Idea Development page 22 (2024/12/23)

Michael Hoffman, Dec. 23, 2024 – Jan. 11, 2025.

Crops by Cybermonk

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toc updated and complete as of Jan 5. 2025, 1:13 am

Incoming Ideas

Rutajit Book: Amanita Is the Best Psychedelic Ever

The Vestibule: The Interior of the Great Porch of the House of God
April 30, 2007 (after my review of Shroom by Letcher)
Andrew Rutajit
https://www.amazon.com/Vestibule-Andrew-Rutajit/dp/0615143989/

Jan Irvin wrote the Forward for this Gnostic Media-published book, 2007, after discussing the 2006 article
Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita
http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm

Vestibule Cover

Vestibule Page 125

Vestibule Page 126: Amanita is one of the most potent psychedelic mushrooms ever discovered

Baloney in the Wide Sense

Written like someone who has never ingested psychedelics, living in Myth Land:

Amanita is one of the most potent psychedelic mushrooms ever discovered.

Andrew Rutajit, The Vestibule, 2007

Amanita is a deliriant mushroom, not a psychedelic mushroom.

Amanita is an “entheogen” like Scopolamine is an entheogen (Datura, Thornapple, Mandrake, Henbane).

Hanegraaff wrongly says anything and everything is an entheogen “in the wide sense”; his statement would be true if he were to say “any psychoactive is an entheogen in the wide sense, such as Datura and Amanita.”

Extreme conflation of Psilocybin and Amanita.

Vestibule Page 127

Huggins vs. Samorini: multiple little branches under cap/crown

find “veil” in Hug article ForWrong Foraging Wrong:

4 hits:

Veil 1

Huggins seems rude the WAY he uses his acronym to label people. scholars. I’m going to call Huggins a member of the DCHBG school, or PMDs: Psychdelic Mushroom Deniers.

“In another context, PMT Giorgio Samorini attempts to sidestep the problem
of multiple branches supporting a single cap by suggesting that “these ramifications might represent the membrane enveloping mushrooms of the family of the Amanitaceae at the early stages of development.

“This membrane then breaks when the cap broadens out and separates from the stalk,”68

This leaves behind on the stipe a remnant called a veil.

“even if we were to credit Samorini’s argument in relation to a tree with only two or three branches, it takes us nowhere near explaining the great tangle of branches we find on the GCP’s tree of nests.”

Samo should have argued that the gills plus veil are sources of branches under cap/ crown. Need to also add my POV that pilzbaum artists are expecially intent on depicting branches, more than mushrooms;

  • pilzbaum artists message is more branching than mushrooms; they are committed to depicting and highlighting, emphasizing the motif of branching more than the motif of mushrooms.
  • Gills look like branches.
  • Vieil looks like branches (less so).

Veil 2

Veil 3

Veil 4

My Clean New Panofsky page with my dirty Comment (which is fair)

Update: Converted comment that’s on page
Erwin Panofsky’s Letters to Gordon Wasson, Transcribed
to webpage, expanded, added headings:
Deniers of Mushrooms in Christian Art Can’t Be Taken Seriously

The Comment format protects the cleanness of the page body.

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/#comment-2449 — I Commented:

the comment is slightly more up to date than the below:
[and the new page is even better:
Deniers of Mushrooms in Christian Art Can’t Be Taken Seriously ]

Mystery intrigue from a novel by Brown, Brown, & Brown:

How did Huggins’ Foraging Wrong 2024 article find out about the two Panofsky letters in drawer such-and-so, if not from Brown 2019, and why does it cite only Brown 2016, not 2019?

Huggins wrote about how we actually cannot “consult” art historians’ publications about pilzbaum, because these competent art historians who are so thoroughly familiar with pilzbaum have never published anything on the topic, which is of mere peripheral importance:

“Trees, being peripheral to the more central features of medieval iconography, are not often discussed by art historians.

“A noted[!] exception is Albert Erich Brinckmann’s Baumstilisierungen in der mittelalterlichen Malerei (1906), a work recommended by Panofsky in his letters to Wasson back in 1952.”

AS IF scholars and mycologists have had access to Panofsky’s 2nd letter since 1952 or 1968!

As if we (Brown) didn’t just find the Brinckmann citation and recognize its importance only recently, in 2019!

And how does Huggins expect anyone to use Huggins’ useless, unhelpful citation of drawer such-and-so at Harvard?

Wasson and Huggins both use improper, abnormal dancing-about, instead of normal scholarly publications citations that are usable by scholars.

Did Wasson read the publications of “competent” art historians, per normal scholarship?

No; Huggins promotes instead of library research:

“Wasson readily sought help from people with expertise in fields related to his research.”

“Sought help” from “experts” who never wrote and published on the topic of pilzbaum, and consider trees merely peripheral, not central in importance, and not worth bothering to write and publish about.

___

Huggins tries to excuse Wasson’s obstructionism:

“Given Wasson’s importance the PMTs are generally aware of Panofsky’s warning, and of Wasson’s subsequent remark that “mycologists would have done well to consult art historians.”

“But they reject it as “an unreflective dismissal [that] misses the point,” or a case of Wasson’s being taken in by the “monodisciplinary blindness and interpretive slothfulness of professional researchers,” meaning Panofsky and the other unnamed art historians Wasson consulted.

“One prominent PMT, J.R. Irvin, even complained that “Wasson adopted Panofsky’s interpretation and thenceforth began to force it upon other scholars.

“Uncritical acceptance of the Wasson-Panofsky view lasted, unchecked, for nearly fifty years.” [Irvin, THM]

“It might be noted, however, that many of the works in which the PMTs express contrary views were published during the fifty years to which Irvin refers.”

___

PMTs = Psychedelic Mushroom Theorists; pilzbaum affirmers.

Where are the expert art historian’s works in Huggins’ Bibliography, that discuss the question of pilzbaum relevant to the Wasson-Panofsky view?

There aren’t any (or, as I wrote in my 2006 Wasson article, we can conclude that such writings by art historians are pathetically few and weak); as Huggins admits:

“Trees, being peripheral … are not often discussed by art historians. A noted [read: censored] exception is Brinckmann…”

These “many works” are nonexistent, and even Brinckmann is missing from the Bibliography section.

Finally in 1996-1998, Samorini finally followed what little of Panofsky’s lead – hundreds of pilzbaum – that Wasson in Soma let leak through.

Huggins continues:

“The only real advantage Wasson has enjoyed was perhaps the result of his trusted reputation, based partly on his willingness to engage scholars in other fields as a way of cross-checking his own work, a feature not often encountered in the more generally insular PMTs.

“In the meantime, the few art historians with expertise in Ottonian and Romanesque art who are aware of the PMTs claims continue to echo Panofsky.

“When questioned on the topic by the writer, prominent art historian Elina Gertsman responded crisply [⏱]:

“I very much do not think that Ottonian or Romanesque imagery was in any shape or form influenced by psychedelic mushrooms.””

___

Argument from crispness?

The Hoffman Uncertainty Principle:

The more directly you probe and interrogate publicly the competent art authority (who has published nothing on the pilzbaum question), the quicker (and crisper!) the celerity of disavowal.

Huggins presents a bizzarre special-case approach to this topic, only:

Consult the drawer at Harvard.

Consult your local top expert art authority stopwatch in hand, to measure the celerity with which they disavow pilzbaum.”

Every competent art authority: No, no, no, no, there’s no way any credible authority affirms these pilzbaum, no way, no how; we disavow!”

Argument by celerity of authorities’ disavowals.

There is a consistent pattern of withholding and preventing people from seeing the letters.

Huggins is of no help here: he does not publish the letters for scholars to share, and he does not point to the Brown 2019 article or my original transcription page at this site.

Mystery intrigue in the Bibliography of Foraging Wrong:

“Consult” the competent art authorities — yet his Bibliography lacks these key entries centrally relevant to main topics discussed in the article body:

Baloney indirection and roundabout dancing:

Huggins wrote:

“The authors venture their claims without an adequate grasp of the standard way of depicting trees and other plants in the art of the period.”

pilzbaum affirmers are extremely grasping of the standard way of depicting trees and other plants in the art of the period:

Every pilzbaum affirmer is intensely aware that art historians describe these trees as “look like mushrooms”, thus their term, the art historians’ term, “pilzbaum“, by which the art historians mean:

The set of trees that look like mushrooms, typifying the genre of medieval art.

The principle of artist responsibility (against Panofsky):

If the artist didn’t want art historians to think of mushrooms when seeing these trees, then the artist should not have made their trees look so distinctly like mushrooms.

Just like with every other item depicted, as art historians say on every other topic – artists were free within the genre.

Within this special topic, only, Panofsky robs artists of their freedom and forces them to follow “prototypes”, trying to remove artists’ responsibility for making viewers think of mushrooms.

The special pleading fallacy.

“Nor have they been much inclined to consult art historians, whose opinions on such matters they show little interest in.

“This began when PMTs responded negatively to the advice art historian Erwin Panofsky gave to New York banker and amateur mycologist G. Gordon Wasson in 1952.”

Huggins nicely leaves out the fact that Wasson only allowed (for 51 years, 1968-2019) only half of the first of the two Panosfky letters to be seen by everyone.

So much for emphatically pressuring mycologists or pilzbaum affirmers to “consult” art historians:

Wasson and Huggins are all talk, posturing,and bluff, while withholding useful citations for critical scholarship – citations that support, not refute, pilzbaum affirmers.

Art authorities have no credibility until they publish something on the unimportant, “peripheral” topic of pilzbaum.

___

(And why does no one ever write “Psilocybin and Amanita”, always Amanita-first? : )

/ end of my Comment

Comment from wrmspirit re: Stang

At Eadwine Images in Great Canterbury Psalter (Commentary & Detailed Crops)

wrmspirit commented June 12, 2023:

“Charles Stang has a hard time relating the Eucharist with the Psilocybin mushroom, because he hasn’t read the Egodeath Theory.

He wants evidence which supports that relationship.

Even if an ancient golden chalice with dried up psilocybin mushrooms in it were presented to him, he would still want to see a video of the ancient mass.

That’s what the ordinary world does to people’s minds.

It distances minds from innate wisdom by locking them within the boundaries that it creates.

If Charles Stang would read the Egodeath Theory and its interpretation of ancient art, and Cyberdisciple’s interpretation of ancient literature as related to the mystic altered state, then just maybe he would begin to understand that the Eucharist is a living, breathing experience.”

Mystery Sites

https://psychedelics386892660.wordpress.com/
The Psychedelic Gospels
Coming Soon

2007 page by someone that’s a placeholder: https://psychedelics.wordpress.com

Comment by Brown on Panofsky Letters Cleaned Up Transcription Page

At https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/, Brown commented on Jan. 7, 2025:

Dear Michael,

While we realized the importance of publishing the two Panofsky letters to Wasson side-by-side, you have obviously grasped and illuminated their greater importance in the entire Mushrooms in Christian Art debate. In our opinion, there is no debate.

Due to the focus and interpretation you’ve brought to these letters, we consider their discovery at the Wasson Archives and our subsequent publication to be one of our most significant discoveries – along with the documentation of Wasson’s meetings with the Pope during his time at JP Morgan which handled Vatican accounts and, of course, the extensive images of both Amanita muscaria and psilocybin images in Christian art published in The Psychedelic Gospels.

Thanks for acknowledging our work in your post,
Julie and Jerry Brown

Pointless Loiterers are Pointing Trio:
Eyes Connect Hand of God with Right Vine Leaf Tree

log a date? 10:51 Jan 5, 2025 – there is a problem with the f177 decoding item name row 1 middle, 3 guys, one with threshing winnowing basket.

I avoided that already at heading “Pointing Trio”:

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/03/12/4-horses-mushroom-tree-right-foot-balancing-great-canterbury-psalter-f177/#Row-1-Middle

Crop by Michael Hoffman
Crop by Michael Hoffman
Crop by Michael Hoffman

Assessing Pilzbaum requires first-hand field work (ie hi-res images), like Brown Writes but Didn’t Do

Consistent finding: It’s impossible to assess what the person is looking at without zooming to view full detail at the library full-resolution site.

per Brown – interpretation requires field work, viewing the art firsthand (such as Brown & Brown looking at the chapel-provided photo in Irvin’s book and firmly concluding about Walburga tapestry, ie, totally not looking like Amanita). Good field work example.

Brown’s argument is correct, thus disproving Browns assessment: Had Brown done field work, instead of writing that they do field work, they would have affirmed mushrooms in Christian art in the tapestry.

Reminds of Hatsis writing more words about his superior methodology, than words constituting superior methodology.

Positively identifies the image as psilocybin, because of systemic consistent mytheme use

“argued that mushroom images in Christian art do not represent mushrooms.”

The man hanging by one leg above the sword positively identifies these Canturbury images as Psilocybin, because of systemic consistent mytheme use.

positively identifies the image as Psilocybin, because of systemic consistent mytheme use

— interesting phrasing in 3 spots. from
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/book-ancient-psychedelia/

Huggins’ Arg: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap (Not How Long Ball-shaped cap)

Huggins’ Argument from Veil Branches (not Rarity of Ball Form Amanita)

Artists Would Not Depict Amanita in Ball-Cap Form, Because That Would Be Extreme Botanical Accuracy, Since Ball Form Is Found Only during a Brief Stage

My argumentation / criticism of Huggins’ arg’n here is off-base.

Huggins is actually here focusing on a “veil=branches under the cap” claim by Samorini – not 4th Day of Creation in Great Canterbury Psalter.

Samo says the branches under the cap of some pilzbaum is the veil.

I have photos proving it is possible to support Samo’s case.

It’s debatable about whether a typical person looking at specimens would have seen veil under cap that looks like branches.

Huggins is not saying ball form of Amanita is rare/fleeting; he’s saying veil like branches under cap is fleeting, which is true.

The Ball Shape of the Amanita Cap Is Anachronistic

Samorini anachronistically projects a greater interest in botanical accuracy than is justified for artists of our period. The idea that they would go beyond depicting a mature Amanita muscaria to capture its appearance during a brief stage in its development is far-fetched.

Ronald Huggins, Foraging Wrong, 2024

I see that you know nothing whatsoever about observing Amanitas growing.

The ball form of Amanita is so rare and fleeting, only a botanical scientist has ever seen it, not dumbass ignoramus Medieval artists – argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong

Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article (2024) argues that the ball form of Amanita is so rare, fleeting, transient, and ephemeral, medieval artists would only have depicted the normal, usual, far more common flat top form.

Only a scientist would know about the technical passing phase, the ball form.

Therefore the red ball-crown pilzbaum in “4th Day of Creation” image in Great Canterbury Psalter) is not mushrooms.

The 4 pilzbaum in Great Canterbury Psalter “Creation of Plants / Day 4 of Creation”, including the red one, cannot be Amanita, because the artist would have drawn an adult, flat-cap type, not the rare, ball form, SO RARE that ONLY A MODERN SCIENTIST would be aware, would have seen, the ball form.

That’s how rare, fleeting, ephemeral the ball form is. Argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong article.

Let’s see how rare, fleeting, ephemeral, and transient… what’s even more rare and ephemeral is the coveted upturned grail form.

SPEAKING AS AN EXPERIENCED AMANITA PHOTOGRAPHER, I can report, against Huggins: Ball form is not even slightly rare.

The form that is ACTUALLY rare – but going against all of Huggins’ wrong assumptions — is upturned grail, which is MORE likely to be in art, BECAUSE of its rarity, the Holy Grail formation.

I especially hunt for Holy Grail formation of Amanita.

I strive to photograph Holy Grail Amanita, like in my initial beginner’s luck 10/10/2020 where I photo’d a pair of holy grails with pools of water with ripples.

Those photos, in 2020 10 years later, enabled me to identify and prove that Dionysus victory mosaic shows leopard-watering fountain as balanced upturned Amanita.

Huggins’ argument based on Amanita morphology just reveals that Huggins has no comprehension – in multiple ways — of the realities of Amanita observation & form distribution.

“Artist would depict Amanita in its most common form.”

Get my pics of RES Golden Guide to Hall Plants from my debunk-brown page… see new site map section on Brown: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#Jerry-Brown — then see Walburga section, a early Nov 2020 article – here’s some of the pictures: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/05/15/browns-faceplant-about-st-walburga-vial-gets-even-worse/ — this time the focus is not serrated base, but the commonplaceness of the ball form of Amanita:

The ball form of Amanita is so rare and fleeting, only a botanical scientist has ever seen it, not dumbass ignoramus Medieval artists – argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong
The ball form of Amanita is so rare and fleeting, only a botanical scientist has ever seen it, not dumbass ignoramus Medieval artists – argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong
The ball form of Amanita is so rare and fleeting, only a botanical scientist has ever seen it, not dumbass ignoramus Medieval artists – argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong
The ball form of Amanita is so rare and fleeting, only a botanical scientist has ever seen it, not dumbass ignoramus Medieval artists – argues Huggins in Foraging Wrong

Wow, Huggins, the ball form is SO RARE

Cover of Wasson’s book SOMA (1968), showing a pair of Amanitas, inclluding a ball – which is not rare, but rather is TYPICAL, the very opposite of Huggins’ made-up imaginings, his fantasy-premised argumentation!

False. Artists often wish to depict upturned, rare form, which is actually a minor, rare, and all the more sought-out form (or ought to be).

“Ball form is not available for viewing by dumb ignorant Medieval artists; they would only have seen the adult mature flat-top form.” False.

  • Flat is not the most mature; upturned is the ideal mature form.
  • Many adult Amanita are round, not flat.
  • The ball form is common – much more common than upturned grail form.
  • The ball form is almost as common as flat top.
  • Typically a ball form and flat top specimen are found together. This is not the minority case, as Huggins’ argument presumes; this is the majority case!

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 9:32 am

_____________________________

Secret Hit Count in this PDF:

secret – 14 hits

hidden – 2 hits

suppress – 4 hits

_____________________________

keynote v1 of this article in 2023:

This Stang article has a rock-solid history, was first given at a Paranormal conference.  

Then Forte, Mururesku, Ruck, and everyone at Harvard (the Ruck committee writ large) rewrote the article.

from bottom of page 1: 

The article “benefited enormously from comments and edits from a great number of readers, including 

Robert Forte, 

Brian Muraresku, 

Carl “Amanita Promoter” Ruck, and 

the members of Harvard’s “Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean” colloquium. [CRAM]”

What about all the Paranormal conference attendees during his 3-day presentation of the original draft, didn’t they get to edit the article draft too?

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Religions+of+the+Ancient+Mediterranean%E2%80%9D+colloquium

CRAM page:  Feb-May 2012

https://www.brown.edu/Departments//Religious_Studies/cram/index.html

“The goal of the Culture and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean Colloquium is

[to rewrite Stang’s paper]

“to promote high-level, interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty and graduate students who deal with 

religion and culture in antiquity in the Mediterranean basin and west Asia, 

all rather loosely defined. CRAM meets monthly during the academic year. Each meeting lasts about an hour, and typically is centered on a pre-circulated paper. CRAM is currently administered by Religious Studies.”

_____________________________
Review Essay
Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
Charles “Breathing = Psil” Stang

_____________________________
v1 of the review essay:

Originally published as: took him 3 days to read it, 11–13 May 2023

An earlier version of Stang’s review essay was a keynote lecture entitled 

The Call of the Ancient: Psychedelic Pasts and Futures

at a conference:

Archives of the Impossible

at Rice University

Search for Archives of the Impossible

https://www.google.com/search?q=conference+%22Archives+of+the+Impossible%22

Conference page:

https://impossiblearchives.rice.edu

Playlist of videos from conf:

Not found a Stang video yet from the Kripal PARANORMAL esotericism conference. Here’s one though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW8Ua49dCYk —

Brain of the conference:
Jeffrey Kripal – [Doctor of Paranormal Studies]
Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Studies, School of the Humanities
J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University

https://impossiblearchives.rice.edu/archives-impossible-intro

Book:
Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred
2011 (“2010”)
Jeffrey Kripal
https://www.amazon.com/Authors-Impossible-Paranormal-Jeffrey-Kripal/

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 10:55 am

The motivation for this email, inventory of ‘secret’, is I choked when reading ‘secret’ here, a word that conveys no information, purely gratuitous use of the word ‘secret’, superfluous and unnecessary:

“did the Ancient Greeks consume a secret psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals?”

God forbid Stang/ Ruck/ Mururesku/ Forte/ Harvard just write:

“did the Ancient Greeks consume a psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals?”

“Dan Brown-inspired”, indeed, Stang Committee of writers.

“that an early, secret form of Christianity was using a psychedelic Eucharist.”

compare:

that an early form of Christianity was using a psychedelic Eucharist.

________________________

Secret 1 in the article written by Stang, Ruck, Mururesku, Forte, everyone at Harvard, and the Paranormal conferencegoers:

Stang puts the PRICE of the book on page 1?

R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (30th Anniversary Ed.; Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008), 192 pp., $18.95 pb., ISBN:

and page 1 says “hardback“?  $190.00 hb.,  for Yulia “Cave = Trip Balls” book

Good to see the new, popular, relaxed style of the top scholarship, after all the edits of Stang’s draft keynote by everyone in the enterprise.

Why not give the ebook price? 

“This 30th-anniversary edition brings with it an enlightening 

preface by religious luminary Huston Smith and 

a renewed exploration of the chemical findings by Peter Webster.

It powerfully argues for a reimagining of Western religious history and the transformative magic of entheogens.”

Secret 2:

Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2020), 480 pp., $21.00 hb., ISBN: 1250207142; Wouter J. Hanegr

You know we mean business b/c we give on page 1 the price of the HARDBACK version.

Secret 3:

“Upon reaching Eleusis, the initiates stood watch at an all-night vigil in a sanctuary and were given a special drink, the κυκεών, culminating in a secret ritual and an ineffable vision.”

Secret 4:

“Of what we are not sure, because the initiatory ritual and accompanying vision were mysteries after all: initiates were strictly forbidden from divulging ( πόρρητος) the secrets of Eleusis, and some speculate
that what they beheld was, in any case, beyond description, ineffable (ἄρρητος).

From scattered remarks and reports over the centuries, scholars have surmised that at the height of the ritual a high priest (ἱεροφάντης) would invoke the presence of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone by brandishing certain sacred objects (τὰἱερά) usually hidden in the recesses of the sanctuary, including an ear of grain;”

[and surely a The Mushroom ()]

Secret 5:

“So, perhaps the secret of the κυκεών lay in the psychoactive ergot that grew on the Greeks’ cereals and grasses, which they had learned to isolate and mix into their ritual potion.”

Secret 6:

“Now an initiate himself, like Wasson and Hofmann, Ruck broke the ancient injunction, and spoke the unspeakable secrets of Eleusis.”

Did you know Dr. Secret is an initiate of the secret Mysteries, and that he has spoken the secrets?  It’s a little tiny purple ergot mushroom (🍄). 🤯

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ergot+mushroom

I studied a Ruck Committee passage, maybe in Apples:

Associated with The Mushroom are the colors purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, tan, brown, and rust, and purple-red.

The ancient text has the word ‘purple’.  Thus is proved, everything is The Msh.

ie I fact-checked the ancient text passage Ruck gave, compared to his analysis, based on presence of color words.  

The fact-check didn’t go well; found no discernable link between the ancient passage & Ruck’s colors argument/analysis.  

The passage doesn’t do what he says it does, and he made no real effort to say how his color words “a reddish blue-purple” matched the ancient text eg “purple”.

It was puzzling how this is supposed to convince anyone.

It was like John Rush: he makes statements about the picture, that don’t match with the picture, are we even talking about the same picture? 

— the reaction of every reader of his disappointing book/gallery.  clinical anthropology.  

Hatsis & Rush sites are still down.

Secret 7:

“Ruck has lived to see his hypothesis revived and defended in this “next generation,” namely with Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.

Ruck appears throughout the pages of this book, which reads like a popular detective story, mixed with learned non-fiction inspired by Dan Brown.”

Secret 8:

CLICHE ALERT: experimenting with

“But Christianity has a more complicated place in Muraresku’s secret history than this would suggest. 

He suspects that at least some early Christians were experimenting with a psychedelic Eucharist, 

and that with the rise of imperial orthodoxy centered in Rome, it was driven underground—perhaps literally, as in the case of the Roman catacombs.”

Secret 9:

LOL I KNEW IT, we’re working with the ebook of Muraresku’s secret ebook!👍🤫🖥📙

20. Brian Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020), all quotations are from the 2020 ebook edition.

Secret 10:

“a small ritual chalice, both of which tested positive for ergot—the very ingredient thought to be in the κυκεών potion at Eleusis.”

Doesn’t count, because a single deviant instance – we can’t conclude anything really until we have texts and … even if we find ergot potion, there is no way we can know that this was normal and mainstream, this once-per-lifetime use of ergot potion by certain offshoot cultic sect community groups.

“Did the Phocaean colonists wrest the secret of Eleusis from its priesthood and presume to practice their own mysteries in Catalonia? 

If so, their free adaptation of the mysteries would mark a betrayal of the initiates’ oath of silence.”

Ruck actually personally buys into “we should not reveal the secret”, along with “I reveal the secret”.  Titillating marketing strategy, and the usual level of consistent posturing and narrative.

Secret 11:

“I fear that Muraresku is doing much the same again in his call for a “new Reformation” and his quest for “the original sacrament of Western civilization.”
He forwards his own version of “the pagan continuity hypothesis” with these two questions: 

“1) Before the rise of Christianity, 

did the Ancient Greeks consume a secret psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals?”

Secret 12:

“As for the second question, regarding the Christian Eucharist, Muraresku claims to explore “an early, secret form of Christianity that has been scrubbed from the record.”32 

Secret 13:

“As far as I can tell, there is simply no evidence, direct or indirect, circumstantial or otherwise, that an early, secret form of Christianity was using a psychedelic Eucharist. 

And even if evidence of a psychedelic Eucharist within the first centuries of Christianity were to surface, that wouldn’t tell us that the “original” Eucharist was psychedelic, 

or that it was ever the norm rather than the exception, 

any more than the discovery of texts from the second or third centuries tells us about who the historical Jesus really was

or what was the “original” faith of early Christians.”

Religious studies expert Stang takes it for granted that all readers take it for granted, the historicity of religious founder figures.

The argument form – a useful form – is used by Letcher against me (specifically) in his 4-item list of “further, it’s impossible to show…”, which I then proved all of and one more: pilzbaum means mushrooms, psychoactive, ingested, intentionally, for religious experience, of the peak type.

Doesn’t count, though, because… … because YOU CANT PROVE that that was NORMAL and MAINSTREAM and ORTHODOX according to the Church as an ENTERPRISE, and not merely a HERETICAL and DEVIANT and just GRASSROOTS and COUNTERCULTURE practice.

_________________________

Rail 1: Also a big bug factor in this article is the word “expect … rail”:

“… Holy Grail, literally. “

oh i see you are ignorant of Heinrich’s 1995 book Strange Fruit.

“And given the silence of the hostile witnesses, the very Churchmen you’d expect to rail against this practice, even if we were to find evidence of a psychedelic Eucharist, wouldn’t it more likely have been something at the margins of Christianity?”

I saw that arg somehow in Huggins, I first saw… maybe the Huggins(?) quote about “rail” is from first draft of this keynote essay.

Rail 2: Assuming That Which Is To Be Proved:

“If there were significant numbers of early Christians using a psychedelic sacrament, I would expect that the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity would rail against it.”

WHY WOULD YOU ASSUME THAT, BASED ON WHAT PRESUPPOSITIONS YOU HOLD?

“In other words, we would have ample indirect evidence. 

Certainly, these early Churchmen used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they labeled “Gnostic.”

How do you know the church fathers are against psychedelic Eucharist?

This is a Hatsis-grade log. fall.  

“There’s no written dogma saying The Mushroom is heretical; therefore, there was no use of The Mushroom.”

“expect” #3:

So, again, if there were an early psychedelic sacrament that was suppressed, I would expect that the suppressors would talk about it, as they do about all the other alleged errors
they document. Why don’t they?”

Why “errors”, why do you ASSUME they thought The Mushroom to be an “error”?  

Have you not read church fathers on the effects of the Eucharist?

Is this scholarly analysis, or Pop Cult fantasy storytelling?

Secret 14:

Stang/ Ruck/ Muraresku/ Forte/ Harvard continues:

“And so the strategy of the book becomes clear only by the very end: to tantalize the readers and to intrigue them with promises, and rather grand hypotheses about “the secret history of the religion with no name” (nearly always couched with a conditional “if” or subjunctive “could”), until the very end, when it is clear that such promises and hypotheses do not have evidence to support them.”

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 1:02 pm

Here’s a Stang video interviewing Muraresku in 2021 where Stang uses same “expect them to rail against” wording as in the new Stang article version: 

“ONE WOULD EXPECT the Prohibitionist church to RAIL AGAINST The Mushroom”.

From Huggins’ Foraging Wrong 2024 Biblio:

65. Stang, “Video: Pychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?” [Interview with Brian Muraresku]
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name
Feb. 1, 2021

I found the Huggins Foraging Wrong 2024 article quote already of Stang writing “rail” – which publication is Huggins citing? 

Answer: It’s a 2021 video; transcription & link in the above Harvard webpage.

Huggins:

“Gallistl’s point about the absence of textual support for the PMTs theories is an important one that applies as well to their treatment of the GCP and of Christian art throughout early and medieval Christianity. 

“Charles Stang, director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, states the problem well:

“if the original Eucharist were psychedelic, or even if there were significant numbers “

[Ruck p 14 Conjuring Eden: every returning Crusader, every heretical-sects member, every mystic, driven underground, had The Secret Msh, and later every elite — but nobody knew about it, it was SO secret] 

“of early Christians using psychedelics like sacrament, “

typo?!  missing ‘a’?

“I would expect the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity to rail against it. I would expect we’d have ample evidence.65

65: Stang, “Psychedelics.”

wow thats real helpful – Pro-level citations

It’s a Stang video; might explain the typo.:

Hug Bib:

65. Stang, “Video: Pychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?” [Interview with Brian Muraresku]
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name
Feb. 1, 2021

__________________

what Huggins passage is Huggins endnote 6 about?

“6 From a description by Wouter Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam), Charles Stang (Harvard Divinity School), and Jeff Kripal (Rice University) on Hanegraaff’s FB page.”

Huggins wrote, w/ endnote 6:

the study:

“In 2015 a joint project sponsored by the Council on Spiritual Practices was launched by Johns Hopkins’ University School of Medicine and NYU’s Langone Health, 

entitled “The Effects of Psilocybin-Facilitated Experience on the Psychology and Effectiveness of Religious Professionals.”

The field is waiting for that long-anticipated paper, “2006: Science proof that Psil causes “a complete mystical experienceTM” 🦄💨🌈 – now, with added Religious Professionals” paper from Hopkins/ Griffiths / Matthew Johnson, Frank Barrett crew.

 🦄💨🌈 

“However, the [Religious Professionals & psilo MEQ] study was featured in both Don Lattin’s 2023 book God on Psychedelics4

and a session at the August 14–18, 2023, Congress of World Religions in Chicago.5
During the previous week (August 6–11, 2023) Esalen Institute in California sponsored an invitation-only conference on Entheogenic Humanities.6

“6 From a description by Wouter Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam), Charles Stang (Harvard Divinity School), and Jeff Kripal (Rice University) on Hanegraaff’s FB page.”

Kripal, keeping entheogen scholarship well-grounded in the Paranormal, high on Hanegraaff’s non-drug entheogens.  Scientific Historiography!

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 1:06 pm

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name

Webpage about the video, page has transcription, to find the hit count of “secret” — 11 hits.

  • Stang (and the entire community who worked on this enterprise) PRESUPPOSES that the “orthodox” Church was PROHIBITIONIST – with no evidence.
  • Stang (and the entire community who worked on this enterprise) PRESUPPOSES that any use of psychedelics was SECRET.

Then Stang wonders why no evidence – when he is laboring in confusion under his own fantasized, PRESUPPOSED scenario, and he perceives his own presupposed scenario to prove the absence of The Mushroom, just like Hatsis argues and I already rebutted as a non sequitur and presupposition of Prohibition.

If Stang would stop adding Prohibition and stop adding Secret, that tilts the evidence in favor of Mura’s goal.

The problem then becomes and different problem, and the evidence becomes different evidence.

My site already cites that page/video:

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/psychedelics-and-the-future-of-religion-transcendence-and-transformation-initiative-stang-harvard/#Video-4

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 1:27 pm

Find “rail” in that Harvard page/transcript: same phrasing as Stang articles.  Also shows ignorance of Holy Grail upturned Amanita which I agree w/ Heinrich 1995; Holy Grail = upturned Amanita.

Stang says in the video:

“I wish the church fathers were better botanists and would rail against the specific pharmacopeia. They did not. But we do know that something was happening.”

I heard Stang say: I wish the church would rail against pharmacopia, but they didn’t.  Therefore there was no use of pharmacopia.  

I wish the church would rail against pharmacopia, but they didn’t.  Therefore there was no use of pharmacopia.

Charles Stang and Thomas Hatsis

NON SEQUITUR

  • assumes Prohibition
  • assumes Secret
  • assumes Suppressed

The pilzbaum deniers, the psychedelic Eucharist deniers, weave and construct an imagined Suppression scenario and CONFLATE that with the presence of psychedelics. When they don’t find their narrow, specific, particular, highly elaborated particular scenario that they expect and bring their system of expectations, then they conclude that there was no psychdelics, because there was no evidence for secret suppressed prohibition psychedelics.

The Suppression paradigm confuses the sheer presence of psychedelics with presence of secret suppressed prohibition of psychedelics. They go hunting intently for secret suppressed prohibition of psychedelics, don’t find their imagined/fabricated scenario, so then falsely “conclude” there was no use of psychedelics. Scenario of secret suppressed prohibition of psychedelics is not found, “therefore”, psychedelics are not found, they conclude.

“They” is everyone who edited the 2024 revised draft of Stang article: E.S.P. professor Kripal; Ruck; Forte, Muraresku, and also Stang, and the Harvard colloquium members.

EVERY ONE OF THEM made the mistake of conflating
“looking for evidence of psychedelics”
with
“looking for evidence of secret suppressed heretical prohibited psychedelics“.

Their negative finding about the second thing, is used as if a negative finding about the first thing.

It’s a move straight out of Letcher 2005/2007 book Shroom: Bernward Door is not secret, therefore, not mushroom.

The deniers totally conflate the mushroom question with the suppressed-mushroom question.

Mura says:

“my biggest question behind all of this is, as a good Catholic boy, is the Eucharist.”

I agree to your terms of battle.

“my big question is, what can we say about the Eucharist– and maybe it’s just my weird lens, but what can we say about it definitively in the absence of the archaeochemstry or the archaeobotany? 

Now, it doesn’t have to be the Holy Grail that was there at the Last Supper, but when you think about the sacrament of wine that is at the center of the world’s biggest religion of 2.5 billion people,

Oh I see you are ignorant of Heinrich’s basic, sound book from 1995.

Mura:

” I opened the speculation, Dr. Stang, that the Holy Grail itself could have been some kind of spiked concoction. “

Stang:

” if the original Eucharist were psychedelic, or even if there were significant numbers of early Christians“

Note problem/contradiction/ inconsistency; what does “mainstream” or “many” mean, or “significant numbers”?  ELASTIC LANG.

per Ruck Committee, we got that covered: The Secret Msh was in the possession of every returning Crusader, every heretical “sects”/”cults”/”certain communities”, every initiate, mystic, nun, monk, deviant, offshoot, suppressed group, etc etc, who “repeatedly REintroduced The Mushroom into their “communities” and brazenly displayed it in THEIR places of worship.” 

— Ruck Committee, “Conjuring Eden” p. 14 in Entheos 1, 2001; supplemented w/ Ruck Committee, “Daturas for the Virgin” p 56, Entheos 2, 2001.

Crop by Cybermonk. Not a mushroom, because has branches, Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article points out. Who has never seen mushrooms, very evidently.
pretty sure this is Stamets’ photo; bigger version says Stamets in lower right, maybe elsewhere in present page

Not a mushroom, because has branches, Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article points out. Ronald Huggins, who has never seen mushrooms, quite evidently.

The art features that Huggins 2024 and Brown 2019 claim “rule out” mushrooms, in fact corroborate mushrooms.

Their arguments are based on a complete and total, shocking and abysmal, lack of basics for identification.

BROWN AND HUGGINS, HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY NOT KNOW THESE ULTRA-ELEMENTARY, BASIC FACTS ABOUT MUSHROOM SPECIMENS?!

How the F are we going to debate and decide if mushrooms in Christian art look like mushrooms, when you clearly have never seen actual mushrooms?!

All your arguments don’t persuade, but rather just serve to reveal your embarrassing total ignorance of the topic & field.

Foolish laughingstock.

My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped

Huggins Foraging Wrong says it’s hard for ignorant stupid Medieval artists to see the so-brief, so-transient, rare, unusual, atypical ball form of Amanita; these dumbass ignoramus artists would only have seen the typical, normal, strongly prevalent flat-top form of Amanita. He carries himself with great tone of assureance and soundness.

Here’s how hard it is to see ball form in relation to flat top adult form (no mention of upturned Holy Grail form?!) —

At church today, the slide deck showed the following two images:

Ball form amanita alongside flat top more mature (but not fully Grail mature) form Amanita – ball form is not at all rare or transient or harder to come across than the adult flat mature form. Picture from today’s church service at SGC.

Ball form amanita alongside flat top more mature (but not fully Grail mature) form Amanita – ball form is not at all rare or transient or harder to come across than the adult flat mature form.

Given that Medieval art is stylized AND WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE A SPECIAL PLEADING RULE TO EXEMPT AMANITA, the set of 4 pilzbaum in Creation of Plants / Day 3 in Great Canterbury Psalter is well within range of meaning mushrooms; within range of resembling actual literal botanical specimens.

You can’t special-case pilzbaum and say that medieval art is freewheeling in its depictions EXCEPT FOR depictions of trees or mushrooms, in which case (supposedly) identifying mushrooms imagery in particular requires strict botanical accuracy, on the level of the entire, whole pilzbaum image and entire, whole mushroom specimens.

There is no special pilzbaum exemption from the principle that Medieval art is non-literalistic and stylized.

The mature form is often round, not flat. Huggins’ argument reveals TOTAL IGNORANCE about actual lifecycle variance/ distribution/ duration.
Picture from today’s church service at SGC.

The mature form is often round, not flat. Huggins’ argument just reveals TOTAL IGNORANCE about actual lifecycle variance/ distribution/ duration.

Conclusion: Huggins hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about. In no sense whatsoever is the ball form of Amanita momentary and rare, as he basis his argument on. To make sure arg, a person would have to be entirely ignorant, just like I was stunned when Brown confidently discarded Walburga because it can’t be Aman b/c it shows serrated base.

To Brown: WHAT?! Have you not seen Heinrich’s 1995 book, or the cover of RES’s 0th edition of Plants of the Gods, called titled 1976 or 1977 book Hallucinogenic Plants: A Golden Guide?

To Huggins: WHAT?! Have you never seen the growing/growth distribution of Amanita forms in its actual lifecycle? Where did you get your ideas, or your “information”? You are just fantasizing, and putting forth your imaginings as if fact.

“using psychedelics like [a?] sacrament, I would expect the representatives of orthodox, institutional Christianity to rail against it. I would expect we’d have ample evidence.”

The heavy use of “expect” indicates: Stang brings wrong, unconscious expectations, ie presuppositions.

To “expect” is to presuppose.

Stang thinks & expects: Evidence of The Secret Suppressed Mushroom would be in the form of Condemnation, Rejection, Suppression, railing against, Prohibition decrees & dogmas against The Prohibited Mushroom.

Assume that which is to be proved.  Have you ever read a description of the effect of ingesting bread, wine, Eucharist? Apparently not.

This is exactly the same trash reasoning as Hatsis!

Stang reasons:

“Certainly these early churchmen [the enterprise orthodox mainstream] used whatever they could against the forms of Christian practice they disapproved of, especially those they categorized as Gnostic. 

Why do you say that the officials categorized Amanita as “Gnostic”?

The only one I hear issuing degrees that Amanita is heretical is Pope Ruck, hiding behind the distancing-phrase, magic projection-phrase, “so-called heretical”.

“You mentioned, too, early churchmen, experts in heresies by” … “Marcus … Love Potion”

Stang “New” (Reheated Leftovers) Article About Muraresku’s TIK: email Jan. 5, 2025, 2:03 pm

Attached is a Word file of the 2021 video transcript page
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name
optimized for printout.

Expect this 2021 transcript is interesting to read to compare to the latest Stang Committee enterprise’s 2024 draft version of the keynote about how:

The Prohibitionist Orthodox Mainstream Establishment would have decreed The Mushroom as heretical, but they didn’t, and therefore, we know there was no mushroom use.

See Hatsis (the Psychedelic Historian) for a sound, tried and true explanation of this proof that succeeds at his goal, his accomplishment, which he describes in his book Psychedelic Mystery Traditions is to “explain away” the instances of evidence.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Dancing, Drumming, and Breathing Do Not Produce Psilocybin Effects (no Matter How Many Paid Authorities Try Their Magic Incantations: ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘might’, & ‘may’)

Pigs Can, Could, Might, & May Fly

🦋🐷🦋

Dancing, drumming, and breathing can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.

Wouter Hanegraaff

Dancing, drumming, and breathing can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.

Charles Stang

Dancing, drumming, and breathing can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.

Yulia Ustinova

Dancing, drumming, and breathing can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.

every university employee

Non-drug ASCs? Zero Evidence Required

Anything you can possibly think of can cause the same effect as Psilocybin.

Every scholar agrees and asserts this.

No proof or demonstration is required.

The assertion cannot be challenged; it’s immune and exempt.

There’s no limit on claims.

All these other methods are much more effective than Psilocybin at the significant actual goals of merit, such as having a love-driven life, which Psilocybin can’t accomplish, unlike the traditional methods of the mystics.

Drugs in Religious History? Infinite Evidence Required

Some people claim that psychedelics are at the root of religion.

This cannot be accepted without massive overwhelming explicit textual literal technical scientific direct assertions, and video recordings of the proceedings, and interviews with the original participants.

And that doesn’t count, because it’s not the norm for everyone, universally practiced, but is merely an exception that proves the rule – a heresy, a deviation, an abnormal exception.

Short of interviewing every member of antiquity and every primitive, orthodox Christian, we must firmly reject the hypothesis, because there is no evidence, and there cannot ever be evidence.

We must demand compelling proof.

High art from the most exalted Great Canterbury Psalter: Cutting King’s Cloak While Taking a Necessity

Stang, Hanegraaff, and all scholars:

“There are so many ways of producing same effect as Psil, there’s no need to go into it.

Drumming, dancing, breathing, all can produce same as Psil; space does not permit listing the countless ways that can produce same effect as Psil.

We would be shocked if anyone asked for evidence and support, because this is so well established.”

Me: Please demonstrate.

Esteemed Doctor Professor Charles 🐮💩 Stang

Left: Charles Stang; right: Cybermonk:

Crop by Cybermonk
181 KB 7:50 pm Jan. 4, 2025
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f206.item.zoom

Houot msg to me

Houot wrote:

“Hi Michael,

“Regarding the link, I had to re-upload the book cover because there was some issues with the last cover.

“It didn’t “pop out” enough. I switched from RGB to CMYK. It’s good now.

“Any day now, Amazon will show paperback, Kindle, and Audible versions on their website.

“Did you receive the book already?! Not sure what Amazon is up to, but if you did, it’s okay. You’re probably the first person to get it!”

Mail to Houot at Academia.edu Jan. 4, 2025, about book Rise of the Psychonaut (Feb. 2025)

I replied:

“The cover of my copy of Rise is nice but dark, I can see how popping colors could improve it.

I’ve read about 30% of the pages of the print book Rise of the Psychonaut.

You contribute a much-needed call for a science psychonaut explorer discoverer framework.

Most people now are pushing back against the top-down-imposed “therapy” Big Pharma framing that’s being pushed at us hard.

Psychonaut Science: The Post-Discovery, Delivery Phase

Be sure to cover the Post Discovery, delivery phase.

I’ll see if your book covers that phase.

I’m not your target audience, because I’m post-discovery.

I’m in the later phase, which you cover less: The task & problem of delivering the scientific discovery.

Nutshell summary of history of developing the Egodeath theory

1985: Explored ASC.
1988: Discovered and formed a theory.
1997: Effectively outlined the discovery theory.
1998: Started adding myth interpreted as analogy describing the theory.
2007: Effectively wrote up my theory + myth as analogy describing it, w/ moderate art interp.
2020: Added art motifs (much better) interpreted as analogy describing that 1988/1997 core theory.
2025: Writing that up for publication, how art motifs describe by analogy the core theory discovered in 1988.

It is often very hard work, packaging a discovery for effective delivery and take-up. Does Rise address this?

The fabricated, phony “therapy” approach is actively deleting negative, crucial experiences, as the CEQ q’air deletes 18 of 21 negative effects — crucially important effects for ACTUAL “complete mystical experiencing”.

The CEQ is fraudulent, a travesty of “Science” — a Big Pharma malpractice concoction based on a wrong model by Stace 1960.

MEQ is not much better, and they share this same “just delete the negative” error.

Writing Book Reviews, Review of Rise of the Psychonaut (Houot, 2025)

[As of Jan. 4, 2025, the link that I used to get the paperback is still 404.]

I used to write a lot of book reviews.

Best format: State what each chapter is about. State a couple critiques.

It’s unclear if writing book reviews is best use of time – but today we are looking at newly online review by Charles Stang, of TIK by Muraresku but appears to be a broad review of the theory’s history:

“Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean”
Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/CFC771D700D6D7BEA8AD6D961BAC4F27/S0017816024000373a.pdf/psychedelic-futures-and-altered-states-in-the-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean.pdf
print pubn date: Oct. 4, 2024
online pubn date: Dec. 31, 2024

I can write book reviews if a good use of time – I’m sitting on a lot of draft reviews/critiques I wrote re: Hanegraaff’s Hermeticism book.

My main critique of Rise will be, it’s all correct, though:

The “Rational Psychonauts” Approach Pits Worst Version of Religion vs. Best Version of Science

  • You pit the worst version of “Religion” against the best version of “Science”.

Rational Psychonaut Reddit Forum: What Is a Rational Psychonaut?

Advised Houot re: semi-404 links:
It may be safer to truncate in Rise p. 88 to just /RationalPsychonaut/

https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/

“Welcome to Rational Psychonaut, a community for sensible discussion of the science of altered states of consciousness.

“For people interested in exploring inner realms without subscribing to the woo surrounding the topic.

“Created Aug 29, 2013“

continuing my post:

I’ll read your recomm’d Rational Psychonaut forums.

[his index fails to have “rational”!]
“Rational psychonaut” section p 87, not listed in TOC.
TOC only lists chapters – bad. 2 levels missing from TOC.

posted to Houot Jan 4 2025:
pls test these links from Rise p. 88, they redirect to same “msg deleted” thread which seems to have i guess half the content you try to link to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/comments/ah2o50/what_is_a_rational_psychonaut/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/comments/ah2o50/what_is_a_rational_psychonaut_in_your_eyes/
End up at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/comments/ah2o50/deleted_by_user/

Sloppy Terms: “belief”, “religion”, “the divine”, “sacred”

I’m allergic to how terms are thrown around as if determinate and fixed, given meaning: “belief”, “religion”, “the divine”, “sacred”.

Against wrongly confident “rationalists”, I don’t know what those terms are supposed to mean, and I don’t employ them.

I reject both such “rationalism” and “religion” as discussion frameworks; I made my own framework instead, and reject all previous position-labels from outside my system, eg “perennialism”, “common core of mysticism”.

I agree with some of those ideas, but especially reject how people historically have written about them, in hazy poetic fashion, never grounding/resolving the poetic analogies in direct Engineering terms.

I reject esotericism as a communication style, even if I can redeem and salvage some core ideas in Esotericism.

Be Like Shamans and Have Full Control in the Psychedelic State

  • You glorify “shamans have total control of the kind we want”.

This won’t pan out in any useful way.

Apples and oranges, very different approach/framework used by shaman’s won’t be effectively imported into modern psychonaut practice.

Surrender, Surrender, but Don’t Give Your Self Away

  • You have a shallow, off-base conception of “surrender”.

We need an engineering explanation of the dynamics of control involved in this so-called “surrender” (not a term that I utilize, but an important dynamic).

The result is a profoundly transformed mode of control.

Control is transformed, to {be cleansed and pass through the guarded gate} & “have the right to tree of life” Rev 22:14 “and go through the gates into the city”.

(That language is analogy, not direct referent in Engineering terms.)

I rejected the way everyone writes about mysticism (1986) and surrender (2022); we need a clear Engineering expression/ model.

“Cognitive Neuro Science” Means Delete the Cognitive and Label Neuro as “Cognitive”

I reject all the shallow trendy pop lingo of (contradiction in terms) “cognitive neuro science”.

“Cognitive” is false advertising, a marketing claim, a magic word for market positioning, but actually “cognitive neuro science” has zero cognitive, 100% neuro; aka eliminative reductionism.

As a Cognitive advocate, I reject Neuroscience, because the Neuroscience approach always eliminates Cognitive.

Cognitive is useful here; Neuroscience is not useful here, and is harmful because the Neuro approach replaces and eliminates the Cognitive approach.

Neuro discussion of cognition is based in the wrong, inappropriate, misleading level: not useful; too roundabout and indirect to be useful lexicon and conceptual vocabulary.

Reject All Canned, External, Pre-fab Lexicons

I reject the entire external-to-my-theory lexicon “neuroplasticity”, “ego loss”, “ego dissolution”, etc.

My custom lexicon is far better than any such terms; it’s shaped directly by the dynamics of the ASC, without scientistic reductionism.

The Wrecked Field, OSC-Restricted “Cognitive Science of Religion”, Made as Boring and Irrelevant as Possible

The most boring, ruined topic is OSC-restricted “Cognitive Science of Religion”.

A boring approach to a boring aspect of religion, by uninspired writers, who forbid coverage of ASC.”

/ end of my reply to Houot Jan 4 2025

Houot’s reply to me Jan. 11, 2025

Acknowledging the Post-Discovery Phase

Houot’s reply doesn’t mention coverage of the need to deliver and communicate one’s discovery; the post-discovery phase, what happens then? Seems not accounted for in this book (after reading 30% of the pages).

Houot wrote:

“Hi Michael,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I’m the first reviewer of Rise of the Psychonaut

Not only are you the first person ever to buy my book, you’re the first book reviewer as well. I have proof that you are the first, will make a blog post about my journey with KDP, ACX, and the glitch you seemed to have exploited.

Good job!

A few responses to your comments:

Contributes much-needed call for a Science Psychonaut Explorer Discoverer framework

YOU: You contribute a much-needed call for a science psychonaut explorer discoverer framework.

ME: Yes, I think we’re ready as a species/culture for this idea.

Pitting Worst “Religion” Against Best “Science”

YOU: My main critique of Rise will be, it’s all correct, though: Tends to pit worst version of “religion” against best version of “science”.

ME: “This is partly correct. The pendulum has swung too far in favor of medicine/therapy and religious paradigms of psychedelic consumption and interpretation.

“I simply pushed the pendulum in the other direction.

“The pendulum eventually should veer back to the center in this discourse, most likely swinging in the other direction over time with new arguments for a new generation.

Dynamics of Control Involved in “Surrender”

YOU: We need an engineering explanation of the dynamics of control involved in this so-called “surrender” (not a term that I utilize, but an important dynamic).

ME: “Exactly (e.g., my master’s thesis topic), and, I’m thinking about this concept for future publications.”

Rational Psychonaut forum threads Partly 404

“Regarding the Reddit Rational Psychonaut links: While the first link says something to the effect of deleted by user, the thread is still there.

“I had no problem with the second link.”

“Thanks again.”

— Houot

/ end of Houot’s reply to me about Rise of the Psychonaut (Feb 2025 book)

Review of the Field & TIK by Stang: “Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean”

Stang’s review of Muraresku & entheogen scholarship (Cyberdisciple adds in email 10:26 am Jan. 4, 2025)

From Cyberdisciple:

“Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean”
Charles Stang, Harvard Divinity School
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/CFC771D700D6D7BEA8AD6D961BAC4F27/S0017816024000373a.pdf/psychedelic-futures-and-altered-states-in-the-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean.pdf
print pubn date: Oct. 4, 2024
online pubn date: Dec. 31, 2024

Cyberdisciple wrote:
“Stang reviews Muraresku’s book TIK:

Webpage of Stang article in journal Harvard Theological Review: 
“Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean”
Harvard Theological Review
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2024
Harvard Theological Review, Volume 117 , Issue 4 , October 2024, pp. 851 – 870
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/psychedelic-futures-and-altered-states-in-the-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean/CFC771D700D6D7BEA8AD6D961BAC4F27
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816024000373

Cyberdisciple wrote:

“Charles Stang in his review uses Ustinova’s two books (Caves and Ancient Greek Mind; Divine Mania)

Cyberdisciple’s pages about Ustinova:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=Ustinova

“and Wouter Hanegraaff’s 2022 book on Hermeticism”

My main page about the book Hermetic Spirituality:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/hermetic-spirituality-and-the-historical-imagination-altered-states-of-knowledge-in-late-antiquity-hanegraaff/
my site map > Hanegraaff:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#Hanegraaff

Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity
Wouter Hanegraaff, June 30, 2022
Cambridge University Press
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hermetic_Spirituality_and_the_Historical/MvxvEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetic-Spirituality-Historical-Imagination-Knowledge/dp/1009123068

Photo: Michael Hoffman

Psychedelics in Christian History? Allegro’s Been Debunked

Cyberdisciple continues:

“to promote psychedelics in a limited way, as just one among many techniques for religious experiencing.

“But not yet psychedelics in Christianity’s history.”

I replied:

haven’t you heard? Allegro’s been debunked

Cyberdisciple rebutted:
https://www.memedroid.com/memes/detail/3582535/Deboonker —

Cyberdisciple re: Stang employs the constructs “orthodox” vs. “heretics”

Cyberdisciple continues:

“Stang employs the constructs “orthodox” vs. “heretics”.”

Orthodox vs. Heretics =
Mainstream vs. Counterculture =
the Enterprise vs. Grassroots

I replied:

That’s same badness as the counterproductive, self-defeating “counterculture vs. mainstream” error.

Forte (self-described grassroots publisher of Road to Eleusis) stands apart from “the Enterprise” yet continues to befriend Mururesku, who is part of the Enterprise.

my email to Cyberdisciple 11:22 am jan 4 2025:

Orthodox vs. Heretics
Mainstream vs. Counterculture
the Enterprise vs. Grassroots [Robert Forte’s terms]

Beware of employing all of these wall-construction barrier boundary constructions, they reify Prohibition, and they perpetuate forcing scholarship into two exclusive uncrossable sides.

[Cyberdisciple replied:
“Yes, this area feels like a breakthrough of sorts for strategy of presentation and research.”]

We should be critiquing these constructs as much as employing them, similar to the artificial & forced bucket/ umbrella/ wildcard construct “psychoactive mushrooms, ie Amanita|Psilocybin”.

That’s similar to the caution required when choosing to write ‘psychedelic’ vs. ‘entheogen’.

My big-brain takeaway: BE SURE TO USE LANGUAGE CAREFULLY.  I recommend not using words — eg. ‘gnosticism’, ‘Christianity’, & “the”, b/c words can mislead.

Freke & Gandy in The Jesus Mysteries:
exoteric vs esoteric

Pagels’s first 3 books:
Orthodox vs. Gnostics (Valentinians)
Hylics [empty set] vs. Psychics vs. Pneumatics
body / soul [bad] / spirit [good]

Cyberdisciple re: Stang leading edge leader; baby steps

Cyberdisciple continued:

“Stang seems part of the leading edge of academics.

“I expect more and more scholars to follow Stang’s lead, accepting psychedelics in a limited way. Baby steps.”

/ end of Cyberdisciple email

email to Cyberdisciple jan 4 #1: Charles Stang, Blotter (Erik Davis, 2024), God on Psychedelics (Don Lattin, 2023)

Jan 4 2025 9:38 am

Ronald Huggins’ Foraging Wrong 2024 article caught Stang writing that the “Creation of Plants/ Third Day of Creation” image in Great Canterbury Psalter is a “bowl” of msh — that is a poor interpretation by Stang.

My article section about entire image:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/06/11/eadwine-images-in-great-canterbury-psalter-commentary-interpretation/#f11

The controverted image:

Crop by Cybermonk
Great Canterbury Psalter, “Creation of Plants”/”third day”, f11 row 1 right
discovered by Paul Lindgren 2000
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom

Here’s what a bowl of Cubensis looks like, depicted by the same artist

My Identification of 4 Mushrooms in Day 4 Creation, f11, Great Canterbury Psalter

[4:23 pm jan 4 2025] I’m pretty sure I posted this id’n before, but per Huggins article re: this 4th Day pic:

The 4 mushrooms in Day 4 of Great Canterbury Psalter f11:

Lib, Cub, Pan, Ama.

Liberty Cap; Cubensis; Panaeolus; Amanita.

Huggins argues that Brown claims the mushrooms in Day 3 are rigidly reproduced intact throughout Great Canterbury Psalter. Huggins tries to stretch what Brown says about organ, tag orange, tan, blue, and red caps – todo: check what Brown wrote.

Against Huggins, the pilzbaum from Creation Day 3 DO transfer wholly to Creation Day 4 (plants), except without branches.

On the third day, God created __.

On the fourth day, God created __.

from https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/what-are-7-days-of-creation —

Days of creation list

end of BibleInfo.com

The Six Days of Creation, in Great Canterbury Psalter

Crop by Michael Hoffman
“f11 row 1 and 2 six days of creation.jpg” 252 KB [5:19 pm Jan. 4, 2025]
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom#

Individual crops of the 6 days:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/06/11/eadwine-images-in-great-canterbury-psalter-commentary-interpretation/#Six-Days-of-Creation

Crop by Michael Hoffman
“f11 row 2 right creation day 4 plants.jpg” 91 KB [8:08 pm Jan. 4, 2025]
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom#

Liberty cap, Cubensis, Panaeolus, Amanita

Bible says:

Day 3: Dry ground & plants
Day 4: Sun, moon & stars

Yet Great Canterbury Psalter shows:

Day 3: 4 pilzbaum with branches.
Day4: 4 pilzbaum without branches, along with wispy plants.

Day 3: Pan, Lib, Cub, Ama. Branch count: 2, 2, 1, 2.

Day 4: Lib, Cub, Pan, Ama. No branches, against Panofsky who wrote:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/05/panofskys-censored-pair-of-letters-to-wasson-revealed/#Sentence-2-6 –

Erwin Panofsky wrote to Wasson, in 1952, after Wassons’ field trip to Plaincourault, about pilzbaum:

“even the most mushroom-like specimens show some traces of ramification”.

Define “traces”.

Panofsky’s statement is overbroad; Huggins identifies a count of pilzbaum that lack branches in Great Canterbury Psalter; it’s nonzero, going against Huggins’ hero Panofsky that Huggins pulls out of the blue strangely AS IF Wasson didn’t censor the two letters from 1952-2019.

I DEMAND TO KNOW HOW THE HELL RONALD HUGGINS FOUND ABOUT THE TWO PANOFSKY LETTERS IF NOT FROM BROWN 2019 – WHY THE HELL DOESN’T HUGGINS CITE AND CREDIT BROWN 2019, when using the Panofsky letters especially letter 2?

HUGGINS IS DISHONEST AND ROBBING BROWN AND COVERING UP FOR WASSONS MOST-EGREGIOUS AND FRAUDULENT CENSORSHIP, PREVENTING AND OBSTRUCTING AND DELIB MIS-LEADING SCHOLARS AWAY FROM PANOFSKY’S LEADS.

Unless Huggins can explain to me why he how he found Pan’s letters – and why didn’t Huggins publish them?

Panofsky’s two letters including the branches argument is a big discovery, that Hug tries to hide and cover-up. This stinks of fraud.

As I understand & deduce, Wasson censored the two Panofsky letters, hiding them from Ramsbottom in 1955.

who says “all pilzbaum have at least traces of ramification”). see if my Pan Per Sentence page works:
(sucks that i haven’t made each sentence’s heading linkable)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/05/panofskys-censored-pair-of-letters-to-wasson-revealed/#Letter-2-per-Sentence

Here’s what a bowl of Cubensis looks like, depicted by the same artist, Eadwine: f134 row 1 right, banquet table.

image here todo – wow my main f134 page section sucks:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/07/19/psalter-rows/#Row-1-Right – wheres all the Nov 2020 crops of just the table? see Proof
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/proof-canterbury-psalters-mushroom-trees-are-psilocybe/#Strict-Prerequisites-for-Ingesting – are these dark dull 2020 palette? check my gallery that shows dates of adding each pic: Nov 20, 2020 – this is the dark, poorer, used in my article alas:

Crop by Cybermonk Nov. 2020
Gallery says Nov 20, 2020; the dark palette
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f134.item.zoom

Later, when my mobile device made per-row crops (row 1; row 2; row 3 of f134), I discovered library brightened the palette:

Crop by Cybermonk
the library’s updated brighter palette

Poor interpretations by pilzbaum affirmers does not mean pilzbaum have been in any way disproved.

Stang’s mistake, “bowl” of msh, is as bad as mistakes of John Rush. It’s fair for Huggins to correct these mistakes, but correcting these mistakes in no way amounts to disproof of pilzbaum.

It’s possible to ridicule pilzbaum affirmers while affirming pilzbaum

Brown made mistakes about specimen id’n both in Walburga tapestry and in Creation of Plants (his “psil, Pan, psil, Ama” should be “Pan, Lib, Cub, Ama”).

But I rightly correct Brown with no implication that pilzbaum are not mushrooms.

I demonstrate that it’s possible to ridicule pilzbaum affirmers while affirming pilzbaum even more than those other pilzbaum affirmers.

I make fun of Brown – still with no implication that affirmers are wrong; in fact Browns’ Walburga screwup is interesting b/c Browns’ strategy backfired in an interesting ironic way:

Brown tried to argue that his interp is reliable, by rejecting Walburga based on his (erroneous) reading of serrated base.

Huggins corrects such errors AS IF he’s disproved pilzbaum.

Review of Blotter (Davis, 2024) by Tristan Angieri

Review of Erik Davis’ new book, & Stang:

News Story: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion: Book Talk: Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium with Erik Davis
by Tristan Angieri, May 8, 2024
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/05/08/2024/psychedelics-and-future-religion-book-talk-blotter-untold-story-acid-medium

God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion (Lattin, 2023)

Don Lattin’s new book March 2023- probably same as Lucid.News Lattin articles but added Intro/Concl which I skimmed:

God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion
by Don Lattin, March 6, 2023, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/God-Psychedelics-Tripping-Old-Time-Religion/dp/195806128X/
Apocryphile Press (March 6, 2023)

Lattin is a good writer at Lucid.News, includes a pair of articles about Bob “Otis” Stanley of Sacred Garden Community (SGC). https://www.sacredgarden.life

Stang Review of Mururesku TIK

my reply to Cyberdisciple continues:

Stang is Harvard director, video interview session host, 

Griffiths is a crew member on the Enterprise – which role was Griffiths, Pollan, & Muraresku on Star Trek?

Forte’s concept: the Enterprise.

Stang Got Griffiths to Admit MEQ’s “Mystical Experience” Is “Positive-Balanced” so as to Simply Ignore & Omit All Negative Mystical Experience

That’s OK, because Negative ASC Effects Are Caught by the CEQ (which Ignores & Omits ASC-Specific Negative Experiences)

😱🐉🚪🔑🚿🚪💎🏆🏅

MEQ – Mystical Experience Questionnaire

CEQ – Challenging Experience Questionnaire

PES – Psychedelic Effects Scale
PES is from Leary’s grad student Pahnke 1962, dissert. 1963 book at MAPS site. PES is the orig source of the later MEQ including MEQ 137, MEQ43, MEQ30
(expect MEQ21 next; WHAT’S UP WITH CONTINUAL SHRINKING MEQ?)

Charles Stang got Roland Griffiths on his back heels, defending the MEQ: Hopkins’ positive-only Walter Stace 1960 model of mystic exp’c is “POSITIVE-BALANCED“, like standing 100% on left foot w/ right foot high in air), 

and our CEQ is sure to catch negative failures of unicorns producing rainbows like cows produce Psil.  

From which we did the same move as MEQ: omit the negative (18 of 21 effects) from the negative q’air.

Our CEQ catches negative effects as long as those effects are same as OSC negative effects.  

Discard any ASC-specific negative effects, we’re avoiding those by staying well under 30 mg and only doing 1-2 sessions with newbies.  

Science!  

And crew member of the Enterprise, Muraresku, will brag about how how we “NOW” have produced “A” bona fide initiation experience, therefore,

WE have solved the problem that Eleusis heirophants FAILED at.

We have an initiation system that’s BETTER THAN DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.

😡⚡️💥😵💀⚰️

email to Cyberdisciple jan 4 #2: pilzbaum denier arguments that are or are not worth rebutting

Jan 4 2025 10:03 am

There are two types of errors in pilzbaum interp, one is more worth rebutting, one is less worth spilling any ink:

* Aspects of pilzbaum/ mixed-wine deniers that ARE worth rebutting.

* Aspects of pilzbaum/ mixed-wine deniers that are NOT worth rebutting.  such as bad tone, where Huggins discusses new details with a tone of “therefore pilzbaum are not purposefully meaning msh”).

Huggins:

“I am writing about details of the pilzbaum in Great Canterbury Psalter, therefore not msh” – that’s the framing he poses as. 

“We know pilzbaum don’t purposefully mean mushrooms, because I am delivering descriptions of the form and patterns of pilzbaum.”

You might find same bad arg’n style in other topics: 

“I’m right, because here’s my general description of the material in some more detail (general info) than my opponent.”

It’s good that Huggins discusses details of pilzbaum.

It’s bad that he does so with a TONE/framing of “therefore pilzbaum affirmers are wrong.”

It’s an uncooperative, adversarial tone of contributing to the study.

Year of Stamets’ kicking “Lib Cap ancient Europe” deniers to the curb: 2005, not 2022, afaik:

Hancock’s 2022/Visionary intro: “I kept old chapters untouched, that’s my philosophy”, for 2nd Ed, titled “Visionary”.  

Visionary pp 187-192 debating “yes there were Lib Cap & Pana in ancient Europe” “nah-ah, b/c i am a committed skeptic” (Bahn i think).

Stamets in Supernatural 2005 [preserved in Visionary 2022 edition] by Hancock says:

 “f this s; not wasting my time on worthless rubbish arguments by committed skeptics who deny in 2005 that there’s Liberty Cap, Pana, & other Psil msh in ancient Europe.”

A balance is needed: There is a “fair point” aspect in ALL the arguments… or MOST all of the args from bullheaded pilzbaum/ mixed-wine deniers, 

committed skeptics who put forth ever more bizarre argument vectors:

My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped (instance 3 of this heading)

“This pilzbaum doesn’t look like mushroom, because the artist wouldn’t have seen ball form cap, 

b/c ball form is such a transient phase in Amanita lifecycle that the artist would have depicted Amanita only in its mature flat-top adult form.”

Revealing: I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, YET I’m going to strut around posing as if I’ve put forth authoritative persuasive arg’n.  

Nothing but Huggins making a laughingstock fool of himself.  

How is this even worth rebutting?  This is ridiculous, a typical shockingly absurd instance of obvious fallacious arg’n.  Why waste time on foolishness, folly?  End of my 2006 Plainc article – move forward, abandon folly.

Looking-Lines Connecting Non-Branching and Balance, f177

Crop and annotations by Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com
“f177 left looking lines.jpg” 362 KB [11:34 pm Jan. 3, 2025]
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f177.item.zoom#

Interpretation of connections made, via lines and boxes:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/03/12/4-horses-mushroom-tree-right-foot-balancing-great-canterbury-psalter-f177/#Looking-Lines-Connecting-Items

Joint Conference of Society for Classical Studies and Archaeological Institute of America

Rad conference, how Muraresku of you to be at this conference learning about how to profitably market our Eleusis construct/ myth/ meme.

Say hi to Brian & CEQ megacorp for me: 

How to alchemically convert the {Shadow Dragon Monster} {transformation gate} into a $$$ weak-sauce psycholytic therapy industry.

Lundborg says in Canada, some psycholytic therapy was 400-500 mics!

🤯🚀🌌💥 🐉🤤🍽

Google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Joint+Conference+of+Society+for+Classical+Studies+and+Archaeological+Institute+of+America

https://www.classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/2025-annual-meeting —

Calls for Abstracts (Jan 2025)

{pass through the guarded gate to get the prize}

Instead of to produce the prize, Transcendent Knowledge; {immortality}; to {live forever} — ie, past through the threat-guarded transformation gate to attain the mind’s mature, non-transient form.

Transformation from possibilism branching to eternalism non-branching mental worldmodel. From autonomous control to dependent, 2-level control.

Crop and annotations by Cybermonk

The guy looking right is connecting the left-looked item to the {scale balance}.

I need to add DERIVED CONNECTIONS that are accomplished by these paired looking-lines.

The top pair of looking-lines (horses):
{non-branching}
is connected to:
{God’s hand lifting}.

The bottom pair of looking-lines (corpse lifters of the PASSIVE CORPSE):
{left-foot-standing rams} and {[visually] cut-right branch}
is connected to:
{scale balance}. (out of view here)

Ego “death” is a stupid fake unjustified characterization of Psilocybin effects?
Tell that to Eadwine. Motif of “threat” implies death. same with flame, blade.

A sort-of “threat” is the threat of a sort-of “death”.

The egoic control system is threatened to death, driving mental model transformation, transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

The Marketing-Myth of Eleusis

We have the Mythic Amanita, as opposed to actual Amanita.

We have the Mythic Plainc fresco, as opposed to ACTUAL fresco.

We have the Mythic Eleusis construct, vs. actual Eleusis.

Why was the mythic Eleusis construct fabricated and marketed? Who profits? Old elites (Eleusis rulers) and new elites (Big Pharma; Big Psychedelic)?

Mura speculates: Christianity took the exclusivity of Eleusis, took the kykeon, and placed it on every house-church table.

Catholic Muru, says primitive Christianity was good:

Christianity liberated kykeon from the iron grip of the Eleusis rulers, made kykeon available to everyone.

Weaponized Entheogen Scholarship

The above makes Forte flip out, because he writes, the very worst thing that could possibly happen is that the Catholic Church use Psilocybin. God forbid!

We cannot allow that!

Do WHATEVER IT TAKES to keep Psilocybin out of the hands of the Church – that is THE reason and motivation for our doing and wielding our weapon of entheogen scholarship.

Never mind that that makes us blind to evidence; prevents Repeal of Prohibition; perpetuates isolating The Msh within the container boundary, “the Counterculture”.

Our The Divine Counterculture Mushroom, of Us Heretics, Outsiders Forever

Never let the evil Mainstream possess our The Mushroom, our The Divine Counterculture Mushroom. Bolster Prohibition forever.

Keep The Mushroom heretical! per Pope Ruck: by the magic of definition, the mushroom is inherently heretical, so-called heretical sects, ruck calls them, any mushroom use is defined by Ruck as so-called heretical.

This is the dilemma choice possible options: Either:

  • Bolster Prohibition to keep the bad guys, the Church, from possessing The Mushroom. John Lash: “I can’t allow Jesus/Moses to have used our mushroom.” Keep The Mushroom heretical-only, forever.
    Or,:
  • Top-down takeover of Psilo by the Enterprise [Forte term]; employing and pushing figureheads Griffiths, Pollan, Mura. Promote the hell out of them, by Big Networking, Big Pharma; Big Psychedelic.

A better ‘or’:

  • My 3rd option: Full Repeal of Psilocybin Prohibition. Work out the details later, of who are the good guys & bad guys [latter terms from Travis Kitchens article Part 2].

Part 2 article does not contain the words:

  • repeal
  • reform
  • policy
  • law
  • schedules
  • prohibit

Entheogen scholarship is compliant and complicit and accommodationist, enabling perpetuation of Prohibition. 

For all Forte “cares”, that care omits Repeal of Prohibition. Whatever Forte most cares about and is worried about, it’s not Repeal of Prohibition.

Forte’s message is not “Repeal Psilocybin Prohibition“.

The More Prominent the mushroom in Christian art, the more “heretical-sect exclusive” we must emphatically frame it

An alien heretical infiltration into the very heart of the Church, proving how intensively the Church suppressed our The Mushroom

That’s what he, Ruck, calls mushroom use: he calls any use of The Mushroom so-called heretical.

Doubly so, for the most major and centrally placed mushrooms in Christian art. The most prominent mushrooms in Christian art are super heretical, such as the cubensis in Cant. Cath. image “Eustace crossing the river”.

Forte & Pinchbeck vs. Muraresku TIK Article by Travis Kitchens; Part 2 (Jan. 2, 2025)

bad, meaningless title, the most ineffective, meaningless title, by random word generator
Part 2: Jan. 2, 2025
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret-1ac

Against “Consciousness Elevation”: The Egodeath theory does not support The Psychedelic RenaissanceTM, which is defined and controlled by shadows

What I Do Support Is Full Repeal of Psilocybin Prohibition

Who is pushing The Psychedelic Renaissance? Why?

Who gets to control and direct it?

These shell-game constructs: “the needs of humanity today” – vague meaningless empty shell, who gets to define “the needs of humanity today”?

Exact phrases from Kitchens Part 2: from a pull quote:
“meetings that aim ito re-establish Eleusis as a global reference point for:”

  • “consciousness elevation” – REJECT! HARD PASS!
  • “the tackling of modern global challenges” – REJECT! HARD PASS!
  • “the protection of life on our planet” – REJECT! HARD PASS!

These are intentionally – Huggins’ word – ELASTIC empty shells, that can be made to mean ANYTHING.

They are empty wildcards with no inherent determinate meaning. I reject your project.

The only project I do & support is the ME project; the Egodeath theory as defined by the Egodeath theory.

Who gets to define “a complete mystical experience”? Stace 1960?

What is a “complete mystical experience”? Per the Leary/Stace PES [1962] aka SoCQ aka the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) – if you score high enough on these opinionated set of effects defined by Stace in 1960, eg since I don’t believe in “ineffability”; I’d fail the test : (

Big Therapy is trying to take over the Psilocybin experience / effects, including steering negative revelatory/ transformative effects instead into a profit-driven, mundane-constrained Psycholytic Grief Therapy model.

This isn’t Science; this is Marketing strategy, dictating the effects and WHAT KIND OF NEGATIVE EFFECTS WE SHALL MAKE PSILOCYBIN HAVE, for profit.

“Item 54. I was afraid to lose my self-control.”

We can’t profit from that, so give some math to excuse our “dropping” that “item”, “because of cross-loading” – yeah, that’s the ticket!

Cross-loading: Translation: These negative effects, 18 out of 21, didn’t fit neatly into one of our Studerus-fabricated slots, so we banished 8 of them into the general broad “Negative” hi-level dimension instead of a narrow low-level “factor” category.

CEQ only draws from the narrow, “factor”-contained negative items, to form CEQ’s initial item pool.

Presto, 8 of 21 negative Psilicybin effects magically “disappeared”. 10 more to go! to achieve our goal, of ending up with just the 3 most feeble negative psil fx. Not 21, but 3. 14%; ditch 86%.

(We put our “B-team” scientists there, on the negative effects categorization task.)

Replace it by a long Grief category/ dimension/ scale/ subscale, because we can turn that into a profit:

OUR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE PROFIT MODEL THAT CEQ needs to be reshaped to support – b/c our initial item pool wasn’t profit-optimized enough.

eg the half baked MEQ and the absolute garbage CEQ that fails at its one job, catching the negative peak experience.

bad, meaningless title, the most ineffective, meaningless title, by random word generator
Part 2: Jan. 2, 2025
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret-1ac

The Eleusis construct and why it was fabricated and pushed.

Last night (Jan 2, 2025), I finished reading Travis Kitchens article Part 2. 

I criticized the Lundborg sentence about how Greeks got high only one time per year, specifically at Eleusis – what a CARTOONISH PICTURE!

The Eleusis meme/myth has left Earth orbit and is now lost in deep space.

The Eleusis Meme: Over-focus on ergot at Eleusis limits discussion of psychedelics in Western premodernity
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/the-eleusis-meme-over-focus-on-ergot-at-eleusis-limits-discussion-of-psychedelics-in-western-premodernity/

Multiple topic threads here are driven by critique of Elesus meme/ myth/ construct.

Turning “Eleusis” into a simplified cartoon, for what propaganda purpose?

Are we talking about “Amanita”/ “Eleusis”/ “history of esoteric wisdom” as an actual thing, or as a mythic construct?

Are we doing reality-based coverage, or myth-based coverage of these things?

Difficult Writing by Travis Kitchens

Travis Kitchens’ writing is too hard to follow b/c overuse of pronouns and other indirect words: 

  • “the book”, after he just listed 3 different books.  Why not give the title?  
  • “He was made when he saw that tribute for his idea.”  Which idea?  Who is “he”?  Why not say his name directly?

The article is just a little too literary, colorful but unclear phrases.

The Part 2 article has good content, buried behind unclear writing. This particular flaw (always using indirect words instead of direct specifying) needs an edit pass, to reach ready readability.

Who the F Is this Invader of Our Space, Michael Pollan/ Brian Muraresku/ Roland Griffiths?

Griffiths’ CEQ q’air: Convert Stace’ 1960 lopsided, 1-sided “balanced” model [quote transcripotion where Stang catches Griffiths; G replies “we ignore negative effects, to have a balanced model of mysticism], unicorns and rainbows mysticism, into a Profit Model redirecting the failure of that model into Grief psycholytic therapy

Catch certain failures but discard the Shadow Dragon Monster, ie negative effects that are specific to the ASC vs workaday familiar-sounding psychotherapy OSC-based constructs.

I recorded, but probably didn’t upload, half hour of wondering what veteran psychonauts say against Pollan; critiquing the Michael Pollan invasion of the field: he works hard and is amplified hard by Big Communication network; Big Publishing, Big Networking, top-down.  

I came to similar conclusions as Forte.  

Travis Kitchens’ Part 2 article confirmed my line of questioning, my wondering about the reception of Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind.

Forte befriended Muraresku in the end, which is kind of like my continued push for full Repeal and allowing Pollan and Mura, outsiders, the Mainstream, to enter “our” space.  

But recognize top-down “invasion” realistically.

Forte is skeptical about WHY “Eleusis” is being fake-promoted to absurd mythic heights; why does Big Networking push and push the dumbed-down 1-dimensional, the “Eleusis” CONSTRUCT?  

What are we being sold, and why?  

Allegro/Ruck/McKenna: “To smash the Church.  That’s why we do entheogen scholarship.  It’s the star we steer by: our “Big Bad Church Suppressed The Msh” narrative.”  

I’ve been rejecting “counterculture vs mainstream” distinction because it preserves and perpetuates Psilocybin Prohibition.

We’ll do anything to uphold our narrative, including perma-prohibition to prove us right about how terrible.

End of article: “I don’t know if Mura [& Pollan?] is Good or Bad.” – Forte.  “Whatever, move forward.”

Bennett vs. Muraresku TIK Article by Travis Kitchens; Part 1

Part 1: Dec. 23, 2024
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret

Provided by Cyberdisciple.

Part 2: Jan. 2, 2025 – Forte & Pinchbeck, but great irony, I accused back in the day, “PINCHBECK IS FAKE ASTROTURF INVADER”, I decided.
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret-1ac

Related critique asking why Psilocybin is being pushed by top-down:

The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms
Jan Irvin
Article series, 2012-2015
https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject

Lundborg Shallow: Why Gave Away Doses for Free in 1966-1970

Lundborg says on same page as Oct 1966, “for no reason, a trend was to give away doses for free”. False.

The reason was LAW; it beccame illegal to sell; it became legally requred to give away doses for free. That’s allowed, that’s legal. Don’t sell or else jail.

You MUST give away doses for free. you are NOT ALLOWED to charge money.

Lundborg has limited comprehension despite knowing so much. Shallow.

Lundborg engages with good set of topics, like Hatsis Letcher Huggins does.

I Never Believed in Books: Books Read per Semester

I did and didn’t depend on books. 1986 I HELD MY NOSE while I read books. It was plenty clear books have limited relevance/utility. Wilber & Watts are state of the art, the state of the art is: poorly known.

No way is the combination in one book. Clearly I need a custom approach …. when was “theory” born, as a theory? ?

April 1987? that’s the obvious date but better Jan 1988.

That pair of dates bracketing the formation of my “theory” concept, that Iam working on developing a theory”, comes into view, fades into view.

Oct 1985, I was working on my personal control, not in style of systematic theory; just figuring out.

Apr 1987 (new style, 2nd fresh attempt)- my activity was de facto theory construction; my activity was styled as working on a theory.

After that, during that semester, I first had the idea of write up a book when i soon figure this S out, and i did soon – not next week as wished, but in Jan 1988, I (in effect) figured out all i was trying to grasp.

everything, goal, expectation, transformed.

Jan 1988. (crashes together, clearly a theory). Branched out to read many fields in order to learn the wording in the fields, to deliver and express what I already have, core newborn theory.

I stood independently skeptically of the books; I knew they were flawed and limited, the books don’t have the answer – and I still think that’s the case.

I wasn’t frustrated w/ books, it’s worse, i had no hope for books to do much.

I got the basic ideas from human potential movement from father.

I could tell what range of limited use ideas after heaving read the Way of Zen by Alan Watts and 1986-era Ken Wilber. And 25 other books.

Other than that, I didn’t read anything; not a reader.

My amount of reading books for the Egodeath proto-theory varied per semester.

In early 1985, before I started the Egodeath theory, I didn’t read.

My dad gave me books, later I read.

I started reading June 1986.

todo: list my 1980s semesters, then fill in notes about the reading done each semester.

My reading exploded after the Jan 1988 breakthough (block-universe determinism in loose cognition).

Hard to be certain, would have to detail that history.

Why I Read The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

I read intensively the Way of Zen by Alan Watts during 1987 build-up to the breakthrough.

Satori switch approach: Engineering Approved.

Cybernetics of problematic control – good topic. Engineering Approved. Let’s debug this right now. Fix my flawed control, right now.

How Little I Expected by Reading Books when Initially Forming the Egodeath theory

It was plenty clear after watts wilber the limits of what books have to offer. Sawdust irrelevancy. The limits felt clear.

Today I can still defend that assessment: books are really limited and low relevance, low usefulness, not the combination needed.

The Egodeath theory is the combination needed.

The books don’t have the answers. The custom Egodeath theory has the set of answers & concerns. Transcendent Knowledge. Transcendent thinking.

Block-universe determinism in loose cognition, superdeterminism, preexisting future control thoughts in the iron block universe.

I read some books at start of theory development in Fall 1985 semester. (Engineering school, so we did Summer, forming a trimester.)

In the Summer 1986 trimester, I read books, like Trungpa on Meditation, but expected limited usefulness.

I’m trying to say I didn’t read books; that my philosophy … the books would be of limited usefulness.

History of Determinism

I later found many fields cover free will vs. determinism but the fields are all framed as if separate; the topic of free will vs. determinism is everywhere, so we don’t see it how ubiq it is in fields.
reformed theology; heimarmene.

Heimarmene in Early Antiquity, Transcending Heimarmene in Late Antiquity

heimarmene in early ant’y, 2-level model
transcending heimarmene in late antiquity. 3-level model.

First you only have naive possibilism-thinking / possibilism-thinking.

Then you briefly have eternalism-thinking, dominant.

You end up with broad, eternalism-thinking including qualified possibilism-thinking and eternalism-thinking.

Mapping Egodeath Theory Constructs to Andro-Gyne/ Hermes-Aphrodite in Alchemical Rebis Holding a Y

map a contrasted pair of things to king & queen:

The thought-injector {king} is not known until initiation, so therefore, map {king} motif of rebis to eternalism-thinking.

{king} = eternalism-thinking

{queen} = possibilism-thinking – which you employ almost all the time including peak loose cognition peak loosecog.

queen = active qualified possibilism-thinking

The rebis has two heads: a king head AND a queen head.

The word AND = rebis two heads: a ruler king & a ruler queen.

Naive possibilism-thinking; Eternalism-thinking; Qualified possibilism-thinking

When you finally return to baseline, you have active qualified possibilism-thinking, not just passively limited/ qualified possibilism-thinking.

ACTIVE use of, transcendent use of possibilism-thinking .

Active qualified possibilism-thinking.

  1. naive possibilism-thinking
  2. eternalism-thinking
  3. qualified possibilism-thinking

Phase 1: Naive possibilism-thinking.
Phase 2: Eternalism-thinking. (In a narrow, exclusive sense.)
Phase 3: Qualified possibilism-thinking. (Including eternalism-thinking.)

Qualified possibilism-thinking is eternalism-thinking in the broad sense, as wide as Hanegraaff’s definition of ‘entheogen’.

Anything and everything, the universal set, U = entheogen.

Nothing is not an entheogen.

You name it: it’s an entheogen.

Simply rob Psilocybin of credit, and claim that everything can produce same effect as two bowls of Psilocybin.

False Advertising Gaslighting by Meditation Hucksters

  1. Meditation huckster: “Active Imagination, meditation, dancing, drumming, and breathwork can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.“
  2. Sucker; mark: “I did your meditation, and it does not produce the same effects as Psilocybin.”
  3. Meditation huckster: “We never claimed that active Imagination, meditation, dancing, drumming, and breathwork can produce the same effects as Psilocybin.”

The Way of Zen (Alan Watts, 1955)

I didn’t much read books, just merely Ken Wilber’s books and Alan Watts 1 book. READ THE BOOK SECTIONS AND READ THE ARTICLE TOO. READ THEM TOGETHER.

todo: cite Watts passages eqivalent to article “ZatPoC”.

1986: hard to think about: i tried to reject Way of Zen and return gift to father. I said to my father, that spirituality stuff, that’s not the way I think. I’m an engineering student. He said keep the book. Then I read it 7 times.

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts 1955 – control-themed, cybernetics.
Aldous Huckstley book was 1954. wos the Way of Zen by Alan Watts too early to cover 1960s head mysticism. If ergot is mentioned it was be psychiatric therapy model.
Soon after, Watts Joyous Cosmology asc.

“Zen and the Problem of Control” (Alan Watts article in This Is It book)

This one’s for Strange Loop:

Was Watts in any way influenced by ergot, or mescaline, or asian psil mushrooms, or nitrous, in this 1955 book? He quickly covered that.

This Is It w/ Zen Cybernetics Zen and the Problem of Control” article (1970?)

Zen and the Problem of Control, Alan Watts, in This Is It collection of essays.

Google search
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Zen+and+the+Problem+of+Control%22

Bing search:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Zen+and+the+Problem+of+Control%22

my site is returned:

http://www.egodeath.com/strangeloopcontrol.htm

tags indicated at Bing search: Alan Watts, Zen. Here’s a quick paste:

egodeath.comhttp://www.egodeath.com › strangeloopcontrol.htm

The Strange Loop of Personal Control – egodeath.com

Cybernetics applies to individual self-control and self-determination with an intensity that is distinct from the problems of sociological control. Alan Watts wrote about the problematic nature of self-control cybernetics in his article “Zen and the Problem of Control” in the book _This Is It_.

Tags:

Alan Watts

Zen

Irvin’s Confused Characterization of Psilocybin as “Suggestogens” Instead of Psychedelics or Entheogens

These articles are similar to the pair of articles by Kitchens about reception of Muraresku’s TIK by those entheogen scholars who got ripped off by Mura:

The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms
Jan Irvin
Article series, 2012-2015
https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject

This article series shows that Psilocybin is an evil fake lie. Silent about Amanita.

Psilocybin is a Suggestogen; because that’s what some ppl tried to do w it, therefore that’s the effect of Psilcybin, to make you suggestible by Them.

The essence of what Psilocybin is: being suggestible by Them. According to Irvin. The name “psychotomimetic”. The name “psychedelic”. The name “entheogen”. The correct name is “suggestogen”, not “psyechdelic”, to name the effect of Psilocybin.

Psilocybin does not actually give a psychdelic effect, it gives a Suggestogen effect. Irvin conflates his narrow expose of malicious application of Psilocybin, with the cognitive effects of psil. Application of Psil vs. effect of Psil, is the diferent focus.

Robert Forte’s Criticism of Muraresku’s The Immortality Key; The Enterprise

The Christian Establishment – Forte flips out whenever he spits the word Christianity.

Christianity = Evil, Forte emphasizes, yells:

CHRISTIANITY IS EVIL! – Foaming-at-the-mouth Forte

The Psychedelic Renaissance is top-down, imposed, fake, corporate, and worst of all, it’s Christian!! bc Mura is Catholic.

Forte labors to bolster drug prohibition, in order to prevent the Big Bad Church from Psilocybin Eucharist, which he says wouls be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Evil Catholic/ Christian Mururesku.

We must do whatever it takes to not allow the worst thing that could happen, Forte says: the Catholic Church using Psilocybin.

I’m siding with the Catholic Church on this one against Prohibitionist Forte.

Full Repeal of Psilocybin Prohibition.

We’ll do anything it takes to stop that.

Bennett Ripped Off by Muraresku

Brian Muraresku, outsider newcomer, studied with Chris Bennett (“Rev 22:2’s twelve manners of fruits crops every month means 12 uses of cannabis”) to get up to speed, then used Bennett’s ideas in The Immortality Key book, failed to credit Bennett, promises to do so next printing.

WTF! Lundborg Comic Book Fantasy Myth: “Greeks only used psychedelics once per year, at Eleusis”

Lundborg’s credibility just fell off a cliff (if it hadn’t already). Welcome to entheogen scholarship. I bet he writes other sentences that contradict this; eg he says there were “several” mystery religions.

the Greco-Roman world restricted its psychedelic celebrations to the annual kykeon initiation at the Great Temple in Eleusis.

Patrick Lundborg, Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life, p. 237

Amanita Has been Scientifically Disconfirmed, So We Must Consider Formally Rejecting that Hypothesis or Major Aspects of It

A year ago I swept across books reviewing history of Wasson’s attempt to lump together Amanita and Psilocybin: in that literature, Wasson & entheogen scholarship is forced to reach and write the conclusion, which I am driving home:

The attempt definitely failed. So what must we do?

We must officially reject the failed hypothesis of 1952-1957; it’s been disconfirmed.

We now now that we CANNOT lump together into a synthetic tentative explanatory construct “The Mushroom”, “psychoactive mushrooms”, “sacred mushrooms”, “sacred fungi”, etc. – SO STOP DOING IT!!!!

Lundborg quote about weird choice of The Mushroom being Amanita, p. 35:

“Allegro … Wasson … A neutral reader may find it puzzling that both men insisted on the fly agaric as the “hallucinogen” origin of two world religions, in view of the unpredictable, un-psychedelic, and unpleasant effects often reported from those who have tried to get high on Amanita muscaria. The fact that Allegro’s suggested ‘sacred mushroom’ didn’t produce effects even remotely as attractive as those of the psilocybe genera may have been as vital to the book’s failure among psychedelicists as the academic criticism. … the psychedelic or ‘entheogenic’ theories of Christianity should not be dismissed just because of the Allegro debacle …” – Lundborg, Psychedelia, p. 35

Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life
Patrick Lundborg [1967-2014]
December 11, 2012
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDY96NKM – hardcover

per sentence, condensed by Cybermonk:

“It’s puzzling that both Allegro and Wasson insisted on Amanita as the “hallucinogen” that’s the origin of two world religions — Hinduism and Christianity — given the unpredictable, un-psychedelic, and unpleasant effects reported by those who have tried to get high on Amanita.

” Allegro’s suggested ‘sacred mushroom’, Amanita, didn’t produce effects even remotely as attractive as those of the psilocybe genera.”

“The psychedelic or ‘entheogenic’ theories of Christianity should not be dismissed just because of the Allegro debacle.”

— Lundborg, Psychedelia, p. 35

Forbidden Word List: ‘ritual’, ‘cult’

Lundborg casually employs terms. Never ever did any shaman ever ingest drugs; rather, they had RITUAL drug use in their drug CULT, cultic practices. It’s as bad as always tacking on, fakely, the word “experiment”.

“I did not ingest drugs; rather, I EXPERIMENTED WITH drugs”.

Why are people such parrots, so conventional, dumb passive vehicles for memes? Why does everyone just carbon-copy the hackneyed cliched word choice for no reason, like the meaningless words “ritual” and “cult”?

The tribe members, some of them, used drugs. THAT WORDING WILL NOT DO!!

The tribe members, some of them, used drugs in their cultic ritual. THAT’S BETTER, FIXED IT.

Such hackneyed conventional word-addition adds nothing, adds no substance at all.

Lundborg Good Motifs {gatekeeper}, {guard}, {gate}, {cleansed to pass through gate}

Patrick Lundborg p. 461 Gatekeeper motif, {guard}, {cleansed to pass through gate}

Excellent {gate guard} treatment. threatened, cleansed to pass through the gate.

Lundborg Premature Closure: No Psychedelics in Buddhism

I don’t understand how he can title the book an ancient way of life and then with fully closed mind, proclaim:

Now in 2012 we know everything about entheogens history, and we know there’s no psychdelics in Buhhdist origins, proved by the fact that no one ever thought to look; no one has written book.

Mike Crowley did in early 2017, write a book on psych origins of Buddhism; also Ratsch 2002:

Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas (Ratsch, 2002)

Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas
by Surendra Bahadur Shahi, Christian Rätsch , et al. | Sep 1, 2002
https://www.amazon.com/Shamanism-Tantra-Himalayas-Surendra-Bahadur/dp/0892819138/

Psychedelia by Lund. > Index > Ratsch: p. 226-227, 407 – see which books cited.

Crowley; Bennett book on Tree of Life 13 Fruits

Crowley book is “the first book to explore
the historical evidence for the use of entheogenic plants within the Buddhist tradition.”

If I recall, Bennett has become a major loud naysayer against Crowley.

I discount Bennett easily enough, eg Bennett book was apparently confused inspirted by the passage i recently found, where he argues Rev 22:2 tree of life 13 plants each month means 1 only: cannabis.

I gave positive review to book and I defended book as not making the single-plant fallacy, but he practically DOES do that re: Rev 22:2 tree of life. So the critic claiming single-plant fallacy was essentially right, here.

Thanks Chris for deleting and leaving on the table 12 out of 13 different plants. by using your inferior, MISREADING Bible “twelve manner of fruits crops every month plus healing leaves” as “12 uses of hemp/cannabis”, which a few days ago Dec 2024 he repeated same, in an interview.

That fault undercuts my entire inspiration to read more of Bennett’s book, signed to me at his place.

I’m disappointed in Lundborg for denying entheogenic origin of Buddhism so that what Lund writes about meditation culture is the usual junk that I hated since forever, 1985, late 1990s:

  • Gnosis Western Esotericism special issue on Psychedelics
  • Tricycle Buddhism special issue on Psychedelics
    • The related book Zig Zag Zen by Allan Badiner.

Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, 2nd Ed. – with Ayahuasca (Badiner, 2015) (1st Ed. 2002)

Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics – new edition (2015)
Paperback – May 5, 2015
Allan Badiner (Editor),
Alex Grey (Art Editor),
Huston Smith (Preface),
Stephen Batchelor (Foreword)
https://www.amazon.com/Zig-Zag-Zen-Buddhism-Psychedelics/dp/090779162X/

blurb:

“A guide for people in pursuit of greater fulfillment in their lives and for those seeking a deeper spiritual truth and strategies for liberation from suffering.

Buddhism and psychedelic exploration share a common concern: the liberation of the mind.

This new edition of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics has evolved from

the landmark anthology that launched the first inquiry into
the ethical, doctrinal, and transcendental considerations of
the intersection of Buddhism and psychedelics.

A provocative and thoughtful exploration of inner states and personal transformation,

Zig Zag Zen now contains an expanded display of stunning artwork including pieces from Android Jones, Sukhi Barber, Ang Tsherin Sherpa, and Amanda Sage, as well as the original brilliant work of Robert Venosa, Mark Rothko, Robert Beer, Francesco Clemente, and many others, including more work by the pioneering visionary artist Alex Grey.

Complementing these new images are original [apparently new] essays by such luminaries as
Ralph Metzner and
Brad Warner; ZEN MASTER BRAD!! TRANSCENDS AUTHENTICITY 🤯
exciting interviews with
James Fadiman,
Kokyo Henkel, https://www.google.com/search?q=Kokyo+Henkel and
Rick Doblin; and a discussion of

ayahuasca’s unique influence on Zen Buddhism by David Coyote; all of which have been carefully curated to extend the original inquiry of authors
Joan Halifax Roshi,
Peter Mattheissen,
Jack Kornfield,
Ram Dass,
Terence McKenna,
Rick Fields, and
many others.

Buddhism and psychedelics are inevitable subjects encountered on the journey to wisdom.

Examined together, the reader may understand more deeply the essence of each.”

Lundborg parrots: “Can psilocybin simulate authentic, traditional, non-drug meditation?” Me: 🤬 📘–>🗑

Non drug meditation to produce feeble benefits is fine, but I can’t stand telling lies and false claims about its history or benefits, involving disparaging and robbing Psilocybin (which is the foundation and origin of meditation).

The Meditation Hucksters are every bit as bad as the Salvation Salesmen. Frauds, fakes, and swindlers, liars, phonies, braggarts, who will never deliver the falsely promised goods, and will deny making their sky-high marketing promises.

False Advertising and No Refunds; Buyer Beware.

The Meditation Church of Egoic Wishful Thinking.

The flaw in Lund book is right where I am most irate and sensitive: nothing burns me up like the massive canard,

“Can psilocybin simulate authentic traditional non-drug meditation?”

My little point I picked up on and recently announced (find tree of life + 12), evidently was the whole motivating power behind the 2001 book.

Mura steals credit from Bennett: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/24/idea-development-page-22-2024-12-23/#Entheogen-scholarship-derailed (below).

Premature Closure in entheogen scholarship; massive negative overconfidence in claiming “We now know that there were no psychedleics in this religion’s history”

Safford 1915: We Now Know there is no Psilocybin Use in Mexico

Lundborg in 2012: “Entheogen scholarship is now mature, and no one asserts psychedelics in Buddhism history”

Mike Crowley book 2017, plus Ratsch book 2002:

Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas
by Surendra Bahadur Shahi, Christian Rätsch , et al. | Sep 1, 2002
https://www.amazon.com/Shamanism-Tantra-Himalayas-Surendra-Bahadur/dp/0892819138/

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide (Ratsch 2006) 🎄🎅🍄🎁🛷🦌❄️

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide
by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling |
Oct 24, 2006
https://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Christmas-Spirits-Rituals-Yuletide/dp/1594770921/

The Alchemical Rebis’ Two Heads Map to Which Contrasts in the Egodeath theory?

instance 2 of pic in this page:

mysterious uncontrollable higher injector of control thoughts [male]
helpless thought receiver [female]

transcendent thinking
egoic thinking

eternalism-thinking
possibilism-thinking

eternalism-thinking in the broad inclusive sense includes possibilism-thinking
eternalism-thinking in the narrow exclusive sense is the antonym of possibilism-thinking

the “eternalism” mental model includes:
* eternalism-thinking
* possibilism-thinking

2-level model/representation:

  1. egoic thinking; possibilism-thinking
  2. transcendent thinking; eternalism-thinking

The 2-level model appears as if mutually exclusive opposites.

3-level model; 3-phase model

  1. naive possibilism-thinking
  2. strict eternalism-thinking
  3. virtual possibilism-thinking including eternalism-thinking

The 3-level, 3-phase model/representation (“same” as 2-level, we’re just adding detail) looks like the pre/trans fallacy: you end up back emphasizing freewill thinking, like at the start — but now it’s become cleansed, qualified, recognized as consciously virtual-only.~

Lundborg’s Conventional False Dichotomy: Drugs for Instant Effortless Transformation vs. Non-Drug Long-term Work Producing Permanent Altered State

Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life
Patrick Lundborg [1967-2014]
hardcover
December 11, 2012
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDY96NKM

Lundborg’s book Psychedelia reads as if it were written in 1966.

Lundborg totally buys into the massive conventional False Dichotomy:
Drugs for Instant effortless Transformation
vs.
Non-Drug Long-term work producing permanent ASC

Infantile Wishful Thinking, Egoic Quantum Mysticism, and the Fantasized Expectation, False Promise of Perma-ASC

Egoic thinking gets free rein to just freely wish and imagine what ego would LIKE enlightenment to be about, and tons of Zen Master Brads are lined up to FLEECE THE GULLIBLE WISHFUL SUCKERS.

Perma-ASC is as much pop nonsense rubbish egoic wishful thinking as Egoic Quantum Mysticism, that stank up my university Modern Physics classroom:

“QM manyworlds is Science proof that if I fantasize myself making a QM observation, at all moments I am the creator of infinite branching worlds.”

A regurgitation of Badiner’s Zig Zag Zen – everything I railed against in the late 1990s. A massive prejudiced false dichotomy, “traditional methods of the mystics, vs. drugs”.

How can PL book be so ignorant of entheogen scholarship and its theories that all religion originates from drugs and the only mystic … the only way to have a mystic experience is drugs, which is my hardline position.

We Must Use Egoic Thinking All the Time

ASC 14% of the time, max (7%, for psil)
OSC 86% of the time, min (93%, for psil)

14% ASC / 86% OSC (ergot)
7% ASC / 93% OSC (psil)

I don’t put up with any grand claims that meditation produces transformation from possibilism to eternalism in the loose cog state, or produces permanent loose cog state, which is not how the mind works.

Perma-ASC is a foolish claim and expectation, States vs Stages. I thought we figured this out by 1989. I feel like I’m thown back to 1989 just by having to make these elementary points.

Meditation-religion or psychedelic drugs (an ideal series of seessions) do NOT produce permanent ASC.

That notion that enlightenment has anything to do with perma ASC is pure pop rubbish and Marketing lies.

That’s not how the mind works. There is ZERO evidence to the contrary.

There is zero reason to imagine, expect, or believe that meditation or psychedelics produces perma ASC.

The notion of perma ASC sounds like it’s the year 1966.

Perma ASC is pure fantasy, wishful thinking, a crude infantile mis-conception of transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

The mental worldmodel changes – the state stays same:

After enlightenment, after complete mental worldmodel transformation, you are 100% of the time in tightcog binding OSC. NOT perma asc.

So you better LOVE the OSC and egoic thinking, now as qualified possibilism-thinking.

Become a rebis: two headed, Hermes-Aphrodite; Andro-Gyne.

You sustain and continue forever, possibilism-thinking, now transformed to qualified possibilism-thinking – always in the OSC of tight cog.

Loose cog occurs ~0% of the time.

365 days / year, 6 hours of ASC per year, 6 hours / (365 * 25 hours) = 0.0007% of the time.

For a hardcore tripper: twice a week blotter 10 strip 1000 mics: twelve hour trips. 12 hours 2x/week for a year, or calculate on a 1-week basis:

Each week, you have two 12 hour loose cognition sessions generously call this “24 hours of altered-state experiencing.”

24 hours of ASC per week is like 1 day out of 7, which is 1/7 of the time in the ASC. 1/7 = 14% of the time ASC, 86% of the time OSC – that’s the extreme max upper limit, of classic psychedelics.

Every 3.5 days, a 12-hour blotter …

The figure is halved for Psil, or even less: 4-6 hours Psil vs 10-14 hours Ergot.

If take blotter twice a week, that’s 12 hours of ASC per week, 1/7 = 14% ASC, 86% OSC – as the extreme upper limit. AT MOST, can be in ASC 14% of the time.

So, if a person reasonably does two 12-hour psychedelic sessions per week, that’s being under the influence 14% of the time.

The other 6/7 of the time = 86% of the time, stuck with OSC, tightcog, egoic thinking; the egoic mode – albeit, qualified possibilism-thinking; employing on a day-in, day-out basis, qualified egoic thinking.

Purify ({cleanse}, {heal}) Egoic Thinking in Order to Use It All the Time

egoic thinking, the egoic mental model of control.

During the intense peak session window, even then, must employ the childish egoic thinking — so you better clean/ cleanse/ purify — while retaining — egoic thinking.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

Rev 22:14
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Rev%2022%3A14&version=NIV

NIV adds to the Bible the heading “Eden Restored” above Rev 22:1 (the next-to-last page of the Bible).

Gullible People, Wishful Thinking, Egoic Fantasy, Lying False Promises of Meditation Hucksters

Eastern religion makes HUGE CLAIMS, but cannot at all deliver on their false promises, braggadocio, which are baseless anti-drug pride and hubris from the Marketing dept of lies.

30 years of non-drug meditation accomplishes nothing (compared to their HUGE bragging claims that DISRESPECT THE HOLY MUSHROOMS); non-drug meditation produces NO transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

The lying, bragging, hubristic advocates of non-drug meditation are forced to do a motte-and-baily fallacy, moving-in the goalposts:

  1. Given, based on manifest effects: Psychedelics produce a temporary peak state and temporary, partial transformation of mental worldmodel.
  2. Eastern religion claims “we do this better – non-drug meditation produces far more transformation, far more lasting, far higher peak experiences, permanent ASC”
  3. Fact: 30 years meditation fails to transform as promised to the degree. Fails to produce any ASC, temp or perm. Fails to accomplish ANY of their goals. Point that out. Reaction from Zen Master Brad huckster:
  4. “We never claimed that [copypaste the above claim he made 2 seconds ago, 30 years ago, after you wasted 30 years of fruitless non-drug meditation].
    “Eastern religion advocates never claimed that non-drug meditation produces far more transformation, far more lasting, far higher peak experiences, permanent ASC.” BUT YOU DID!! MOTTE AND BAILEY:

THE BAILEY OF BRAGGADOCIO: The desirable bailey for anti-drug Eastern lying fraud hucksters:
“Non-drug meditation produces far more transformation, far more lasting, far higher peak experiences, and permanent ASC.”

The phony fake huckster spiritual salesmen, the non-drug meditation advocates/ salesmen, cannot at all defend their ultra-aggressive position, not in the slightest. NONE of their bragging huge massive claims are delivered on.

So, the meditation/”contemplation” hucksters fall back to the entirely opposite, defensible but worthless, position assertion:

THE MOTTE OF RETREAT: The cold, undesirable, worthless motte fortress: “Eastern religion makes no claim that non-drug meditation produces far more transformation, far more lasting, far higher peak experiences, and permanent ASC.
We only claim that it gives weak, feeble, faint, slight, nebulous benefits like corporate relaxation training, and vague, spiritually lasting benefits like kindness; a mystical life.”

They put forth the most nebulous, weak, feeble claims, the moment they are pressed by some sucker who got taken in:
“Where’s the goddam enlightenment you promised, you fraud!“

🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️

“Promise, what promise? We never made any such promise or claims. I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

The False Dilemma of Meditation vs. Psychedelics, and the 3rd Option

Almost NO ONE in this genre of writing like Badiner or Lundborg ever states or acknowledges the possibility of my 3rd position, which is the truth, the actual way the mind works:

Mental model transformation , transformation from possibilism to eternalism, requires like ancient greek initiation SERIES, a SERIES of drug psychedelic sessions, with training and education.

like what I figured out, studying the two mental models — as Eadwine 1200 Great Canterbury Psalter depicts, as the pilzbaum genre of art depicts.

Pop junk (including academic pop junk) writing on this topic ALWAYS is based on this false dichotomy: which one is it:

  • Either, instant effortless enlightenment from psychedelics.
  • Or, effortful, strenuous, difficult, long-term non-drug “contemplation”.

The latter is a fantasy, fabricated, imagined, ad-hoc made-up fictional construction by defenders of this false assertion]/ “non-drug meditation” (which is a contradiction in terms actually).

  • No one EVER gives the correct, 3rd alternative: long-term effortful difficult transformation from possibilism to eternalism integrating series of psychedelic sessions of loose cognition. This is the origin of religions.

The only meditation worth doing if your goal is like the grand promises, is meditation integrating psychedelics. Smashing the false dichotomy.

Slow, Effortful Non-Drug Meditation? Instant, Effortless Drug Enlightenment? Long-term Psychedelic Reconfiguration

False: Non-drug meditation producing transformation to eternalism-thinking.

False: Instant effortless drug enlightenment producing eternalism-thinking.

True: Psychedelic meditation; long-term contemplation eventuating in complete enlightenment ie eternalism-thinking including use of qualified possibilism-thinking.

Drug-based meditation is the actual “traditional method of the mystics”. Drug-integrating meditation. Psychedelic meditation.

Lund writes well on the topic, he’s in the realm of “must read” – but huge limitations are mixed in with this mixed bag.

Lundborg writes on the relationship between therapist model, guide model, guru model, historically shifting in 1960s-1970s – I’d like to see what Lundborg 2012 has to say about “Moving Past Mysticism” and such current debates circa 2022.

Premature Closure: In 2012, Entheogen Scholarship Now Concludes There Were No Mushrooms in Buddhism

p. 384 ch endnote 5: Lundborg has tiny coverage, for this book on this scope, of the possibility that ancient religion is entheogen-originated.

PREMATURE CLOSURE: Lundborg seems here unaware of 21st C developments in entheogen scholarship. He writes:

“At this mature stage of entheogenic studies[are you kidding me?!], no researcher has yet put forward a serious case for psycho-active drug inspiration in ancient Buddhism”

That paragraph mentions the Badiner book Zig Zag Zen.

Lundborg Died 2014, Crowley Book Was Announced 2016

Lundborg died 2014 3 years before Mike Crowley book on psychedelics in history of Buddhism:
Order Placed: October 27, 2016
Shipped on January 31, 2017 [1 day before available]
I ordered the book 3 months before available.

Older edition i have:
Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Origins of the Vajrayana
February 1, 2017
406 pages, Amrita Press; First Edition (February 1, 2017)
by Mike Crowley (Author), Ann Shulgin (Author) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692652817?ref=yb_qv_ov_prnt_dp_rw –

newer edition: (allegedly) (suspect it’s just a 2nd printing)
Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Origins of the Vajrayana
Mike Crowley, 2019
340 pages, Synergetic Press; 2nd edition (November 5, 2019)
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Drugs-Buddhism-Psychedelic-Sacraments-dp-0907791743/dp/0907791743/ –
406-340 = 66 pages less than 2017. 66/340 = 19% fewer pages. I guess same content, smaller font in 2nd “ed”/printing. Reasonable to call repagination “2nd edition” perhaps.
The 2019 book’s publisher page has no hint of “2nd edition” or “revised”:
https://synergeticpress.com/catalog/secret-drugs-of-buddhism-psychedelics/

Crowley book is endorsed by psychedelic historian Thomas Hatsis, although Chris Bennett slags Mike Crowley. In a livestream, Hatsis & Bennett agreed that instead of attacking each other, they’d attack Jerry Brown, who wasn’t there.

Blurb about Secret Drugs of Buddhism, Crowley, alleged “2nd ed.”

“Secret Drugs of Buddhism is the first book to explore the historical evidence for the use of entheogenic plants within the Buddhist tradition.

“Drawing on scriptural sources, botany, pharmacology, and religious iconography, this book calls attention to the central role which psychedelics played in Indian religions.

It traces their history from the mysterious soma potion, celebrated in the most ancient Hindu scriptures, to amrita, the sacramental drink of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Although amrita used in modern Vajrayana ceremonies lacks any psychoactivity, there is copious evidence that the amrita used by the earliest Vajrayana practitioners was a potent entheogen.

It is the nature of this psychedelic form of the sacrament which is the central topic of this book.

In particular, Secret Drugs of Buddhism attempts to identify the specific ingredients employed in amrita’s earliest formulations.

To this end, the book presents evidence from many countries in which the Vajrayana movement flourished.

These include Bhutan, Japan, Mongolia, and Tibet but special attention is given to India, the land of its origin.“

/ end blurb

About Mike Crowley

I might contact Crowley to vent and exchange frustrations with the massive entrenched DOGMATIC FALSE DICHOTOMIES. We are members of the same church.

From alleged “2nd edition” blurb: (no mention of revisions):

“Michael Crowley was born Feb. 26th, 1948 (100th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto) in Cardiff, Wales.

“He began studying Buddhism with a Tibetan lama in 1966, becoming an upasaka (ordained layman) of the Kagyud lineage on May 1st, 1970 and was ordained as a lama on January 1st, 1988.

“He has also received many teachings and empowerments from all four major Tibetan Buddhist lineages.

“In order to augment his Buddhist studies, Mike acquainted himself with Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin Chinese.

“Mike has lectured at the Museum of Asia and the Pacific, Warsaw, the Jagellonian University, Cracow, The California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“His work has been published in Fortean Studies, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture, Psychedelic American, and Psychedelic Press UK.

“In January 2016, Mike received the R. Gordon Wasson Award for outstanding contributions to the field of entheobotany.

“He currently serves on the advisory board of The Psychedelic Sangha and teaches at the San Francisco Dharma Collective.

He lives in Northern California.”

Lundborg Usual Prejudice: Meditation Causes Same Effect as Psilocybin (but Far Better), and Meditation Produces Perma-ASC

Also: We Never Claimed that Meditation Causes Same Effect as Psilocybin, or that Meditation Produces Perma-ASC; We Only Made a Tiny Relaxation Claim

Lundborg Parrots Conventional Prejudiced Views:

Anything eg Meditation Causes Same Effect as Psilocybin; Meditation Produces Perma-ASC

& We Never Claimed Meditation Produces Perma-ASC

& We Never Claimed Meditation Causes Same Effects as Psilocybin

Lundborg: Instant Effortless Psychedelic Enlightenment, or Long-Term Effortful Non-Psychedelic Enlightenment? My 3rd Option: Long-Term Effortful Psychedelic Enlightenment

Which one is true?

  • Instant, Effortless, Psychedelic Enlightenment
  • Long-Term, Effortful, Non-Psychedelic Enlightenment

Answer: 3rd option; hybrid combination (OBVIOUSLY!):

  • Long-Term, Effortful, Psychedelic Enlightenment

Lundborg Parrots the Unthinking False Dichotomy: Instant Effortless Psychedelic Enlightenment, or Long-Term Effortful Non-Psychedelic Enlightenment, Which One Is Correct? Ans: Long-Term Effortful Psychedelic Enlightenment

I am not on the same page as either of the two wrong positions falsely put forward by Badiner and everyone.

Aside from this feeble end note p 384 that acknowledges this 3rd option – that mystic historical experience came from entheogens – Lundborg just spreads the usual confusions and false dichotomy!

Lundborg even condones view that “real, traditional” long-term methods prodduce permanent ASC, which Wilber says is a confusion of states and stages. Likely he contradicts and wafffles himself here.

Does Lundborg believe that “traditional non-drug enlightenment” produces permanent altered state, like the worst pop Buddhism?! Zen Master Brad (eye roll). You gotta be fkin kidding me.

The only thing PL contributes on this topic is a clear exemplifying of everything that’s false and wrong in conventional thinking about “drugs vs real religion”.

Disappointing page ~366 of Lundborg: he buys into false dichotomy of “authentic religion transforamation vs drugs” or “hard long lasting work vs drugs” – he never presents the true, mature view, the effective way, the truth: the third alternative that is OBVIOUS:

Obviously, it requires drugs — which are the actual historical inspiriation origin of the prideful anti-drug religions — PLUS long, hard work, to produce fully cleansing transformation purification satori.

Lund in no way takes up my lessons from egodeath theory 2000-2007. It’s full-on establishment/conventional hackneyed obvious false dichotomy.

Lundborg is no better, he’s a stupid CARBON COPY OF EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH SIZ ZIG ZAG ZEN BO book and Zig Zag Zen + Gnosis special issue on Psychedelics, book based on Tricycle special issue on Psychedelics.

Lundborg is merely the exact same falsehoods that are the foundation of those terrible bad exercises in false dichotomy.

The Egodeath theory was — you could say — a rejection of that whole bunk mentality, that OBVIOUS false dichotomy.

“Can drugs simiulate traditional religion?” False Dich!

Drugs are the origin and fountainhead and ongoing fountain of inspiration for authentic religion – but not according to unthinking, totally conventional Lundborg.

Going full-on conventional, unimaginative cliches – Lund pits drugs AGAINST discipline and long-term transformation process.

Lund says, so boringly conventionally: which one is correct:

  • drugs, immediate enlghtenment effortlessly in a pill, like a myth compacts the entire transformation process into a single moment: Zeus reveals, Semele dies, Dionysus is born – as if Athena fully born in battle gear in a single instant.
  • non-drug, traditional religion, long-term transformation process — and, strangely,

Ancient Greeks never really said completion initiation is a single initiation session; it was actually understood as a SERIES of ASC initiations.

Not a single session – even though myth condenses the psychedelic 10-session transformation process into a single lightning-strike transformation in one moment of time.

It’s an extremely disppointing [though totally predictable and utterly cliche and not surprising, just disappointing] Lundborg view here.

Lundborg just regurgitates the usual tired establishment conventional FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Hancock Visionary pp. 187-192: Parallels with pilzbaum Dispute

I supposedly have Supernatural, but didn’t realize how much Hancock engages entheogen scholarship including a topic – I caught his livestream equivalent of this – of whether Psil mushrooms were in Europe.

Even Letcher 2005/2007 had to admit Liberty Cap occur naturally in England, against previous prejudice, and then move goalposts more and more.

I’m just waiting for ppl to admit Cubensis in England, sooner or later, a matter of time.

My Reactions to Hancock Visionary pp. 187-192: Parallels with pilzbaum Dispute; Committed Obstinate and Obnoxious Denial.

Huggins Argument from Cap Patterns Inconsistency

Crop by Cybermonk

Great Canterbury Psalter: “Creation of Plants”/”third day”, f11 row 1 right
discovered by Paul Lindgren 2000
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom —

Crop by Cybermonk – “Panaeolus, Liberty Cap, Cubensis, Amanita” classes id’d by Cybermonk Dec. 13, 2020.

Crop by Cybermonk – “Panaeolus, Liberty Cap, Cubensis, Amanita” classes id’d by Cybermonk Dec. 13, 2020.

This is NOT to buy into Huggin’s garbled false accusation of Brown claiming falsely that Brown argues that these attributes from id’ing these 4 pilzbaum EXACTLY MATCH COMBINATIONS ALL THROUGHOUT Great Canterbury Psalter.

Brown makes NO SUCH argument.

I’m not wasting my time – like Stamets so beautifully says in Hancock book, not going to waste my time with these idiot argments.

If Brown had claimed or implied that these 4 pilzbaums’ exact combination appear, I would have already contacted and corrected Brown about such an error.

This is sheer lying on Huggins’ part: Huggins lies about what Brown claims.

Nowhere does Brown have any whiff of implying these 4 items are used INTACT as a fixed set of attributes, throughout Great Canterbury Psalter.

Same move by Huggins on another variant of this bad move: he argues in Foraging Wrong that: the pilzbaum as a whole, doesn’t match a specimen as a whole, therefore this pilzbaum [art historians define as: looks like mushroom tree that looks like mushroom] does not “very much” look like mushrooms.

Looking for where Hugs writes “not very much”–
p. 11 Hug writes footnote bottom:
“none of the four plants really resembles the mushrooms the Browns have identified them with.” For one thing, Brown does NOT identify each of the 4 plants; he’s too vague, “a psil mushroom species”, twice.

Brown never says “cubensis” (todo: triple-check 2016 & 2019, again.) Check again b/c I CAN’T BELIEVE Brown fails to say Cubensis for pilzbaum 3 (Blue). The only pilzbaum I was hesitant was #1.

3 is OBVIOUSLY stylized Cubensis.
2 is OBVIOUSLY stylized Lib Cap.
1 – The only debatable pilzbaum of the four imo is #1. My solution was stylized Panaeolus, (the Dec 2020 specimen photo was captioned like “Panaeolina”, which does appear in Stamets book as a Panaeolus) and I keep getting more and more confirmation that this is a perfect choice.
4 is so obviously stylized Amanita, it’s hardly worth stating.

I kind of agree in a way: Brown is garbled and vague:
“psil; Pan; psil; Ama”. They are actually:
Pan; Lib; Cub; Ama.

Irvin 2009 AstroSham 2 p 177 mentioned by Huggins is bad: Irvin fails to point out that Arthur is trying to make a recipe for Soma involving 5 plants.

It’s not even very clear that Irvin is quoting excerpt from Arthur book.

We can discount Arthur’s bad id’n of the 4 plants, bc Arthur in 2000 is not trying to id 4 mushrooms; he’s trying to id 5 different plants to make a Soma recipe.

Msh & Mankind (Arthur 2000) was the first book to present Paul Lindgren’s discovery of mushrooms in Great Canterbury Psalter (Creation of Plants/3rd day image). IN FACT: (it occurs now to me, jan 1 2025):

I am the first person to even properly attempt to NAME the 4 mushroom plants:

  1. Arthur 2000 was not trying to ID 4 mushrooms; he was making a 5-plant Soma recipe.
  2. Brown 2016/2019 doesn’t even TRY to name 4 mushrooms; half of them he vaguely just says “psil’.
  3. Hoffman 2013 SPECIFIES, BY NAME, the 4 plants/classes: Pana, Lib, Cube, Aman.

My 2013 conjecture/classif system has held up extremely well; increasingly well – that’s a great sign, I know very well, of a correct decoding; a science hypoth under test for confirmation/ disconfirmation.

In Foraging Wrong, Huggins writes, strawmanning the pilzbaum affirmers:

“The artist then elaborated the squares created by the cross hatching by adding further details, such as dots, tree / parasol shapes, etc. The same was done throughout the GCP with no attempt at consistently linking a particular pattern with a particular color or form of plant or tree.”

I hate the way Hug says or insinuates that Brown says otherwise. Brown never denies or discusses such variations/variants. Hug doesn’t explicitly here say Brown says that, but Hug ACTS like Brown — and maybe pilzbaum affirmers altogether — says “rigid consistent pattern use throughout GCP”.

It is GOOD that Hug discusses pattern combination consistency.
It is BAD that Hug acts like such a new topic that he introduces here amounts to a refutation of pilzbaum affirmers’ stated, established position.

So BIZZARE Hugs’ anti-Samo arg’n about Amanita: Hug requires that the image needs to match an ADULT flat-top (no mention of chalice!) config’n. p. 18.

Huggins’ Arg: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap (Not How Long the Cap Is Ball-Shaped)

Photos of Amanita Specimens Showing Frequent Ball-Shaped Cap

Hatsis wrote me famously, “The shape of the Liberty Cap is anachronistic.”
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/03/16/liberty-caps-and-panaeolus-caps-in-the-canterbury-psalter/#Liberty-Caps

It is a ludicrous, arb’y, & bizarre arg vector, typical of pilzbaum deniers: Hug wrote: MOVE GOALPOSTS MUCH? PULL NEW “RULES” OUT OF THIN AIR MUCH? Talk about “far fetched” arg’n:

“Samorini anachronistically projects a greater interest in botanical
accuracy than is justified for artists of our period. The idea that they would go beyond depicting a mature Amanita muscaria to capture its appearance during a brief stage in its development is far-fetched.”

Typical bizzarrely vectored arg angles. The whole arg reeks of making sht up, you obviously have NO idea what , zilch REAL WORLD experience or you wouldn’t invent your imagined “what it would be like [as a pessiment] were i to see A mushroom. it would be alone, in full adult form

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SCENARIO UNREAL, WRITER CLEARLY HAS NO REALITY-BASED EXPERIENCE WITH AMANITA GROWTH

THIS this is just wrong, incorrect, NOT the Amanita spread of forms IN PRACTICE, IN ACTUALITY not in his bizzarre Hugs arg invovling a description of the imagined distribition of forms & avilableility to view – he fantastizes that the ball form is rare – it is characteristically commonplace in fact. Crazy imagined behavior is revealed,

Ball, Flat, and Upturned forms of Amanita lifecycle & form distribution

update: My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped

A 5-second Web search instantly reveals hugs is just making shit up!

the more Hug args based on lifecycle forms, the more he talks about Amanita forms he reveals his ignorance and his invention/ fabrication that conflicts with reality, mismatch with reality, fails to match reality at all;

Reality: actual experience observing Amanita form distribution, w/ photos to prove it. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=amanita – 15 seconds at this page, and the Hug argument crashes down, UNSUSTAINABLE, obviously sharp contrast with reality, his claim:

Huggins argues:

Stupid artists are ignorant and only get to see Amanita in adult form, b/c it is only momentarily in ball form.

What?? u have no idea talk. Embarrassing, Hug is caught making sht up, that’s against plain reality. His argument reveals foolishness. WHWER DOES HE COME UP WITH THESE ARGS?! his argment basis is revealed foolish and his credibility plummets way down to zero. Prove your not a fool but it’s clear you are.

DEFINE ‘FOOLISH’: HUGGINS’ ARG THAT AMANITA IN ITS BALL FORM IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR ARTISTS TO SEE, ONLY ADULT AMANITA FLAT TOP IS WHAT ARTISTS SAW, SO PILZBAUM NOT MUSHROOM 🚫🍄

update: My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped

🚫🍄 <– ADULT SHAPE FLAT TOP? I DON’T THINK SO. THIS IS A BALL FORM SPECIMEN (ON MY SCREEN).

RONALD HUGGINS FORAGING WRONG ARTICLE 2024 IS ALREADY DISPROVED AND HAVEN’T EVEN GOT OUT OF THE HEADING

Ronald Huggins Foraging Wrong 2024 article is WAY out of touch with reality re: Amanita form distribution of ball vs. flat, not to mention – revealing he is the most shallow imagining – THE HOLY GRAIL YOU DISRESPECTED BY OMITTING , the upturned Amanita. the upturned Amanita grail

WE HAVE A HALL OF SCHOLAR SHAME ENTRY!

Samorini anachronistically projects a greater interest in botanical
accuracy than is justified for artists of our period. The idea that they would go beyond depicting a mature Amanita muscaria to capture its appearance during a brief stage in its development is far-fetched.

Ronald Huggins, Foraging Wrong article, 2024, p.

Red pilzbaum 4 in Creation of Plants/ Third Day, Great Canterbury Psalter:

Crop by Cybermonk
Photo not by Michael Hoffman. Props to photographer, had good fortune. Excellent photo; excellent find. Instructive.

Against Huggins, not one of these in the cluster is flat top alleged “mature form”. They are:

  1. round
  2. round
  3. round
  4. round oval
  5. flat oval
  6. chalice

Conclusion: If an artist wants to depict Amanita as ball-cap, it is very often found growing in that form, often together with a flat top specimen.

This is a matter of the frequency of varying phases of shapes – Amanita is famous specifically for its varying shape-shifting, so it contradicts the essential form of Amanita to act like Amanita is “normally” in flat-top form.

Normally Amanita is found in varied combinations of forms, typically, characteristically.

Therefore a stylized artist is free to depict any form, as the books like Heinrich show.

Has Huggins looked at the couple books? Feeney, Heinrich – Amanita books are inherently showing lots and lots of varied photos. Or click my web-search image links.

So, Huggins here just demonstrates how bizarre vectors of argumentation are stooped to by pilzbaum deniers, who don’t settle for obvious logical fallacies of a genereic boring sort; pilzbaum deniers are renown for obvious logical fallacies of an extremely absurd and bizarre type.

Huggins just reveals he’s working from speculation, imagining, and guesswork — not from Brown-like field work that I’ve done.

What if the artist wanted to depict stylized four round-top trees, with distinctive mushroom attributes of 4 types (Pan, Lib, Cub, Ama)? Then the artist would produce EXACTLY what we have here, which is WELL within the rules/ limits/ boundaries of Medieval stylization.

On the topic of pilzbaum, only, Huggins tries to require strict literal specimen scientific naturalism/ realism. The Special Pleading fallacy.

“And, all 4 must be shown in their adult form.” (Never mind that the adult form ideally of Amanita is chalice, not flat-top.)

“Because… uh… too-brief ball stage! Yeah, that’s the ticket!”

My reaction studying Hug article was: HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN MUSHROOMS? You clearly, obviously have no idea what you’re taking about.

Jimi: “Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have. Let me prove it to you.”

I spent 5 minutes going through my Oct. 2024 Amanita pics, adding to Fav, 5 minutes adding to my util page to upload them, now 5 minutes to add here, 15 minutes total to demonstrate Huggins is talking utter baloney that contradicts the actual experience of looking at patches of GROUPS of mushrooms in VARIOUS stages simultaneously.

One photo isn’t mine, but so beautiful, this is why people — exotericists; low-grade esotericists — go stupidly fawning after this non-psychedelic, poor-effects plant, Amanita.

Huggins’ Claim that artists wouldn’t have seen Amanita in branches-like veil form (not ball-and-stem)

update: My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped

Huggins falsely claims that it’s difficult to find growing specimens that look like this non-flat-top form/phase (revealing his lack of real-world experience with mushroom specimens):

Huggins’ INSANE (extremely unsustainable) claim that artists wouldn’t have seen Amanita in ball-and-stem form because that’s such a brief phase – revealing Huggins has no idea what he’s talking about and has no credibility on such points.

My recent picture:

Photo credit: Michael Hoffman, Oct. 22, 2024

My recent picture:

Photo credit: Michael Hoffman, Oct. 22, 2024

My recent picture:

Photo credit: Michael Hoffman, Oct. 28, 2024

My recent picture:

Photo credit: Michael Hoffman, Oct. 28, 2024

My recent picture:

Photo credit: Michael Hoffman, Oct. 28, 2024

I wish my picture:

Photo not by Michael Hoffman. Props to photographer, had good fortune. Excellent photo; excellent find. Instructive.

Search web:
Google: Amanita image search
Bing: Amanita image search
According to Huggins, expect to see few ball-shaped caps, since that’s such a brief, transient phase.

Evidently Huggins is just fabricating arguments ad-hoc, and has no idea what he’s talking about. His arguments can’t withstand any pushback, but immediately collapse.

I’ve seen a record number of the pilzbaum in art; and I’ve seen and habitually photographed MANY specimens of growing mushrooms in various lifecycle phases including photo’ing MANY Amanitas.

I have to stop myself from photographing every Amanita or other mushroom I come across in nature, because there are TOO MANY MUSHROOMS.

It just seems strange to me that, given a patch of Amanita in various forms, many of them are ball-on-stem; it is NOT like Huggins describes.

Huggins claims that Amanita only briefly are in ball/stem config; most Amanita most of the time are flat-top.

My assessment: YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN AMANITA AND YOU ARE GUESSING WRONG.

*Plenty* of Amanita are in ball/cap form; my recent photos Oct. 2024 prove this: look at my ~30 recent Amanita photos: PLENTY are ball/stem, not flat-top “adult” formation.

update: My “Ball” Critique: Huggins’ Arg is Actually re: How Long the Veil Looks Like Branches Under Cap, Not How Long the Cap Is Ball Shaped

Huggins Strawman Argument: “Crown Patterns are not Strictly Rigid throughout Great Canterbury Psalter, as pilzbaum Affirmers Claim”

todo: to fact-check my critque of what Huggins claims that Brown argues, I need to inspect Brown 2016 book & 2019 article re: “tan, orange…”

Huggins wrote (copypaste from PDF):

“Given the persistent issue of
ramifications (branches), the
PMTs cause is not advanced
when the Browns assert that
“Numerous red, blue, orange,
and tan stylized mushrooms dot the first hundred pages” of the GCP.70“

“70 Brown / Brown, Psychedelic Gospels, 137.”

Biblio:

“Brown, J.B. / Brown, J.M., Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity, 2016”

Huggins makes a mistake or plays a trick: When discussing Brown 2016 or 2019, always cover both; always include both in the Biblio. I suspect Huggins didn’t cite 2019 because he’d have to give credit to Brown for exposing and revealing the two Panofsky letters.

The two Panofsky letters don’t make Panofsky any worse than already per 1968 Soma, but the letters make Wasson look much worse as of 2019, revealing Wasson as a deceptive obstructionist, for which there is no excuse, given that Wasson pretended to urge people to “consult” art authorities, while covertly and deceptively, in bad faith, con the reader by simultaneously censoring the citation of Brinckmann that Panofsky urged twice, strongly.

The only possible reason why a person would delete/ omit the Brinckmann citation while at the very same time berating people for not “consulting” the art authorities, is fraud; trying to mislead people and misrepresent the Panofsky communications.

Certainly, if you actually wanted people to “consult” the art authorities, you’d pass along the twice-strong-urged Brinckmann citation from Panofsky.

Let’s try my per-sentence links:

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/05/panofskys-censored-pair-of-letters-to-wasson-revealed/#Sentence-1-6 —

“If you are interested, I recommend a little book by A. E. Brinckmann, Die Baumdarstellung im Mittelalter (or something like it), where the process is described in detail.”

Wasson replaced that by elipses in Soma, in the same paragraph in which he insulted and berated mycologists for failing to “consult” the art historians.

Outrageous! Phony! Lying deceiver! Academic obstructionism through deceit, combined with insult, and disrespect!

Wasson knowingly and deliberately perverts proper, normal academic “consulting” of publications, into improper, abnormal “consulting” personally.

Fake, fraud, phony play-actor, make-believe deceiver Wasson.

Wasson is a liar.

In 2006 when writing my Wasson article, I wanted to consult publications, and I KNEW Panofsky MUST have provided citations to back up his HUGE, aggressive claim that art historians are “familiar” with pilzbaum.

I detected that Wasson must be withholding citations and bullshitting us, as I accused him of in my 2006 article.

I felt in 2006, “Give us the damn citations that Panofsky MUST have provided, RUDE JERK, Gordon Asson!

Find “citation” in my article at Egodeath.com > Wasson: http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/05/panofskys-censored-pair-of-letters-to-wasson-revealed/#Sentence-2-10 —

[handwritten]
“And I really recommend to look up that little book by A. E. Brinckmann.”

Huggins tries to excuse Wasson’s obstructionism, and refrains from such analysis of the Pan letters.

Huggins ACTS like he is rebutting Brown’s position, but Brown doesn’t rely on such pattern-combinations – Hug tries to make the reader THINK that Brown takes such a position of rigid use of cap patterns.

Is Huggins hallucinating and getting himself confused about what Brown wrote/ argued?

My specific class names, my set of specific names, has powerful explanatory power.

and NO i do NOT argue what Huggins will put in my mouth: i do NOT do what Huggins falsely claims Brown does:

I do not say that these four combinations of attributes in “Creation of Plants” are rigidly adhered to throughout Great Canterbury Psalter.

The other pilzbaum in Great Canterbury Psalter are FREE COMBINATIONS of these typological attributes that are introduced in “Creation of Plants” image.

Against Huggins, we are NOT to argue in terms of SETS of attributes preserved rigidly across Great Canterbury Psalter.

In two distinct bad arguments, Huggins’ article depends on that out-of-the-blue, arbitrary, ad-hoc move.

Typical of pilzbaum deniers is ad-hoc invention of new rules out of the blue – moving goalposts — and fabrication of the alleged position of the opponent, ad hoc, pulled out of thin air AS NEEDED, WHEN NEEDED. case-by-case, blown by the winds of arbitrary inspiration, going in the most unpredictable and bizarre of inspired directions; one vector this way, next vector in an entirely different, arbitrary direction.

pilzbaum deniers get creative, constantly; what I mean by deniers’ “slip & slide arg’n”. “elastic”, as Hug says of Ruck committee’s writing.

The only person that can be convinced by Huggins’ article is committed pilzbaum deniers and ignorant outsiders. Ditto Letcher & Hatsis.

The Hancock Visionary / Supernatural book pp. 187-192 is highly comparable in his interesting description of the deniers’ arg’n style, where Paul Stamets said he’s not going to waste time on their foolish committed-skeptic arguments.

We are to argue in terms of individual recombined individual pilzbaum attributes; fragments of tree images.

Huggins labors with many words to contrstuct a rebuttal to his strawman-Brown position that Huggins invented.

Huggins says “Brown is wrong! These exact combinations of features don’t occur in other pics. Therefore, NOT MUSHROOMS.”

Typical strange vectors of bizarre instances of obvious logical fallacies.

Make Sure Your Obvious Logical Fallacies are spectacularly bizarre instances, to dizzy the opponent

It’s one thing to commit obvious logical fallacies.

What is so strange about Letcher Hatsis Huggins school of argumentation though is how EXTREMELY BIZARRE their particular use of obvious logical fallacies is – the strangest, weirdest, baffling directions of argumentation.

The strategy is to try to distract you with how weird their argumentation vector is, to distract from the fact that it’s an obvious logical fallacy.

My Good Choice of Panaeolus as Pilzbaum #1 in “Creation of Plants”

Hancock in Visionary/Supernatural pp. 187-192 further confirms the soundness of my “Panaeolus” Identification/Classification of “Creation of Plants” image, pilzbaum # 1 of 4 (Pana; Lib; Cube; Aman).

I am the first person to even ATTEMPT (Dec 13, 2020) to NAME the 4 mushrooms / mushroom types/classes; Brown on half (2 of 4) just says “some kind of psil mushroom”.

I am happy because in Irvin’s new book and in Graham Hancock’s book, I’m seeing “Panaeolus” heavily. So, I picked a great classifcation name for pilzbaum 1 of 4. Hancock in discussion with myc’ists eg Paul Stamets are saying “tons of Panaeolus native to Europe”.

But they are elevating likelihood of Lib Cap & Pana, and they are NOT elevating Cubensis, in fact Hancock waves Cubensis aside as “a diversion by Bahn”. “Too cold” for ice age climate, he says Lib Cap can handle cold.

Note: dung loving: f134 Eadwine’s leg-hanging mushroom tree image in the Great Canterbury Psalter —

I argue cattle bovine in f134 proves Cubensis. But, Hancock & Stamets remind, Pana some grow dung loving, so, f134 bovine COULD indicate gathering Lib Cap or Pana, not nece Cube.

Eadwine’s leg-hanging mushroom tree image in the Great Canterbury Psalter canot be Lib Cap, looks too diff & doesn’t have Hatsis’ Parasols of victory in caps – so, it’s either classed as Cube, or Pana.

Therefore, if f134 isn’t blue-staining Cube, it could be Pana, a dung loving type, that can handle colder than Cube.

Hancock Error? “Plants of the Gods first published in 1992″ – Probably 1976 or 1979

I might create a page about this/these book(s), with a section focusing on this question of “edition” numbering of this book(s).

Hypoth: (quick sketch, probably erroneous):

  1. 1976 – Hallucinogenic Plants: A Golden Guide – the true 1st ed, i suspect.
    https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Guide-Hallucinogenic-Plants/dp/B000UMW12I/ (several urls, this is just one)
    Pages: __
  2. 1979 – PotG 1st Ed. really tho, I suspect 2nd Ed; a revision of Golden Guide. Richard Evans Schultes is the only author.
    https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Gods-Origins-Hallucinogenic-Hardcover/dp/0070560897/
    Pages: 192
  3. 1992 – Hofmann joins author list.
    https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Gods-Hallucinogenic-Schultes-1992-10-22/dp/B01K0RPCE6/
  4. 1998 – Ratsch joins author list.
  5. 2001 – yet another “edition” or printing.
    https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Gods-Sacred-Healing-Hallucinogenic/dp/0892819790/
    Healing Arts Press; 2nd edition (November 1, 2001)
    Pages: 208
    Sure, “second edition” — after the 1976, 1979, 1992, & 1998 revised versions. I doubt the book actually says “2nd edition”, it must be 3rd, if not 4th edition:
    0th ed: RES only, Golden Guide.
    1st ed: RES the only author.
    2nd ed: Hofmann joins.
    3rd Ed: Ratsch joins.

Nice page showing many editions of the book(s):
https://www.biblio.com/hallucinogenic-plants-by-richard-evans-schultes/work/911757?srsltid=AfmBOooIyEpS0EV8T7y0NK-UQIkGW02TlkJ2QChWK8giiETIApQtGz8-

web search: “Hallucinogenic Plants” “golden guide” “Plants of the Gods”
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hallucinogenic+Plants%22+%22golden+guide%22+%22Plants+of+the+Gods%22

Apparently proving Hancock wrong, here’s apparently a 1979 version of Plants of the Gods:
https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Gods-Origins-Hallucinogenic-Hardcover/dp/0070560897/
Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw-Hill; First Edition (January 1, 1979)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0070560897
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0070560895

I need to finally confirm my 2020 hypoth: A Golden Guide by R.E.S. is the true first edition of PotG. Richard Evans Schultes. Hallucinogenic Plants
https://www.amazon.com/Hallucinogenic-Plants-Richard-Evans-Schultes/dp/0307243621/ — OMG check it out, appears to confirm immediately my hypoth, tho a bit garbled year:
Hallucinogenic Plants: A Golden Guide
Mass Market Paperback – May 31, 2021[?? sic]
by Richard Evans Schultes (Author), Elmer W. Smith (Illustrator)
3.4 3.4 out of 5 stars (61) 4.2 on Goodreads 135 ratings
See all formats and editions
There is a newer edition of this item:
By Richard Evans Schultes – Plants Of Gods (2nd Revised edition)

Hancock Visionary/Supernatural: Bahn Says “No Liberty Caps in Europe”

Parallels between the “mushrooms in Christian art” dispute and Hancock’s entheogens dispute

The pilzbaum deniers’ model has now been refuted. One can only conclude that anyone who continues henceforth to cite or apply the pilzbaum denial model is either ignorant of the facts or has little respect for truth in scholarship.

Modification of Bahn’s wording, p. 187 of Hancock, Visionary.
Expanded version of Bahn’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Trance-Fixed-Patricia-Helvenston/dp/1933265191/
Waking the Trance Fixed
Patricia Helvenston & Paul Bahn (2005), 128 pages.
Out of Print–Limited Availability.

Their original book might be easier to get:
https://www.abebooks.com/Desperately-Seeking-Trance-Plants-Testing-Three/31300008649/bd

Here’s what Hancock page 188 is rebutting:

“This book includes an updated reprint of the popular Desperately Seeking Trance Plants: Testing the “Three Stages of Trance” Model, as well as a number of new challenges to the model often referred to as a Neuropsychological or Shamanic Model.

“Some of these papers have been included in other publications such as the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, and many, including a chapter documenting the misuse of several historical ethnographic sources by some North American TST proponents, have never been published before.

“Taken as a whole they provide a systematic and detailed refutation [PROOF!!] of the TST model with respect to its applicability to Palaeolithic Cave Art, as well as to the rock art of Native Americans of the far western United States, and the South African San.”

The “Three Stages of Trance” model = the TST model.

Hodgson review of Bahn Waking the Trance Fixed (Hancock Rebuts)

Waking the Trance Fixed by Patricia A. Helvenston and Paul G. Bahn.
Louisville: Wasteland Press (2005)
Reviewed by Derek Hodgson

Derek Hodgson wrote:

“One of the peculiarities of Palaeolithic art has been its capacity to inspire a succession of theories, each claiming to have solved the mystery contained in its strange shapes and forms.

“This, unfortunately, has led to a situation where many ad hoc, ill-informed accounts are given undue attention in both academic and not so academic circles.

“Considering the failure of nearly every one of these attempts to account for the facts, one would have thought that the word might have got around by now that there is no Palaeolithic “Rosetta Stone” to be had.

“This, however, seems not to be the case, as is testified by the latest version of this kind of speculation, namely Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s shamanic Three-Stages of Trance model, which Helvenston and Bahn, in “Waking the Trance Fixed”, set out in a precise and systematic manner to refute.

“This collection of previously published and unpublished criticisms of Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s position, vividly describes the twists and! turns of the debate and casts some welcome light on to a controversial and much contested subject.

“Helvenston and Bahn have the advantage of being foremost experts, in neuropsychology and rock art respectively, and are therefore able to discuss the underlying issues with great perspicuity.

“By returning to original sources, the authors reveal how important texts and documents have been misrepresented leading to a biased reading of the data with all the distortions that this implies.

“From a position of undoubted authority, they show why Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s model came to prominence, the reasons for its acceptance, and how the purported neuropsychological and archaeological evidence has been misapplied both to palaeoart and rock art more generally.

“One of the main criticisms concerns a general lack of understanding of the complexities involved that has led to, and perpetuated, a confused and limited understanding of the major issues.

“For example, Lewis-Williams and Dowson conflate the different kinds of mind-altering drugs with their psychological effects.

“An error compounded by an inadequate account of what constitutes an altered state consciousness (of which there are seventy different kinds) and the diverse range of subjective experiences that can accompany them.

“Moreover, there may be many predisposing factors that produce such an altered state, of which shamanic trance may be but one.

“Depending on how these altered states are induced, different parts of the brain will be stimulated leading to different kinds of experience, none of which induce the notorious three-stages of trance.

“Crucially, altered states of consciousness, generated by such things as sensory deprivation, fasting, and “bad air” do not appear to produce the geometric imagery central to this debate.

“Rather, this imagery seems to be the exclusive preserve of psilocybin, mescaline and LSD which, again, do not necessarily involve the three stages favoured by Lewis-Williams and Dowson.

“More seriously, because these substances were unavailable to Palaeolithic people, the chances that the geometrics of Palaeolithic art were inspired by the trance states of shamanism turns out to be close to zero.

“Another major criticism is that shamanism is applied without discrimination to a broad range of different groups.

“As Helvenston and Bahn point out, rather than one common definition applied arbitrarily, shamanism should be seen against the prevailing cultural norms.

“In this respect, it is important the myths, customs, and rituals of a community, are given due regard, which may be more relevant in determining the subject matter of art than shamanism per se.

“Indeed, Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s primary ethnographic example, the San, may be more influenced by such factors of which shamanism could be just one example.

“The fact that we are unable to determine whether shamanism had any direct connection with San art further disqualifies any comparisons between San and Palaeolithic communities.

“We may, however, the authors suggest, be on safer ground in attributing some mythic tendencies to palaeoart based on a “religious” striving, the exact nature of which has yet to be ascertained.

“In what should become a classic of its kind [“Out of Print–Limited Availability” – Amazon], the hazards of applying ethnographic comparisons carelessly and prescriptively are beautifully illustrated in Chapter 7, where Whitley’s shamanistic analysis of Native American Rock Art is laid bare.

“Whitley, a convert to Lewis-Williams and Dowson’s model, attempts to illustrate how the shamanic proposition can be usefully applied to the art of indigenous groups such as the Coso Shoshone.

“The original documentation on this issue, it seems, remains silent or, alternatively, can be interpreted as referring to mythic thinking that determines the content of dreams, initiation ceremonies, healing rituals and the like, all of which Whitley ignores.

“By supporting Keyser and Whitley’s claim that documentary evidence does exist for shamans producing rock art, thereby contradicting Kehoe, Helvenston and Bahn’s integrity and fairness in these matters is aptly demonstrated.

“Having said this, the authors continue to maintain that such evidence is restricted to one or two examples and there is, nevertheless, still no ethnographic data that directly connects rock art to trance.

“The final chapter is a withering indictment by Bahn on Lewis-Williams’s competence to comment on Palaeolithic art.

“By drawing attention to some glaring inaccuracies and omissions contained in Lewis-Williams’ “The Mind in the Cave”, Bahn shows how inattention to detail can be construed as symptomatic of failings on a more theoretical level.

“This disregard is all too obvious in relation to neuropsychological terminology, which Helvenston and Bahn provide a valuable service in correcting by defining entoptics, phosphenes, form constants, geometrics and hallucinations with reference to the various processing stages of the visual hierarchy.

“Because neuropsychology deals with subtle nuances of meaning, it is absolutely essential that these terms are clearly and unambiguously defined, as the lack of precision has often led to much of the debate being conducted at cross purposes.

“Helvenston’s authority on such matters is underscored by the fact that she personally knew Klüver and was intimately acquainted with his work.

“As Lewis-Williams and Dowson place great emphasis on, and misrepresent, Klüver’s research, this throws into sharp relief the difference between their highly selective and superficial reading of the data compared to Helvenston’s more informed understanding.

“The authors conclude that the preoccupation of the archaeological community with Lewis-Williams and Dowson‘s theory has seriously undermined the study of Palaeolithic art.”

“They suggest that this partially stems from the recent fashion for New Age philosophies with the associated obsession with shamanism that the media has latched onto.”

The Egodeath theory does not employ “shamanism” as an explanatory construct. (Nor “rational”, like Houot embraces.)

I do not agree “religion is irrational, science is rational”, per Rational Psychonaut forum per Houot.

The best religion vs. the worst, BAD SCIENCE, doesn’t support that crude, biased characterization.

There’s inferior science & superior science.
There’s inferior religion & superior religion.

The ego-empowering advocacy of Quantum Mysticism: By fantasizing yourself making a QM observation, you are the creator of infinite worlds every moment – an infinitely extreme, ego-empowerment free-for-all that motivates & drives the most fantastical interpretations of quantum physics.

Reviewer continues:

“Richard Dawkins might call this a “bad meme” that has infected the minds of archaeologists and public alike – a meme which Helvenston and Bahn have so eloquently exorcised.”

Shades of Letcher Hatsis Huggins (and me) pointing out the runaway, out of control Amanita Primacy Fallacy that has taken over Pop Cult Spirituality.

But my solution is not burn it all down in simple-minded total denial of mushrooms in Christian art; I engage with the harder work of nuanced filtering and correct theory-expression.

“Waking the Trance Fixed” should stand as a warning [like bully Hatsis: “crying in a corner”] to all archaeologists and anthropologists who would turn to neuropsychology to prop up their theories and is a long overdue antidote to the shamanic “neuropsychological” trance model.

“For those who wish to gain a proper understanding of the complexities and intricacies of the issues involved, [good goal] Helvenston and Bahn’s book is an indispensable read.”

Hancock retorts to Bahn, way above; Hancock wrote:

“Such shrill claims of refutation, such easy dismissals of the life work of other scholars, are characteristic of Bahn and Helvenston. Their certitude seems ironclad and they never for a moment consider the possibility that their own central propositions are wrong. … and they themselves are refuted.”

A crude bullying tone.

All that’s missing from Bahn is Hatsis’:

I am going to unload on this entire nonsensical idea in a way that will have those who believe this bullshit crying in a corner.

Psychedelic Witch wrote to Dr. Brown, 2019

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/01/22/prof-jerry-browns-works-psychedelic-gospels/#Hatsis-Email-to-Brown

Give it a whirl:

I am going to unload on this entire nonsensical idea in a way that will have those who believe this pilzbaum-denial bullshit crying in a corner.

Now that’s academic discussion. Hatsis emphasizes constantly (to the exclusion of substantive content) that he exemplifies professional academic methodological historiography.

I’m following in Hatsis’ “sound, tried and true methodology” footsteps.

Mytheme Decoding (art interp.) is a matter of weaving, refining, degree, system of interconnections

This is a good example of idea development.

I have NOT posted (or developed) this realization before, this degree of phrasing-insight.

Disproof of the above claim: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/#immortal – no date shown, but, pretty well covers my latest description of “immortal”. Actually that’s not as articulate as the present page; find “immortal” in the present page.

todo: in Mytheme catalog page, refresh/ update/ fill in blanks. Make sure Great Canterbury Psalter motifs art are listed eg {threat}, {scale balance}, {stand right foot} / weight on right foot.

What about {flame}, {fire}, {blade} in the Key Mythemes catalog? adequate? or “means ASC” (fail). verdict: POOR. It LOOKS fair, but actually, hardly more than “it means ASC”: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/#fire – no trace of “being made to deliberately threaten the the egoic control system, to demonstrate its vulnerability and thus drive the transformation of the personal control system”.

Nuance of word-choice is important; it matters; it makes a big difference for degree/depth of comprehension.

Improve/develop the network of interconnected ideas/ mythemes. Refine the system of mythemes; develop the language; put this coding system through the fire to develop it.

todo: Key Mythemes catalog: add entries:

  • {blade}
  • Improve {spear} and {blade} and {flame}/{fire} – not just “being in the ASC”; but the transformative specific mental activity that’s done in the ASC: experiencing, examinging, testing , demonstrating, the abiltiy of control to seize and fail, to be .. the capability of control to be made by the mind to seize itself. fire is demonstrating repeatedly the mind’s capabiliuty of making lower control (the egoic control system ) seize and become not viable.
  • {cleansed}

{blade} is only mentioned, not a section:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/#spear

{cleansed} to {go through guarded gate}; Rev 22:14.

todo: improve spear entry; try conjoined dual: {blade} and {flame} – bc my inventory of Great Canterbury Psalter indicates the interchangeability of those two motifs:

  • demon with flame
  • demon with blade (spear, bow&arrow, sword)
  • angel with fire
  • angel with blade (spear, bow&arrow, sword)
  • army with blade (spear, bow&arrow, sword)
  • lion with claws

You said you like cats? https://www.amazon.com/Cats-Keepers-Spirit-John-Rush/dp/1644117460/

Crop by Cybermonk

Within past year, I got much better at interpreting re: {flame} and {blade} (eg Gen 3 cherubim, flaming sword):

{flame} and {blade} and {threat} = the mind being made to explore self-thwarting control seizure potential, to drive transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Proof that my reading/interp of {flame} was entirely too vague and not as good 10 years ago: Christmast 2015, in my Egodeath Yahoo Group thread about Dancing Man image, I commented about “fire” that it means “being in the altered state”.

That fails in exactly the way I criticised Brown’s interp of {Eve’s ribs visible} as “indicates shamanism altered state”: That type or level of “interpretation” doesn’t explain this particular mytheme; it merely states (a truism) the genre/ mode/ type of art.

Every mytheme “means” alt state; rather, that’s a mode, not a meaning within the mode.

The Genre Question is crucial, but you still have to do the specific work of decoding a specific mytheme vs. other mythemes: which specific aspect of the ASC is this mytheme like?

In 2015, that level of explanation (“flame means ASC”) SEEMED good to me, but, is totally poor, given that EVERY mytheme “means” being in altered state.

Huggins’ Dizzy article: Subjecting your salamander to flame to transform it to Phoenix

Subjecting your salamander to flame means transforming your mental worldmodel of control by threatening, ie exploring/ demonstrating to your mind a control dynamic that’s threatening.

The salamander is impervious to flame? If so, asks Huggins, and he asks Hane., why is salamander replaced by Phoenix in next frame? The OSC-based literalists/ reductionists couldn’t figure it out, reports Huggins.

The artist wanted to represent change, transformation.

A salamander can represent the part of mental worldmodel or mind that remains after transformation – just as egoic thinking; the egoic control system, remains after disproving it and gaining the transcendent control system.

The salamander/mind is impervious to flame, but, also, is transformed, thus {Phoenix}.

A motif that really does mean specifically, being in the ASC, is {mushroom hem}. Or “cloth in wind” (Hellenistic art). Or lifted garment; John Rush’s {celestial erec’n}.

More proof of my idea development progress: Great Canterbury Psalter f109 – the image that’s read from lower left to upper right: took a few tries to grasp meaning of {cloth}.

Figuring out “drape cloth” was really hard 2022/2023 in Saint Martin church fresco. I studied Brown book, I puzzled over “nailing cloth in city walls Jerusalem”.

First I had to puzzle to figure out what Brown refers to in pictures.

Then I had to puzzle over the meaning/ interpration of “cloth”, which Brown raises by saying nailing cloth.

Similarly, explicitly, Brown 2016|2019 asked:
“Why is a mushroom tree growing on a stone tower (above the gate)?”

It takes time, a certain number of minutes and hours, to interpret and decode an image: eg to find the main trajectory, from lower left to upper right:

Crop by Cybermonk

In mediocre-decoding Brown 2016 fashion of “every motif means shamanic state” (not insightful much in detail). re: Eve ribs = shamanic state, in Plainc fresco.

{immortal} merely means “mature form”

todo: sort the below blocks into these two headings sections

vs.: Eve’s visible ribs means perceiving underlying mechanism of the personal control system” – as I’d put it specifically about seeing ribs/ naked/ exposed.

“gain immorality” means transform from temporary immature form (transformation from possibilism to eternalism)

transcribed to here my TIK notes {immortal} which merely means “adult form”. p. 164, 99, etc.

p. 164:

imperishability

immortal = final form.
mortal = initial form.

Mortal mind is subject to perishability perishable.

that which is temporary, the temporary mental model

Gain the non-temporary mental model.

You live forever = gain final form.

Your mental model becomes the mature form, not larval.

Tadpole transforms to become immortal; frog – final form. 🙌 🐸

the initial, perishable, transient, volatile, temporary, larval, childish, immature mental model. possibilism-thinking

transform in order to go through the gate

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

transform from mortal to immortal; transformation from possibilism to eternalism

wash your robes = no pollution = no impurity b/c impurity causes goddess / god’s wrath, Wrath of Dionysus when refuse to acknowledge him as king.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

Rev 22:14 NIV

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev%2022%3A14&version=NIV

p 99 TIK:

my decoding of immortal = adult, mature form vs. temp, immature form.

go beyond temp child immature form, now. become imperishable. completed initiate.

Why does a culture require keeping psychedelic eternalism secret in the public sphere?

To avoid “killing” children prematurely; to protect egoic children; to not annihilate & lose virtual freewill thinking

I speculated on this multiple times before, like 2001 in Egodeath Yahoo Group posts.

My role is to fully reveal summary of Transcendent Knowledge openly. else we lose it entirely, like happened due to fault of mystery religions “not allowed to speak of what’s revealed”.

Ill advised – do you want to shield children from higher truth so bad, that you entirely discard Transcendent Knowledge, such that adults entirely lose access to it?

Hancock, Visionary, pp. 187-192 re: distribution of psil in Europe history

This is an email sent to Cyberdisciple Jan. 1, 2025.

I snagged Hancock book pages from the book Visionary (a superset of Supernatural), 

pp 187-192, re: distribution of psil in Europe history.

topic: PREMATURE CLOSURE.  As far as I am concerned, entheogen scholarship has not even started yet.

I have only started reading the 6 pages – I immediately hit an example of “PREMATURE CLOSURE” not by Hancock, by Bahn (first word).

We can say as of 1952 or 2024, there are x evidence.  But we CANNOT say negatives:

“No one uses psychoactive mushrooms in Mexico.” (the “conclusion” in 1915)

No one uses psychoactive mushrooms in Mexico (Safford 1915)

Proof that no one ever uses psychoactive mushrooms in Mexico.  Science; Fact; Official; Certain, per 1915 expert research in the field:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/12/aztec-narcotic-safford-1915/

“There was no Psil in Europe.”  (Hancock battles against that grossly premature negative.)

“Ok, we f’d up, we were full of sh!t, but still – moving the goalposts, Letcher – there WAS Lib Cap in England, but, no one used it or knew about it.  And certainly there was no Cubensis in Canterbury.”

I grilled a cultivator:

“If I pay you $100, so that you WANT to find Cube in England – so you have an incentive – is it POSSIBLE for you to find a Cubensis, just a single Cubensis, in England (non-cultivated)?

He reasoned “No, it would not be possible, b/c temperature.”

I say: TRY HARDER.

My motto/ theme/ cry to entheogen scholars: YOU GOTTA WANT IT!

You gotta want the presence of evidence, MORE than you want your favorite objective of crying about “the big bad church suppressed”.

As far as I am concerned, entheogen scholarship has not even started yet.  

During first gen entheogen scholarship, Wasson wanted, and then did not want.  As ppl noted, he tried, and then said do not try.

Work like hell to prove presence in 1000 BC Genesis text, and then STOP.  HALT.  DO NOT PROCEED FURTHER.  go go go STOP.

Many have noticed this about the Wasson Contradiction eg Brown 2019, & Samo 1997: If Wasson in 1952 at Plainc. had travelled just 8 km to Saint Martin Church, …

Another example of the Wasson Contradiction: “Hey Ramsbottom, you stupid ignoramus mycologists pilzbaum affimers ought to have consulted the art authorities [while quietly deleting citation of Brinc. book].”

Only Irvin w/ me 2006 seems to have picked up on what Ramsb. did in retaliation to the insult: 

Ramsb. said: “Throw away the first printing of my new book.  Fire up the presses.  Add “Rightly or wrongly, we are going to reject Plainc. – Wasson.  (pers. comm.)”

Rams. 2nd printing made Wasson look like an idiot like from 1955 to 1970 before Wasson finally realized that his COMMITTED SKEPTIC assertion had been printed/exposed.

________________________________________

When Was First-Gen Entheogen scholarship?

todo: Brown 2016: does book in effect define 1st gen = 20th C, 2nd gen entheogen scholarship = 21st C?

Per Brown (in essence) 2016 / 2019, a strong candidate is Samo to kick off 2nd Gen – his 1998 paper overshadows the important lead-up in 1997 article which heavily refers to 1996 San Fran conf presentation.  If you like 1998, kinda hafta include 1996, they are of a unit. 

Brown 2019 does include Samo 1997 not just 1998.

1998 = 2001 Entheos 1 especially ConjEden article.  This is why Brown 2016 says “21st C = 2nd gen”.  pdf that pdf:  he starts list w dubious “web scholar” (Hatsis term), Michael Hofffman.

copypaste from Brown 2019 article:

Overenthusiasm by ardent advocates
[1st Gen per Brown:]

Since the publication of Wasson’s Soma (1968) and Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970),

[2nd Gen per Brown:]
new evidence has emerged on websites (Michael Hoffman, 1985–2007a) [read: ~2001-2007] and in articles (Samorini, 1997, 1998) and books documenting the presence of sacred mushrooms in Christian art.

Several of these books are: The Holy Mushroom (Irvin, 2008) and The Mushroom in Christian Art (Rush, 2011) – both of which contain color photo galleries – and The Effluents of Deity (Ruck & Hoffman, 2012), which does not* present photos but offers extensive analysis of medieval religious art.”

*expensive book supposed to have DVD; missing; cust. complaints.  A semi-error by Brown.  I don’t think I have that book – 

I want to check if Ruck switches his kettle logic incoherent story from “only heretical sects had The Mushroom” to “only elites had The Mushroom” as Irvin 2006 Conclusion of AstroSham claimed, before Irvin deleted that “attempt to restrict” (Irvin’s words in THM).

I’m not saying Ruck necessarily self-contradicts; I’m saying he puts forth an APPARENT direct self-contradiction, then fails to acknowledge that it’s an appar. cont., fails to explain / reconcile this appar. cont.

I’m not into unneeded stories put forth as “important required explanation conjectures”, but given that Ruck does put such forth, he needs to reconcile his set of conflicting explanatory narrative scenarios.

I only care about inventorying instances of evidence – I don’t think we should attempt to “assign” evidence to one subgroup or one type of Christian – that exercise is assumed to be a requirement, but really it causes blindness and distracts from the basic project. 

It’s counterproductive at this point. 

Keep it distinct and separated, aside from sheer question of “to what extent” 

When I ask “to what extent Psil & Aman in Christianity”, I am NOT asking “Please provided an explanatory narrative.” 

I’d almost rather entheogen scholars OMIT any such attempted, “helpful” (not helpful) explanatory, like Brown tries to provide at end of 2019 article, about… in CONCLUSIONS section:

oh good my greedy temptation copypaste found “generation” I was looking for:

Brown writes w/ great earned authority re: Wasson stymied, in that this article exposes both Panofsky letters:

CONCLUSIONS: 

…

While Wasson’s views stymied research on entheogens in Christianity for decades after the publication of Soma in 1968, 

[when does that 1st Gen era start?  1968? 1952?  1915?  1910? 1906?  1875?  1845?]  

[Huggins Foraging Wrong contributes some early names / dates, somewhere at my site – find “Rignoux” at my site, which page? ans: Foraging Wrong, p. 12, fotnote:

  • Rouge, Folk-lore de la Touraine.
  • then Marchand & Boudier, La fre probably fr. myc. society 1910/1911.

copypaste of Hug:

55 Rougé, Folk-lore de la Touraine, 214. Subsequently, Marchand / Boudier, La fresque de Plaincourault (Indre), 31–32

Here’s one:

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/12/aztec-narcotic-safford-1915/#First-Asserters-of-Plaincourault ]

a new generation of 21st century researchers has documented growing evidence of 

psychedelic A. muscaria [BE SURE TO ALWAYS LIST GOD-KING AMANITA  FIRST] 

and a variety of species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms [Hatsis writes “lesser-looking”] 

[Graves/Wasson/Heinrich/McK/everyone story/ narrative/discourse: 

When our The Holy Mushroom, Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) was sadly  no longer available, they had to fall back and make do with fake substitutes, Psil, unfortunately; that sucks, but at least this great loss of our Holy Msh was compensated for by fact that Psil is powerful .”]

in Christian art, consistent with Samorini’s [1998] typology of “mushroom-trees.” 

“The Psychedelic Gospels [book 3 years ago] contributes to these entheogenic studies 

(a) by providing original photographs and analysis of psychoactive mushroom images in several churches and cathedrals in Europe and the Middle East; 

(b) by arguing that 

based on the presence of these images in the high holy places of Christianity, 

[Ruck: all of the returning Crusaders were initiates (tho only a few ppl were initiates); had The Mushroom, displayed it brazenly in THEIR places of worship [eg Mega Cathedral], 

they repeatedly REintroduced initiation [read: The Msh] into certain communities/ cults/ sects/ groups” 

— even Samorini writes “certain” Christian “communities”.  

God forbid The Mushroom be allowed for individuals mixed into the set of all ppl in Christendom, gotta keep em separated/ bounded/ confined into a “certain” “group”]

these psychedelic traditions were not suppressed by the Church, but were rather maintained for the secret instruction of initiates

[i HATE that writing, “secret initiation”, that fake anthropology-mode dragging-in of that superfluous, added, imported attempt at helpful explanatory construct/ fabrication] 

and possibly for the education of the illiterate masses

[I like that, and silently default to that]

; and 

(c) by proposing a psychedelic gospels theory, [vs 2016 book] which hypothesizes that 

these images represent an alternative history of Christianity, 

[be careful in spinning such a history – we might be better off without this ALWAYS-LIMITING, CONJECTURED SCENARIOS.

If we screw up our speculated scenario, that causes blindness, by saying “don’t look”, “stop looking” – the evidence must be restricted to uphold all driving, all-dominant, all-important “helpful explanatory scenario”]

suggesting that early and medieval Christians experienced healing, divinity, and immortality by ingesting sacred psychoactive sacraments.”

/ end of Brown 2019 excerpt

re: mushrooms in Christian art, I suppose can assign Egodeath.com = 2001-2007. 

Prior to the Egodeath Yahoo Group was my posts ~1998 or 1999 in other Yahoo Groups eg Jesus Mysteries – half page in that book about entheogens. 

The Jesus Mysteries yahoo group hosts shut it down even tho ppl wanted to talk about entheogens re: Christian origins, so I started the Egodeath Yahoo Group in 2001.

during 1st Gen 1952-1996 (Brown 2019 defines basically 20th C 1st gen, 21 C 2nd gen incl Samo 1998 which really is 1996/1997/1998).

1st Gen: 1952, 1906, 1910 (french myc soc; pub’d 1911). 

The early 20th C details of Reko –> Schultes –> Graves –> Wasson are unclear to me, though I do have some relevant books here.

I’d have to research that particular question:

When can we say 1st Gen entheogen scholarship was? consider that in 1967 or 1962 everyone was saying “new”, “for 1st time we have access on demand”.

It’s hard to make case that entheogen scholarship started in 1900 or 1875 given that in 1967 everyone saying “new for the first time mystic experience on demand” – contradictory pop stories.  Huxley 1954.  Wasson wrote Pan. in 1952.

Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium (Erik Davis, 2024/04)

Book Review of Blotter (Davis)

Review of the book:
“News Story: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion: Book Talk: Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium with Erik Davis”
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/05/08/2024/psychedelics-and-future-religion-book-talk-blotter-untold-story-acid-medium – “introduced by Charles Stang”
May 8, 2024 —

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/about – “Center for the Study of World Religions [CSWR] is an integral part of Harvard Divinity School.”

Book review paragraph 1:

“On Tuesday, April 30, 2024, the Common Room at CSWR hosted an engaging evening, organized as part of the CSWR’s Psychedelics and the Future of Religion Series and centered on Dr. Erik Davis’s new book, “Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium.”

“Released in collaboration with Mark McCloud’s Institute of Illegal Images, the book delves into the complex world of LSD blotter paper.

“Dr. Charles Stang, Director of the CSWR, introduced Davis’ new book as an exploration of the “wild images of this ephemeral medium, about a form of art that is meant to be consumed, digested images that are meant to inaugurate a trip, a journey, images that are meant to disappear so that others might appear.””

/ end of book review paragraph 1

My Commentary about Blotter (Davis)

Davis has written: now that the Establishment [Forte: “the Enterprise” eg Griffiths, Pollan, Muraresku] has taken over ownership of Psilocybin, the remaining authentic underground counterculture chem is blotter.

ie: Blotter has authenticity; Psil has lost its authenticity, by that measure.

I’m against the construct “counterculture” though; b/c it perma-reifies Prohibition of psychedelics, though confusion of definitions vs. reality:

“By definition, the mainstream is Prohibitionist. Therefore, it’s impossible to ever repeal Prohibition.”

The Ruck school tends to be self-defeating that way. Their commitment to “fight the power”
becomes
“Don’t let the evil mainstream get ahold of our Holy Mushroom.”
becomes
“We must fight and labor tirelessly to keep Prohibition in place forever, to protect and preserve our committed narrative of how awful the Mainstream is.”

Entheogen Scholarship Often Omits drug policy reform and condones Prohibition

Proof: Kitchens’ Part 2 article about Forte vs. Muraresku contains not a trace of drug policy reform; it’s simply missing from the minds of entheogen scholars.

Citation of Blotter (Davis)

Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium
April 30, 2024
Paperback
by Erik Davis (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Blotter-Untold-Story-Acid-Medium/dp/0262048507/

blurb:

“A richly illustrated exploration of the history, art, and design of printed LSD blotter tabs.

“Blotter is the first comprehensive written account of the history, art, and design of LSD blotter paper, the iconic drug delivery device that will perhaps forever be linked to underground psychedelic culture and contemporary street art.

“Created in collaboration with Mark McCloud’s Institute of Illegal Images, the world’s largest archive of blotter art, Davis’s boldly illustrated exhibition treats his outsider subject with the serious, art-historical respect it deserves, while also staying true to the sense of play, irreverence, and adventure inherent in psychedelic exploration.

“Davis weaves together two main stories: first, the largely unknown history of blotter paper’s development in the 1960s and its later flowering in the 1970s and 1980s; and second,

the story of how San Francisco artist, professor, and “freak” McCloud began collecting blotter and ultimately became embroiled with the LSD trade.

“The book closes with a unique discussion of the market for “vanity blotter”—more recent perforated papers produced as collectible art objects never meant to be dipped in LSD.”

🤔 compare my fridge magnets:

Crops & photo: Michael Hoffman, Dec. 2024

“While vanity blotters are intimately related to the underground blotters of the LSD trade, they effectively open up their own visual world.

“As the ultimate document of this ephemeral artform, Blotter represents an exceptional contribution to the scholarship of art and psychedelics that will entertain older readers with lysergic nostalgia and younger readers with its image-driven journey through a colorful and scandalous corner of psychedelic lore.”

My Jan. 1 comment at Cyberdisciple page: The abuse of entheogen scholarship causes blindness

Jan. 1, 2025, I posted the following Comment at the Cyberdisciple page:
New Books received – The Holy Mushroom; Failed God
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/new-books-received-the-holy-mushroom-failed-god/#comment-2718

Cyberdisciple wrote:

“What is the author’s central goal?

“These comments sound like the author attacks visionary plants and the altered state of consciousness in order to attack Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

“It’s as if the argument runs:

“Christianity, Judaism, and Islam were all based on drug-usage.

We all know how horrible and awful drugs are, not to mention irrational.

Therefore, we can discredit the basis of these three religions.”

______________________

A question I’m asking of entheogen scholars recently:

Why are you writing about history of psychedelics in religion?

What’s your motivation and strategy, for engaging in entheogen scholarship?

Are you driven by wanting to debunk religion, or to defame religion? Or are you driven by passion to positively find as much evidence as possible for the heavy extent of psychedelics in religion?

My goal is to prove Christianity (and Hellenism) has a fully developed Psilocybin tradition, as part of my using religious myth to corroborate the Egodeath theory (psychedelic eternalism).

If Christianity annihilated Alderaan and ten other planets, that’s irrelevant to my project and my purpose for doing entheogen scholarship.

Reading the book The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, I come across author-elevating/ moral grandstanding/ author-aggrandizing retelling of myths such as:

The big bad Church burned down The Great Library of Alexandria — isn’t that terrible?!

For one thing, much of the disparagement of Christianity is based on invented, fake history.

For another thing, I am autistic: If Christianity or the Church was the lowest evil or the highest good, either way, in a way, that’s not my concern and not my interest, and is not my motivation for doing scholarship. It’s irrelevant.

I only care about one thing: Religious myth corroborates the Egodeath theory.

My motivation for doing entheogen scholarship is to prove the Egodeath theory.

Other people do entheogen scholarship in order to advocate Pop Sike Spirituality and in order to defame and disparage and beat up on Christianity and the Church.

That’s an abuse of the topic of entheogen scholarship as a means to an end; an ulterior, other motive.

I use and abuse entheogen scholarship to put it to use to serve my own end, that’s a higher purpose: to make the theory of psychedelic eternalism available to psychonauts and everyone.

I do entheogen scholarship in order to make psychedelic eternalism available to everyone – not in order to self-aggrandize, morally posture, and tell Pop Cult Spirituality stories/ narratives/ discourses.

I watched a YouTube video recently that debunks and greatly complicates the history of libraries in Alexandria.

Letcher Hatsis Huggins is right on one of his points (not wrong on every one of his points):

The field of entheogen scholarship needs more discernment, along the lines Wouter Hanegraaff calls for in the academic scientific historiography of Western Esotericism:

We need science-based, reality-based history, differentiated from myth-based history; history-styled myth.

Letcher Hatsis Huggins complains that entheogen scholars (pilzbaum affirmers; “psychedelic mushroom theorists [PMTs]; theorists of mushrooms in Christian art; “mushroom theorists”) don’t care about history, but interpret mushrooms in Christian art without text context or history context.

I embrace that characterization; indeed my motivation as an entheogen scholar is not to tale-tell about the relation between Hellenistic mysteries and Christian formative Eucharist like Muraresku focuses on.

For example, I felt I should strategically avoid learning the backstory of Eustace crossing the river, in order to listen to the art motifs that are present in the image, without a potentially blinding, distorting overlay imported by background stories and texts.

I learned the hard way about how importing presuppositions and prejudices into art interpretation causes blindness.

In Nov. 2020 in the heat of breakneck-paced decoding of Eadwine’s leg-hanging mushroom tree image in the Great Canterbury Psalter, I told Cyberdisciple I’m avoiding looking at row 2 and 3 because they are just agriculture (Cyberdisciple retorted like “that’s dumb of you”) – just agriculture, which is depressing and so risked hampering my recognition of findings in row 1.

After years of intensive looking at the entire image, I finally traced looking-lines of eyes and was led by force to finally LOOK at the grain dispensing bins, which, against my prejudiced blindness, contain mushrooms.

This is a big cautionary lesson for entheogen scholarship, about how negative expectations and negative framing causes blindness and is self-defeating.

So much of entheogen scholarship is motivated by negative expectations and negative framing.

Hand Carl Ruck your wonderful pilzbaum find, and he snatches it away and hastens to neutralize the evidence, wrapping it in a jail cell of framing as “yet more proof of heretical infiltration of The Mushroom (🍄) even into the very heart of the big bad Church”; “repeatedly reintroduced their initiation practices into certain heretical groups/ communities, and displayed brazenly in their[??] places of worship” (Conjuring Eden article p. 14 + Daturas for the Virgin article p. 56).

Hand Ruck your evidence, and he says “Thank you for the yet more evidence of entheogens in heretical Christianity.”

The only person I see decreeing entheogens heretical is Pope Ruck himself, hiding, psychologically disowned behind HIS phrase “so-called heretical sects”, in all 3 print issues of Entheos! 😄🙃

My eyes had been squeezed tightly shut – like McKenna’s book Food of the Gods, in order to preserve entheogen scholarship’s negative presuppositions, which is their real motivation: wield entheogen scholarship as a club in order to Smash the Church and cry (in self-defeating fashion) about how the Church totally got rid of all entheogens from the start.

No need for a coherent, consistent narrative — or kettle-logic set of narratives.

This belated, reluctant-seeming discovery of the huge shipment of mushrooms bins shattered my claim to be expert as such image interpretation.

I had fallen into the trap the same as any two-bit, Ruck-type seeker of mushrooms in Christian art: as if I were primarily interested in, or driven by, negative framing, a negative mental attitude, to the point of “presence means absence” (the Ruck school); eg. so as to cynically/ critically subtitle my Entheos issue 1 as “Evidence of Psychedelics in Heretical Christianity”.

I try to keep a barrier between what’s in the image vs. the backstory and the text that serves to accompany the image.

pilzbaum deniers tend to disregard what’s in the picture and replace it by text and backstory and history trivia instead; eg pilzbaum are trees and have branches, therefore don’t look like mushrooms. (Ignore the fact that these “branches” in many cases look identical to mushrooms.)

Huggins explains: Art historians don’t write about trees, because trees are decorative and unimportant:

“Trees, being peripheral to the more central features of medieval iconography, are not often discussed by art historians.” – Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article, Conclusion section.

I initially reacted the same way to the dud mushroom trees (vine leaf trees) in Great Canterbury Psalter — until the pink key tree touching the leg-hanging cubensis tree, isomorphic, taught me to value and seek-out branching YI morphology in all trees in the pilzbaum genre.

_______________________

In a private wish list, I just stumbled across a hardcover of Fulvio & Gosso vol. 2, about Psilocybin mushrooms in Christian art, and ordered it.

Amazon no longer supports customer lists of books for others to view – just private wish lists. Old public book list urls are 404.

/ end of my comment Jan 1 2025

Rating Voice Recordings or Podcast Episodes

Fit all aspects into four categories. For “Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm.mp3”:

  • content: _ 10
  • voczn: _ 8 – great baseline tone, marred by lisp on 33% of ‘s’, & frequent throat clearing (can delete.
  • mic tech: _ 10
  • writeup: _ 7? Not sure how thorough at Idea Development page 10.

At Idea Development page 10:

Voice Recording 15 with Header (2021-01-28):
“Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm.mp3” 2:34:51

Why is Old Secret voice recording so good?

Voice Recording 1 was 01/20.

Writeup: not necely or simply transcribe, often add new content, or summarize – and-reword and add links and clarifn.

My writeup is a reaction.

The writeup sometimes or in some ways is better than or addl to the content in the recording.

Remembering points/factors: At first I was doing Multiple episodes per day, multi-part episodes.

Ever-varying early shows/ recordings/ approaches.

Episode notes in an idea development page & in a dedicated page.

Idea Development Site; Idea Development is King

Once, I had an idea while editing some page, and i didn’t want to dirty the page. i wanted to write up the idea in the / a correct page instead. by the time fumbled, THE INSPIRED STATE WAS GONE AND WASTED. Never again.

I loosened up where I type an immed idea.

Better to dirty a page — typing immediately regardless of which page/section — than lose an idea or idea session state.

todo: Reissue 2021/01/28 Recording “Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm.mp3”

with Throat Clearing Scrubbed, Intro & Outro Added

Also add a 2024 Foreword of some sort. Damn, GREAT “episode”, as I wrote, 10/10/10 – except lisping/slurring ‘s’ sometimes, which I can’t fix, and throat-clearing, which I CAN fix. Then create dedicated page.

Possibly delete a tiny bit of off-topic? It’s harmless and not unrelated. eg a brief mention of vocalizing, cussing.

Ironic that such a good episode was before concept of the Egodeath Show / Egodeath Mystery Show – but after i did short 1-off recordings and uploaded them. Was this the first LONG… one of the first LONG recordings, that was tantamount to a planned “show episode”.

Where was my head at then re: “I’m going to make a podcast-like, long recording”? I had done a few long recording sessions with some poor approaches, avoided here – found the magic combination. Like my great 1987 recording, implausibly great off-the-cuff speaking.

Annoyingly great like the Egodeath Yahoo Group posts. High bar! 2.5 hours PACKED with leading-edge substance.

Voice Recording with Header (2021-01-28):
“Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm.mp3” 2:34:51

Books Received Late Dec. 2024

Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, Feb. 2025)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPSJGMFR – became 404, though this is listed in my Received Order page.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rise+of+the+psychonaut

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States
(Hatsis, 2018)

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States
(Hatsis, September 11, 2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1620558009

ebook format blows, for reading – good for Search. I finally got Hatsis’ book for real.

Got Print Copy of Hatsis 2018 book Psychedelic Mystery Traditions

Dec. 30, 2024 – I finally got the REAL version of Hatsis’ book:

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States
Thomas Hatsis, September 11, 2018

Nov 8, 2020, in the lead-up to discovering Great Canterbury Psalter, I got the Kindle edition – I hate that experience, other than skim & search. Even on desktop.

  • I must have print.
  • and for other reasons, I must have Find/Search electronically.
  • Comes down to: AMAZON SHOULD GIVE PACKAGE DEAL to buy print + Kindle version at a discount.

I got Hatsis kindle book and I HATE the experience of not having the real, printed book.

ebook/Kindle is good for Search – I always want and need BOTH the e-book and print book.

Today I received the REAL Hatsis book, in print: Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States.

Eager to see his chapter all about pilzbaum and mushrooms in Christian art, and about hellenistic mixed wine and myth.

I only read this in kindle version in Nov 2020 – probably saw only a few, selective spots, b/c can’t deal w/ reading ebook onscreen.

Breaking Convention: Essays on Psychedelic Consciousness (2014)

Has article about the Egodeath theory.

Editors:
Cameron Adams
David Luke
Anna Waldstein
Ben Sessa
David King

Breaking Convention https://www.amazon.com/dp/158394771X

Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life (Lundborg 2012) – Mystery Religion & Rock Music

Ancient psychedelics & Blotter-based Rock music.

Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life
Patrick Lundborg [1967-2014]
hardcover
December 11, 2012
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDY96NKM

Index for Lundborg Book

Latest index, v0.98 (July 15, 2013):
https://web.archive.org/web/20150626111309/http://www.lysergia.com/Psychedelia/AZindex_Psychedelia_PatrickLundborg.pdf

When I Posted About the Lundborg Book

Surprisingly little. Create dedicated page?
Not clear why this section is at this page (2022/12/16):
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/sacred-drugs-course-and-book-gary-laderman/#title

I posted a citation of the book in 2014:
Subject: Entheogenshow.com podcast
Date: 2014/12/21
https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-125/#message6452
The Entheogen podcast Episode 3 Reference section links to two interviews with Lundborg.

Why Didn’t Post Much About It since 2012? Why got book only in 2024?

Received hardcover yesterday, 2024/12/31.

Feels like I had Kindle of entire book, but apparently only a sample I got in 2022.

After 2012, I read sample online, and this book really stood out, not sure why I didn’t get this book earlier. Hard to believe I didn’t really post about it.

I got the Kindle version sample Dec. 2022 and hated that format. Doesn’t work for me, especially not for reading this massive book.

I think I added this 2012 book to my Amazon wish list in 2014 – FINALLY got the book 2024/12/31, 10 years later than I should have.

55 Episodes of Entheogen Show Podcast with Joe, Kevin, Brad [~2014/10 – 2022/05]

https://entheogenshow.com
The latest episode at home page is March 2022:
#55: FLOW STATES WITH BOBBY LYTE
but I’m looking for Episode 3.
Also my post has notes about:
Episode 2: PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH RENAISSANCE, PART 2 /OCTOBER 14, 2014

https://entheogenshow.com/?offset=1533052200561 – Bad design makes impossible to view all episodes.
Hosted by Joe, Kevin, and Brad. I think I listened to a number of the early episodes and will recognize the 3 guys.

Compare Psychedelics Today with Joe Moore:
https://psychedelicstoday.com/about/ – no Kevin or Brad.

Advanced Web Search:
Word: Lundborg
Site: entheogenshow.com
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=Lundborg&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=entheogenshow.com&as_occt=any&as_filetype=&tbs=

Entheogen Show podcast Episode 3:
003: RESIDENT PSYCHEDELICISTS DISCUSS ENTHEOGENS VS. OTHER PATHS /DECEMBER 14, 2014
https://entheogenshow.com/podcast/2014/12/14/003-resident-psychedelicists-discuss-entheogens-vs-other-paths —
TOPICS:
Is the psychedelic experience “real”? Does that question have merit?
Is taking entheogens “cheating”? Why do people think so?
Is the entheogenic experience comparable to experiences achievable through meditation, yoga, shamanic drumming, etc., or is it substantively different?

Text Interview of Patrick Lundborg by Conradino Beb

A Polish language WordPress site.

Interview with Patrick Lundborg: 60’s psych & garage guru, psychedelic culture scholar and author of brilliant „Psychedelia” and „Acid Archives” books
at
http://magivanga.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/interview-with-patrick-lundborg-60s-psych-garage-guru-psychedelic-culture-scholar-and-author-of-brilliant-psychedelia-and-acid-archives-books/
redirects to:
https://magivanga.com/2013/06/26/interview-with-patrick-lundborg-60s-psych-garage-guru-psychedelic-culture-scholar-and-author-of-brilliant-psychedelia-and-acid-archives-books/

Text Interview of Patrick Lundborg by Benton Rooks

Unified Psychedelic Theory: An Interview with Patrick Lundborg R.I.P.
at
http://realitysandwich.com/220045/unified-psychedelic-theory-an-interview-with-patrick-lundborg-r-i-p/

/ end of show 3 notes

I periodically looked at this book, probably have it added to wish list Amazon since like 2013-2014.

If I only have the ebook version, I don’t have that book

Other Books I Have Got in 2024

Yugler – Psychedelics and the Soul

https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelics-Soul-Psychedelic-Psychology-Cultural/dp/B0CR9VRB64/

We read it in church book club. The author joined our final session, where I asked him if anything’s left of the book after deleting all the “therapy” content/ framing, like Houot calls for an exploration fwk instead.

The Immortality Key – Brian Muraresku

Hardcover. Borrowed, marked it up so I probably will buy.

Motivation for reading this book: The McCarty & Priest article 2024 in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies​ claims that Mura claims that Ruck claims that “institutional Christianity elided/omitted entheogens”. So, I have been reading the Index entries’ Ruck pages to see if Mura mis-characterizes Ruck that way.

The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name Brian Muraresku
Graham Hancock (Foreword, Contributor)
Hardcover
September 29, 2020
4.7 of 5 stars (3200 ratings)
https://www.amazon.com/Immortality-Key-Uncovering-History-Religion/dp/1250207142/

Actually Ruck’s position is a self-contradictory combination of two different assertions/ just-so stories, storytelling narratives, unresolved: The church got rid of psychedelics, and, the heretics in the church – and he later adds elites — “repeatedly reintroduced” The Mushroom and “brazenly displayed it in THEIR (??) places of worship”.

Entheogen scholarship is corrupted and abused by mis-using it to beat up on Christianity, and self-blinds and self-contradicts itself as a result

I am autistic and don’t care whether Church was good or bad. DON’T CARE.

I ONLY care about finding psychedelics in Christianity.

I never write anything about “big bad church” narrative – unlike everyone else, for me this is NOT a project of enabling myself to storytell about how awful Christianity is.

1st Gen entheogen scholarship is a project for the purpose of — like Allegro – storytelling how awful Christianity is.

Mis-motivated entheogen scholars have no interest in psychedelics phenomenology.

No interest in Amanita, either; the ENTIRE point for Graves Wasson Allegro Ruck Irvin 2006, is SECRET amanita.

These fake, mis-motivated entheogen scholars are motivated purely by smearing Christianity, and only use the topic of psychedelics in order to advance that project.

2nd-Gen entheogen scholarship needs to DROP THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN MIS-MOTIVATION PROJECT: OMIT SUCH NARRATIVE STORYTELLING ALTOGETHER

2nd Gen entheogen scholarship needs to DROP THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN MIS-MOTIVATION PROJECT.

It is two concerns that are at odds with each other.

John Rush cares about psychedelics – but he forgets that, chasing after attacking the Big Bad Church.

Rush’s book is a conflicting combination of two incompatible projects, that counter each other and cancel out.

Rush’s book cancels itself out like his site that’s down.

Narrrative baloney and self-aggrandizing smearing of Christianity – as your MAIN favorite motivation and goal and purpose — is a way of preventing discovering evidence for psychedelic tradition of Psilocybin inside the essence core heart of normal mainstream ordinary standard Christianity history tradition.

Crop by Cybermonk

Fly Agaric: A Compendium of History, (Kevin Feeney, 2020)

The Feeney Fly Agaric Compendium book is good; good reading, apparently.

Borrowed. Need to look at more, to decide if want my own copy.

Feeney’s chapter on Effects places Amanita more in the Deliriant class than Psychedelic. “The Experience” p. 425-444.

Paperback:
https://www.amazon.com/Fly-Agaric-Compendium-Pharmacology-Exploration/dp/0578714426/
October 31, 2020

Hardcover:
https://www.amazon.com/Fly-Agaric-Compendium-Pharmacology-Exploration/dp/0578303329/
Oct. 31, 2021

Pharmako Gnosis (Dale Pendell)

Got this around 2022/12/06. Appears I read whole Psil ch and ignored Aman ch. This Amanita chapter is probably largely good reading, and the Feeney Fly Agaric Compendium book is good; good reading, apparently.

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/06/pharmacognosis-book-on-amanita-pendell/

updated edition
https://www.amazon.com/Pharmako-Gnosis-Plant-Teachers-Poison/dp/1556438044/

Multi-Worlds Possibility Branching

Possibility-branching universe
vs.
Non-branching block universe

Branching-universe possibilism
vs.
Block-universe eternalism

Those phrases are from my 2021/01/28 podcast recording prior to the Egodeath Show. An excellent podcast/episode.

cybernetic transformation

todo: find “branching” in https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/idea-development-page-10/ – interesting phrases. I wrote the good phrases BEFORE this recording/episode.

block-universe eternalism vs. branching-universe possibilism

block-universe determinism vs. branching-universe possibilism

How much did I transcribe this show? a lot, but missed the above phrases re branching.

“multiworlds possibility branching” – good phrase in podcast 50:00 “Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm”

per Stanford Ency Phil: the growing block model (possibilism)

the possibility-branching universe vs. the non-branching block universe

how the future turns out to be depends on me.

i control the future, where I is autonomous control

analogical psychedelic eternalism with dependent control – the current concept label for cybernetic transformation

branching universe possibilism vs. block universe eternalism

Voice Recording with Header (2021-01-28):
“Old Secret Entheogen Paradigm.mp3” 2:34:51

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/idea-development-page-10/#Old-Secret-Entheogen-Paradigm-mp3 – I rated that podcast “episode” as 10/10/10! Sometimes lisp like I have a lozenge; often throat clearing. The voczn (& miking) sounds very good otherwise.

“Robert Graves’ 1956 essay Centaurs’ Food is probably a myth; no one has ever seen it, though that essay can be considered the start of the first-generation, Old, “Secret Entheogens” Paradigm” (2021/01/28)

I’m glad to find that I made no progress whatsoever between start of 2021 and start of 2025, four years later.

That’s how well-developed my phrasing of ideas was, shortly after my Nov 2020 decoding and discovery of the Great Canterbury Psalter hanging image.

The image reminded me of the Egodeath Yahoo Group posts 2001 writing that:

Relativity/ Minkowski/ Einstein = non-branching,
QM / Bohr = branching.

Led Zep: “There are two paths you can go by”. first branching, second non-branching. Stairway, climax of Davis book citing me. about Zep 4.

I wrote: “Robert Graves’ 1956 essay Centaurs’ Food is probably a myth; no one has ever seen it, though that essay can be considered the start of the first-generation, Old, “Secret Entheogens” Paradigm, which I took up and transformed and repaired to form the New, “Explicit Psychedelic” Paradigm.”

Funny b/c w/ Cyberdisciple nov/dec 2024 we confirmed Graves is confused when claiming in 1973 book that he wrote in 1956 aug atlantic the article; his diary jun 27 1957 says he sent that day to New Yorker, “what food the centuars ate”.

Allergic to Term-Usage from Rational Psychonaut forum: Religion Bad, Science Good (what about Higher Religion, & Lower Science?)

False Dichotomy; Proper Science is Proper Religion, but anyway it all comes down to relevance: psychedelic eternalism

Houot does write at length about word-choice – yet I still get this feeling, about the use of terms as used by Rational forum, Rational Psychonaut forum.

[Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 11 pm] My eyes glaze when I read authors like Houot so naturally, easily, casually employ endefined terms:

“rational”

“secular”

“divine”

“sacred”

“God”

“belief”

He’s using vocabulary in a way that lacks self-awareness. Unrefined. Undisiplined. He TAKES FOR GRANTED that these words have a given, particular, given meaning that is shared and established.

WHEN YOU DISPARAGE “MYSTICISM” AND “DIVINE” / ‘sacred’ AND “RELIGIOUS FRAMEWORK”, YOU DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER DEFINING WHAT EXACTLY IT IS THAT YOU ARE DISPARAGING. Foo is bad! [failed to define what ‘foo’ is supposed to mean]

try instead: good religion vs bad religion

eso vs exoteric religion

lower religion vs higher religion

take this, Houot:

LOW SCIENCE VS HIGH SCIENCE

egoic exoteric vulgar low unrefined crude childish “SCIENCE”
vs.
Transcendent, esoteric, refined, high, developed, adult science.

Huoto stoops to low Reason vs. low Religion; crude “science” vs crude “religion” – an unsophistication runs throughout the too-easy use of words by Houot.

“The religious framework is bad! The science framework is good!” – Houot. High religious, or low religious? High science, or LOW SCIENCE?

Low-grade “science” and low-grade “religion” are equally bad.

Houot takes/assumes the best version of “science” he can imagine, and pits it against the worst form of “religion” he can imagine. then he imagines all readers hold a uniform… he acts like in the little groups he’s hung around (Rationalist forums), everyone thinks of these terms in a completely determinate, uniform, unproblematic way.

I use best form of Science + best form of Religion.

FALSE DICHOTOMY is baked into Houot’s conceptual vocabulary. Throwing around loaded words as if their meaning is simply given. It reads as staggeringly immature/ unrefined, for such a writer. Like when the 4 horsemen of Atheism wrote books 2005 against “Religion” but I instantly confirmed that they say not one word about mysticism – they pick the worst version of their demonized thing, and act like “that’s the given meaning of the word”. Religion = “the worst I can think of. And everyone else holds the same definition I do; it’s simply a given, Religion means Belief in the Divine. Me: I have no idea what you are supposed to be talking about, throwing around your words

“divine” bad;

“sacred” bad;

“religion” bad,

“science” good

Is Houot just as low and vulgar and bottom dwelling as James Kent writing to me that:

“myth” bad

Pop Junk Writing Evidencing Lack of Sophisticated Thinking: Kent & Houot: “Religion bad.” “Myth bad.” “Science good”. “Surrender bad.” “Control good.” “Shamans good.”

It never crosses Houot’s mind, that maybe not everyone holds the identical meaning of those words as he does; acts like their meaning is a simple given.

I don’t like the WAY Houot employs such terms – he’s a parrot escaped from “Rationalist Forum”.

Religion is the same thing as Science.

When you Science enough, you get Religion.

Branching-message mushroom trees booklet article

article = booklet of best pics of {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs w brief instructions summarizing interp

Giving a Voice to pilzbaum Artists

180 degrees opposite of Nagger Hatsis’s prejudiced reasoning, I give voice to the pilzbaum artists, liberating them from tyranny of the mere texts that serve to accompany their art.

in one article at Hatsis’ psychedelic witch historian site, he says that interpreting art oppresses and silences the artist (unless your interp matches Hatsis’ reductionist, literalist, genre-contradicting misreading of the image).

If your interpretation matches Hatsis’, you are allowing the artist to speak.

If your interpretation counters Hatsis’, you are disallowing the artist to speak.

That’s all taken for granted in Hatsis’ reasoning. todo: link

Why do pilzbaum deniers have no concern at all with good argumentation?

pilzbaum artists weren’t able to read the accompanying text anyway, in non-literate culture.

Highest Art Project: Canterbury Psalter Prints

Got some good glossy printouts yesterday of the worlds set of 3 best images proving that Christianity in Europe & England has a fully developed Psilocybin Cubensis tradition.

or, proving that Jesus was secretly a mushroom, and the “secret Amanita cult” alien infiltration made it all the way into the heart of Christianity.

Dec. 24, 2024 I made fridge magnets 4×6″, Crops by Cybermonk

6×8″ prints

Crops by Cybermonk, prints Dec. 24, 2024

todo: update: to add pics :

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/13/great-canterbury-psalter-images-f134-f145-f177/

Merry Amanita Christmas!

🎄🍄🦌🦌🏆🎅🤢😵‍💫🪽🛷🪽

Hatsis Debunks Amanita Christmas

todo maybe post url of hatsis vid / post / article

Thomas Hatsis is a Christmas History critic 👎

Tell Grinch Hatsis the Amanita Christmas denier to go back to his era, 1970, playing his endless 8-track tape loop of John Allegro.

🎄🍄🎁

more like the Christmas History Witch

the Christmas historian witch

🎄🍄🦌🏆🎅🤢😵‍💫🛷

Thomas Hatsis the psychedelic witch rebranded as the psychedelic historian – ie failed witch

🎄🍄🎁 🧐🤨

I Am Not a “Mushroom Theorist”

I am not a “mushroom theorist”.

I am a theorist of mental model transformation.

The Egodeath theory is not aligned with any position that’s discussed, affirmed, or denied by Allegro or Letcher or Hatsis.

The Egodeath theory (the theory of psychedelic eternalism, incl. the Mytheme theory) cannot adequately be framed as any other position, school, philosophy (eg “perennialism”) or theory.

Any critiques of the Egodeath theory must be SPECIFIC to the Egodeath theory.

You can’t lump me in with some previous school.

The Egodeath theory does not assert that “Jesus was a mushroom”.

In 1998, I wanted Jesus, and then Paul, to confirm the Egodeath theory, but I immediately found a la The Jesus Mysteries book by Freke & Gandy, that religious founder figures are ahistorical, and incorpd countless themes, including The Mushroom.

The Genre Problem: Religions are actually religious myth, eg the Bible.

I switched, between 1998 & 2001, from using Mr. Historical Jesus & Mr. Historical Paul to corroborate the Egodeath theory, to using religious myth to corroborate the Egodeath theory.

In using religious myth to corroborate the theory of psychedelic eternalism, the topic of secrecy is counterproductive, irrelevant, unjustified, and unhelpful.

Secrecy is a wrong, false, ineffective explanatory theory.

The premise of secrecy and suppression has no explanatory power.

The less we employ the premise & topic of secrecy and suppression, the greater our explanatory power.

Entheogen scholarship has been derailed and abused for the polemical purpose of demonizing & delegitimizing Christianity, since Allegro 1970

Chris Bennett says his motive for doing entheogen scholarship is to attack Christianity:

Part 1: Dec. 23, 2024
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret

Part 2: Jan. 2, 2025
by Travis Kitchens
https://vegetabletelevision.substack.com/p/what-we-do-is-secret-1ac
Provided by Cyberdisciple.

New article about anti-Catholic Bennett vs Brian Muraresku & Graham Hancock.

Starting in Phase 2 around 1998:

The purpose of the Egodeath theory (phase 2) is to explain religious myth as description of enlightenment per psychedelic eternalism with dependent control.

The 1986 motivating motive of the Egodeath theory is to usefully explain mental model maturation in the psychedelic state.

to explain psychedelic mental model maturation.

ie Explain enlightenment, Transcendent Knowledge, & mental model transformation per satori, Gnosis, enlightenment, regeneration, revelation, initiation, completion, maturation, spiritual transformation.

I judge against Christianity the same as I judge against esotericism:

The flaw of Christianity is its poor communication of Transcendent Knowledge.

Rev 22:2 Tree of Life with 13 Manner of Fruits Crops Every Month Means Cannabis with 13 uses

the Egodeath theory says tree of life means 13 entheogens, especially Cubensis, not just cannabis.

entheogen scholarship = premature conclusion no Cubensis growth or usage, like the official conclusion in 1915 that Mexico lacks Psil mushrooms usage.

At least in 1915 they bothered to look, instead of 1952-2024 no entheogen scholars bothered to try to look for Cubensis in Europe/England. It’s gone, big bad church disallowd and also, it doesn’t grow there, by Pope decree.

– Pope Stamets, whose lowest pri intèrest is Cubensis in Europe, so he wrote 4 words carelessly: not known in Europe.

Hall of Shame: feeblest coverage of a topic

Signed Copy of Bennett Book Using Pot to Crush the Church

[1:39am Dec. 26, 2024] It sounds like Bennett’s whole motivation for his 2001 book is specifically my verse of interest, Rev 22:2, identifying the 13 manner of fruits crops – his shaking revelation was that 12 fruits means Hemp which has 13 uses, in 2001 when he signed my book and unchanged in 2024 yesterday.

My reading Rev 22 again recently paid off — good timing for reading this new interview in which Bennett practically quotes his 2001 book’s key passage I found the other day.

“Muraresku even sent Bennett’s girlfriend $60 via Paypal for a signed copy of Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, a rarity in his catalog.

“Can’t wait to dive further into your opus,” Muraresku told Bennett, referencing the authors then soon-to-be-released tome Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs, and the Occult.”

i am superior to Mura bc i paid nothing to get my copy signed to me.

i visited Bennett and he signed his book to me in person.

I actually don’t believe in respecting scholars. Mixed bag.

My review of Bennett at Amazon

https://a.co/d/cSYnJ09 –

Michael Hoffman

5.0 out of 5 stars

Valuable cannabis-focused entheogen theory

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2003

“Anyone interested in the entheogen theory of religion should get and read this book.

It is largely devoted to ferreting out the many entheogen references and allusions in the Bible.

It covers most books of the Bible in order.

High-quality scholarship.

Aside from some distracting typos, it is highly readable and reveals how interesting and complex many of the Bible stories are.

As is standard, it assumes the literal existence of Bible characters — an assumption which entheogen scholars are increasingly calling into question.

I’m grateful for this book spurring me on to take on studying all the books in the Bible.

Highly recommended for entheogen and religion collections — essential, in fact, especially in light of how few books there are about entheogens in Christianity.”

16 people found this helpful

Secret Amanita Cult 🤫🍄⛪️

My Forgot Plot

Insofar as I am an entheogen scholar, …

The Egodeath theory is an integrated combination of {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs.

Focus not on “when mushrooms were forgotten” or suppressed, but rather, when psychedelic eternalism was forgotten; part of when esotericism was rejected. eg Around 1687.

in 1986, I disrespected books on enlightenment.

I read the best given by my father, but Watts and Wilber, I selectively pulled from while rejecting, to vastly supersede them.

Western Esotericism deserved its failure around 1687, because of its unhelpful poetic obfuscation

replaced by scientific clear direct expression & Usefulness per Engineering Technology

Western Esotericism ought to have been re-expressed like the Egodeath theory in plain useful direct terms.

I reject – I disrespect, and the Egodeath theory supersedes, any previous, garbled, occluded and concealed explanation of Western Esotericism or perennial philosophy.

Mushrooms (psychedelic eternalism) were forgotten when Western Esotericism was rejected, when Natural Science & Protestantism rejected esotericism, eg 1687, the year of Newton’s Principia Math‘a.

In a ~2007 podcast, Max F says conflating Amanita & Psil as “magic mushrooms” is a big problem.

psychedelic eternalism was forgotten at some late point.

That is not praising any previous expressions of psychedelic eternalism.

the poor expressions of Western Esotericism are what killed Western Esotericism.

Western Esotericism should have been expressed in terms of Natural Science after 1687.

Not based on relying on poetic obfuscation.

Culture forfeited esotericism and got what they deserved: the entire loss of esotericism comprehension.

What do you expect?!

OF COURSE esotericism died off, because its foolish advocates hid and obscured it.

With advocates like Carl Dr. Secret Ruck, who insists on branding The Mushroom as always heretical and secret, despite all evidence, entheogen history gets lost, killed by its own internal bad strategy of barrier construction, reifying Prohibition perpetually.

Ruck frames heavy handedly, POLEMICALLY MOTIVATED, his morality-tale storytelling runs away with the whole field.

Can we please have entheogen scholarship WITHOUT any of the unnecessary storytelling that is self-defeating?

Stop focusing on identifying which “groups” had or lacked The Mushroom. Forget entirely the imagined explanatory construct of the “have/lack the mushroom” barrier.

The Ruck school is incapable of saying 1 word about psychedelics without using it as an opportunity to crybaby and tale-tell about our protagonists, the oppressed secret heretical sects cults groups communities, their fortified barrier wall built by the moderate (read minimal) entheogen theory of religion.

tail wags dog: entheogen scholarship becomes corrupted and used as a mere tool to prop up the morality tale telling.

Who is calling all Amanita users “heretical sects”? Ruck, in all 3 Entheos issues writes:

so-called heretical sects

Pope Ruck is the only one who called anyone who used The Mushroom a “heretical sect group”.

Analogy vs. Metaphor

pilzbaum art sucks (has limitations), and integrated {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} visual art motifs sucks, unless treated correctly per the wonderful dictionary definition of the word ‘analogy’ and ‘analogical’, way better than using metaphor.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=define+analogy

“a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification”

Metaphor is the poorer way that analogy is used within literary writing; opposite of the Egodeath theory.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=define+analogical – of, relating to, based on, expressing, or implying analogy.

The Egodeath theory is STEM, Science, a Technology, Engineering, bc of its communication style and analysis style.

pilzbaum art must not and cannot stand on its own; pilzbaum art must be treated as ANALOGY that explains and clarifies psychedelic eternalism, articulated clearly and directly, without relying on analogies or metaphor.

Perennialism (as Expressed Through Esotericism) Fails at Communication & Comprehension, a Dead end, Deservedly Abandoned – Not a Usefully Presented Body of Knowledge

The problem of esotericism or perennialism was always poor communication; esotericism as a writing style was the problem, that I fix.

Esotericism as a body of knowledge was killed by esotericism as a writing style.

Entirely alien from my thinking, and absent from it, is any notion of “secret” entheogens use, or any kind of “cover up”.

What is a given entheogen scholar’s Forgot Plot? In what historical era does their plot line drop from upper left to lower right?

Wouter Hanegraaff tracks when and why esotericism was rejected: when esotericism was rejected by the bickering parties (Natural Science & Protestantism),

Mushroom knowledge was rejected and forgotten when the culture’s attitude flipped from respect to disrespect for pagan wisdom, when psychedelic eternalism was rejected, as part of rejecting esotericism.

Not only did culture reject the expression style of esotericism, culture lost the occluded payload content that is Western Esotericism, as a (garbled) body of knowledge.

The date range per W Hane’s book Esotericism and the Academy. 1687 is an ok point of reference; Newton’s Principia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica

Who Is Letcher Critiquing?

Whoever Letcher 2006 & Hatsis 2015 is critiquing, it’s not me.

Letcher & Hatsis are critiquing at times:

Wasson Russia 1957, SOMA 1968

Allegro SMC 1970

AstroSham (Irvin & Rutajit 2006) Conclusion First Sentence: Irvin Restricts Secret Amanita to the Elite Only – The Storytelling Narrative Demands It

Irvin AstroSham 2006 Conclusion section, first sentence, about “The elites always kept The Mushroom secret from the masses.” Actual quote:

Irvin 2006 attempts to limit mushroom use in Christian history to only the elites, which is “completely unfounded” (Irvin’s words against Ruck in THM p 104); so, that “elite” Concl sent. was deleted from AstroSham 2009.

But per Irvin p 104, [mainstream, normal, mass culture] Christianity itself was based on entheogens.

McKenna Food of the Gods 1992

Given I am looking to religious myth to corroborate the Egodeath theory, I always took a greedy approach: presence means presence, presence means my theory is correct.

Not presence means secrecy means absence.

Presence of evidence for mushrooms in Christian art.

Hatsis the #1 Fan of Allegro Projects and Fights against His Own Gullibility

The Sacred Mushroom is one of my favorite books. Top 10, easily.

Thomas Hatsis, weblog post “Reading Allegro Again”, 2015

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/18/reading-allegro-again-hatsis-2015/#Reading-Allegro-Again-Hatsis-Blog-Post

Hatsis Blog Post about Allegro’s Book

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/02/18/reading-allegro-again-hatsis-2015/#Reading-Allegro-Again-Hatsis-Blog-Post

todo: add the following to that page:

Below is Hatsis’ entire post, broken up per sentence.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160709005902/http://arspsychedelia.com/2/post/2015/09/reading-allegro-again.html

Hatsis wrote:

Reading Allegro Again (Hatsis 2015)

Since my follow up [Psychedelic Mystery Traditions] 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 [& The Cross] 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.

___

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.

___

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.

___

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).

___

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.

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.

___

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.

___

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.

Okay, I just saw how long this post got. Imma call it a night! Good night, mushroom people!”

/ end of Hatsis post

Site Map of Cyberdisciple.wordpress.com

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/04/21/site-map-of-cyberdisciple-wordpress-com/

major update of my page: practically finished; usable now.

added all pages

categorized all pages

todo: create new dedicated page re Egodeath Mystery Show episodes

Houot recent two articles and sample of forthcoming [Feb. 2025] book Rise of the Psychonaut which I have

Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025) – 2024/12/24 – lists the articles, in section:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/24/rise-of-the-psychonaut-houot-2025/#Related-Houot-Articles

Houot replied to me that I might be the first to receive his new book.

Photo: Michael Hoffman, Dec. 29, 2024

They’re redoing the cover’s color palette. My copy was printed Dec. 28, 2024.

Ordered Houot book Feb. 2025 Psychonaut.

I have already read most of the following:

Master’s Dissertation: Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot 2019)

Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot 2019)

Article 1: Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices (2021)

I printed and read this.

Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices

Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 2021

Intellectuals qualified to investigate consciousness – namely, philosophers, especially phenomeno… more 

Article 2: The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency (2022)

The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency

Psychedelic Press Quarterly Journal, 2022

Modern psychedelic users are commonly advised to surrender to altered states of consciousness. On… more 

Book: Rise of the Psychonaut (Feb. 2025)

The present section is just part of a list of Houot’s works. For info, see https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2024/12/24/idea-development-page-22-2024-12-23/#Rise-of-the-Psychonaut above.

Available: a sample of the book, Dec. 2024

Next, will read:
book, Feb. 2025 – Correction: Dec. 29, 2024; I’ve read much of Houot’s forthcoming book.

Recent Posts; December 2024 Posts

— Michael Hoffman, Dec. 23, 2024 – Dec. 30, 2024

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

2 thoughts on “Idea Development page 22 (2024/12/23)”

  1. Under “my forgot plot,” what you have written feels so right. …”Esotericism as a body of knowledge was killed by Esotericism as a writing style.”

    The belief in secrecy and suppression can be a result of the gradual change and misconception of Esotericism through writing style. And since time has never been absolutely understood cognitively other than through theory, the modern world can only interpret the change from the modern world’s belief system where suppression exists within a block of time. The deniers are caught in the web of misconception.

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  2. Please don’t take away poetry from the scientist.. The Greek origin of the word ‘metaphor’ is “metaphora”, “to carry across” or “transfer.” It represents moving across between the ordinary world and the mystic altered state. There’s such flare within the dance of both states that to abolish one for the other would deprive the world of the essence of God.

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