John Lash – Voice Recording Tour of Metahistory Website

_{Site Map > John Lash}

Contents:

• todo

July 9, 2022: in production[done], and more voice recording[done; success]: Egodeath Mystery Show Episode 182 – Metatour of Metahistory. will briefly be downloadable from https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/03/09/idea-development-page-13/ – 182+183 is a good episode, the pair of episodes was created on July 9, 2022 all day as 1 episode, delivered as two episodes: 182 = Lash speaking, 183 = Cybermonk speaking on various topics that are fairly well-developed by now.

The episode contains tightened smoothed excerpts from John Lash’s five 20-minute voice recordings discussing the articles at Metahistory.org, from Archive.org Wayback Machine, John Lash voice clips selected & produced by Cybermonk.

Meta History Site Map at Wayback Machine

When nav’ing through the site map “Site Guide” page for Metahistory.org at Wayback Machine.

When a link in the page doesn’t work, be ready to be nimble moving back and forward through time using wayback UI.

This is just one snapshot: 2017-08-09: https://web.archive.org/web/20170809160007/http://metahistory.org/sitemap.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20170707113723/http://metahistory.org/sitemap.php

https://www.ironmaiden.com/discography/details/somewhere-in-time Somewhere in Time altered-state album

Amazon Author Page for John Lash

https://www.amazon.com/John-Lash/e/B001HMTWY0 –

“Comparative mythologist, author and teacher John Lamb Lash is one of the foremost exponents of the power of myth to direct and shape an individual’s life, as well as history itself.

Described as the true successor of Joseph Campbell, John is a teacher of world mythology, Gnosticism, the pre-Christian Mysteries, along with many of his other expert talents.

He has traveled widely and lived in Japan, the UK, Greece, Norway, France, Spain and Belgium.
_____

His unpublished and in-progress works include original studies of alchemy, the Dendera Zodiac, eonic cycles in the World Ages (“parallel history”), psychonautics and entheogenic shamanism for the future.

He is the leading exponent of the new discipline of metacritique (radical analysis of belief systems). [“I believe all entheogen ideas come from Wasson and belong to him.”]
_____

In 1981, John founded the Institute for Creative Mythology in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

ICM offered an open forum to explore universal “directive” – psychologically active – myths and their expressions in culture and daily living.

At ICM John gave lectures and interactive seminars on a broad range of subjects, including Gnosticism, the erotic psychology of the Troubadours, Mesoamerican calendars, and Goddess rites of participation in the seasonal cycles of nature. [latest theory of myth from 1870! 👍 🎉 ]

Over several years, he developed a long course in alchemy that resulted in an extensive syllabus and study guide entitled “The Great Work: Alchemy and PsychoEcology.”
_____

For over 35 years, he has specialized in studies of sidereal mythology i.e. myths found in all cultures around the world relating to the visible patterns in the skies.

He has a unique technique of observation, combined with an original method of reading those patterns and relating them to the way we live and view the world.

He is recognized as a leading scholar on ancient astronomy, the Zodiac, and precession of the equinoxes (World Ages).
_____

John Lamb Lash is also co-founder and principal author of metahistory.org, a unique source of gnostic and pagan perspectives, including Planetary Tantra, a open source vision for interactive magic with Gaia.

The purpose of this site is to challenge unexamined beliefs [such as “I thought of visionary plants used in a religious context without my ideas coming from Wasson”] and foster a future myth centered on Gaia-Sophia, the living planet.
_____

John Lash’s published books:

The Seeker’s Handbook: The Complete Guide to Spiritual Pathfinding (Crown, 1991)

Twins and the Double (Thames & Hudson, 1993)

The Hero – Manhood and Power (Thames & Hudson, 1995)

Quest for the Zodiac (Starhenge Books, 1999)

Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief (Chelsea Green Publishing, November 2006)

Forthcoming: 18 September 2021 – The 15th anniversary edition of Not in His Image, revised and updated [updated except for idol worship of Wasson the Holy Mushroom: all ideas about visionary plants come from Wasson and belong to him, including considerable variations of Wasson’s ideas and departures from Wasson’s ideas, which still are the property of Wasson]”

Heading

I plan to create an mp3 containing some John Lash voice clips. 90% done

Updated Archive.org snapshot potentially: maybe change my links to 2017 not 2011:
June 6, 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170606044337/http://metahistory.org/sitemap.php#psychonautics
1st Eadwine link works.

this page is for my little project since lash is always doing projects: an mp3 of a few clips from john lash voice tour of his site map for metahistory.org

starting this page on desktop not mobile app editing

Lash is Pro-Psilocybin, Anti-Amanita

eg:

• x
• x

Lash Recommends Long History Intro in Metzner Book on Psilocybin Mushrooms

Lash recomm multi times:
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Mushroom-Visions-Teonan%C3%A1catl-Sourcebook/dp/1594770441
Sacred Mushroom of Visions: Teonanácatl: A Sourcebook on the Psilocybin Mushroom
Ralph Metzner Ph.D. (Author & Editor) 2005 –

“Over 30 contributors share their expertise on the chemical, biological, cultural, psychological, and experiential dimensions of psilocybin mushrooms

• Describes in vivid detail the consciousness-expanding experiences of psychoactive mushroom users

• Provides firsthand accounts of the controversial Harvard Psilocybin Project, including the Concord Prison and Good Friday studies

Teonanácatl was the name given to the visionary mushrooms used in ancient Mesoamerican shamanic ceremonies, mushrooms that contain psilocybin, the psychoactive agent identified by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. The rediscovery of these visionary mushrooms by the Mazatec healer Maria Sabina and mycologist R. Gordon Wasson ignited a worldwide mushroom culture that inspired the consciousness revolution of the 1960s.

This book describes in vivid detail the consciousness-expanding experiences of psychoactive mushroom users–from artists to psychologists–and the healing visionary inspiration they received. It provides firsthand accounts of studies performed in the controversial Harvard Psilocybin Project, including the Concord Prison study and the Good Friday study. It describes how the use of the psilocybe mushroom spread from the mountains of Mexico into North America, Asia, and Europe by seekers of consciousness-expanding experiences. It also details how psilocybin has been used since the 1960s in psychotherapy, prisoner rehabilitation, the enhancement of creativity, and the induction of mystical experiences and is being studied as a treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).”

Points of Note in Lash Voice Recordings Part 1-6

• Part 1:
  • 1:04 – Metahistory.org came online in July 2002. A teaching site. orgly sponsored by a nonprofit org. but since May 2009, this site has not been funded, it is nonprofit. Home page states purpose, to invite a future myth to guide humanity, not invent a new myth. We should revamp, revise, revision, upscale old myths and change their direction.
  • My myth is: The Fallen Goddess Sophia. It is a once and future myth.
  • concepts and assumptions – a page.
  • Lash writes (exact copypaste of start of https://web.archive.org/web/20111019195903/http://www.metahistory.org/sitemap.php):
    • “defines metahistory.org as a teaching site and states its dual purpose: to critique beliefs and invite a future myth [ie that Wasson is the source of religious plants] to guide humanity. The “future myth” proposed in metahistory is not the author’s personal invention, and not a channeled scenario. It is a recovery and extrapolation of the sacred narrative of the fallen goddess Sophia [or actually that Wasson is our God and savior and gave us all of our ideas of religious plants] derived from the Pagan Mysteries of pre-Christian Europe, Egypt, and the Levant. Hence the mission statement links immediately to the story of Gaia-Sophia, a myth in progress.”
  • 8:23 webpage: “Background to Metahistory” – had to go wayback to get a non-404 page: https://web.archive.org/web/20080209020812/http://www.metahistory.org/background.php
  • 9:40 – “I personally don’t read anymore. I can’t find anything worth reading, anything that keeps my attention.”
  • 16:32 – “Joseph Campbell, my forerunner.” I suspect that Lash applies his own intellectual history, which might be 1) Read Campbell’s books, 2) Modify Campbell’s ideas ie the ideas gathered/developed by Campbell – Lash wrongly applies his own model of how he got his ideas (ie by reading books), to every person who writes on the topic of entheogen scholarship: each of those people must have gotten their ideas from reading Wasson’s book Soma, just like Lash got his ideas about mythology from Campbell. How many people even have the book Soma? It’s a near-rare book!
  • Lash’s narrative sucks, and is insulting to everyone. Lash’s underlying implied model of how theories develop sucks, it’s an authoritarian model; the Great Man model of history.
    • Wasson is Lash’s “Great Man” in Lash’s history of ideas in the field of entheogen scholarship.
    • It’s true I’m the greatest theorist EVAR; but perish the thought, of people talking about me the way Lash forms constructs to totally conflate all instances of visionary plants idea with “Wasson’s idea”. The way Lash employs the wording around “the Wasson thesis” is awful, insulting, & clumsy.

• Part 2
  • 4:36 – “In the jargon of the 60s, the white light.”
  • 4:46 – “And it is possible, using ergot, to experience directly the organic light. I would recommend doing so, to those who are ready, willing, and able to undertake this kind of quest under the right conditions of course.
  • 5:10 – “I would describe the ergot experience of the organic light as kind of riding a bicycle with training wheels. I would describe the experience of encountering the organic light with sacred plant teachers, such as the Psilocybin mushrooms, as riding a bicycle without training wheels. But, it’s good to have the training wheels; ergot, of the right quality and dose, taken under the right conditions, can definitely show you the way to perceive the organic light.”
  • 6:04 – “Psychonautic adventures: people investigating the structure and dynamics of the psyche.”
  • 6:33 – “This section, Psychonautics, includes my extraordinary find, ” … [my discovery of the mushroom imagery in the Paris Eadwine Psalter] “images of psychoactive mushrooms”
  • 7:06 – “Entheogenic Revelation outlines my proposed book on the Wasson theory*.”
  • 9:03 – “R. Gordon Wasson, a banker … and most likely a double agent for the nu hurl odor, if you want to play into that scenario”

• Part 3
  • x

• Part 4
  • ~3:45 i now reject my earlier framing of Mary Magdalene as trophy wife for the savior, she is wholly pagan
  • ~4:30 “omg i forgot i wrote a review of Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code”
  • ~5:00 – i call myself a comparative mythologist, parallel myths around the world. my c.v. of my background is a page at this site
  • ~6:45 – I step beyond J Campbell – i follow the 4 prescripts at opening page Creative Mythology, the 4 precepts of Joseph Campbell
  • my poetry encodes a lot of mythological material
  • my rewrite of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice
  • 17:00 sophia plunged from organic light into material; metamorphosis/hypostases (a stepping down/ downscaling of power) to become the material planet and her light became insane , sheared away part of the Anthropos, she didn’t plan to tear Anthropos into two parts; she split male vs female, so ppl on earth were purely female, men remained in the Orion Nebula, so later those men came to earth and encountered the female, these descending ppl were the men, the gender counterparts of the females on earth. This is Living Myth.
  • webpages about his proposed book about the book Quest for the Zodiac – (Not In His Image book mentions a 13th Real Sky constellation.)

• Part 5
  • https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Zodiac-John-Lash/dp/187045037X

“Unsuspected by the world at large, astrology uses a model that ignores the stars. Many who practice it do not know that there is a lost, star-based zodiac, entirely distinct from the well-known circle of twelve sun signs. Although not wrong on its own terms – the popular sun sign profiles do work- astrology it is wrongly defined as “the language of the stars.” Quest for the Zodiac corrects this error and recovers the visible star patterns observed in ancient times. The distinction between sign stereotypes and the real-sky constellations is astounding and revolutionary.

The mythic images of the constellations, not the signs, present a new approach to the age-old question: What is destiny? In the code language of the constellations, myths and archtypal themes reflect the long-term experience of humanity. In the author’s formulation, the star zodiac is a visionary tool for detecting the way each individual can advance on the learning curve of the human species. In effect, we each have a second horoscope, but its message is transpersonal, not ego-centered. Sun sign astrology examines and elucidates personality, but with the star zodiac we discover the innate genius of the person. Quest for the Zodiac proposes a new method of interpreting life-patterns. It breaks the 2000-year-old monopoly astrology holds on the interactivity of psyche and cosmos. This is the future of astrology, and the astrology of the future.”

Lash’s Atrocious False Model of History of Ideas and Theory of Idea Formation Results in Conflating Wasson with Visionary Plants for Religious Experiencing

Against John Lash’s fumbling, extremely ill-advised, harmful and misguided historian’s attempt at misleading narrative-driven mythmaking around Wasson, see Jan Irvin’s article “R. Gordon Wasson: The Man, the Legend, the Myth: Beginning a New History of Magic Mushrooms, Ethnomycology, and the Psychedelic Revolution” – the final chapter of John Rush’s book Entheogens and the Development of Culture. https://www.amazon.com/Entheogens-Development-Culture-Anthropology-Neurobiology/dp/1583946004

To get to Lash’s webpage “Background to Metahistory”, had to go wayback to get a non-404 page: https://web.archive.org/web/20080209020812/http://www.metahistory.org/background.php – “”Herodotus engaged in a study of comparative mythology … he was critical of some of his sources. Drawing upon many ancient traditions and oral accounts, he was careful in some cases to question the narrative structure of the stories he was recording. [such as Lash’s Wasson narrative] Traveling widely and encountering diverse cultures, Herodotus could not help notice the similarity of heroic tales preserved in different parts of the world. He was especially struck by the recurrence of events in stories of heroes who resembled the Greek Herakles (Latinized name, Hercules). Assuming a viewpoint that was quite radical for his time and place, Herodotus stated that Herakles was not a figure unique to Greek myth. He even berated his countrymen about adopting tales of this hero uncritically from other races: “The Hellenes tell many things without proper examination. Among them is the silly myth they tell about Herakles.” (Book 2.45, cited in Finley, 23). In his travels Herodotus encountered many variations of a plot formula known to the Greeks as the “labors of Herakles.” Cults dedicated to this mythical figure occurred all over the Near East under various names such as Melkart in the Lebanon, Samson in Jewish legend, and Ogmios among the Celts, [and Wasson in John Lash’s writings,] to name but a few variants.

• “R. Gordon Wasson, a banker … and most likely a double agent for the nu hurl odor, if you want to play into that scenario” – yet Lash idiotically persists in every single time framing the fundamental concept of ‘entheogen’ as equated directly with “the Wasson thesis”; Lash practically grants Wasson with ownership of the concept of ‘entheogen’ AS IF THE ONLY PERSON WHO EVER THOUGHT OF THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE LABEL ‘ENTHEOGEN’ IS WASSON, HE MADE THE UNDERLYING IDEA OF SACRED PLANTS / VISIONARY PLANTS INDUCING RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCING. Better go back in time and inform everyone who ever used entheogens that they are ingesting Wasson’s plants in Wasson’s way; entheogens come from Wasson and he owns the idea.
  • Many people have independently discovered the self-evident obvious idea of religious use of plants, as Lash’s history page/book draft Wasson and company covers.
  • I/we must firmly and absolutely as a point of principle against the insane dumb way that Lash & Hatsis purport to “trace where ideas came from” that:
  • I independently discovered (like many people) the underlying concept of ‘entheogen’, I held that the Bible including the book of Revelation has religious use of psychedelics in 1986; I didn’t hear the name “Wasson” or “Allegro” or read any articles or books asserting the entheogen theory of religion until 1999, 13 years later.
  • I merely didn’t identify which psychedelic plant is in the Book of Revelation until Clark Heinrich’s 1994 book Strange Fruit, which I read in 1999.
  • Lash & Hatsis embrace stupid ideas about tracing where ideas come from, the fallacy “If person B thinks of idea X after person A, then B got it from A and is to be described as a variant of A’s idea” and idea X is to be framed / described as “Idea X belongs to person A bc person A thought of it before person B” -never mind a million years of psychedelic & visionary plant use LONG before Wasson and INDEPENDENTLY OF WASSON, but Lash & Hatsis are too stupid to grasp the concept of multiple independent discovery of idea X throughout history.
  • It is arbitrary and unfair and irrational to dub Wasson as the source and originator of the concept of entheogen and “the entheogen thesis”, this is sloppy, crude, amateur, bad narrative, terrible theorizing and scholarly framing of history of ideas from Lash & Hatsis.
  • Lash traces a hundred years of development of entheogens scholarship before Wasson, it is not justifiable to grant Wasson ownership of the concept of ‘entheogen’; Lash even credits Wasson with “inventing the word entheogen” p 337 endnote 223 2nd edition Not In His Name.
  • This is absurd, grotesque, malformed theory construction on Lash’s part. Fallacious meta-theory & false history & false theory of the history and origin of ideas, by Lash.
  • A false model of how ideas work, is in Lash’s very poor usage of his phrase, which no one else uses such a conflated usage, “the Wasson thesis”. That phrase isn’t necessarily wrong; but Lash wrongly employs the phrase “the Wasson thesis” eg Lash’s wrong & incorrect idea “variants of the Wasson theory.”
  • From Lash’s article “The Entheogenic Theory of Religion“, Lash presents a false, incorrect framing and implicit false and poor explanatory theory; false meta-theory:
    • “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.”
    • *loaded and incorrect, false usage; a false theory lies behind Lash’s usage of these words.
    • entheogen scholars are liable to overestimate how influential books are. Scholars assume that since THEY got their ideas by reading other people’s books, anyone who came to possess an idea must have acquired the idea by reading a previous person’s book. This is a biased and perversely book-centric fallacy, history AS IF history of ideas works by propagation of memes from one scholar’s book to another. A scholars’ fallacy, fallacious notion of the history of ideas – transposing their own, formal book-based scholarship onto the entire world of thinkers.
  • The wrongness and error and poor explanatory power isn’t fully reflected in that one sentence; you have to compile every usage of such theory-naming by Lash, whenever Lash mentions Wasson together with ‘entheogen’, you then perceive and prove that Lash is fabricating a bad, wrong theory with low explanatory power; Lash spreads confusion via his incorrect background theory of how ideas originate and develop collectively, that he’s putting forward. Lash mis-credits and vastly overcredits Wasson.
  • Lash conflates the idea of ‘entheogens’ with Wasson, and presents a wrong and false recounting of the history of the field of entheogen scholarship. this is not how ideas work, in their formation and spread, according to the clumsy handling by Lash & by Hatsis. Just bc Irvin is literally a follower of Allegro, doesn’t mean following someone else is where ideas come from.
  • I am the originator of the formal particular theory the Egodeath theory / analogical psychedelic eternalism w/ dependent control etc., but don’t be so clumsy like Lash in your model of how ideas form and arise and spread.
  • Just because you’re writing a book about Wasson, doesn’t give Lash the license to grant ownership to Wasson of the underlying idea of religious use of plants as “the Wasson idea”, “Wasson’s idea”, and everyone who ever had the idea is employing “Wasson’s idea” – as Lash’s implicit theory and historical model of history of ideas falsely asserts. This mis-attribution to Wasson of the fundamental concept of religious use of plants is clumsy intellectual theft by John Lash.

How I got the mp3 files

steps valid on desktop browser at least:

1. optional: Go to https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/07/wise-as-serpents-entheogenic-religion-and-the-paris-eadwine-psalter-john-lash/
2. Click each link then click … then click Download.
4. Tried right-clicking these links directly > Download, but that’s not working, it’s shown as filetype .html not .mp3, and changing that gives a tiny file, not big, so fails.)

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20111019021004/http://metahistory.org/Audio/MetahistoryTourPart1.mp3
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20111019003059/http://metahistory.org/Audio/MetahistoryTourPart2.mp3
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20111019021004/http://metahistory.org/Audio/MetahistoryTourPart3.mp3
4. https://web.archive.org/web/20111019021004/http://metahistory.org/Audio/MetahistoryTourPart4.mp3
5. hah! i found a part 5, from 2022 04 21 April 21, 2022 snapshot probably can get from current metahistory.org
   https://web.archive.org/web/20220421053521/http://metahistory.org/Audio/MHtour5b.mp3 – 55 minutes not 20 minutes like 1-4. “Closely related to my study of the Dendera Zodiac, these essays cover the mythical and astronomical background of the 2012 debate and present some suggestions on what that date might entail as a window of opportunity looking toward a “planetary shift.” With eight chapters and an after”

lash none too keen on the d-pop genda. pronounces a curse on anyone using his site for that evil misuse

https://web.archive.org/web/20170623171856/http://metahistory.org/psychonautics/Eadwine/EadwinePsalter.php –

“Until now, the Paris Eadwine Psalter has been studiously ignored by scholars who refrain from commenting on the blatant mycological images used to illustrate Biblical narratives. The graphic contents of the MS are totally unknown to the general public. My secondary aim in PARADISE DENIED was to introduce this astonishing book to the world.

“The images in the Paris Eadwine Psalter are stunning, explicit, and unmistakable. They require no squinting and speculation, as occurs with esoteric doctrines allegedly encoded in great works of art. This one-of-a-kind manuscript presents vivid evidence complementary to the Wasson thesis*. Currently, there is a rapidly growing body of research confirming Wasson’s views*, but nothing accessible to mainstream interest.

“I have not seen the original BNF Latin MS 8846—special permission is required to access and handle it—but I have closely studied the microfilm in the library archives. Some illustrations show an elaborate proliferation of mushrooms and elegantly branched mushroom-trees, “

*In the Egodeath Mystery Show, I went off, and scathingly criticized John Lash for this awful, wrong, unjustifiable framing, terrible framing of entheogen scholarship.

Our mission in life as entheogen scholars is NOT “to confirm Wasson’s views”, that is wrong, harmful, misleading, erroneous framing.

“The Wasson thesis” can absolutely go to hell. F&ck “the Wasson thesis”, I could GAF about Wasson and his thesis.

We are not here to discuss “the Wasson thesis” – stop framing the field of entheogen scholarship incorrectly and harmfully this way, Lash!

I fulminated against Lash’s scholarly construct from Hell eg in:

• Egodeath Mystery Show episode 181 – Psychonaut Wasson Tax (July 8, 2022)
• Egodeath Mystery Show episode 180 – Wasson the Holy Mushroom (July 6, 2022)
• Egodeath Mystery Show episode 179 – Graves Wasson Thesis (July Fourth, 2022)