Archive copy posted by Cybermonk, 10:42 p.m. February 17, 2023.
Contents:
Brief Commentary
I have described Hatsis’ anger & insults as projection.
I have suspected that Hatsis (in his personal intellectual trajectory) is or was Allegro’s #1 fan, and that’s why he attacks others as “Allegro followers”, and why Hatsis so totally looks to Allegro to set the horizons and limits of his own thought, and why his head spins when anyone thinks outside of the orbit of the Allegroism paradigm that Hatsis is stuck within.
This Hatsis post essentially confirms my read.
Link to Hatsis’ reply to me, “you guys aren’t allowed to deviate from Allegro, because Allegro’s theory is your foundation.” The exact quote is in the paragraph that starts with his infamous memorable quote, “The shape of the liberty cap is anachronistic.” https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/idea-development-page-12/#Tom-Hatsis-Reply-to-Me
I plan to keep this page a verbatim archive snapshot and likely comment, on other pages. Not sure.
Like my sometimes error, he fails to show his name, Thomas Hatsis.
I don’t know if there are other, revised versions of this posting.
I separated the sentences and put horizontal lines between his paragraphs.
I guess Hatsis is too busy, as an amateur web blogger and the leader of the disciplaie Allegraeia (his favorite insults to level at others) to migrate this web blog post to his 3rd domain, https://psychedelichistorian.com.
I don’t see this blog post revealed there or at his 2nd domain, psychedelicwitch.com.
Reading Allegro Again (Hatsis Blog Post)
Thomas Hatsis, 09/02/2015
https://web.archive.org/web/20160709005902/http://arspsychedelia.com/2/post/2015/09/reading-allegro-again.html
Author: Historian of psychedelia and entheogenic history.
09/02/2015
Since my follow up to The Witches’ Ointment will be an unbiased appraisal of Allegro’s work and what conspiracy theorists like Jan Irvin and John Rush have done to it, I started to read The Sacred Mushroom again for the first time in years.
—
I am again struck by the brilliance, clever writing, and sheer magnitude of the subject, which Allegro so eloquently displays.
I thought back to my first reading of it, when I believed every word, every aspect of the theory.
Looking back, I can see why.
It literally appealed to the very core of my own beliefs.
But as I got older (and hopefully wiser) I realized that my beliefs and historical truth were two very different things.
Historical truth cared not about my beliefs.
Ignoring this (or rather trying to) brought no comfort.
—
I do not think Allegro fabricated this whole thing – even Letcher doesn’t think that anymore.*
But I’m getting off-topic.
The Sacred Mushroom is one of my favorite books.
Top 10, easily.
And I think there is something to be said about entheogenic drug use in the ancient world (I deal with it in my forthcoming book), I just don’t think that Jesus was a mushroom.
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The problem is the hermeneutical lens with which mushroom theorists view the Bible.
To them, mushrooms represent deeper realities of love and universal tolerance – ideas born in New Age utopian understandings of the mushroom experience (at least according to Letcher).
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But that simply wasn’t who Jesus was. In our modern popular culture, Jesus (for those who think he existed in history), is imagined as taking on all the attributes of a hippy, if not a very liberal democrat.
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No.
Paul might have been that (you know, after he was done persecuting Christians before his own conversion on the road to Damascus), but Jesus was not.
He was a radical rabbi, an insurgent magician, who caused trouble in the community in defiance of the bastardization that the Temple – the seat of the God of the Universe’s terrestrial home – had become.
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Mushroom theorists have largely bought the popular culture narrative of Jesus, which is why their “theories” are so sub par.
They don’t understand Christianity as historians do, and quite frankly, neither did Allegro, regardless of his philological credentials.
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The Sacred Mushroom, to me, represents the work of a brilliant mind. It is, however, a ludi mentis aciem – a mind that cannot see it’s own shortcomings.
One of the biggest problems for the Jesus-as-mushroom theory is that an apocalyptic rabbi hellbent on overthrowing the Roman government and crucified for trying was not at all uncommon for that time; the worship of a mushroom and subsequent “cover up” is.
Don’t get me wrong – there are some real fascinating nuggets of historical awesomeness strewn throughout The Sacred Mushroom. It’s the overall thesis that is problematic.
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Okay, I just saw how long this post got. Imma call it a night!
Good night, mushroom people!
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*In Shroom, Letcher theorizes that Allegro might not have believed a word of his own theory and merely wrote it as a moneymaker, which it was.
Over shepherd’ s pie in Oxford, Andy disclosed that he had been wrong about that.
He still doesn’t think Allegro was right (I don’t either), but he does concede that Allegro truly believed what he wrote.
/ end of archive snapshot of Thomas Hatsis post
See Also
Cyberdisciple’s posts/pages about Allegro:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=allegro
I need to tag all my Hatsis pages or group them at Site Map.
Find ‘Hatsis’ at Site Map: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/ – including:
Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/
- Hatsis’ Errors about Western Mushroom Scholarship [scholar]
- What Letcher-Hatsis, Ruck, Irvin, and Pop Onlookers Must Change, for Constructive/ Productive Western Mushroom Scholarship [field]
- Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis) [book]
- Hatsis maintains “no mushrooms in Christianity” [scholar]
Original title of Hatsis’ article:
Roasting the Salamander: Mushroom Cult Theorists Vs. Critical Historical Inquiry
<= August 18, 2013
https://web.archive.org/web/20160218214557/http://arspsychedelia.com/uploads/3/2/1/4/3214063/roasting_the_salamander.pdf
I found the present Hatsis blog post about Allegro while I was about to post the answers to Hatsis’ questions for Irvin and Rush, in the strangely lost/omitted appendixes of his Roasting Irvin article, originally titled differently. <= August 18, 2013, proved by start from here, which lists his Roasting article in Aug 18 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130818041600/http://arspsychedelia.com/ and leads to a later snapshot archived of the original PDF article: (I temp’ly dumped my research about this 2013 PDF in https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/04/13/salamander-mushroom-tree-right-side-cut/ ).
Roasting the Salamander: Mushroom Cult Theorists Vs. Critical Historical Inquiry
https://web.archive.org/web/20130818041600/http://arspsychedelia.com/roasting-the-salamander-mushroom-cult-theorists-vs-critical-historical-inquiry.html
🤔 It’s almost like Hatsis has suppressed his own previous, industrious online blogger work to force emphasis onto his major academic scholarly publishing house books instead, Oxford University Press (or maybe Park Street Press, I get those mixed up).
The Egodeath theory 