a book (I want my money back, you provided worse than no value) CLAIMS that he has some devastating proof and evidence somewhere, giving the titles of two articles.
But those articles only contain a 1-sided position statement, or rather a little more: he counters Irvin, who has left the field.
Irvin, who Hatsis is fixated on attacking in his articles, was still (at the time of Irvin’s book), a little too much of an all-in, pro-Allegro cheerleader, back then.
Irvin got too stuck in the “secret Amanita Christian cult” dead-end, enabling Letcher/Hatsis to (sometimes) make that red herring issue the center of their squirrely slip-and-slide attack.
The issue is far, far from settled; the pathetic tiny “exchange” has been far from a real back-and-forth debate.
Just like Wasson/Allegro’s non-exchange, it’s been just throwing a couple or a few darts past each other, not even engaging at all in a 2-way debate between the Minimalists vs. the Maximalists.
Hatsis’ book is a lie, when he claims that his book doesn’t need to treat mushrooms in Christian art at all, showing no pictures in his book, because if only the ignorant reader saw his proof in his articles, they’d instantly know and concede that the matter is settled.
Hatsis’ book’s non-treatment literally makes a false statement, that IF people read his papers, they’d agree with him: I did read all his articles, in his old original website pre-Park Street Press; I critiqued his set of articles in detail, and he’s totally full of it.
Hatsis is illiterate at reading altered-state art mythemes.
He brags proudly, literally, of “explaining away” mushrooms in Christian art — I do not think those words mean what you think they mean; he should be embarrassed that all he has is sleazy “explaining away”.
Hatisis is not a serious scholar, on the only topic that matters: mushrooms in Christian art (and practice, and culture).
He thinks playing a fool is the same as being funny. He reveals his hand by bragging of being able to “explain away” mushrooms in Christian-related art; he thinks it’s amusing; he thinks he’s funny.
Serious scholars of the topic are not laughing, at this clowning.
Absolute B.S. Some scholar! What a joke.
Hatsis’ “method” of winning the argument and omitting the only topic that is worth anything (mushrooms in Christian art) from his $15 book, stinks of Brinckmann/Panofsky as “settled” (that is, censored) by Wasson.
The same unearned bravado,
The same “victory by position-statement”,
The same “victory by declaring victory”,
The same censoring and omitting of mushroom-art pictures,
The same failure to mention (critically) Brinckmann’s book,
The same slip-and-slide of what it is we’re debating,
The same stink.
The Brinckmann/Panofsky/Wasson/Letcher/Hatsis Minimalist school is a cover-up, not a covering, of the world’s most important topic:
Psilocybe in Greek and Christian art.
What does Hatsis’ book say about Graves’ discovery of Psilocybe in Greek religious mythology?
Finding: No, Hatsis does not cover mushrooms in Greek art; he merely mentions the conjecture of possibility of mushrooms 1 or 2 times in that chapter, but does not treat mushroom images in Greek art.
Rubbish aplenty: Brown castigated Hatsis for this, in Brown’s article: Hatsis’ book (Kindle) page 139: “Working off the theories of the now discredited John Allegro, these researchers have argued that the main Christian entheogenic sacrament was the …”
Everything about that statement is wrong. The passage is beyond redemption. He lumps together all researchers, he fixates on Amanita, he does not specify those he critiques —
Hatsis says they are “working off the theories of Allegro”, – no, that’s false; nobody is “working off the theories of Allegro”, except maybe Irvin, who’s now flipped his opinion (values) against the whole field of mushroom scholarship.
Hatsis says allegro is “discreditd” — that’s partly false.
Brown does the same slop — COME ON GUYS, you are making falsely perceived EASY SHOTS, WHOLESALE-DEMONIZING ALLEGRO as your “look how good I am” punching bag, to make yourself look good by making stuff up? SLOPPY!
Allegro wrote stuff, Irvin agreed with it, so now Hatsis (and Brown! and Price!) sees an easy way to make himself look superior, by tilting at the apparent tag-team of “Allegro/Irvin” — and, anyone else they want to throw into that garbage can of careless dismissal that THEY themselves (Wasson/ Letcher/ Hatsis) created, their mental fantasy of “Allegro and Irvin and everyone else who follows them in affirming mushrooms in Christianity” — a giant STRAWMAN exercise, cheap, sloppy, worthless, and NON-SCHOLARSHIP.
It is hard to push back and condemn a position that is not a position, because it is so ill-defined and silently changing from one paragraph to the next.
The Old Theory protects itself by poor, inconsistent definition: the minimal-to-moderate view of mushrooms/ entheogens/ or is it Amanitas or Psilocybe, in Greek, or just Christian? art — or maybe we’re arguing about religious practice?? or culture, overall?
What are we debating about? It’s under-specified, inconsistent, and unscholarly all-around.
Stop the cheap shots, guys, you’re embarrassing yourselves, making mistakes left and right. Allegro looks to you like an easy way to make yourself look superior, but you are making yourselves look SLOPPY.
The Minimal/Moderates gravitate in a fixation around Allegro, they orbit Allegro, it’s the only thing they see, the star that they steer by.
The are not capable of thinking about the field without obsessing around Allegro — unlike everyone who is actually in the field! Heinrich, Ruck, etc.
The only person I know who at all orbits around Allegro is Irvin, but he’s changed his values and left the field.
The people who are looking for cheap self-glorification by kicking the punching bag Allegro, can’t engage the field in any other way.
I’m knowledgeable about Allegro, but I have a balanced perspective — he’s only one of many in the Moderate-to-Maximal school, and he is far from the most important.
The Minimal-mushroom school is are stuck, trapped on Allegro forever, letting Allegro dictate the range or window of their thought.
Allegro was correct in some points: Christianity did use mushrooms, which is provable when the scope of question is defined adequately.
Numerous scholars believe Allegro was correct about Jesus’ ahistoricity; such as Richard Carrier.
Had I peer-reviewed this paragraph by Hatsis, I would’ve had it completely rewritten.
It’s as bad of a mess as Robert Price’s badly botched, careless, sloppy, unscholarly dismissal of Allegro as treated by Acharya (which she thanked me for reconciling her & Price and correcting him).
Page 140 he misuses the word “in fact”; he is speaking falsehood:
“There is, in fact, no evidence that any Christian ever [his emph] interpreted the forbidden fruit in such a way.” Such a what way, you ask? Sh*tty writing, is the answer — Hatsis doesn’t know what his own position is, or is incapable of articulating what it is he’s asserting and denying.
I already quoted and rebutted Hatsis’ paragraphs, at:
Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/
Brown rightly castigated him for the next sentence — this shows how off-base, tilting at windmills, mis-conceiving and misunderstanding what the debate is even about:
“Here is where the discipuli Allegrae and I part company. …”
He is strawmanning; inventing the enemy group and what their position is. WTF are you talking about, “the discipuli Allegrae”?
Speak English and stop talking rubbish. “… There isn’t a shred of evidence…”
Ok, at this point, I’m gonna give up on him (whatever that means), like Cyberdisciple did with Muraresku — HATSIS IS IRRELEVANT AND INCOMPETENT in this topic; he’s failing to engage with the body of evidence, and is either ignorant, or willfully blind.
I simply don’t care what this incompetent outsider has to say on this topic.
His writing on this topic, his research, is simply too low-quality to bother with.
There are more sensible, relevant people to read and critique.
The field has moved on, leaving Hatsis in the dust of irrelevancy, heap of discarded rejected hypotheses like my calling the bible-reading man a “scribe” in the Canterbury hanging-from-mushroom image.
Hatsis is stuck back in 1970, in an endless-loop 8-track tape, debating some position that he fantasizes — in a shared dream with Letcher — that anyone cares about.
Every sentence is so filled with rubbish, there is simply no profit in taking his commentary seriously.
Hatsis is beyond hope of point-by-point correction.
I had to write a 70-page article putting down the nonsense around Plaincourault, after Price’s totally-botched dismissal of Acharya, which Price (editor of “Journal of Higher Criticism”) had to completely delete in embarrassment (and make up with Acharya with apology to her); I’m sure as hell not going to waste my time on this waste-of-time non-scholarship.
There’s some good in every book. We do have to decide which books are worth how much time to engage with, to filter out wheat from chaff.
I officially give up on the Minimal school (whatever “giving up on them” means) on the topic of mushrooms in Christian and Greek art/ religion/ culture.
Wasson Letcher Hatsis (the Minimal mushroom school) misreads the whole state of play in the field; everything he writes is off-base, and tangled in confusion, on this set of distinct questions.
Hatsis (or: the Minimal mushroom view on Greek & Christian art/religion/culture ) is not effectively engaging with the field on this topic (set of questions).
Hatsis (or: the Minimal-to-Moderate mushroom view) mistakes Irvin’s past promotion of Allegro, with the entire question — or rather (importantly) set of distinct questions.
Hatsis’ perspective (the Minimal view) is highly distorted; he doesn’t have a balanced view on the field (the set of questions).
He is (the Minimal-to-Moderate mushroom view is) under-read and doesn’t realize it, so he has poor judgment and seems to be playing on the wrong ballfield.
Notice that I’m having to tighten up and specify exactly which position I am condemning, here. The whole field is way too squishy, vague.
Hatsis (the Minimal/Moderate view) is not worth taking seriously on this topic, though my pushing back against his failed, hackneyed treatment, has been profitable in some ways.
I’m throwing up my arms about Hatsis (or: the Minimal/Moderate view) not being worth taking seriously on this subject that he just displays his ignorance and mytheme-illiteracy about.
We have to decide how much time to invest in following the Minimal-to-Moderate school. A problem with those general labels: we must instead be specific in which question we are debating.
I gave up on on Hatsis (whatever “giving up on him” means), partly because he’s inconsistent on which point he’s debating, partly because he overestimates the importance of Allegro.
He has a lopsided outsider’s reading of where the field’s at, overly influenced by Irvin (who was very pro-Allegro, 10 years ago).
Brown rightly castigated Hatsis for strawmanning, continuing to attribute to Brown a position which Brown explicitly repeatedly said he rejects and doesn’t hold.
Hatsis and such people try to make themselves look good by mis-placing everyone who is investigating any of this set of questions, into a 1-dimensional grab-bag garbage can of “Allegro”/secret Amanita cult — you win, Hatsis, you win a fake argument.
We have to decide how much time to spend following a given author, regarding a specific question.
We need to spend less time reacting to people who can’t think straight, and spend more time defining the field with precision, such as articulating consistently what the different distinct topics of debate are.
My general buckets (Min/Mod/Max) don’t always help, lumping everyone into one bucket like Letcher/Hatsis do, for some 5-10 distinct questions.
I wrote more criticism of Hatsis, which became criticism of the Minimal-to-Moderate school, which is a rather hazy category. It’s better to have specific research on highly specified topics and lay out all the evidence/arguments and control the debate.
Good, competent entheogen scholars need to control the debate with precision, on their end, and not only react to the confused and inconsistent writings of outsiders.
Competent entheogen scholars need to control the debate with precision, on their end, and not only react to the confused and inconsistent writings of outsiders.
That’s the conclusion that I ended up heading towards as I wrote more fulmination against “the Minimalist-Moderate school” (my phrase there is starting to fray as too broad a bucket):
We need a more professional, insular school, who is committed to a certain view, which we Can call “the Maximal view”.
I’m just having trouble specifying what I mean by “the Minimal view” and “the Moderate view”, which depends on which point, exactly, we’re debating.
That’s one beneficial outcome of writing the “Criteria” article — I now see how many distinct question-scopes there are, to debate.
I can thank Hatsis for that, he’s both good and bad there – he lumps all mushroom questions into “Allegro”, but OTOH, he breaks my Min/Mod/Max distinction, b/c he’s Min on some topics, Max on others.
It’s not exactly clear what actions this means:
“Ignore inept scholars in this field, on these particular topics.”
__________________
What does it mean, to “not take an author seriously” on a given topic?
Is it a matter of how much time to spend reading them, or writing in direct reply to them?
We have to sort wheat from chaff, and do what we can to rightly shape and steer the field.
People in the field need to do a good job, and to hell with the ignorant opinion of clueless outsiders.
If my overly sweeping categories are of any use:
To hell with Minimal-to-Moderate outsiders.
Read their books, I guess, but “don’t take them seriously” — what does that mean?
Have a patronizing attitude: What are the little children saying about this matter?
Did the little children discover an easter egg or anything to pay attention to, like little Tommy Hatsis found that cool Salamander Bestiary image?
Hatsis wrote total rubbish about it, of course, but at least Irvin, through Hatsis, brought it to my attention, and that image is pretty cool when read and decoded by someone who is mytheme-literate.
Hatsis’ use of the bestiary image in trying to win some muddle-headed irrelevant debate against the Irvin of 2010, is just a confused, unhelpful mess.
Hatsis thinks that he proves Irvin is Wrong, on some ill-specific position, because… it’s not a religious picture but a bestiary?
It is a waste of time trying to unravel Letcher Hatsis’ confusion from getting the genre wrong, a fundamental category error — we inhabit incommensurate assumption-frameworks.
It was good, in the “Criteria” article, to throw “the Minimalists” overboard, flip a giant collective bozo bit on the whole lot of them.
But haven’t I been doing that for all scholars, for 35 years already?
Adherents of a wrong framework are beyond redemption; forget them, they are just committed to a bad framework, some “The Old Theory” that doesn’t pan out.
The findings of people who are using a bad Theory/lens, might nevertheless despite their confusion, contribute some value, sometimes, after you correct their distortions.
Scholars always have to work with previous, distorted research, to constantly correct it to move forward.
Sometimes, the Old Theory is just ignorant and IRRELEVANT.
What the Minimal entheogen writers think they are arguing about, is not what my school is correctly investigating.
We have to treat the writings of the other camp(s) like aliens, not operating on the same basis of worldview at all. Of course everything they write is distorted 10 ways from Sunday.
Why should I spend hours explaining that Hatsis’ entire worldview is wrong?
Same as it’s ever been.
I care about mushrooms in Greek & Christian art/ religion/ culture/ myth.
Hatsis’ book is sub-garbage quality on the topic I care about; his book is *literally not even worth reading*, on that topic.
On the set of distinct topics I’m interested in, Hatsis’ book is nothing but an annoying, sub-amateur, outsiders’ display of his own confusion and mis-reading the field.
His book probably contributes substance, on topics that I don’t care about.
The Egodeath theory 