J. Christian Greer
2025, South Atlantic Quarterly
Abstract
Scholarship on the global history of psychedelics is divided into two rival approaches.
This article analyzes these approaches, emphasizing the way in which ideological biases on both sides have stymied serious research on the use of psychedelic substances across space and time, before introducing the empirical approach as an alternative.
~= the minimal entheogen theory of religion:
The most prevalent view, “pharmacological Calvinism,” essentializes mind‐altering drugs and their users as degenerate or antisocial.
This reductive approach has defined the intellectual mainstream across academic disciplines to the present.
~= maximal entheogen theory of religion:
In contrast to pharmacological Calvinism, the entheogenic school offers a maximalist interpretation of psychedelics’ impact on human culture and cognition, presenting consciousness‐expanding drugs as the “secret key” behind the world’s religious traditions, mythology, and folklore.
This article proposes that the empirical approach offers a corrective to the overstatements of both schools, as it is defined by comparatively granular research that draws from a deep understanding of primary sources placed in conversation with the intellectual apparatuses of the secondary literature.
Distinctly uninterested in unveiling psychedelics as the “key” to any tradition, this approach interprets the multiplicity of meanings and values associated with powerful psychotropics, alongside other modes of ecstasy and transpersonal relationality, as an integral dimension of the human story.
Comments
Mobile voice transcription draft
my model of minimal my 2002 and 2003 model of minimal versus moderate versus maximal is problematic because people like ruck shift and prevaricate and waffle between moderate versus minimal positions
From Sade point of view from Sade’s point of view shark SHARDAY , ruck – fromGreer pov, Ruck = maximal entheogen theory of religion
but on Tuesdays, Ruck is moderate; Wed hes Minimal. Waffle House Gang.
my 2003 M M M model fails to address waffling, shifting, illusion, as from one angle, Ruck appears Maximal… Mod.. Minimal.
God, how can the computer be so stupid
obviously I’m trying to say or then spell the word that’s on the very next line.
How could voice transcr be so entirely uncomprehending?
any retarded idiot moron imbecile could tell obviously I’m talking about the name that’s on the next line. how could you be so stupid, computer?
Sharday Mosurinjohn commits the fallacy: arg from silence:
one side of mouth:
“There is insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion on the extent of psychedelics in western religious history.”
other side of mouth:
“TIK/ Muraresku / Rogan/ Ruck is definitely wrong. There are def no psychedelics in western religious history. Everyone who says so is fools. “
Sharday Mosurinjohn w Richard Ascough makes their biggest point that “Ruck switches from “there might be psychedelics” to writing as if there definitely were psychedelics.
(it is natural and reasonable for Ruck to write this way. Would you expect him to say “alleged” before every single word?)
yet these hypocrites themselves make that very same fallacious move, worse than Ruck does.
(every accusation is a confession)
in contrast, Richard Greer gives the most coherent, balanced, reasonable viable argumentation:
it is certain that we will discover instances of psychedelics in western religious history. The only real debate will then be about the extent: was it normal and mainstream.
I attack the definition of normal and the definition of mainstream as one argument vector I employ
Sharday Mosurinjohn online in various forums, including Harvard presentations is immature and nasty and incoherent and self-contradictory, and just mean, and deservedly her articles, get rejected by every kind of journal for her rough, crude attack and self-aggrandizement, which I’ve posted about here w red hilite quotes.
She entered the field five minutes ago because she had no direction in her tenure career and latched onto the trendy pop topic of psychedelic therapy and history like a parasite opportunist. Professhunul Debunker of Muraresku / Rogan/ Ruck
I have not read the entheogen scholar Joe Rogan, but it’s ridiculous How the co-authors treat popular reception of allegro and Ruck to equate Rogan and Muraresku and ruck.
VOICE TRANSCRIPTION IS AN IDIOT. OBVIOUSLY, I MEAN Ruck, NOT GODDAMN ROCK, IDIOT!
computer iq of 5
any moron can tell i mean Ruck, but not the computer.
AI is so capable that it replaced all professions and all tasks, but we can’t make a voice transcription that’s worth a sh*t.
Sharday Mosurinjohn entered the field, a bully, a newbie, with both fists swinging, as clumsy as aggressive, clumsily contradicting herself, committing the same fallacy that she makes a big stink out of attributing to Ruck.
her stupid pop followers on the internet – “yeah, u DESTROYED Ruck!!” (by fallacious arg from silence)
Her first book was nothing to do with psychedelics. Directionless.
Muraresku / Rogan to the rescue: career idea!💡- Latch onto pop entheogen scholarship as self-appointed head of debunkers.
Easy pickins! Easy mode: just appease anything-but-drugs academia, & internet fans, w words that sound like arguments. just Read Muraresku & ur rdy to go.
Her career positioning posture marketing.
like Thomas Hatsis defending psychedelics in Western religious history – at the same time as “but def no mushroom in Western religious history”.
Thomas Hatsis’ 2025 book Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634312783 & https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/08/17/psychedelic-injustice-how-identity-politics-poisons-the-psychedelic-renaissance-hatsis-2025/
Hatsis’ rigidly Allegro-framed (grossly underinformed by Giorgio Samorini) Amanita / sacred mushroom [awful hazy fake 1950 Wasson-fabricated bucket to force / smush together/ conflate Amanita = psilocybin but w entire emph on Amanita – even Jan Irvin 2008 does same
brittle crude arg’n
Thomas Hatsis can only arg against his own strawman, young Thomas Hatsis who is the #1 fanboi of Allegro.
Ignorant of articles on psilocybin history.
Proof: watch his video titled proof of no mushroom in Christianity, but the content of the video only covers Amanita, and is completely unaware of the existence of psilocybin focus in other writers.
because he is ignorant of any writings about psilocybin – he only has eyes for Allegro 😍 – he totally and absolutely conflates Amanita with “the sacred mushroom”, equals “psychedelic mushroom”.
There is only one mushroom in his little mind, none other than the specifically John Allegro-framed Amanita Amanita hypothesis.
Secret Christian Amanita Cult
as if John Allegro 1970 is the beginning and end and totality of the scope of the idea of mushroom in western religious history.
John Lash nauseatingly mis-attributes the entire topic of psychedelics to be “Wasson’s idea” – fortunately he does this weird fanboy move to the extreme, way beyond what anyone else does.
No one else tries to give entire credit to every psychedelic idea to be “Wasson’s idea”, which is ridiculous and absurd, just bad scholarship & writing.
It’s more fanboyism rather than scholarship.
Thomas Hatsis similarly mis-frames the entire question of mushrooms in western religious history with the ultra narrow, specific framing from John allegro 1970, The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross
Thomas Hatsis the disappointed Allegro fanboi. sees no other arg’n, only Allegro, not:
Conjuring Eden: Art and the Entheogenic Vision of Paradise (Hoffman, Ruck & Staples, Entheos 1, 2001), https://entheomedia.net/Issue%20one.htm & https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/12/24/entheos-issues-1-4-mark-hoffman/#Entheos-Issue-1
which incorps “Mushroom-Trees” in Christian Art (Giorgio Samorini, 1998) https://www.samorini.it/doc1/sam/sam-alberifungo-1998.pdf & https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/mushroom-trees-in-christian-art-samorini/.
as if Giorgio Samorini never wrote 1997 and 1998 milestone breakthrough articles, expanding the question to encompass psilocybin as well as the number one uber most important, be all, end all, mushroom, which is of course Amanita
Giorgio Samorini perpetuates that false centering of Amanita.
Overemphs the lone pop proxy Ama tree example, Plaincourault fresco, to be the model paradigm to copypaste to apply to all mushroom imagery in Christian art.
my criticisms of entheogen scholarship; 1st-generation entheogen scholarship (the Secret Amanita paradigm) are better than Sharday Mosurinjohn scorched earth.
entheogen scholarship needs correction, not discarding the field / hypoth wholesale.
Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest: The Great Canterbury Psalter as a Medieval Test Case (Ronald Huggins, 2024) broke that monopoly that the Plaincourault fresco held.
“Allegro is wrong, thus the mushroom (= Secret Christian Amanita Cult) is NOT in Western religious history.”
Sharday Mosurinjohn makes her career direction opportunity the claim that Brian Muraresku, who equals ruck (& rogan), is tot wrong.
but the real problem in the field is not Bunk evidence but rather fallacious argumentation which the shameless academia appeasing, shameless of the rotten argumentation fallacies.
The Huggins article is just a solid wall of bad argumentation, but he has no shame and no embarrassment over these wretched, terrible arguments that might appease the academia expectations, but totally collapse the moment that you challenge them.
Sharday Mosurinjohn & Deniers of mushroom imagery in Christian art ought to be embarrassed and ashamed of their wretched wall of fallacious arguments, but no, since they’re singing the song that they get paid to sing by the expectations of anything-but-drugs academics, they do not sense any need to put forth arguments that can actually stand up to challenge.
For example, Huggins saying that Canterbury day four of creation has trees – when in fact, there’s no branching at all, and these are literal mushroom specimens
his “conclusion” section is simply a negative declaration pretending to be a detailed argumentation.
It’s just a negative declaration really. a faith statement proclamation. (instantly approved by anything-but-drugs academics. )
yet Sharday Mosurinjohn cites Huggins as if solid argn.
entheogen scholarship does not suffer from bad evidence, or lack of attention to texts surrounding art; entheogen scholarship suffers from fallacious argumentation by the deniers.
