Scholarly Fail-Quotes Hall of Shame

Michael Hoffman, December 4, 2020 11:57 pm UTC+0

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Contents:

There’s No Psilocybin Used in Mexico (Safford 1915, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture)

An Aztec Narcotic (Safford 1915)

How ironic it will be if Dr. Safford himself, in the long run, should be remembered chiefly because of this resounding blunder that he made, a classic example of the fallibility of the specialist!

Ethnomycology Specialist Wasson, “Mushrooms, Russia and History“, 1957; Vol. 2, p. 236 (“32”)

What’s in an Ellipses? …:

Also Wasson: “pilzbaum do not purposefully mean mushrooms. You mycologists are ignorant and failed to consult the art authorities. [while simultaneously, Sneaky Actor Wasson quietly deletes and censors and omits the Brinckmann book 1906 citation urged by Panofsky]”

Also Wasson (added to mycologist Ramsbottom’s book 2nd printing w/o Wasson realizing it for decades): “Rightly or wrongly, we are going to reject the Plaincourault fresco as representing a mushroom.“

http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm –

Excerpt from my 2006 article, research contributed by Jan Irvin:

Wasson, 1953

Ramsbottom’s book was originally printed in 1953 and lacks the following.  The 2nd printing was 1954.  Unbeknownst to Wasson until 1970, a printing after the original run contains the following passage which Allegro quoted from.  Ramsbottom’s introductory note reads:

Addendum.  Mr. R. Gordon Wasson, of New York, an authority on the folk-lore of fungi, writes to me as follows (cf. p. 46):

Ramsbottom immediately continues the paragraph by quoting Wasson’s private letter:

“Rightly or wrongly, we are going to reject the Plaincourault fresco as representing a mushroom. This fresco gives us a stylized motif in Byzantine and Romanesque art of which hundreds of examples are well known to art historians, and on which the German art historians bestow, for convenience in discussion, the name Pilzbaum. It is an iconograph representing the Palestinian tree that was supposed to bear the fruit that tempted Eve, whose hands are held in the posture of modesty traditional for the occasion. For almost a half century mycologists have been under a misapprehension on this matter. We studied the fresco in situ in 1952. – Wasson, private letter of December 21, 1953, quoted in Ramsbottom, Mushrooms & Toadstools, post-1953 printing, p. 48

Wasson is proposing that the placement of Eve’s hands demonstrate that she’s being modest, rather than exhibiting the Agaric intoxication symptoms described on page 46-47 of Ramsbottom, including by Jochelsen on the Koryak tribal practice.  He argues that the picture portrayed the tree of knowledge and therefore did not portray Amanita mushrooms.

Ramsbottom does not comment on the merit of Wasson’s argument or on Wasson’s combining of uncertainty and conclusiveness.  Ramsbottom does not express agreement or disagreement, and he does not revise his own statements on the subject on the previous page or in the caption of the plate.

/ end excerpt from my article 2006

Non-Drug Entheogens: “Entheogenic religion does not imply substances” (Hanegraaff 2012)

The Worst Idea of Any Academic Ever 🥇

Keynote article/chapter, in Christopher Partridge book, “Entheogenic Esotericism”, which phrase I wrote 8 years before Hanegraaff, in the title of a post “Authentic esotericism is entheogenic esotericism” at the Egodeath Yahoo Group practically directed to Hanegraaff telling him not to do what he would do 8 years later.

Hanegraaff wrote:

“Although the terms “entheogen” and “entheogenic” were invented with
specific reference to the religious use of psychoactive substances, it is important to point out – although this broadens current understandings of the term [like broadening “tall” to include “short”, or “true” to include “false”, or broadening “up” to include “down”] – that the notion of “entheogenic religion”, if taken literally [ie if we use the fallacy “etymology defines meaning”], does not strictly imply such substances: after all, there are many other factors that may [= “can” = 0% likelihood = do not] trigger or facilitate a state of ε’νθουσιασμός (“enthusiasm”), such as
specific breathing techniques [exactly same as high-dose Psilocybin],
rhythmic drumming [exactly same as high-dose Psilocybin],
ritual prayer and incantations [exactly same as high-dose Psilocybin],
meditation [exactly same as high-dose Psilocybin],
and so on [anything you can think of is exactly same as high-dose Psilocybin].

“This was already the case in antiquity, and remains so today.

“It will therefore be useful [like “make up whatever” is useful] to distinguish between entheogenic religion in a narrow and in a wide sense: with respect to the wider category, one could think of such cases as the ritual practices known as “theurgy”, described for instance by the third/fourth-century neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus, the complicated techniques known as “ecstatic kabbalah”, developed by the Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth century, or even the experience of being “filled by the Holy Spirit” in contemporary Pentecostalism.”

Hanegraaff somehow knows these are facts, givens:

  • Theurgy was as effective as high-dose Psilocybin, and did not use high-dose Psilocybin.
  • Ecstatic kabbalah was as effective as high-dose Psilocybin, and did not use high-dose Psilocybin.
  • Being “filled by the Holy Spirit” in contemporary Pentecostalism is as effective as high-dose Psilocybin, and does not use high-dose Psilocybin.

“The historical evidence in Western culture for entheogenic religion in a narrow sense (that is, involving the use of psychoactive substances) is a contentious issue to say the least, and discussing it seriously would require a book-length treatment; but in order to establish that we are not pursuing a chimaera it suffices, for now, to point out that the existence of such kinds of religion in indigenous cultures is well documented, particularly in the Latin American context.”

Psilocybin-based religion, based on actual entheogenic chemicals, is well documented in Medieval Europe, as pilzbaum; branching-message mushroom trees, and related imagery – and in Hellenistic religion before that.

Site map sections:

“The present chapter will focus exclusively on one particular trend of contemporary entheogenic religion – in a narrow sense – which may be defined as a form of Western esotericism and has not yet received the attention it deserves.”

He builds on this bad foundation in his book about Hermeticism around 2022.

Chapter 19: Entheogenic Esotericism (2012), by Wouter Hanegraaff
https://www.academia.edu/3461770/Entheogenic_Esotericism_2012_

Nobody Had Used the Term ‘Entheogenic Esotericism’ Before Hanegraaff (Except Me, 8 Years Before Him, and Far More Vigorously)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/30/nobody-had-used-the-term-entheogenic-esotericism-before-hanegraaff-except-me-8-years-before-him-and-far-more-vigorously/

Non-Drug Entheogens: “a Purely Symbolic Entheogen” (Ruck 1994)

From Dec. 7, 2024 Cyberdisciple email:

The sacred marriage often involves an entheogen (either chemical or purely symbolic) as the means for summoning the possessing spirit, and the axis mundi is sometimes thought of as a magical garden, a grove of trees, or a single special tree (the world tree or the cosmic tree), whose fruit is the entheogen.

Carl Ruck & Blaise Staples, The World of Classical Myth: Gods and Goddesses, Heroines and Heroes [but Not Monsters 🚫🐉], 1994, p. 90

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/World-Classical-Myth-Goddesses-Heroines/dp/0890895759

Cyberdisciple wrote re: “an entheogen (either chemical or purely symbolic)”

“What is a “purely symbolic” entheogen??”

Olive Better than Amanita Because Not Psychotropic (Carl Appeases Prohibition Ruck 1994)

Dec 10 2024 email Cyberdisciple

Cyberdisciple wrote:

“Page 81 of Ruck/Staples myth book. First use in that book of term Entheogen. They deviate from the 1979 definition, which is limited to drugs.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Classical-Myth-Goddesses-Heroines/dp/0890895759/

“From “Entheogens” article printed in Third Edition of The Road to Eleusis (2008), page 139 (last paragraph, first sentence):
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Eleusis-Unveiling-Secret-Mysteries/dp/1556437528/

“We, therefore, propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs.”

Cyberdisciple con’t:

“Last sentence of that paragraph:

“In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens.”

Cyberdisciple con’t:

“Then by page 81 of Myth book in 1994, the definition has been expanded: “need not be chemical.”

Page 81 is the section: Entheogen: (Woinos or ‘Wine’

Dec. 7, 2024 Cyberdisciple email

From Dec. 7, 2024 Cyberdisciple email:

The sanctity of the olive derives from its symbolism as a substitute for the sacred plant of the homeland which it commemorates, Amanita, which similarly in Indo-European tradition is ‘pressed,’ and called, in fact, in the Hindu tradition ‘Soma,’ the ‘Pressed One,’ for the act of pressing. The olive, perhaps, was even better than the original Amanita, since it is cultivated and has no psychotropic properties for shamanism: the Indo-European tradition was never at ease with the need to depend upon the body to see the deities.

Carl Ruck & Blaise Staples, The World of Classical Myth: Gods and Goddesses, Heroines and Heroes [but Not Monsters 🚫🐉], 1994, pp. 62-63

Cyberdisciple wrote re: “The sanctity of the olive derives from its symbolism as a substitute for the sacred plant … Amanita … The olive … was even better than the original Amanita, since it is cultivated and has no psychotropic properties for shamanism: the Indo-European tradition was never at ease with the need to depend upon the body to see the deities.”

“WHAT!? Thanks a lot, Ruck! Whose side are you on? With friends like these, who needs prohibitionists?

“Carl Amanita Promoter Ruck = Carl Appeases Prohibition Ruck.”

The argument reminds me of the preposterous Conclusion of the Gnosis book by Dan Merkur: “Gnostics wouldn’t have used mushrooms, because Gnostics were against the body.” Oh, so we can conclude that Gnostics didn’t eat food or breathe air, by your solid reasoning, Merkur – you MUST be pulling our leg; joking. Section below:
Dan Merkur: “The Gnostics wouldn’t have used mushrooms, because those are physical, and the Gnostics were against the physical world.”

Plaincourault depicting a hallucinogenic mushroom has been debunked, repeatedly, by scholars in the best position to interpret it

If the idea of the Plaincourault fresco depicting a hallucinogenic mushroom has been debunked, repeatedly, by scholars in the best position to interpret it, why does it persist?

Emma Betuel

Qualifications to Make Pronouncements & Assessments About Mushrooms in Religious Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/03/15/qualifications-to-make-pronouncements-assessments-about-mushrooms-in-religious-art/

Letcher, Truly, You Have a Dizzying Intellect: Mushrooms on Church Door Proves: No Hidden Mushrooms; thus Proves: No Mushrooms in Christian History

Commentary on “Transcendent Knowledge Podcast” Episode 22 (2020-02-23) James Kent part 6

Cyberdisciple: “Hasn’t this argument been made already, that the poorness of Amanita as an entheogen disproves bad entheogen scholarship and bad Pop Sike Cult, that fixates on Amanita as the uber-entheogen of Christian history?

“What’s Kent doing here that’s new, isn’t this just what Letcher was saying over a decade ago?”

Max: “Yes, though Kent uses different examples. Letcher leans heavily on a Belgium cathedral door, which Kent doesn’t mention.”

Books by Andy Letcher that are rushed out by big-name Establishment presses, making loud-sounding arguments about nothing in particular, a shell game, in which we nod our heads in dizzied consent that this constitutes an argument:

“The mushroom on the church door is evidence that there’s no hidden mushrooms in Christian art.

Therefore I have shown there’s no evidence for mushrooms in Western religious history; such use is late 20th Century only.”

Letcher

Yes Letcher, truly you have a dizzying intellect; I give in!

Movie: Princess Bride, “battle of the wits” scene, after convoluted but futile argument. 2:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZSx3zNZOaU&t=170s (after skip ads)

You are right (in your theory and position, whatever it is, that shifts on every other page, as needed, to give the right surface impression of something having been proved).

Letcher’s book Shroom has all the logical structure of a pile of oatmeal.

John Lash: “Variations of the Wasson theory, including considerable departures from it”

Lash wrote:

“Variations of the Wasson thesis, including some considerable extrapolations and departures from it, have been advanced by [every entheogen scholar].”

Got that?

“Variations of the Wasson thesis, including considerable departures from it, have been advanced by every entheogen scholar.”

Presto! Now he’s able to frame any & every possible entheogen theory for all time as “a variation of the Wasson theory”.

So, Lash, is not your own entheogen theory then, “a variation of the Wasson theory, including considerable departures from it”?

“Variations of the Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology, including considerable departures from it, have been advanced by Copernicus.”

Thus, by definition, EVERY THEORY in the field of entheogen scholarship, is hereby framed as, “Variations of the Wasson thesis, including considerable departures from it.” Is not this reasoning worthy of the Scholarly Quotes Hall of Shame?

“variations including significant departures” <– HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM

full article:
Wasson and Company: The Entheogenic Theory of Religion
https://web.archive.org/web/20110612022630/http://www.metahistory.org/psychonautics/Wasson/WassonAndCo.php — a narrative designed to FORCE the entire the field of entheogen scholarship and all its scholars and all theories, for all time, into being designated and framed as variations of some imagined-by-Lash, “Wasson-Allegro-Amanita theory”.

John Lash Bonus Quote, Because 1 Just Isn’t Good Enough: “associations between psychoactive mushrooms and the historical Jesus, famously argued by John Allegro”

LASH THINKS ALLEGRO BELIEVES IN MR. HISTORICAL JESUS!

John Lash wrote: “associations between psychoactive mushrooms and the historical Jesus, famously argued by John Allegro in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross“

John Lash, article: Wasson and Company: The Entheogenic Theory of Religion, https://web.archive.org/web/20110612022630/http://www.metahistory.org/psychonautics/Wasson/WassonAndCo.php

Dan Merkur: “The Gnostics wouldn’t have used mushrooms, because those are physical, and the Gnostics were against the physical world.”

3 books by Dan Merkur (I read them around 1999) on things like ergot in the Israelites religion:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dan+merkur&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Dan Merkur wrote that line — that ridiculous, unbelievable, ludicrous, “you MUST be pulling our legs, you CAN’T be serious” line at the end of the book Gnosis, that:

The Gnostics wouldn’t have used mushrooms, because those are physical, and the Gnostics were against the physical world.

“Because College Students Have No Way to Experience the Mystic State First-Hand”

Footnote on page 1 of a very mainstream respected textbook about mysticism: Something like:

“Of course, students have no way to have first-hand experience of the mystic state of consciousness.”

HOW COULD ANYONE WRITE SUCH A THING?

Is your head buried in mud?

How totally out of touch could you possibly be, to write such manifest nonsense?!

Muraresku: “We Have Already Achieved What the Mystery Religions Could Never Manage to Do”

Muraresku: Our scientists have achieved what the Mystery Religions Never Managed to Do: Profound Mysic Experience that’s Safe, Reliable, & Scalable.

Then a dragon appeared and ate the Licensed Psilocybin Therapy building.

Hopkins/NYU therapy model of psychedelics guides Muraresku, The Immortality Key
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/10/19/hopkins-nyu-therapy-model-of-psychedelics-guides-muraresku-the-immortality-key/

Cyberdisciple writes (my emphasis added):

“Muraresku’s modernist stance is apparent on p. 387, where he praises the “psychopharmacologists and clinical psychiatrists at Hopkins and NYU” for “somehow doing what the Greek and Christian Mysteries were never able to accomplish in antiquity.” And how, in the eyes of this self-satisfied modernist, have they advanced on the ancients? Muraresku goes on:

“Today’s scientists have now solved the critical flaws of the religion with no name: safety, reliability, and scalability. Delivering a profound mystical experience in the most cautious way possible, as effectively as possible, to the most number of people possible. The technology is all there: a safe, pharmaceutical-grade hallucinogen and a finely-tuned protocol that maximizes spiritual breakthrough while minimising risk.” – Muraresku

“The hubris of Muraresku and the therapists! Muraresku’s entire historical depiction of ‘the religion with no name’ is a mere foil to justify how it has been improved upon by modern technology and ‘protocol.’ The historical study serves only to support the already set agenda of the therapists. Despite the book’s marketing, this is not the work of a serious scholar or student of history.”

Hatsis: “My Entheogen Scholarship Methods Are Rock-Solid, Proven, and Watertight (and I’m Not Going to Tell You What They Are, in This Book About That Subject)”

“The supposed mushrooms that appear in Christian art are easily explained away through sound, tried-and-true historical criteria.”

These historical criteria are not identified or summarized in this book.

He brags about being able to “explain away” the evidence!

You keep using that phrase — I do not think it means what you think it means.

The phrase “explain away” means an illegitimate argument used to deny something that is true — not something to brag about having accomplished!

“The supposed mushrooms that appear in Christian art are easily explained away through sound, tried-and-true historical criteria, which those who still support the theory (in one variety or another) have simply not considered.” — Psychedelic Mystery Traditions, p. 139 (Kindle version).

In this $15 book, a footnote to support that extreme statement gives just the titles of two articles by the author, good luck finding what the flimsy arguments are, in support of the extreme assertion in the book.

They amount to airtight rock-solid arguments that are universally persuasive, such as:

“They do look like mushrooms, but we have no idea whether they intend psychoactive mushrooms.” (In religious, mythological, otherworldly art.)

Or another rock-solid argument buried-away somewhere in the mentioned articles:

“That looks like a mushroom, but it is of no concern, because it’s in a (Medieval fantastical) bestiary, which therefore has no relevance to religious or mystical art, which is what we’re discussing.”

Such argumentation is, itself, not worth reading; yet the subject matter, thanks to Irvin, is well-chosen, so when I brought fluent Mythemese to these atrocious would-be rebuttal writings, my re-treatment of the images in question produced some benefits:

it led me to decode an extremely important Psalter image, after my warm-up on decoding the bestiary salamander image.

This mytheme-illiterate scholar fumbled-around with the images ineffectively, hamfisted, but brought them to my attention, as a qualified esoteric image interpreter, for a proper reading and analysis.

Panosfky: “the medieval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable”

Article title:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
Subsection:
Stylized Psilocybe Clusters, Literal Liberty Caps
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/#spcllc —

I strongly agree with Panofsky that this artist’s botched attempt to depict an Italian pine with Umbrella pines in its canopy “became quite unrecognizable”; it became so unrecognizable, it accidentally ended up looking exactly like a Cubensis with Liberty Caps in its cap — unbeknownst, of course to the artist, who was working off prototypes; who “hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable.” I’ll say!

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

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