good news I talked it through on Egodeath Mystery show while reading this page aloud on April 20, 2022 and have a clear definition spelling out about three components of my October 2002 definition of maximal versus moderate positions
the only thing lacking in that announcement was giving more examples of Mythology Interpretation then ahistoricity
and now I can summarize better than those postings that the way that the Moderate entheogen theory thinks about mythology is low physical object; spot the physical 🍄 object, Mushroom object = Jesus.
I did , back then, elaborate a sophisticated levels of different senses in which ahistoricity of Jesus figure
but now I have a cleaner simpler summary, both of the two different levels of saying “mythological Jesus”, and more broadly the two different levels of saying “mythology describes visionary plants”.
Interesting realization is that the field of entheogen scholarship has always been an add-on a solution to the field of esotericism and mythology and religious Mythology and mysticism.
The Field of entheogen scholarship has never been about isolated question of visionary plants or a dispute about just the quantity of visionary plants in historical periods; it has also different theories of mythology interpretation.
by my demanding a more sophisticated Interpretation of Mythology than the moderate position is able to articulate, I am in effect demanding that you meet these qualifications to be allowed into the Maximal position:
you have to include my 1988 or 1997 core theory of possibilism versus eternalism as the true referent of mythology, that describes not just visionary plants, but experiences from the plants, specifically, loose cognitive association transforming the mental model from A to B, with adequate specifics.
you cannot be a Maximal entheogen theorist without recognizing that the people before us interpreted Mythology as description of this particular mental transformation.
I not only disagree and say that it was the majority of people, but also, together with that, I provide a far more sophisticated explanation of the kind of analogy mythology that this majority held.
then also distinctly, we have the question about
the Moderate position holds that *some kind of* analogy Mythology was held by a minority of people, together with the sheer use of visionary plants by a minority of people. How many people used plants, and which interpretation of mythology did they hold:
Summary
the Minimalists say little plants use, and literalist.
the Moderates say minor plants use, and crude analogy.
the Maximal position says major plants use, and sophisticated analogy.
it is this combination of change of understanding which made it difficult to clearly articulate the exact difference between the Maximal versus Moderate entheogen theory of religion.
it is a matter of quantity and quantity
we have a dispute about both the quantity and quality:
Carl Ruck & the Moderate paradigm estimates too low of a quantity, of both plants and mythology understanding on the part of the people before us in the middle ages;
and Carl rock also brings too low of a quality, of his own understanding of mythology, and his reading of how the people before us, our ancestors who used the visionary plants:
how did they interpret mythology and analogy?
What was their quality of understanding- was it merely that Jesus = 🍄 object?
Or, per the Maximal, sophisticated understanding of mythology, which includes our understanding of how our forebears understood Mythology as describing the experiential shift to loose cognition, causing a particular transformation of the model of self and world regarding control and possibility branching.
entheogen scholarship has always been, from day one, about how people interpreted mythology in the past.
but the Moderate position has always had –
but the Moderate Entheogen Theory of Religion has always had a poor conception of Mythology, as describing the physical plants as objects,
whereas my Maximal entheogen theory of religion has always had a sophisticated understanding of how earlier people used mythology to describe the experiences that result from the visionary plants.
I did make this point in 2002, but I also had many too levels of ahistoricity that I discussed too many levels, you could say.
and I lacked any specifics on mythemes other than that, although I did say broadly mythological thinking, but unfortunately the only example I gave was ahistoricity,
and I talked about how the moderate position says Jesus is a personification of the physical Mushroom object
and I also correctly said that the Maximal Entheogen Theory Religion Instead held that Jesus life (as Max Freakout described to Kafei) is a description of the experiencing of the altered state from visionary plants.
The shortcomings of the announcement posting of 2002 and 2003 are that :
I provided too many different versions of the ahistoricity of founder figures in general
and that I did not yet possess my catalog of mytthemes other than the founder figure the life of Jesus
I only covered that indirectly , what would become my catalog of all key mythemes all the key mythemes by only providing an abstract broad Statement
but the 2003 shortcoming was that I was not able to articulate examples other than seven different versions of ahistoricity eg aHistorical Jesus, (In the case of Christianity).
see my announcement page regarding Maximal Entheogens Theory of Religion at this website
but also imagine clarifying it to make it tighter definition of maximal Versus Moderate Position
and also a good coverage of the minimal Position
one suprising realization is that John allegro as well as Terence McKenna are the examples of the Minimal entheogens Theory position or explanatory framework or theory Within the Field of entheogens Scholarship
and allegro makes it confusing: he gives the appearance that he is moderate entheogen theory advocate, by including in a self-contradictory way the Plaincourault fresco
and also a Development today April 20, 2022 is that I proved that Jan Irvin, Against Allegro, holds the moderate entheogen theory
The proof of that is that irvin re-instated
the planegirl Friscobecause
The proof of that is that irvin re-instated the planegirl Frisco
Jan Irvin re- added the Plaincourault fresco and maybe text about it restored back into a John Allegro’s book after Allegra had removed it
Allegro definitely removed the picture according to Thomas Hatsis (the great historian of psychedelics) but I don’t know if allegro also removed his text from his book, text mentioning the planecrawl fresco and whether Jan Irvin added that text back in again.
So a couple things are going on here is
for one thing, I’m at identifying why my 2003 articulation of maximal Versus Moderate theories was not clear enough for future-me to understand, and
it was challenging to specify exactly how it fell short of what it needs to be
it defined too many positions about the particular Mythology Interpretation of Historycity of Jesus when it really should have defined two or maybe three positions at most
and it did not provide any examples of mythology as description of the experiences from plants other than cataloging seven different versions of Jesus ahistoricity
So now I am positioned to write a clearer and more focused and announcement and give more broader examples of just two different ways of interpreting Mythology on the part of entheogen scholars, along with back-attributing how the people before us interpreted Mythology
the moderate school Carl Ruck says, and John allegro the minimal school says, that the people before us interpreted Mythology : that Jesus is the personification of the physical Amanita as an object.
in contrast, my maximal school says that the people before us interpreted myth as describing loose cog experiential transformation as referent of mythemes such as:
the life of Jesus that is, the death of Jesus as describing, and the judgment of him, & the last cup, and fastened to the cross, and buried in the rock, and reborn from the rock tomb, and miracles: handling snakes without dying; interpreting foreign languages; you shall do even greater miracles.
as the Maximal theorist, I reveal how the people before us interpreted Mythology and mythemes, as description of the experiences that are produced from visionary plants not the plants themselves as the ultimate referent.
What Carl rock had in the book the Apples of aPaulo amounts to a certain low kind of analogy understanding, as cyberdisciple has noted in his webpages, by Rucks applying a mixture of crude anthropology theories of mythology. and Carl rock brought knowledge of visionary plants in history.
then what I brought to the game what I brought to the table was a different overlap in 1999 I brought my core theory which is possible as in versus eternalism and autonomous Control Premise Versus dependent Control Premise and I did not bring analogy Mythology and History and I did bring sort of visionary plants experience but not the history of visionary plants what I brought was the understanding of the
Cognitive loosening effects that are produced by a visionary plants which Carl Ruck does not bring so even where we overlap I bring something very different than the moderate school
you cannot simply say that both of us covered visionary plants in the year 2001 when I read their disappointing Moderate entheogen paradigm book, Apples of Apollo.
it would be interesting to analyze how is Dr. Jerry Brown closer to my view of today or of 2001 , how is his book The Psychedelic Gospels more fulfilling to my expectations that I held in 2001 than the Carl Ruck school’s Moderate theory book, apples of Apollo.
like snake rock king wine Branching nonbranching vine fruit of the vine equals gnosis Transcendent and Knowledge this fool Rich catalog of methane mapping to transcend a knowledge this is how we maximal entheogens theorist understand mythology and also this is how we recognize the people before us who invented this mythology this catalog mythemes how they understood them, not in a crude physical childish way where mytheme X equals physical object Y, Like Moderate Carl rock and the Minimalist John Allegro.
sometimes in the past few days (or months, or decades) , I’ve put the emphasis on how much does the moderate position grasp esoteric analogy or a historicity or a complete mental model transformation
at other times, I have said that the distinction between maximal versus moderate is entirely simply a matter of the narrow Question to what extent christian middle ages knew about and used visionary plants.
then that view uses, or feeds into the idea of the Forgot Plot
the idea of the forgot plot is the premise that the maximal, moderate, and even the minimal views all agree about the endpoints being upper left and lower right
but they only disagree about the middle ages.
what did people –
which of Elaine Pagels’ clusters of ideas did people hold during christian middle ages ?
what percentage of people held the gnostic set of views versus the orthodox set of views?
and among those set of views is use of visionary plants, as well as ahistoricity, or apathy about Mr. Historical Jesus, and also, were they fluent in the language of Mythemese?
The Carl Ruck school says that in the middle ages, this set of gnostic views was half forgotten, yet largely present.
notice how here I am focusing on the question about visionary plants, but like my March 2003 posting I am also combining the view or our estimate of the view held by people in the middle ages
I am combining their view regarding visionary plants, together with the idea that they are inclined to understand analogy and metaphor and myth describing the Altered State.
like “the Gnostics” , according to Elaine Pagles’ first three books (jon writings; the Gnostic paul; the gnostic gospels) vs “the Orthodox”,
together with “exoteric versus esoteric” per Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy ‘s book The Jesus Mysteries.
aka “Psychics” vs “Pneumatics”;
aka per me 1986 “egoic vs transcendent”.
so the Forgot Plot that’s drawn by Carl Ruck school, which is the annoying frustrating book, the Apples of aPaulo in December 2000, authored by the anonymous committee consisting of Carl Ruck and Clark Heinrich and M. Hoffman.
The scope of that book is explicitly Greek and Christian.
The visionary plant advocated by that book I think is amanita, I guess.
(Minimal here would be Terence McKenna) noticed this position is not the tea total denial position except maybe it’s a T total denial that middle ages Christianity had visionary plants as defined here the minimal position the minimal entheogen theory religion asserts that religion did begin from visionary plants but was quickly forgotten so in this sense John allegro is a minimal entheogen theory advocate but probably Jan Irving his number one fan boy does not take that narrow view cyber disciple Points out in his analysis of John allegros relevance that allegro had much to particular and I add fleeting views it only the first generation ad used visionary plants and knew about them
but I don’t think Jan Irving takes that same position; I assume that Irving pictures that 🍄 use continuing into the middle ages
that the forgot plot starts in the upper left we’re along time ago everyone used visionary plants and then all three parties agree that today no religion uses visionary plants.
In distinguishing the Maximal Versus Moderate entheogen theories, the emphasis is not- well there are two different emphases, maybe;
we are emphasizing what the moderate people believe, or ,
we are emphasizing what the entheogens scholrs believe that the Christians of the middle ages believed.
and in 2003 I extended this to be general to all world religions: look at the way that the moderate entheogen theory advocate thinks about how other people thought during the middle part of their religious history.
if you think that knowledge of visionary plants was 50% forgotten by Christians in the Middle Ages, and that comprehension of metaphor and analogy was 50% forgotten by the middle ages, then you are a moderate entheogen theorist.
but how does that position relate to Amanita Madness? (extreme overemphasis on presumed use of Amanita, at the expense of perceiving Psilocybin).
Entheogen scholars who fully understand mythemes and visionary plants draw a high Forgot Plot in the middle ages which is to say they tend to assume or perceive that the knowledge was not forgotten during the middle ages but was very alive and well
the knowledge of visionary plants and the understanding of religious Mythology as metaphor describing the effects of the visionary plants to reveal our dependence of control on the creator who created our near-future control thoughts a million years ago.
A different definition of the moderate position is : those entheogen theorist/scholars who study esotericism (but not adequately), and who use psychoactive’s (but not adequately) and they aren’t good enough, effective enough psychoactives to force a mental transformation.
The Egodeath theory 