Michael wrote:
>>>http://www.egodeath.com/acharyaschristconspiracyreview.htm
>>>[Acharya] discusses the Jesus figure as specifically a personification of
the Amanita cap, as one thematic source [of the Jesus figure].
Dave wrote:
>>This sounds like a rehash of John Allegro's _Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_.
What about her take on this sets her apart from Allegro?
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of
Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East
John Allegro
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340128755
1970
Includes my review of Allegro's book, showing my general evaluation of his
theory that Jesus was none other than a personification of the mushroom.
Acharya, Allegro, and Freke have all written about no-historical-Jesus and
about the use of visionary plants in religion. Of these, Allegro most closely
connects the subject of entheogens and no-Jesus, while Freke seems to least
connect the two subjects.
http://www.egodeath.com/frekeenthnofreewill.htm — 4 of the 6 pages on
visionary plants, from Freke's book "Spiritual Traditions/Encyclopedia of
Spirituality: Essential Teachings to Transform Your Life"
(
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080699844X)
Acharya favorably supports Allegro. However, the main proposal of Allegro's
book is that Jesus was none other than the mushroom. In contrast, Acharya's
book has only the following references to visionary plants, and does not
integrate them into its main proposal, which is that early Christianity was
first of all a metaphorical allegory, grounded in the ordinary state of
consciousness, ultimately referring to the literal, physical planets — a
conception that is typical of the 19th-Century fashion of demythologizing.
____________________
The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Acharya S
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932813747
Sep. 1999
Page – theme
114 – Osiris as plant of truth eaten in communion
186 – venom inebriation to induce prophetic and hallucinatory trances
203 – datura, opium, 'wine' with spices – in sacred king tradition
270 – eating sweet scrolls followed by visions in Ezekiel & Revelation, "it
has been suggested that these scrolls represented hallucinogenic drugs, which
were commonly used in mystery schools and secret societies."
275-276 – introduction to the sex and drugs section. 'God-given' sacramental
drugs as avenue to the divine, paths to "God" or Cosmic Consciousness, gifts
from "God", to create union with the divine, use of drugs as part of the
esoteric religious or "mysteries", these "sacraments" constituted a
significant part of the mysteries, many schools and cults used drugs in their
initiation rites, there have been a number of pro-drug rituals, esoteric
Judaism and Christianity used these rites and rituals; need to utilize these
powerful devices wisely, the "instruction manual" of initiation, entheogens as
generating God.
Disparages "the potent extracted chemicals causing such turmoil today".
293-295 – main section on drugs. Strong defense of ancient widespread
tradition of visionary plants ("opium, cannabis, hashish, sacred plants,
herbs, amanita, fungi") in religious practice. Plants as teaching-gods, for
initiation, spiritual physicians, Therapeuts, medicinal herbs. Alcohol is
"truly drugging and stupefying, whereas entheogens, including the "magic
mushroom, " have the ability to increase awareness and acuity". "Much of the
world's sacred literature incorporated the mushroom in an esoteric manner"…
"manna from heaven" as psychedelic.
"In fact, Allegro's suggestion that "Jesus" was a mushroom god is not
implausible, considering how widespread was the pre-Christian Jesus/Salvation
cult and how other cultures depict their particular entheogens as "teachers"
and "gods." However, this mushroom identification would represent merely one
aspect of the Jesus myth and Christ conspiracy, which, as we have seen,
incorporated virtually everything at hand, including sex and drugs, widely
perceived in pre-Yahwist, pre-Christian cultures as being "godly."" – p. 294
____________________
Dave wrote:
>>I felt Allegro made way too much out of way too little real evidence.
The construct "real evidence" is problematic; facts are theory-dependent. A
smoking gun according to one interpretive framework is non-evidence according
to a competing interpretive framework.
When Allegro's book is considered within an interpretive framework that is
only now beginning to form — the maximal entheogen theory of religion — and
considered together with all the other books on entheogens and religion, and
with all the other books on no-historical-Jesus, according to that
interpretive framework, there is more than enough evidence for Jesus' being
none other than the personification of visionary plants, metaphorized as
'manna', 'bread from heaven', and 'mixed wine'.
Most entheogen scholars assume uncritically the historicity of Jesus and crew.
In contrast, no-Jesus scholars commonly accept the entheogen theory of the
origin of religion. I'm almost alone in instead promoting the entheogen
theory of perennial philosophy in general, which is far more extreme than the
entheogen theory of the mere origin long-ago of religion.
Timothy Freke and I are in nearly complete agreement about what I consider the
key aspects of religion and perennial philosophy. However, he has said that
we lack evidence for visionary plants in early Christianity, though he devoted
6 entire large pages to entheogens.
John A. wrote:
>I have suspected for some time that the basic Christian myth was
>acted out in rites by the converts and initiates. I think that
>when "Paul" says, "We have died, been buried, raised, and ascended
>with Christ"(paraphrase) that it is indicating that this cosmic drama
>was acted out by the converts in secret mystery rites. We know about
>baptism/death, so why should the other mythical deeds of the redeemer
>have no reenactment? I think that the experience of participating in
>these secret rites is the shared background knowledge between writer
>and audience in the Pauline writings (rather than knowledge of an
>historical person).
>
>I have posted about this in the past, but must admit that thus far it
>has fallen short of proof. However, I think that Michael Hoffman
>would concur, with the addition that the participants partook of
>hallucinogenic drugs to enhance the mystical experience. (Michael,
>please correct me if I have misstated your position).
I would not say 'enhance', but rather, 'induce'. The perennial philosophy is
based on the ongoing wellspring of mystic experiencing induced by visionary
plants. This is true for the Mystery Religions, Gnosticism, Christianity, and
Judaism in the Greco-Roman era, as well as Persian and Egyptian religion, all
of them being superficially different metaphor-systems describing the same
realm of experiencing, the mystic state of consciousness.
Only the modern loss of the integrated use of visionary plants in religion,
and therefore the loss of the key to the conceptual metaphorical language of
mystic experiental insight, causes scholars to assume that there are
significant divides and differences between Greco-Roman Christianity,
Gnosticism, Mystery Religions, and Judaism.
Scholars publish tomes struggling to figure out whether one derived from the
other, but the short answer is that a wide variety of different metaphor
systems mutually influenced each other easily, because they all were rooted in
the same garden, the mystic state of consciousness, routinely administered as
a series of initiations ergonomically producing a change from the uninitiated
mental worldmodel to the fully initiated mental worldmodel.
>There is nothing implausible in the above. We know Christianity
>started as a mystery religion, and that mystery religions had secret
>rites that were guarded from outsiders. We know that other mystery
>religions acted out their divine dramas, so why not Christianity? The
>use of drugs is much less certain, although not impossible. Maybe
>Acharya and Allegro are onto something.
Freke hasn't explicitly addressed that particular question in writing — the
connection between no-Jesus and the use of visionary plants in early
Christianity — otherwise, I would add "and Freke". Talking with him, I did
confirm my take on the strangeness of the passage in the book _The Jesus
Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the
Gospel of Jesus Christ_, about the ancients having been lightweights with
their 'mixed wine'. He wrote that the ancients had a different physiology
than us moderns.
— Michael Hoffman
The Egodeath theory 