Erwin Panofsky’s Secret Pair of Letters to Gordon Wasson, Exposed

Michael Hoffman, May 11, 2022 7:47 pm UTC+0

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Contents:

• Intro
• Entheogens in Christian art: Wasson, Allegro, and the Psychedelic Gospels
• The Ardent Psychedelic Gospels Theory
• See Also

Intro

A major milestone event in the field of entheogen scholarship is Brown & Brown’s recent 2019 expose publishing the secret pair of letters (sans 2 plates) from Panofsky to Wasson.

We are in the Post-Publishing era of entheogen scholarship now that Brown June 1, 2019 has published the suppressed pair of letters from Panofsky to Wasson, which Wasson tried to hide and censor and cover-up the extreme impotence and brazen self-contradiction of Panosfky’s manifestly embarrassingly poor and weak argumentation and total lack of art historians’ treatment of the problem-for-them mushroom trees & mushroom imagery all throughout Christian art.

Wasson hid the flimsy citation of Brinckmann’s book which Panofsky, in both censored letters, described as “little”.

Wasson lectured and insulted mycologists for not consulting art historians, while simultaneously censoring Panofsky’s citation of Brinckmann’s embarrassingly weak & thin treatment. https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/brinckmann-mushroom-trees-asymmetrical-branching/

The lead Mycologist, John Ramsbottom, demolished and exposed Wasson’s bad-faith, committed-skeptic admission, without Wasson finding out for 17 years, 1953-1970. Poetic justice!

http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm 54-page article written prior to Browns’ revelation, pre-Publication of the secret pair of censored, covered-up letters which reveal the totally flimsy case and specious argument that the art historians crowed and bragged about while doing a psychopathic level of insulting, abusing, & smearing, of Mycologists & artists alike.

The 2006 article accuses Wasson of withholding scholarly citations, withholding any details of art historians’ alleged treatment of mushroom trees.

The article should be subtitled “Citation Frickin Needed!! (& Withheld by Wasson the Anti-Scholar Obstructionist to Investigating Mushrooms in the History of Our Society)”.

I knew that Panofsky’s massive huge claims surely must be accompanied by what the first thing any scholar would do: give citations.

Panofsky cited Brinckmann’s book and provided two images, which Wasson misleadingly suppressed, a repeated set of lying by omission, omitting many relevant aspects of Panofsky’s pair of letters.

Gordon Wasson misrepresented Panofsky’s pair of letters, and withheld Panofsky’s poor argumentation, and weak, totally unconvincing evidence that would get people to pursue asking more questions about the additional, exposed examples of mushroom trees.

Omit art, call people insults in text only, to prop up the art historians’ indefensible denial of the self-evident.

“This whole thing stinks, something is fishy!”, I said in 2006 , “Any art historian making such a massive claim would provide citations.

So why doesn’t Wasson provide citations and demand citations from the top art historian scholar??!! This stinks; I smell a rat!”

Deceit & misrepresentation to mislead the world away from the OBVIOUS mushroom referent, but even the Editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism, Robert M. Price, in his inadequate attention, fell for Wasson’s deception propaganda.

Entheogens in Christian art: Wasson, Allegro, and the Psychedelic Gospels

Abstract:

“In light of new historical evidence regarding ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson’s correspondence with art historian Erwin Panofsky, this article provides an in-depth analysis of the presence of entheogenic mushroom images in Christian art within the context of the controversy between Wasson and philologist John Marco Allegro over the identification of a Garden of Eden fresco in the 12th century Chapel of Plaincourault in France.

“It reveals a compelling financial motive for Wasson’s refusal to acknowledge that this fresco represents Amanita muscaria, as well as for Wasson’s reluctance to pursue his hypothesis regarding the entheogenic origins of religion into Christian art and artifacts.

“While Wasson’s view – that the presence of psychoactive mushrooms in the Near and Middle East ended around 1000 BCE – prevailed and stymied research on entheogens in Christianity for decades, a new generation of 21st century researchers has documented growing evidence of A. muscaria and psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Christian art, consistent with ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini’s typology of mushroom trees.

“This article presents original photographs, taken during fieldwork at churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and the Middle East, that confirm the presence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art: in frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, and stained glass windows.

“Based on this iconic evidence, the article proposes a psychedelic gospels theory and addresses critiques of this theory by art historians, ardent advocates*, medieval historians, and conservative Catholics.

“It calls for the establishment of an Interdisciplinary Committee on the Psychedelic Gospels to independently evaluate the growing body of evidence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art in order to resolve a controversial question regarding the possible role of entheogens in the history and origins of Christianity.” – Brown & Brown

The Ardent Psychedelic Gospels Theory

Brown defines the psychedelic Gospels theory in a extremely basic way, that:

Early and medieval Christians got their inspiration experiences from visionary plants.

not a trace of limitation, restriction, reduction, the Suppression paradigm, the 1970 Allegro/Ruck “secret underground suppressed forgotten hidden encoded” paradigm that Allegro/Ruck, the Dr. Secret Amanita team emphasizes.

Brown silently sneaks in the word ‘all’ by the striking notable lack of any restrictive qualifiers which is Carl rut’s signature move.

It doesn’t make sense for Brown to speak in terms of the Ardent Advocates “arguing against” the psychedelic Gospels Theory.

Brown is a closeted Ardent Advocate agreeing with me and Jan Irvin and John Rush: the Maximal entheogen theory – the Normalcy theory of entheogens, rather than the Suppression theory of entheogens.

The dispute over the vial or blurry images is merely a dispute among the Ardent Advocates, who all hold & assert the psychedelic gospels theory.

in the aftermath of this article, the distinction, the false dichotomy between the psychedelic gospels theory “versus” the Ardent Advocates collapsed.

That false distinction was just a stance, a ploy, a marketing move, trying to strategy give the appearance that you should prefer the psychedelic gospels theory because it’s not crazy like these guys who go too far.

Brown artificially tried to depict Jan Irvin and John Rush and Egodeath.com (pride of place listed first in the section Ardent Advocates 🎉) as bad guys who go too far, to steer people away from asserting too many mushrooms, a strategy of sending people to the psychedelic gospels theory instead of to the Ardent Advocates, who see too many mushrooms.

Brown set up a false dichotomy by listing Ardent Advocates as an opposing position to the psychedelic gospels theory.

Brown tried to sell the psychedelic gospels theiry as a Moderate, ie compromised, self-canceling, diminutive theory, just like Allegro/Ruck’s Suppression paradigm.

Brown tried to side with the those who emphasize the absence of mushrooms, who hold that entheogen use was 1/10 of 1%, of secret underground hidden Suppressed rare abnormal deviant users, which is the Allegro/Ruck 1970 paradigm.

The psychedelic gospels theory is a fundamentally different paradigm, that entheogen use was mainstream and normal and not hidden and Suppressed, in early & medieval Christianity.

The psychedelic gospels theory is grouped with the Ardent Advocates, against the Dr. Secret Amanita team.

Anyone, no matter how ardent, who asserts that Christians got their inspiration from visionary plants automatically affirms the psychedelic gospels theory, as it is simply defined by Brown.

I don’t really think it works the way Brown tried to include the ardent Advocates in the list of positions/people that they’re defending the psychedelic Gospels Theory against.

There are particular disagreements between people, but it is not the case that John Rush rejects the psychedelic gospels theory.

Same with Jan Irvin and me.

it was just a lax approach to list ardent advocates as though they disagreed, in a list of people who disagree with the psychedelic gospels theory.

Irvin & Rush & I don’t deny the psychedelic gospels theory.

Brown screwed up by using the serrated base to falsely reject the deliberately Amanita-styled vial as intending amanita; this is a detail correction, not a theory rejection, & Brown needs to be a more ardent advocate than in 2019 by adding the Mytheme theory of analogical psychedelic eternalism.

Irvin was largely right, Brown largely erred; both were incomplete. The tapestry means a vial styled as Amanita, with vial proportions.

Browns’ theory is right but not ardent enough to fit the data & provide coherent, complete interpretation. – Cybermonk

“yeah, your poor little pictures & that little, 1906 book by Albert Erich Brinckmann aint gonna do the trick; i’ll pass, and resort to intimidation, posturing, & name-calling insults, pressure tactics, instead of revealing your evidence for critical consideration, which isn’t going to go our way.

And your branch-omitting argument just raises too many questions and invites investigation, which we are striving to head off.

I’ll handle this.

We’ve already let on too much, by exposing the fact of hundreds of mushrooms trees, which is liable to backfire on us, big-time.” – rgw

OSC-limited old fogie Robert M. Price, who uses the Prohibitionists’ lingo “hallucinogens”, disrespected Acharya S’ Allegro-favorable view as “a bit of pot-smoking hippie apologetics”, and Price was all too eager to lap up the Panofsky->Asson Prohibition-compliant horsesht claim that mushroom imagery in Christian art doesn’t connote mushrooms.

No coincidence that Price’s out-of -touch, squaresville (ordinary-state-based only) wife Carol Price wrote a clueless, psychedelics-free book about Rush lyrics.

These out of touch people, selectively “critical thinkers”, are exactly the kinds of half-attentive people that Wasson knew that he could fool, because of their biased presuppositions.

Wasson knows that we know he’s manifestly blowing smoke just in the exact same way as he just discussed with Eliade regarding arbitrary, prejudiced assumptions and baseless, intensely biased assertions about shamanism.

See Also

Site Map > Panofsky per Wasson
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#Panofsky