Contents:
- Differentiate Between the Field of Study, Personalities, and Theories
- Define the Field in Terms of the Topic, Not in Terms of Personalities and Their Particular Narrow Theories
- What’s Not Acceptable
- Prerequisites to contribute in this field
- Who Speaks for this Field, and Who Doesn’t
- Principles Guiding this Field
- Relevance of World Religious Mythology
- Relevance of Non-Mushroom Psychoactives
Differentiate Between the Field of Study, Personalities, and Theories
There’s a terrible conflation effort going on, to try to conflate and over-identify:
- The field of “mushrooms in Christian history“.
- Particular personalities (such as referring to the whole field and its questions as “the Allegro theory”).
- Particular theories in the field (such as “the Holy Mushroom”).
The field, personalities, and particular theories, are conflated together, reductionistically, as if debunking Allegro, or debunking Irvin’s Holy Mushroom theory, is the same thing as “debunking the field of scholarship on mushrooms in Christian history”.
I always expect Hatsis to say “mushrooms”, and instead, he reaches for the bizarrely specific term “Amanita”.
I always expect Hatsis to discuss research in the field, and instead, he reaches for the bizarrely specific word “Allegro” or “the Holy Mushroom”.
Hatsis might be doing good work within a strange other alien field, the field of “Allegro-Amanita Studies“, but what is harmful, is that he then conflates that strange, less-important speciality field, Allegro-Amanita Studies, with the other field, that’s most important: the field of Western mushroom scholarship — identifying and interpreting Psilocybe references in Hellenistic & Christendom art & texts.
I would rather say “mushroom references”, but with all these people around who are HELL-BENT on conflating the whole field with their fantasized narrow “Allegro-Amanita Studies” field that they confabulated, I have to defensively pro-actively Shut Down that misreading, explicitly countersignalling by broadcasting “Psilocybe”, where they are intent on strawmanning as “Amanita”.
I’m not very anti-Amanita, but I have to sound like I am anti-Amanita, by aggressively pushing “Psilocybe”, exactly where the Allegro-orbiters would try to strawman-misrepresent the entire field reduced down to their little miniaturized thought-world of some imagined “Allegro-Amanita studies”.
Define the Field in Terms of the Topic, Not in Terms of Personalities and Their Particular Narrow Theories
http://csp.org
Council for Spiritual Practices
The Entheogen Chrestomathy (passage excerpts) has excerpts from 4 Robert Graves’ books.
Graves is weak, understated; not forceful, punchy, outspoken, and explicit, re: mushrooms in Christianity.
Graves tiptoes around the outer periphery of the field of “Western mushroom scholarship”, under the watchful guidance of Pope Wasson.
Allegro’s 1st Edition dust jacket fold text is punchy, is largely spot-on, and that front cover has the diagrammatic (thus powerful) symbol of the Plaincourault mushroom tree.
Irvin’s reissue preserves that original powerful cover diagram art.
These Allegro-centered Irvin/ Letcher/ Hastsis books sell quite well and get high ratings from reviews. There is significant interest in the topic or scholarly research-field of mushrooms in Christian history.
Don’t allow Hatsis & the other followers of Allegro to name the field “The Holy Mushroom theory” – cringe! what is one signing-up for, employing that overly charged Irvinism? That makes the mistake of labelling an entire field, as one particular theory in the field.
I’d like more information about Wasson dissuading Graves from writing more, about Western mushroom scholarship.
“Western mushroom scholarship” is a subfield within the field of “entheogen scholarship”. Notice it’s not “the Allegro theory”, “The Holy Mushroom theory”, or other such personality-centric labels.
The field name “Western mushroom scholarship” integrates Greek & Christian; Hellenism & Christendom.
Heading
The field of Western mushroom scholarship should be topic-centered, not personality-centric.
Wasson, Allegro, Irvin, Letcher, & Hatsis all try to make the field of Western mushroom scholarship personality-centric; positively or negatively orbiting around Allegro.
Irvin, Letcher, & Hatsis all place Wasson & Allegro at the center of “the field” (as they conceptualize it) and thus they make Allegro (or “the Wasson/Allegro debate”[sic]) also set the outer boundaries that delimit and circumscribe the field, and everyone’s thought.
Regarding the field and questions of Western mushroom scholarship, everyone who orbits their thinking around Wasson, Allegro, or Irvin (whether positively or negatively) is pushing and re-entrenching The Allegro Paradigm, as if rejecting that paradigm they’ve defined and selected, is the same as rejecting the field of Western mushroom scholarship.
Heading
There is no one good to represent the field of Western mushroom scholarship.
Brinckmann, Panofsky, Wasson, Letcher, Hatsis;
Rolfe, Ramsbottom, Brightman, Graves, Allegro, Heinrich, Irvin, Ruck
— not one of them represents what the field is, and needs to be:
Psilocybe in Greek & Christian art & texts; Hellenism & Christendom.
What’s Not Acceptable
Equating pop articles about “Allegro’s theory shows that Amanita magic mushrooms are the real origin of Christianity”, with professional-level scholarship within the field.
Required Evidence Exhibits You Must Be Aware Of, to Earn a Voice/ the Podium/ a Platform/ the Mic
Like in the form of a Course Syllabus, this rulebook define the kind of field this needs to be.
Professional credentials required; a bozo filter.
Gallery: What pictorial evidence you must be aware of, to have the right to be listened to.A standard body of images to discuss, like the “curated collection” idea. You must be aware of these 200 images, before there’s any reason why anyone in this field should pay any attention to you.
What the commitments are, who the point-of-reference authors are (and are not).
To counter this awful pattern of books like Letcher’s and then Hatsis’ recent book and his planned “Conspiracy” book which sounds like an awful book concept, an exercise in debunking Allegro and thereby reaffirming that Allegro is the be-all and end-off who is definitive of the entire subject.
CANCEL YOUR GOD-FORSAKEN BOOK, IT’S GOING TO BE HORRIBLE AND HARMFUL, AN EXERCISE IN REIFYING FOLLY. I AM ALREADY WRITING A SCATHING, PANNING, CONDEMNATORY BOOK REVIEW FOR THIS BOOK THAT WON’T EXIST FOR ANOTHER TWO YEARS, BASED PURELY ON ITS TITLE.
Prerequisites to contribute in this field
Read 3 of 4 issues of Mark Hoffman’s Entheos Journal.
Read some Ruck – ideally w/ my caveats in my review of his overview book mistitled as “Consciousness”.
Be aware of the long list of books about ahistoricity of religious founder figures. Don’t make statements about whether Jesus existed, if you aren’t even aware of these book titles — you’d just demonstrate your ignorance and lack of credibility. Any ignorant, unread fool can proclaim on the matter, while oblivious to the existence of these books. You have to earn your right to be listened to on this topic. Otherwise “you won’t be taken seriously” [define that phrase].
Who Speaks for this Field, and Who Doesn’t
Anyone who uses phrases such as “the Allegro theory” (equating & grossly mis-crediting Allegro with the topic of Western mushroom scholarship) has no credibility and is an outsider and cannot, does not, represent this field.
Anyone whose thinking places Amanita & Allegro in the center of this field is an imposter and should be treated as a rank member of the public, regardless of how much research they’ve done on other psychoactives history.
Wasson might be an authority on something — I don’t know what — but he has nothing to contribute, except confusion and ambiguous, evasive doubletalk, regarding mushrooms in Christianity.
Principles Guiding this Field
Relevance of World Religious Mythology
Relevance of Non-Mushroom Psychoactives
- policy for % emphasis:
- Samorini re: Strains of Ergot at Eleusis in Kykeon
- Peripheral; out of scope; can be brought in but with uinderstanding they are outside the domain of explanation — like fantastical non-psychedelic mushrooms may figure into the art.
- We hold that they did use cannabis products like Chris Bennett asserts; but, that’s not our focus. We are dedicated to Psilocybe and its specific effects and how those classic psychedelic effects are described by mythemes.
- Assume that users (through the Early Modern era) had full control of dosage and redosing.
- The great benefits of these simplifying, enabling, foundational assumptions outweigh the minor, incidental costs/inaccuracy.
Heading
John Allegro is irrelevant. The only articles this field needs about Allegro, are about how Allegro is irrelevant. Take down his portrait.
Take down the framed portrait of Pope Wasson.
For mushrooms in Greek & Christian religion, Wasson is irrelevant; is extremely compromised by his close relationship with the Pope; is purely harmful; and stole credit and limelight from Graves.
Robert Graves is the real brains behind the operation, when it comes to mushrooms in religion, including mushrooms in Greek religion.
The best starting point — put up his framed portrait — is Robert Graves.
Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments : An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Tom Roberts & Paula Jo Hruby
https://csp.org/docs/indexhttp://www.csp.org/chrestomathy/https://archive.org/search.php?query=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.csp.org%2Fchrestomathy%2F
Search the Chrestomathy for Robert Graves to read some of Graves’ 83 pages on the topic.
Religion and psychoactive sacraments: A bibliographic guide
January 1, 1995
http://amzn.com/1889725005
search Robert Graves entheogen kykeon
Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion
Thomas Roberts (Editor), 2001
The CSP Entheogen Project Series, 3
by Stanislav Grof (Author), Huston Smith (Author), Albert Hofmann (Author), Charles T. Tart (Author), Alexander T. Shulgin (Author), Mike Young (Author), & 4 more
http://amzn.com/1889725021
The Pharsalus Bas-Relief and the Eleusinian Mysteries
Samorini
https://www.samorini.it/doc1/sam/pharsal.htm
https://www.samorini.it/doc1/sam/sam-1998-ter-pharsalus.pdf
https://www.amazon.com.au/Entheogens-Myth-Human-Consciousness-Carl-ebook/dp/B00BSEQOPW “This book reviews the 20th Century history of the reception of the Entheogen theory of religion. Ruck shows how Wasson told Robert Graves to self-censor Graves’ 1950s discovery of mushrooms as the foundation of Greek myth and initiation religion. Ruck’s work, if extrapolated to the maximum, shows that religion comes strictly through visionary …” <– who wrote???
Book:
Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness
Carl Ruck, Mark Hoffman
http://amzn.com/1579511414
January 8, 2013
My review:
Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness (Ruck & Hoffman)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/entheogens-myth-and-human-consciousness/
The Egodeath theory 