Contents:
Who Needs to Change What
What the individuals must to do rectify the situation for the field:
- Ruck must stop employing his malformed concept “secret”. Stop using the word ‘secret’, FFS! PLEASE STOP, for the love of God, and to save the field of mushroom scholarship!
- Irvin must stop uncritically affirming Allegro monolithically. Do like I do: list the pros and cons of any writer; what aspects they get right, and what they get wrong.
- Outside the field, everyone must stop treating “Allegro” as synonymous with mushroom scholarship, or the theory that Christianity involves mushrooms.
- Letcher-Hatsis must stop thinking that the Pop-spreading of “Allegro says”; and Irvin’s uncritical wholesale affirmation of Allegro; and Ruck’s obsession/fixation on “secret”, define the productive potential field of mushroom scholarship.
- Letcher-Hatsis must stop conflating a particular hypothesis with the entire field; stop covertly flipping back and forth between the extremely narrow, particular premise/hypothesis of “spreading via secret Amanita cult” vs. the completely broad, general question, “the extent of use of various psychoactive mushrooms in Western culture”.
- Letcher-Hatsis must dis-entangle their discussion of what are actually distinct questions; some 5-7 distinct debate-issues. List extracted from
Article title:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
Subsection title:
Conflating the Distinct Questions: Sloppy Scholars’ Game of Slip-and-Slide
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/#Conflating-the-Distinct-Questions-Sloppy-Scholars-Game-of-Slip-and-Slide
The Distinct Questions to Differentiate and Specifically Address
Section copied from “Criteria” article:
Careless entheogen scholars slip and slide among vague, shifting position on exactly what they are denying and affirming; constantly, silently changing their mind about what subject they are centrally debating about:
- The Secret Amanita Christian Cult theory?
- How knowledge & tradition spread?
- Which mushrooms?
- Just Amanita?
- All mushrooms (including Cubensis, Liberty Caps, & Amanita)?
- Mushrooms in which aspect of Christianity:
- Mushrooms in Christian art?
- Mushrooms in Christian practice?
- Mushrooms in Christian culture?
- Mushrooms in Western culture, including Ancient Near East & Mediterranean Antiquity; Hellenistic Mystery Religions & Greek mythology?
- Which genre?
- Strictly explicitly religious art?
- Broad esotericism art within Christendom?
- Strictly Biblical, or equivalent Hellenistic content as well?
The Minimalist school (“there’s never mushrooms, there’s never evidence”) is vague about:
- On what basis each of those questions is to be explained away.
- 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).
- Why some types of evidence and readings of that evidence count, but others are to be ignored and discounted: texts & art; literal depictions, stylized depictions, and depictions of effects.
- Which form-family of mushrooms to discuss: Amanita? Cubensis? Liberty Caps? This most-basic, elementary level of differentiation and discussion is completely missing from the Minimalist explainers-away; these fervent, shallow, and inarticulate wavers-of-arms.
/ end of section copied from “Criteria” article
- Letcher-Hatsis must stop writing unthinking phrases like “I find the idea totally ridiculous” – that’s the problem with Letcher-Hatsis’ approach to writing about the field’s questions, right there: *WHAT* idea; *WHICH* IDEA? You HAVE to be specific and articulate! Or else you are failing as a scholar, and even failing as a thinker.
It is *not* “the”, single, one, idea, which Letcher-Hatsis flips between identifying as “spread of secret Amanita cult”, and “use of mushrooms in Western culture”.
Like good scholars in the field of mushroom scholarship, I reject the hypothesis “spread of secret Amanita cult”, and I assert “significant use of mushrooms in Western culture.”
According to Letcher-Hatsis, no such compound position is possible, because they are one and the same question; in their Pop-shaped, overly Pop-guided thinking, “spread secret Amanita cult” is the same identical position as “mushrooms in Western culture”.
That’s why Letcher-Hatsis consistently — and PROVABLY — demonstrates ZERO SELF-AWARENESS about his continual flipping back-and-forth, silently conflating the (incorrect) “spread secret Amanita cult” position with the (correct) “mushrooms in Western culture” position.
In his sloppy, undifferentiated, Pop-guided, Pop-level thinking, — Letcher-Hatsis argues this way consistently — he assumes and takes it as granted, that if you reject the “spread secret Amanita cult” hypothesis, that’s the same thing as rejecting “mushrooms in Western culture”.
They think and reason that, because the idea of “spread secret Amanita cult” is totally ridiculous, that’s the same thing as the idea of “mushrooms in Western culture” being totally ridiculous.
According to the malformed assumption that’s latched onto (and promoted) by Letcher-Hatsis, if you assert mushrooms in Western culture, that necessarily means that you assert “spread of secret Amanita cult” — in his inchoate thinking, these two positions are the same identical position — that’s why Letcher-Hatsis never discusses or acknowledges the distinction between the two question-scopes (“spread secret Amanita cult”, vs. “mushrooms in Western Culture”).
Thus (as proof and evidence supporting my seemingly unbelievable assertions about his total lack of self-awareness of conflating the two extreme opposite-scoped questions) you have Hatsis within his video disproving Amanita, and then titling the video “I disproved mushrooms.”
Video title:
Mushroom Trees Debunked
YouTube channel:
Psychedelic Historian
Nov. 12, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrfeNp1FSUY
The clear implication in this video is that he is unaware of Liberty Cap mushrooms, and he is only aware of Amanita!
Throughout the video, I was repeatedly startled because I expected him to say ‘mushrooms’ — but instead, out of the blue, for no clear reason, he instead reached all the way, going out of his way, for the specific word ‘Amanita’ — which is, of course, a different issue!
- Issue 1: Does the image generally represent mushrooms (of any type)?
- Issue 2: If so, which specific mushrooms: eg Liberty Caps; Cubensis; or Amanita?
Who the f*ck ever asserted, that the question of “Amanita” is the same question as “mushrooms” — other than bad, sloppy, Pop thinkers? — including Letcher-Hatsis.
Letcher-Hatisis is letting sloppy Pop-thinking guide, steer, shape, and constrain his would-be scholarly analysis.
Those are two opposite extreme scopes of “the” idea, but Letcher-Hatsis conflates the two totally differently scoped questions into this single monstrous construct of his own creation, “the” idea.
This way, Letcher-Hatisis can strawman-misrepresent the entire field of “Western mushroom scholarship”, and struttingly self-promote as if he has proved something significant and contributed something significant, when in fact, the only thing Letcher-Hatsis has contributed to the field of Western mushroom scholarship, is his own confused conflation of the narrow, incorrect hypothesis “spread secret Amanita cult”, and the broad, correct hypothesis, “significant mushrooms in Western culture”.
See Also
A new see-also article just published, same day:
Influence of early anthropological theorizing on ‘entheogen’ scholarship: John Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/12/14/influence-of-early-anthropological-theorizing-on-entheogen-scholarship-john-allegro-the-sacred-mushroom/
— Great article, much-needed assessment. My comments on this article are at:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/06/idea-development-page-5/#Article-About-Allegros-Undue-Influence
Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/
Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
The Egodeath theory 