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What is “the Wasson thesis”? Lash gives an extreme, Maximal definition, allegedly supported by an endnote, but the endnote actually presents a much weaker definition.
Ingestion of plants is the origin of all genuine religious experience.
Lash p 220, citing the supporting endnote 223
Religious experience originated from ingestion of plants.
Lash, endnote 223 on p 337
John Lash’s book Not in His Name, Sep 2021 2nd Edition
photographic proof that p 220 asserts that that extreme, maximal assertion is “the Wasson thesis”:
To supposedly support that claim that that is “the Wasson thesis”, Lash gives endnote 223 on p 377:
photographic proof that endnote 223 on p 377 does NOT support, but CONTRADICTS AND greatly SOFTENS p 220’s claim of what “the Wasson thesis” is:
The endnote does NOT support Lash’s false claim that Wasson asserted the maximal entheogen theory of religion per p 220.
p 337 proves that p 220 asserts a highly overgenerous, FALSE DEFINITION of “the Wasson thesis”.
According to my definition of my theory (part of the Egodeath theory) which I call the maximal entheogen theory of religion, including the maximal entheogen theory of Christianity, including the maximal psilocybin theory of Christianity (which in NO SENSE “comes from” Wasson or “comes from” Allegro: nor “comes from” from the Ruck committee!): my theory: the maximal entheogen theory of religion / maximal entheogen theory of Christianity / maximal psilocybin theory of Christianity –
MY THEORY COMES *FROM ME*, *NOT* “FROM WASSON” OR “FROM RUCK” OR “FROM ALLEGRO”!
In fact, the reason that I had to invent the maximal entheogen theory of religion is precisely because the Ruck committee (including coauthor Wasson) failed to be so generous, and they provided only a failure and a loser of a negative, minimizing, very stingy theory.
It was specifically in retaliation & rebellion against the Ruck committee’s stinginess, the fact that people like Wasson et al precisely did not provide this Maximal, generous, greedy theory (as greedy as Lash p. 220), *I* had to provide and invent this Maximal theory, in Oct 2002, in fervent opposition against Wasson’s stingy, bad negative, minimizing view!
The maximal entheogen theory of religion, ie the Cybermonk thesis, in contrast to the actual Wasson thesis, and against Ruck, is:
The main source, by far, of the intense mystic altered state at the beginning of all religions and throughout the history of all religions – pointedly including Christianity – is psychedelics.
Medieval Christianity did NOT abandon, forget, or suppress entheogens, as Wasson, Ruck, Graves, Rush, McKenna, etc. assert.
When we take this adopt this explanatory framework, we become able to perceive massive evidence for the mainline & heavy (not sidelined & minor) presence of entheogens in hellenistic and Christian religion, in support of this hypothesis, thus corroborating this hypothesis.
Religious mythology is recognized as evidence describing by analogy classic psilocybin (psychedelic, psycholytic, loose cognitive association) effects, including eventual transformation of the mental worldmodel from possibilism with autonomous control ({branching}) to eternalism with dependent control ({nonbranching}).
People lie when they claim that “the traditional methods of the mystics”, or zen meditation, is something other than Psilocybin and suchlike visionary plants.
The name of my theory, the maximal entheogen theory of religion, came together October 2002 and March 2003 and in the months after that I eventually literally crafted my phrase from variants, “the maximal entheogen theory of religion”.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/announcement-the-maximal-entheogen-theory-of-religion/ has links to eg oct 2002 & mar 2003 announcements of the maximal entheogen theory of religion ie:
October 16, 2002
Subject: Entheogen use constant in religion
6 pages: https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-23/#message1162
full article: John Lash
Wasson and Company: The Entheogenic Theory of Religion
https://web.archive.org/web/20110612022630/http://www.metahistory.org/psychonautics/Wasson/WassonAndCo.php –
“Although there are important antecedents, the argument for the entheogenic basis of religion can be said to have been formally launched by R. Gordon Wasson in his book, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.
“Initially, due in part to the influence of his Russian wife, Valentina, Wasson posited the existence of a prehistorical shamanic mushroom cult in the Ural mountains.
“He sought to prove that the natural sacrament and inebriant of this cult was the fly-agaric, amanita muscaria, which he identified with the Vedic inebriant, soma.
“Variations of the Wasson thesis, including some considerable extrapolations and departures from it, have been advanced by John Allegro, Ralph Metzner, James Arthur, Terence McKenna, Benny Shannon, Jim de Korne, and many others.”
x https://web.archive.org/web/20110611235620/http://metahistory.org/psychonautics/Psychonautics1.php
bottom has malformed treatment of serpent and egodeath: https://web.archive.org/web/20111019035124/http://metahistory.org/gnostique/telestics/SheafWheat.php –
“Contact with the Light does it, every time.
“The entheogenic brew taken at Eleusis does not induce the state of consciousness for encountering the Light, it merely removes what blocks reception to it (recall the novel syntax, above) — namely, ego-fixation, self-concern, and the illusion of separation.
“Egodeath and rapturous surrender to the living sensorium of the natural world are the hallmarks of Gnostic practice.
“This is as far from the hype of the God/Self equation as you can get, yet nothing is more divine than standing in the presence of the Organic Light.
para brk
“Telestai who underwent egodeath and entered full-body trance often represented their experience in serpentive imagery, because the Mystery Light engages Kundalini, the Serpent Power.
“Gnostic writings refer to the Divine Sophia having serpent form, like DNA.
“Kundalini is a kind of labile extract of the Organic Light, Sophia’s opalescent current deposited in the human organism.
“In shamanic trance, the initiate often encounters a magical Serpent who can appear externally, an independent entity, as well as internally, a serpentine organism that stretches from head to bowels.
“Cecrops, Hero, O King, Thou who at thy feet art serpent-shaped,” intones the Greek poet (cited by Jane Ellen Harrison in Themis, a rich repository of Mystery lore).
“In a famous image, Demeter hands the “divine child” of the Mysteries to Cecrops, the serpentine man who represents the lineage of male shrine-guardians at Eleusis.
“Cecrops holds in his left hand the sheaf of sacramental grain, and gestures with his right hand, finger to his lips to indicate the status of the mystes: “a sheaf of wheat in silence reaped.”
“The dual form of Cecrops, human above and serpent below, represents fusion of the human body with the serpent power of the Divine Mother, embrace of the most exquisite tenderness.
“The initates of the Mysteries were Serpents of Wisdom, Kundalini adepts and devotees of Gaia-Sophia who must not by any account be confounded with the “reptilians” of planetary folk lore.
“Initiates were, in fact, humanity’s main line of defence against the non-human intruders known to Gnostics as Archons and known today as reptilians, Greys, ETs, EBEs and so forth.”
The Egodeath theory 