Michael Hoffman 8:08 pm Fri Oct 9, 2026
picture here
Contents:
- pend
Cyberdisciple’s Email Mon. Oct. 12, 2026
Michael,
I read your continuation of the Greer page.
One clarification about my comment:
I wasn’t advocating theory-free historical research.
Around 2007, I decided to
assume you were right and work from there,
and that’s still essentially my method.
[reference 2007 main article, 1997 summ outline, combine
4-D block universe
future-exists, beyond the still-rgoic: possibilist domino-chain “determinism “, falls short of several stronger forms on positions on spectrum to ultimatrly,
bad news for the egoic personal control system
king ego steering
from {king steering in tree} through {mixed wine at banquet} to {snake frozen in rock}
combine:
4-D block universe
eternalism
analogy
loose cognition state
psychedelics
visionary plants
qualified possibilism-thinking
eternalism-driven control-transformation
– mh]
Cyberdisciple cont:
My distinction concerned Greer’s empirical historiography:
Is Christian Greer:
advocating a method for evaluating historical claims
or
ruling out in advance the possibility of a maximal explanation
The first is legitimate;
the second builds a theoretical restriction into what presents itself as methodological neutrality.
-Cy
Voice Miscirption vs. Voice Recording
I might have to fire up the voice recorder.
I was gonna say “hey I can simply use voice transcribe” here, except it just makes me mad
total lack of comprehension zombie AI, no consciousness, no comprehension, no ability to discern between reality versus hallucination.
neoplatonism
is to
the false engine non-dual Unity oneness;
v1 common-core mysticism and perennialism, in Antiquity
as
Neo advaita
is to
the false engine,
the “nondual unity oneness” model of
the intense mystic altered state in the modern era
v1 of common-core mysticism and perennialism is nondual unity oneness
v2 of common-core mysticism and perennialism is eternalism-driven control-transformation
Ancient False “Positive Unity” Model Driving Neoplatonism; Modern False Same Model Driving Neo-Advaita
wrong sane central focus,
Neopl / Neo-Adv mis-places nondual unity oneness at the center,
against the best religious myth and mystery religion, completion of initiation through ingesting elixir
such as henbane substituting for the desired, true, rarer Reference sacrament, psilocybin
Instead of speaking with these metaphors of placing the wrong thing at the center of a theory, we can similarly criticize more generally:
using the wrong paradigm regarding data reasoning, theory, describing the theory, etc.,
thats all done through the wrong paradigm, which is like saying it’s all selected the wrong centering, the wrong central focus,
equiv:
the wrong paradigm
the wrong focus
the wrong central focus
the wrong basis
the wrong explanatory framework
the wrong explanatory theory
for example Wouter Hanegraaff, in his latest grandest book, does put forth a theory.
He tries to construct a model of arranging the hermetic texts and
their cosmos model
integrated with Wouter Hanegraaff’s theory of their model
the ancient model of progression in a series of alt state initiations/ immersions
astral ascent mysticism – before helionewton forgot this model in 1687.
I am more capable than Wouter Hanegraaff of recognizing the same themes and the same basic framework across these ancient brands of astral ascent mysticism.
as an anti-historian, I deny that there’s any distinction, I focus on the important similarities. I emphasize:
the important similarity of the various brands of astral ascent mysticism
in Classical Antiquity = psychedelic eternalism; mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism
then Late Antiquity added: transcend determinism/ heimarmene/ block-universe eternalism
I am not obliged, like the historian to emphasize the differences between them.
one should do the hard work of compare and contrast;
identify what all these brands of astral mysticism had in common and the trivia surface stylings that differed.
I’m one of those evil perenniallists 😱, (except of the new, version 2 type), who Wouter Hanegraaff criticizes as carelessly smooshing together indiscriminately with as much of a myth-based mythological basis of historiography.
Wouter Hanegraaff criticizes the ERANOS school in a special way:
Eranos treats mythic history as if it were literal history.
Wouter Hanegraaff says to them, stop naïvely receiving mythic history, as if it is literal history.
eranos made the historiography of Western Esotericism subservient to their agenda “save the world”.
eranos distorted the history of Western Esotericism to serve an alien agenda, save the world.
Eranos scholars play fast & loose w/ shifting betwen/ conflating the literal history of Western Esotericism, w the mythic history per Western Esotericism.
we proper academics, doing scientific history, historiography of mythic historiography of western esotericism,
we are to reconstruct the history of the ideas, the mythic ideas the real reality based history of the Fantasy pseudo mythic history we must not conflate the two that’s one of his big messages regarding the Aros’s type approach. ERANOS type approach.
I mush together under the excuse of perennialism these oh so entirely different systems, sarcasm
Wouter Hanegraaff overemphasizes the importance of distinctions that are tracked by historian
that’s the standard way you’re supposed to do history writing
you’re supposed to trace the history of a given word usage, how that word usage changed throughout time
typical model for history writing
trace the detailed change of meaning of x thru history, hilite trivia differences, avoid especially any whiff of evil perennialist thinking!! better avoid Theory altogether, han demonizes Theory. we need data evidence, not Theory, which = maximal entheogen theory of religion per the entheogenic school.
browns 2019 open their Hyper-Radicals section w Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com
Ruck is tge entheogenic school, opposite radicals than the pharma Calvists.
sitting balanced in the middle, like the Browns balanced on the Wahlberg tapestry as exemplary of their middle of the road middle of the spectrum position of
Look we are eager to discard and close our eyes to 50% of the evidence
see how moderate and middle we are
Greer: don’t be like those minimalist pharmacological Calvinists at the one extreme and also don’t do the opposite. Don’t be like those evil perennialists , the entheogenic school, the maximalists typified by Ruck. pushing the radical extreme maximal entheogen theory of religion as Ruck does.
be like me, Greer, like Brown 2019 balanced perfectly in the middle of the road –
ALL YOUR HISTORICAL EMPIRICISM ARE BELONG TO US; only Greer uses empiricism, Ruck instead uses the entheogenic school, not empiricism
per Greer’s spectrum:
extremist Ruck starts by taking the maximal entheogen theory of religion as if granted, as if the key to relig is psychedelics.
extremist pharmCalvs other end
Greer: me, the moderate centrist, THE ONLY REASONABLE balanced moderate view , greer emph that visionary plants were ubiq & commonplace incl Christianity.
This, Greer says, is the position that is driven by empirical data, NOT driven by an extreme theory.
actually, it is good to assume and be extreme and be driven by a 1997 pre-given theory upon entering the question of the history of psychedelics and the history of mythology. It is good if the theory is correct
we need both and we have succeeded by combining both a pre-given theory that the key to all religion is psychedelics which I assert per edt
the Egodeath theory
and ALSO test that pre assumed theory agains epmpir evidence.
the Egodeath theory / the theory of psychedelic eternalism applied to hist of myth analogy does better than that, it reveals and makes visible, makes perceptible massive new evidence, such as the medieval art genre of {mushroom-trees}; {mushroom}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs– revealing and explaining them.
The one extreme theory, that drugs are bad per pharmacological Calvinism.
Greer disparages anything-but-drugs academics, as i do.
Brands of Ancient astral ascent mysticism, all per perennialism v2, modelling by analogy, psychedelic mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism & end up w both complm’y POVs married
Gnosticism
Neoplatonism
Hermetism
Christian cosmos
Mithraism cosmos
= astral ascent mysticism , they all shared, succ ly explained by the Egodeath theory, not by Hanegraaff in his greatest work, book Herm
browns19 fumble tapestry attempt to be moderate
Hanegraaff fumbles cosmos model allergic to stars – so much for the Hanegreer Moderate strategy crashed & burned
in some way, I have narrowed my sweep of history, era of concern, narrowing it to not Christian origins, which is what Greer is intent to write about or to write in critique of original Paleo Christianity but now I narrow my era of concern instead to medieval warm. When there were psilocybin mushrooms and cube , not just liberty cap , in England and Europe, 950-1250.
they all have same cosmos model, as revealed by the theory of psychedelic eternal ism in its application to the other leg, which is history, myth, analogy, and history of psychedelics, including henbane substituting for psilocybin
leg 1: 1985-1997 – cog sci theory: the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, a developmental transformational model when immersed in the eternalism state of consc
leg 2: 1998-2026 – the history of myth analogy describing that eternalism-driven control-transformation
The two legs cross-corroborate each other.
Motive of Page
mobile app editor cant handle long page, so new short page – reaction to greer 2025 article, con’t
that page 1: Greer artic itself
this page 2: my reaction
todo: transcribe hand notes on a 2026 email from Cyberdisciple y w his Qs, prior to my sending some ans’s in my equiv email to Cy & Brown, justifying my strategy of “hey Greer, the BEST 1% of mysticism was psychedelic eternalism.
added that email i sent to Cyberdisciple & Brown.
Greer ~= Charles Stang’s arg’n. can lump this crop of scholars. Sharday Mosurinjohn , Ascough , R S-S, Ronald Huggins
tepid moderates who waffle to Minimal
Sharday Mosurinjohn is 90% Minimal, same as a pharm Calvist, “demolishing Ruck!!” with a scorched-earth sweeping denial & discrediting, when she is not asserting that there is insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion one way or another about the extent of psychedelics in Western religious history.
Justifying my strategy of “the best 1% of Christianity Used Psilocybin” = Mainstream, Influential
Justifying my strategy of “the BEST 1% of mysticism was psychedelic eternalism; the best 1% of Christianity Used Psilocybin”, = Mainstream Influential
call that 1% of ingesters “normal, commonplace, mainstream”
that Greer-conversant strategy does not contradict the maximal entheogen theory of religion.
this strategy is developing within the frame that Greer puts forth, not within the theory of psychedelic eternalism’s history interp theory ie the maximal entheogen theory of religion.
Theory-maximized data collection:
The best theory is that which enables colecting most data, thats overlooked by inferior theories.
the Egodeath theory/ the theory of psychedelic eternalism proved its superiority by revealing way more mushroom imagery in Christian art than secret suppression theory of Ruck Committee.
which has a conflict of interest, counterproductive: data (mushroom imagery in Christian art) is made subservient to the secret/ suppression frame.
Greer notes the Ruck Committee! no telling who wrote what.
5 good passages to paste from greer 2025 to here
i entered entheogen scholarship/ history of myth analogy field already w essentially the theory of psychedelic eternalism in hand, that is my distinctive vector better than Ruck or per Greer, THE ENTHEOGENIC/ MAXIMALIST school
Greer has no Moderate position re plants in Western religious history
Greer attempts to place himself as the Brown-like, moderate middle.
Compare the fallacy of the middle, a la Browns 2016/19 w exemplary: rejecting Walburga tapestry. 🍄🍶
per Greer, relating/ positioning the 3 positions:
Bad Extreme 1: the minimal entheogen theory of religion; = “pharmacological Calvinism”.
Correct middle: Hanegreer theory-free data; = “empirical historicism”.
Bad extreme 3: the maximal entheogen theory of religion; = Ruck [on Tuesdays when he’s not in a min or mod mood] = “the entheogenic school”
Wouter Hanegraaff ‘s real message about his advocacy of radical empiricism:
what Wouter Hanegraaff means by advocating radical emperialcism:
stop rejecting giant areas of study in the history of western esotericism
stop closing your eyes to whole areas of human thought and experience.
Greer’s 3 phrases:
The 3 Available Approaches According to Greer:
pharmacological Calvinism
the entheogenic school
empirical historicism
Simply Assume I’m Right
Cyberdisciple wrote:
“the historian shouldn’t assume such an explanation in advance”
1998, i was literally “assuming” (& testing) the theory of psychedelic eternalism in advance, before i entered the field of entheogen scholarship / history of myth analogies describing the intense mystic altered state.
The assump was consistently cross-corrobed w the evidence, victory after victory, 2001-2026.
An increasingly condensed elegant theory w/broadened explanatory power.
My rabid forcing of the Egodeath theory onto evidence in entheogen scholarship/ history of myth analogy.
the diamond hammer of interpretation. MAKE evidence appear, mutually corrobing the theory. i pulled off this magic “u gotta believe” trick many times in a row to ever greater, towering success.
I made a STRONG (IN SOME WAY) “assuming” that psilocybin = the key to all the BEST gnosis. typically w its cheap avail stand-in, scopolamine/ henbane.
Amanita means psilocybin eternalism-driven control-transformation.
Henbane (as a readily avail stand-in for rare psilocybin) means eternalism-driven control-transformation.
my eternalism-driven control-transformation model is superior, as proven by its ability to reveal & comprehend way more data & recog evidence: {branching-message mushroom trees}; decode systematically {mushroom}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs
Email 1
the relation between
* simple strong assertion of maximal entheogen theory of religion
* engagement w Greer-school’s arg’n on its own terms; u must read Greer to understand how my arg strategy works: suppose Greer is correct; how little has to be conceded and abandoned?
These are not two contradictory positions from me; these are two arg vectors within two different frames:
* the Egodeath theory’s simple bold assertion that’s motivated more by explanatory power and clarity, than by an obsession w prioritizing detailed historical accuracy.
i care FIRST about effective basic powerful theory-expression; i only care “thirdly” about worrying over historical accuracy trivia details.
the Egodeath theory’s theorizing is not DRIVEN/ motivated by centering detailed hisytorical accuracy, like Wouter Hanegraaff’s / Greer’s professional rmpirical historiography.
the Egodeath theory is firstly a clear bold effective explanatory theory & paradigm specification, NOT firstly a proof of historical data eg exactly which mystics ingested exactly which plants how many times.
the Egodeath theory comes from the Cog Sci dept, NOT from the History dept.
* arg’n within the frame thats provided by Wouter Hanegraaff / Greer: proven historical “empirical”, wannabe “theory-free” data.
I accuse Wouter Hanegraaff of commitment to blindness; he cannot ever gather his historical data effectively, as long as he lacked a guiding lens of comprehending the theory of psychedelic eternalism.
Hanegreer advocates theory-free gathering of data, which is impossible and especially, ineffective.
All data collection is theory-bound and theory-enabled.
My paradim lens is optimized for explanatory power rather than optimized for following the data from the data to a theory.
theory-free gathering of data – Good luck with that, it’ll never work, and it did not work, whereas my application of my guiding lens paradigm commitment, proved capable of revealing massive new data,
such as psalter art motif comprehension and tons more mushroom imagery than ruck’s wishy-washy agenda-driven approach, where his agenda is to crybaby about the big bad church getting rid of all entheogens.
Basic Strategy of Ruck, Hanegreer, & Hoffman
The Ruck strategy: start w the agenda “it’s so terrible 😭 how the church got rid of all entheogens”, then fit [limit] the historical data into that framing agenda.
The Hanegreer strategy: start by theory-free gathering of historical data.
good luck w that 🙈
Wouter Hanegraaff’s point of his call for radical empiricism:
Stop the exclusionary prejudice against studying the history of huge swaths of human thought.
The Hoffman strategy: start by a clear bold, simple explanatory paradigm.
In 1998, I started w the theory of psychedelic eternalism, and then used that lens to successfully discover massive evidence in the field of entheogen scholarship / history of myth analogy.
Ruck’s Focus on Myth
ruck is as interested in myth as entheogens
alas, for Ruck, myth means Amanita.
for the Egodeath theory, myth means analogy for eternalism-driven control-transformation.
Greer advocates a freakout demons emph in history of mystical experience / myth. a la the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) , vs 🦄💨🌈 the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) ie per S Vivek. 1893/ Stace 1960, then add psilocybin: LearyPahnke 1962, W Richards, … R Grifty.
incl Wilber, Watts, everyone; but not the Egodeath theory.
the big school (everyone in the field unanimously agrees in STACEANISM) thats psychedelic pseudo science, criticized by Sharday Mosurinjohn, C Greer, & Michael Hoffman.
The Positive Unity fake pop $$$ model of mystical experience. driven by pop wishful selection/ exclusion.
Heading
the Hanegreer strategy is blind & naive, and ineffective, as PROVEN by his so-botched cosmos model that cannot allow any, heimarmene-contaminated stars in his sky.
Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Wouter Hanegraaff, 2022)
Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Hanegraaff, 2022)
This is the MATURE Wouter Hanegraaff – the best he can muster is a broken cosmos model & a reversed sequence of cognitive development in the psilocybin state:
“The mind has rebirth from initial, evil heimarmene/ eternalism, into egoic freewill possibilism. 😑🎉”
per the Egodeath theory:
mental model transformation is from possibilism to eternalism, then to the marriage of both, complementary POVs.
per the Ken Wilber lens [driven by nondual unity oneness mis-premised, neo-Advaita] , where to place/ how to relate the two mental models?
how does Ken Wilber-ism relate the Eternalism mental model in relation to the Possibilism mental model ?
consider Ken Wilber’s integral theory, but without his erroneous engine that everyone else holds: version 1 of perennialism. as if the central characteristic distinctive essence, character of mystical experiencing, the intense state, is nondual unity oneness (
combine instead as the engine, eternalism-driven control-transformation, within Ken Wilber’s map, integral theory.
for MATURE SCHOLAR Hanegraaff, at his best,
Heavens forfend, that rebirth through the Saturn gate initially delivers us into Heimarmene Central, before moving beyond sphere eight, the fixed stars, where only the spirit portion steps outside of the physical cosmos, where the soul was left behind in its highest possible level.
identifying as a historian versus identifying as a theorist
The History department has limited resources and requires rescue by the Cognitive Science department, which reveals more historical data (thus corroborating itself) through effective powerful explanatory framework construction.
Hanegreer aspires to have a reputation of exemplary collecting of accurate historical data.
I do not.
I aspire to have a reputation of an effective powerful theory specification that has maximum explanatory power of how the mind transforms, and how religious myth as analogy describes that transformation.
I draw examples from the database of history of art, but I do not aspire to be a exemplary historian on the ideal level, of Thomas Hatsis in empirical historiography methodology.
they brag about their superior hardheaded historical data collection, but I brag about my superior explanatory framework power that is proven by its ability to expose and perceive data which even entheogen scholars are blind to, and failed to perceive,
such as for example, the Ruck Conjuring Eden article does not see the day 4 mushrooms, pointing to the pans of the balance scale held by creator in day one panel;
or if you can get past that page one barrier wall of folio image F11, in folio image F134, similarly the artist Eadwine is concerned to provide us with evidence that the blue big collection vase connects to the mushroom dispensary display cases.
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
Hoffman strategy: start by a clear bold, simple explanatory paradigm.
To gather data effectively, optimize for explanatory power (maximal entheogen theory of religion), not for accurate historical detail.
the Egodeath theory is not a History theory, it’s a Cog Sci theory:
A model of how the mind transforms when immersed repeatedly in cognitive-loosening psychedelics, and how that transformation is represented in religious mythology as analogies describing that transformation.
Greer’s article has some nice, great passages, such as articulating why the obsession with secrecy, which functions as a seemingly required highly demanded explanation for the apparent eventual absence or decline or fall off of and absence of psychedelic evidence,
but I have complained that we should instead bracket off that imagined demand for such an explanation of the fall off or absence of explicit evidence.
Ruck & Hanegreer & I all care about history, data and theory, and the forgot plot or alleged paucity of unambig evidence for psychedelics in western religious history BUT we arrange these concerns quite differently, with different role, different emphasis, different strategy.
This is my philosophy and strategy of the relationship between theory development versus historical-data gathering.
Email 2
Ancestors provide a mess of entangled inconsistent clarity & confusion about eternalism-driven control-transformation.
Our job & strategy is to not to place all their gropings-in-the -dark on equal, “neutral” ground.
our job is to recognize and judge the best signal vs the worst noise.
Neoplatonism is an elaborate Philosophy-dept effort by some ancestors, similar in key ways w pop neo advaita & its nondual unity oneness centering.
neopl is not pointedly centered on eternalism-driven control-transformation, but it SHOULD be.
neopl would be better and more consistent w mystery-rel myth if it were pointedly centered on eternalism-driven control-transformation.
Value judgment is required, to have the Best model and theory of what drove ancient thinking
They often fell back to readily avail scopolamine deliriants, as a practical substitute for the rarer, real, more desirable elixir, psilocybin.
Even psilocybin does not effortlessly always produce clear result of eternalism-driven control-transformation.
the main character of the altered state is, experiencing eternalism
the alt state is first & foremost the eternalism state of consciousness – the best view of the nondual unity oneness state of consc
cont from above:
This does NOT mean Katz constructivism is right, good, effective, or helpful. as if psychedelics have no distinctive eternalism emphasis
Stace and the v1 perennialists are RIGHT to try to identify the most valuable aspects of the intense mystic altered state & relatively ignore other aspects
we should be open to & aware of all psychedelic experiential content, BUT this does not mean place all on equal value footing
v1 common-core mysticism and perennialism is mis centered on nondual unity oneness – ~= neoplat.
v2 common-core mysticism and perennialism is profitably centered on eternalism-driven control-transformation. = the best of the mess left to us to sort through & pick out the best & most worthy & profound.
Hanegreer risks providing no theory, just a formless heap accumulation of data; but a poor, gap-ridden database of experience results, & bad theory like Hanegraaff’s broken cosmos model.
Great Canterbury Psalter aligns well w Greers great call to stop 1-sided, wrongly narrowed model of mystical experience
against [Vivek 1893 to Stace 1960], which was then baked into LearyPahnke 1962 good fri,
Greer rightly calls to, in effect, reunite Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) & the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ)
= O & A of OAV 1994 (Oceanic Boundlessness, Angst of/ Dread of Ego Dissolution, Visionary Restructuralization) psychedelic psychometrics effects questionnaire by Adolph Dittrich, which is exactly the kind of broad encompassing collection of all psychedelic effects data Greer calls for via “empirical” history method.
love how Greer spotlights Leary instead of isolating Pahnke as usual,
Leary’s marsh chap research
“Learys operationalizing (via questionnaires) of the Stace model of mystical experience”
Greer emph terror, dread, {shadow dragon monster} ; Great Canterbury Psalter emph the local control agent experiencing being threatened by eternalism – the power of the personal agent pitted helplessly & hopelessly against the pre-existence of future control-thoughts.
email sent to Cyberdisciple & Brown Sep 15, 2026
I am following the recent scholarship by naysayers gang, who tends toward extreme & over-aggressive (unjustified negative “conclusion”) assertion of the Minimalist entheogen theory of religion:
Sharday Mosurinjohn
Richard Ascough
Richard Saville-Smith – rebuts the 1960 Walter Stace model of mystical experience, which wrongly centers nondual unity oneness instead of eternalism-driven control-transformation.
Christian Greer
Charles Stang
Richard Saville-Smith (friend of a psychedelic church lead pastor, at Harvard conferences)
Ronald Huggins
Heading
If we grant as much validity as possible to the naysayers, we are left with the best of the naysayers: Christian Greer.
Greer argues that most likely, we’ll find some evidence of some plants used in Christendom, and then we will debate: extent; mainstream; normal?
My recent analysis focuses on that arg from Greer, and that’s where the the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D. comes in.
Then define what constitutes “mainstream, normal”, eg Brown 2016/2019 end section points out that [during the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D.?], mushroom imagery in Christian art is extremely central and mainstream.
Given that mushroom imagery in Christian art is extremely common and central at least during the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D., can we say that USAGE of Psilo was “common” and “widespread”?
How little and how much can we say psilo was “common”, “normal”, “mainstream”, based on the gallery of evidence such as Brown?
How much might MICA Affirmers be able to assert, given the naysayers like Sharday Mosurinjohn, or best of them, Christian Greer?
What if some points are valid, from the naysayers?
the anything-but-drugs academics
the false equivalency of the lying word “can”:
you can go around the world on bloody knees or jet plane; “can” is wildly different in the two cases but falsely elevates the poor way & good way.
You can have intense mystic altered state from stumbling on log or from psilo, but “can” is wildly different in the two cases. This is a kind of evidence for psilo; the arg from efficacy and directness. (Not that psilo is 100% reliable; blotter is more reliable but still not always producing the classic best mystical experience: control restabilization.)
The best evidence (qty & quality) for mushroom imagery in Christian art is in the the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D.
The biggest question is, given how the medieval art genre of {mushroom-trees} peaked in the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D.,
WHY did that mushroom-tree imagery and motif system fade out after 1250, so that only traces of that tradition are visible by the pivotal time of Newton 1687, start of Late Modern era?
eg the cover alchemical art of Jan Irvin’s book Astro-Sham 1, around 1550, shows insider sustained continued recognition of the 4 motifs: {mushroom}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs. Fizzling out by 1687 Newton, though Flammarion 1850 also shows tree with more branching on L than R.
The Forgot Plot: if plants were originally (500 BC) 100% present/ used/ recognized, WHEN were plants forgotten?
* 150 AD? (Big Bad Church Got Rid; the popular Suppression theory) — or,
* 1687? Newton Prin Math, when Science world finally moved to the sun-centric cosmos model after 185 years.
* 1250 AD at end of the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D.?
The {handedness} motif category includes my recent research on analogies represented by medieval YI hand shapes, such as in Entry into Jerusalem scene w/ Christ’s L vs. R hand-shapes.
Branching-message mushroom trees: Psychedelic eternalism depicted in medieval art as mushrooms, branching, handedness, and stability – draft article for the Journal of Psychedelic Studies.
Ronald Huggins wrote an article proposing to make Great Canterbury Psalter the test case to dismiss all mushroom imagery in Christian art.
His article is a gallery of logical fallacies, quite bad, yet Sharday Mosurinjohn cites article as if it supports her radical assertion that Ruck is to be entirely dismissed.
It blows my mind that Ruck sometimes writes entire books proposing that Amanita is the engine of the mystery religions; Psilo is a better model and historical proposal.
See back cover of
See Amanita on cover of Ruck books about Eleusis.
The recent naysayer crowd, MICA Deniers, eg Sharday Mosurinjohn (the most rabid discrediter of entire Ruck theory), is correct that there’s a lot of poor quality entheogen scholarship that needs internal correction.
I most strongly align with Sharday Mosurinjohn re: debunking the 1893 pop wallet driven selective fabrication, that claims that the specific common-core mysticism and perennialism is nondual unity oneness (the common core is actually control model restabilization).
v1 of common-core mysticism and perennialism: positive unity; nondual unity oneness
this is the totally dominant Old Theory, held by EVERYONE.
like 1st-generation entheogen scholarship (the Secret Amanita paradigm) is the all-dominant, universal standard view.
v2 of common-core mysticism and perennialism: eternalism-driven control-transformation
The New Theory.
I’m an Alt Perennialst. The all-dominant, unanimous model of common-core mysticism and perennialism is wrong.
The bare idea of common-core mysticism and perennialism is correct, but their specific model is wrong.
And Katz’ Constructivism is wrong/ overstated.
The common core isn’t nondual unity oneness, as Swami Vivek’s paying audience 1893 wishes for, through Stace 1960, taken up by Pahnke 1962, critiqued by Sharday Mosurinjohn, Richard S-S, & Richard Ascough. Traced by the McRae article and the other two articles provided by an Asian Studies member of a psychedelic church.
I have 2023 book by Richard S-S, Acute Religious Experiences.
Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest: The Great Canterbury Psalter as a Medieval Test Case (Ronald Huggins, 2024), https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/11/23/huggins-foraging-psychedelic-mushrooms-wrong-forest/ & https://www.academia.edu/118659519/Foraging_for_Psychedelic_Mushrooms_in_the_Wrong_Forest_The_Great_Canterbury_Psalter_as_a_Medieval_Test_Case
On John M. Allegro’s Suggestion That the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the 12th Century Plaincourault Chapel Depicts an Amanita muscaria Mushroom, Ronald Huggins, Oct. 29, 2025, Religions journal, Issue: 11, Volume: 16, 30 pages, https://www.academia.edu/144814668/On_John_M_Allegros_Suggestion_That_the_Tree_of_the_Knowledge_of_Good_and_Evil_in_the_12th_Century_Plaincourault_Chapel_Depicts_an_Amanita_muscaria_Mushroom & https://egodeaththeory.org/2026/02/11/on-john-m-allegros-suggestion-that-the-tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil-in-the-12th-century-plaincourault-chapel-depicts-an-amanita-muscaria-mushroom-huggins-2025/The tip about the concept of the Medieval Warm Period 950 A.D. – 1250 A.D. is from a psychedelic church member who is an Asian Studies scholar.
The McRae article and a couple others confirmed my worst suspicion about selective fabrication of the alleged specific common-core mysticism and perennialism being, supposedly, nondual unity oneness.
I say, against everyone (Ken Wilber, Alan Watts; the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology; Walter Stace; Pahnke / William Richards/ Roland Griffiths; Swami Vivekananda 1893),
The actual common core of mystical experience is control restabilization by ending up w/ two distinct models of personal control power into the future: mature, in addition to immature, upon completion of initiation.
McRae is listed at https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/
The Asian Studies member of a psychedelic church is so good at finding plant evidence in Buddhisms, they were reluctant to borrow my Mike Crowley book cited by Greer.
pre-purchased 2016
newer Mike Crowley book:
Notes Prtout Cy’s Email
todo
