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The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death (2006 main article)
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Main article from Egodeath.com, with corrections at bottom.

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death

by Michael Hoffman

Salvia Divinorum, Issue 4

Copyright © 2006 Michael Hoffman. All rights reserved.

Contents:

• The Entheogen Theory of Religion
  • The Origins of Christianity in Entheogenic Initiation
  • The Sociopolitical Strategy of Canonical Christianity
  • The Altered State Was Integrated into Ancient Culture
  • Modernity Is a Single-State Culture
  • Freedom for Higher-Order Religion
  • The Role of Democracy for Ecstatic Danger
  • Initiation as a Natural Developmental Sequence
  • The Entheogenic Future of Religion
• The Dissociative Cognitive State
  • Restructuring Is Enabled by Loose Association Binding
  • The Splitting of Representation and Referent Layers
  • The Moving Control-Agent as Mental Construct
  • Religious Effects of Salvia divinorum
  • Myth Describes Dissociative Phenomena
• The Block Universe and Frozen Worldlines
  • Time as a Space-like Dimension
  • The Physical Fastening of All Thoughts and Actions
  • Fixed Worldlines of Subjective Experiencing
  • Accommodation to Everything Being Pre-set
  • Vertical, Timeless Determinism
  • Transcending Determinism Requires Two Jumps
  • Fatedness and Control in Astral Ascent Mysticism
• Self-Control and the Hidden Source of Thoughts
  • The Goal of Understanding Ego Death
  • Deliberately Postulating Coming Control-Loss
  • The Potential for Control Breakdown and Transformation
  • The Transcendent Solution to Restoring Viable Control
  • Sin as Misattribution of Control-Thoughts
  • Wrath, Compassion, and Making Peace
  • Sacrificing to End Battling the Thought-Source
  • Vertical Atonement for Rebellion-Guilt
  • The Sacred Marriage
• Bibliography

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death explains what is revealed in religious revelation and in enlightenment, including the nature of personal control agency.

The essence and origin of religion is the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered state, producing loose binding of cognitive associations. This loose cognitive binding then produces an experience of being controlled by frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future.

Experiencing this model of control and time initially destabilizes self-control power, and amounts to the death of the self that was conceived of as an autonomous control-agent. Self-control stability is restored upon transforming one’s mental model to take into account the dependence of personal control on a hidden, separate thought-source, such as Necessity or a divine level that transcends Necessity.

Myth describes this mystic-state experiential insight and transformation. Religious initiation teaches and causes this transformation of the self considered as a control-agent, through a series of visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial philosophy. Most modern-era religion has been a distortion of this standard initiation system, reducing these concepts to a weak interpretation that is based in the ordinary state of consciousness.

The Entheogen Theory of Religion

The main origin and ongoing wellspring of religion is the use of visionary plants. These plants include Psilocybe mushrooms, Henbane, Cannabis, Opium, Peyote, Salvia divinorum, and Amanita mushrooms.

Visionary plants have been commonly used around the world throughout the history of religion and culture (Hofmann, Schultes, & Ratsch 1992), including in the various forms of Western Esotericism (Heinrich 1994). Greek and Christian mythic-religious systems often refer to visionary plants (Ruck, Staples, & Heinrich 2001). Leading mystics throughout the history of various religions have used visionary-plant sessions on-demand, with mystic-state experiencing that was largely rationality-oriented (Merkur 2001).

Meditation, shamanic drumming, and liturgical ritual were developed as activities to do in the plant-induced dissociative state, not as methods of inducing the dissociative state in the first place.

The Origins of Christianity in Entheogenic Initiation

The extent of entheogen use throughout Christian history has barely been considered yet (Hoffman 2007). Early Christianity involved mystical, religious, visionary experiencing, including the experience of the transformative, transcendent power of the Holy Spirit at Eucharistic agape meals (Johnson 1998). Early Christian writings show familiarity with ecstatic mania, inspiration, elevated sobriety, and ‘drunkenness’ induced by ‘mixed wine’ (Nasrallah 2003).

The Jesus figure is portrayed in the New Testament as a spirit-possessed altered-state shamanistic healer (Davies 1995). The figure of Paul the Apostle is portrayed as a shamanistic mystic (Ashton 2000), and the apostles are portrayed as adepts in altered-state mystic experiencing (Pilch 2004).

Solving the riddle of the original mystic-metaphorical meaning of Christianity requires also understanding the surrounding metaphorical altered-state initiation systems throughout Christian history. These altered-state initiation systems that were related to Christianity, include Roman religion, Neoplatonism, Western Esotericism, and astral ascent mysticism.

The large window of the Legend of St. Eustace in Chartres cathedral shows many ‘mushroom trees’ and unambiguous depictions of mushrooms throughout its panels. Hundreds of depictions of mushrooms appear in Christian art.

The Sociopolitical Strategy of Canonical Christianity

The New Testament editors utilized the era’s standard mastery of mystic-state metaphor and the altered-state experience of communal unity to direct the Jewish mystic-metaphor system into the figure of Jesus. This combination of Jewish themes, mystic-state metaphor, and the communal altered-state unity experience enabled the ruling-class church leaders to profitably sweep together the various quasi-Christian groups. The early Catholic bishops claimed themselves to have been appointed as the administrators of the Eucharistic gatherings by Jesus, who they portrayed as having been around just long enough to commission them exclusively with all authority.

Jesus and all the apostles were entirely and strictly mythic, not historical individuals (Doherty 1999, Drews 1924). The figure of Paul served as a controverted authorial token that was used to endorse the positions of competing camps (Detering 1995). The authors and redactors of the writings attributed to Paul don’t mention any biographical information about the life of Jesus because the gospel story was a later, literary creation. The gospel story of the life of Jesus was based on many sources, including Roman imperial ruler cult, Josephus’ writings, and Hellenistic literature.

Mystic revelation about the nullity of self-will was routine in antiquity. Roman imperial theology utilized this routinized mystic-state revelation to legitimate the Roman sociopolitical arrangement. Christianity became popular as a polemical counter-narrative about how the entheogen-accessed mystic revelation should be used for sociopolitical concerns. The figure of the ‘king on the cross’ in the New Testament is a depiction of the mystic-state insight of non-autonomous control, in service of a rebuttal and alternative to Roman imperial theology.

The Altered State Was Integrated into Ancient Culture

The entheogenic altered state was integrated into culture, using metaphor to map all domains together. Altered-state experiencing served as a standard point of reference for banquets and parties, civic processions, punishment, release of captives, sport, taxation, and alliances.

A common standard banqueting tradition with reclining at table while drinking ‘mixed wine’ ran across many seemingly disparate cultural practices (Smith 2003). ‘Mixed wine’ was the central, reliable means of accessing the intense mystic altered state throughout antiquity. Ancient ‘mixed wine’ specifically meant visionary-plant mixtures (Ruck 1978), such as Psilocybe mushroom wine. If Electric Kool-Aid in an Acid Test type of gathering were switched with ‘mixed wine’ in a Hellenistic symposium, neither party would notice much difference.

Socrates’ initiation of elite youths outside official democratic channels carried political implications and risks, because ancient politics and religion were deliberately interlinked by mystic-state experiencing.

Modernity Is a Single-State Culture

The adept use and comprehension of metaphor faded after the battle between politicized Christianity and Scientism around 1700, leaving a long-term standoff between mystically neutered religious literalism versus exclusively ordinary-state-based Science. The culturally predominant type of religion in the modern era neutralized and reduced the traditional initiation system by a combination of non-transformative surface ritual and intellectual speculation based only in the ordinary cognitive state.

The modern cultural experience resulted from the predominance of the ordinary cognitive state. The lack of culturally integrated altered-state initiation caused the egoic mental world-model, which is based in only a single cognitive state, to become completely predominant.

Authentic initiation is widely present in modern culture, including art, literature, spirituality, and popular culture, but is not integrated into the official culture; for example, the song “Help!” written by John Lennon, the album Ride the Lightning by Metallica, and the Matrix movie series.

Freedom for Higher-Order Religion

Lower-order religion is derivative, limited to mundane conduct-of-life doctrine suited for the ordinary state of consciousness. The higher-order version of each religion involves transformation of personal control-agency concepts; revelation about control-system limits and dependence on the transcendent; and re-attribution of the origin of one’s will and thoughts.

The essence of religious freedom is specifically the freedom to reliably access mystic-state consciousness, as in early, house-church Eucharistic agape meals, the ancient banqueting tradition, the mystery religions, and symposium “drinking-party” associations. All of these mainstream cultural practices utilized mixtures containing visionary plants as their central sacrament.

Suppressing entheogens because of their danger amounts to a blanket illegalization of higher-order religion and primary religious experiencing. As long as modern culture forbids itself the true, ergonomic Eucharist, legislating against the entheogen-based ecstatic heart of religion, religious freedom is restricted to selecting among various brands of lower-order religion; higher-order religion is placed off-limits, out of reach.

The ever-expanding drug schedules directly conflict with the only kind of religious freedom that amounts to specifically religious freedom; that is, freedom to regularly and ergonomically access primary religious experiencing. The system of schedules is not from God, but is an invention that ignores the central role of visionary plants in religion, multi-state cognitive psychology, and the innate human drive to self-transcendence.

The Role of Democracy for Ecstatic Danger

The proper role for representative democracy regarding drugs is to work out how visionary plants and psychoactive substances are to be healthily integrated into mainstream culture, making dissociative-state religious initiation as ergonomic and as safe as possible. Drugs are not a problem to be eliminated and suppressed, but a means of maturing to be channeled.

The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized the legitimacy of Peyote and Ayahuasca in worship; these plants have the same effects as LSD and Psilocybe mushrooms, including causing the person’s power of will and power of self-control to become seized and then restored in a religiously transformed configuration.

The threat of the encounter with the power of the divine is, specifically, the threat of loss of control of one’s thoughts when studying self-knowledge in the ecstatic state. This inherent danger of entheogens is inherent in the encounter with the power that transcends our personal control of our will. This danger is mitigated by having a systematic model of personal control agency, in conjunction with mastering the skilled use of entheogens and understanding how past cultures have accommodated this danger. This necessary danger that is inherent in the encounter with the power of the divine is the gateway to mature religious knowledge.

Initiation as a Natural Developmental Sequence

Greek and non-modern cultures integrated a series of altered-state initiations. Initiation classically combines a series of visionary-plant sessions with learning perennial philosophy, followed by subsequent religiously integrated dissociation such as agape meals, festival banquets, and symposium parties. Entheogenic religious initiation was a prerequisite for symposium banqueting, so that participants were experienced. The banqueting tradition including symposium “drinking parties” included prayer and sacrifices. Social recreation and religious experiencing were not opposed activities.

People often use entheogens recreationally or with other non-religious intent, but are then surprised when they are overcome by the inherently entheogenic nature of the visionary plants. This unanticipated primary religious experience unexpectedly reveals how personal control depends on a source of thoughts outside one’s domain of control – a realization which is the gateway to religion. Young adults naturally seek initiatory transformation; the modern culture of Prohibition demands that they suppress this drive and permanently stunt their growth, settling into the non-initiate’s mindset for life, foregoing enlightenment and religious revelation.

The Entheogenic Future of Religion

Ergonomic tools, including a systematized model of personal agency and controllable use of entheogens, will make the mystic state common knowledge again in the post-modern era, but with a more explicit and systematic understanding than in antiquity. For example, Salvia divinorum makes the dissociative-state experience accessible, practical, and ergonomic. With the systematic explanation of ego death in hand, there is no need for heroic doses of psychoactives; moderate dosage is most effective.

New, culturally intelligible metaphor-systems will result from the culturally integrated use of entheogens to transform our conception of personal agency, including metaphors for self-control cybernetics.

The religio-political philosophy in the true spirit of the United States is to accept entheogens, accept culturally supported religious self-control breakdown and transformation, and accept the transcendent as the ultimate ruler or governor, but reject all claims that a given earthly system of government is divinely authorized or approved.

Hallucinogenic drug-plants will be revived as the authentic vehicle for the mystic state in communal religion, because they are immediately available to all people and are fully ergonomic. Christianity will reawaken to its original idea of applying mental worldmodel transformation based on the altered state toward providing an alternate sociopolitical configuration. Worldly systems of sociopolitical government typically use metaphors from mystic-state revelation to support a claim that they are divinely mandated. Christianity will return to its original New Testament purpose of serving as a counter-narrative to such attempts to abuse mystic-state revelation.

The Dissociative Cognitive State

Mental constructs are dynamic association matrixes of mental representations, held together by some degree of binding intensity. Ordinary-state cognition is settled and immersed in standard ruts of patterns and mental associations, such as trying to improvise on a musical instrument but ending up playing repeated patterns. Having a recognizable personality relies on such habitual patterns of dynamic mental construct associations, which are somewhat dynamic, but are restricted to a characteristic mode. Behind their mask of habit-based, pseudo-separate agency, everyone is Dionysus (that is, the ultimate control-source).

Entheogens cause their various phenomenological effects by loosening cognitive associations, which causes mental construct processing to be revealed as artificial representationalism and projection.

Ecstatic maenads mix visionary plants into wine in a wine-mixing bowl in front of a column and mask. The mask of Dionysus represents the illusory nature of a person’s autonomous control-agency. The column behind the mask represents the timeless frozen block-universe that gives rise to the illusion of the individual person as an independent control-agent.

Restructuring Is Enabled by Loose Association Binding

Revolutionary conversion to a new theory or world-model involves structural transformation of concept networks and hierarchies, increased explanatory coherence, concept recombination, and rational mechanisms of paradigm conversion (Thagard 1992). The dissociative cognitive state loosens the mind’s associative binding, enabling deep revision of the interconnections between mental constructs.

Religion and myth are about dissociative-state experience, frozen-time determinism, self-control cybernetics, and metaphorical description of these. In intense primary religious experiencing, the mental model of self and world undergoes a standard, pre-configured expansion and transformation. The religiously transformed mental model takes into account the representational nature of experience, the experience of embeddedness in timeless unity, and the limited and dependent nature of self-control agency. This religious mental-model transformation is assisted by metaphors that describe these experiential insights in a pictorial form that is easy for the mind to retain.

Like the egoic cognitive structure, the transcendent mental model is an innate, pre-configured structure that is discovered and revealed, like the adolescent discovers the innate ability to climax. The ability to mystically climax is inbuilt, as is the mental model that is revealed, although the useful metaphors and systematic explanation that are necessary to retain the revealed mental structure must be a product of human effort.

The Splitting of Representation and Referent Layers

Salvia divinorum causes metaperception, which is the tangible perception of the layer of mental constructs that is the only thing directly presented to awareness. In the dissociative state, the vantage-point of awareness is raised, or stepped back a level, resulting in perceiving the cognitive workings of mental-construct processing and perception itself.

Mental constructs that are usually tightly associated separate from each other. The mental representation of each item also perceptibly separates from the represented referent; representations split into two perceptibly distinct layers. The representation layer is present to awareness like a tangible painting, while the referent layer is a remote, speculative realm that is pointed to but is perceptually absent, like a foreign country one has never directly seen (Hoffman 1996).

A person lives their entire subjectively experienced life inside a simulation that their own mind produces by presenting mental constructs to awareness. In metaperception, personal control-power and personal movement through space and time appear as synthetic mental constructs.

The Moving Control-Agent as Mental Construct

In the ordinary cognitive state, the mind generates the sensation of being an autonomous egoic agent wielding cross-time control-power while moving through time and space; this sensation is a projected, constructed, synthetic image and perspective.

The ego-entity exists as a real set of patterns and dynamics spread across time, but the ego is not solid, continuous, or autonomously powerful in the way the mind originally imagines. The self exists as a mental construct in the form of a time-slice series. This mental construct exists both as the entire series and as individual time-slices, with the continuant agent’s motion and control-power mentally projected from within each time-slice.

Seeing the illusory aspects of mental representation of oneself, and feeling static spacetime unity in the absence of the accustomed sense of personal solidity, can be experienced as death. This death-experience is the ending of personal existence, because the egoic-mode mind identifies one’s existence with the projected image and sensation of the moving continuant agent and its control-power.

Religious Effects of Salvia divinorum

Salvia divinorum is an ergonomic means of religious revelation and transformative, initiatory mental-model regeneration. Salvia produces fewer bodily effects than LSD; Salvia doesn’t cause trembling, pupil dilation, temperature swing, or heart palpitation, as LSD does. The reduction of bodily effects, along with controllable dosage and short duration, makes Salvia ideal for studying cognitive dynamics about time, will, and control, including the nature of personal control agency. When Salvia is combined with understanding this model of ego death, one can be immediately and straightforwardly initiated into transcendent self-knowledge.

Salvia can cause intense undulation of vision and of the mental body-image similar to Laokoon, the seer and priest of Apollo, who was wrapped by the two serpents of Apollo and wrestled with them to his death. Perceptual undulation is also depicted in Jonah’s prayer in the whale, with the currents, waves, and breakers swirling around him and threatening to engulf him with turbulent waters, with seaweed wrapped around his head; and Medusa, with snakes moving around her head. The material plane itself, including one’s mental body-image, seems to undulate, not just one’s visual perception of it.

Compared to mushrooms, Salvia produces less visual and auditory distortion such as color smearing, blurring, surface waving, bending, tracers, and audio warbling. Salvia causes sensations of explicit representationalism, frozen timelessness, spacetime embeddedness and spatial merging, and inability to control and steer one’s thoughts. Awareness seems to sit still while thoughts arrive, presented and given to disempowered, passive awareness.

Because of the short duration of smoked Salvia, there isn’t the experience of a “voyage”, “long trip that plays out”, and “epic journey”. However, as with the longer-lasting entheogens, the same classic theme can occur: “There’s no turning away from any control-crash that might be sitting up ahead on the worldline.” The duration of smoked Salvia is too brief to enable transcendent, dissociative-state emotion.

Myth Describes Dissociative Phenomena

Myth is metaphorical description of the intense mystic-state experiencing that results from visionary plants. Myth reflects dissociative phenomenology or dissociative-state experiencing, not ordinary-state experiencing.

Visionary-plant states and otherworldly themes form the tradition of altered-state journeying (Culiano 1991). Many thematic categories of metaphorical descriptions have been used throughout history to describe dissociative-state sensations and experiences (Metzner 1986). Metaphoricity is a prime characteristic of the entheogenic, dissociative cognitive state (Shanon 2002).

The hunter Actaeon saw the goddess Artemis bathing naked, so she turned him into an animal, and his own hunting dogs tore him to pieces. The Actaeon hunting myth comprises the dissociative-state themes of seeing divinity (the higher or ultimate control-level), transgression of control-limits, and transformation of oneself. This myth also incorporates themes of mental searching, dissociative fragmentation of the mental body-image, and the death of the initial self-conception.

Depictions of Kali portray cognitive dis-integration of the mental body-image as dismemberment, and the sensation of splitting into multiple selves, with each of these sub-selves existing in an isolated time-slice.

Triptolemus is shown as a charioteer or steersman in a chariot that has wings and is propelled by Heimarmene-snakes, with a large cup of psychoactive mixed wine given to him by the goddess Demeter or Persephone.

The Block Universe and Frozen Worldlines

Time can be envisioned as a space-like dimension, forming a block universe that includes personal worldline threads that are frozen and unchanging (Rucker 1984), and are shaped like snakes. Each snake or thread represents a person’s entire subjective stream of thoughts during their entire life. Analytic philosophy and space-time physics have been brought together to construct a tenseless, static model of time (Oaklander & Smith 1994). This perspective is characteristic of altered-state perception.

Time as a Space-like Dimension

Salvia divinorum produces a strong sensation of spatial merging and unity. The static, frozen nature of time is perceived as a collection of present moments, with time as a space-like dimension. The mind forcefully and vividly perceives that space is experienced through the medium of present mental representations, rather than being simply present and directly perceived. The feeling of Salvia is strange yet familiar, returning the mind to home-base – the block-universe Origin. All times and locations feel equally nearby and connected to the present.

Metaphors for experiencing embeddedness in the frozen, timeless block-universe include the end of time, imprisonment, and fastening the body to physical objects. Eastern religious myth expresses experiencing the frozen timeless block universe and transcending the idea of autonomous moral agency. Such Eastern myths include the Ground of Being or Tao that flows everywhere including one’s mind, escaping the endless round of moral karma and its unbroken causal chain, and avoiding rebirth into a material, mortal body.

In the dissociative cognitive state, objects and the controlling ego-entity are explicitly perceived as extended across time. Objects and the self are perceptibly distributed along a fixed and pre-set stream of time-slices frozen into position, such that a person appears as a living statue made of a series of separate statues or image-frames in incrementally different poses.

Time is no longer perceived as a flow, but as a frozen expanse and positional relationship of stationary, distinct and separated time-slices. Mental constructs, including personal control-thoughts, are experienced as being permanently laid out along the time axis.

The Physical Fastening of All Thoughts and Actions

In the dissociative state, all actions anyone has done in the world, good and evil, are experienced as physically attached to one’s own arms, body, and train of thoughts that is frozen into spacetime.

Prometheus is chained looking out from the rock; Theseus and king Pirithous are fused into the banqueting bench in the kingdom ruled by Hades and Persephone; king Pentheus is caught up in the tree looking out; and Osiris is trapped in the coffin by his brother. Conceptually, these mythic figures are all physically connected to the cross Jesus is nailed to, together with his elect: dissociative-state initiates.

King Hades imprisoned Persephone’s would-be suitors (and abductors) by fusing them to a magical bench and binding them to it with snakes while bringing them ‘mixed wine’. It was possible for Heracles to free the divine hero Theseus, but Heracles had to leave king Pirithous behind, fused into the banqueting bench in Hades for eternity, because the whole world shook when Heracles pulled him. This myth describes the dissociative-state sensation of physical embeddedness in the timeless block-universe, followed by abandoning the former pseudo-sovereign model of one’s personal control agency.

Fixed Worldlines of Subjective Experiencing

A person’s entire subjective life consists of their stream of conscious experience. An experienced life is a worldline frozen and embedded in spacetime in the shape of a snake, or a thread woven and cut by the Fates to a predefined, finite length.

To be ‘bitten by a snake’, as in the allegory of Paul the Apostle after his shipwreck, means to perceive the fatedness of one’s entire stream of thoughts. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, the seer Balaam rode his donkey on a road to curse the Israelites, but ended up blessing them. Balaam had an unavoidable encounter with the angel of death on a narrow vineyard path with no room to turn away to the right or to the left. Balaam was permitted to proceed past the angel only upon acknowledging that he speaks the words God puts in his mouth. The perspective of timeless fatedness reveals that all words that anyone speaks ultimately originate from outside the region of one’s personal control.

A house shrine in Pompeii shows a snake of pre-set inevitability reaching the sacrament placed on top of an altar. An initiate’s pre-set worldline of experiencing and thoughts reaches a point where the initiate ingests entheogens. This destined point in the initiate’s worldline was portrayed as a Heimarmene-snake that is drawn by divine Necessity to drink the entheogenic libation of psychoactive wine in the wine-mixing bowl or in a cup of mixed wine, or consume the psychoactive sacrificial cake on the sacrificial altar.

Banqueters on a bench are shown looking at a Heimarmene-snake ending up at their own cup of mixed wine.

John the Evangelist has been shown as blessing a cup of the Eucharistic sacrament shown as a snake.

A maenad, ecstatic follower of the god Dionysus, holds a snake, representing awareness of fatedness and the fixity of one’s entire stream of thoughts.

Sacrifice is predestined and frozen into spacetime, comparable to the labyrinth path leading the sacrificial youths to the Minotaur in the central lair every year, and comparable to a city’s festival procession past sacred landmarks to a sacrifice at an altar. When Perseus shows Medusa’s head covered with Heimarmene-snakes to king Polydectes and his followers at the feast with ‘mixed wine’, the king and the other governors are turned into stone, helplessly frozen.

Kwan Yin masterfully rides the fatedness-serpent through the turbulent sea, with a cup of visionary-plant elixir in hand.

Accommodation to Everything Being Pre-set

During the visionary-plant initiation, the feeling of being a control-agent moving through time and space is replaced by the sensation and perception of no-free-will. The mind adjusts its mental world-model to fit the transcendent perspective, which includes the experience of frozen-time block-universe determinism.

The Israelites rebelled against the Lord, so the Lord sent snakes which fatally bit them. When the remaining people told Moses they had sinned in speaking against the Lord, the Lord told Moses to put a brass snake on a pole, which the Israelites had to look at to prevent them from dying from these snake-bites. These themes indicate realizing personal non-control with respect to time. A pole represents time, because a pole’s shadow served as a clock. The snake’s shape and rigid composition represent one’s finite-length, pre-set worldline. ‘Fatal snake-bite’ indicates ego death upon seeing all one’s thoughts as timelessly pre-set and given. To be cured of snake-bite and made immune to it is to continue life after ego death, purified of misattribution of the source of one’s thoughts and power of will.

‘The chosen race of God’, ‘the elect’, ‘the immovable race’, and ‘double-predestination’ express the idea that all people are timelessly pre-determined but only some are destined to realize this. ‘The elect’ refers to the set of people who are destined to be experientially initiated into no-free-will, and ‘the lost’ refers to the set of people who are destined to remain under the delusion of autonomous personal control-power.

The wide-eyed Minoan snake goddess ominously wields and controls initiates’ predestined, snake-shaped worldlines.

The initiate’s eventual 2-level system of personal control can be represented as a divine winged snake that rules from above, interconnected with a personal pseudo-autonomous controller snake on the lower level.

Vertical, Timeless Determinism

In late antiquity, consciousness was centered around the doctrine and mystic-state experience of the pre-setness of future thoughts and occurrences. The central thematic concern of religions in the Hellenistic era was Heimarmene (Martin 1987), which means fatedness, Necessity, or timeless cosmic determinism. Modern thought considers some related issues, though only in a single cognitive state. For example, Philosophical Metaphysics investigates the related issues of tenseless time, fatedness, agent movement through space and time, and controller agents (Oaklander & Smith 1995).

The future is unchangeable and pre-set because of the static relation of control to the time dimension, and because it is largely an illusion that a person is a continuant agent who exercises power while moving through time.

Modern science introduces clockwork determinism and thereby reduces the person to an automaton; in reaction, Copenhagenist quantum mechanics aims to provide an emancipating alternative to the hidden-variables determinism of Einstein and Bohm. However, modern conceptions of determinism and causality are limited to intellectual speculation based in the ordinary cognitive state, so they habitually tend to envision time as a sequential flow.

Transcending Determinism Requires Two Jumps

Determinism is both a praised goal and a disparaged trap to escape, due to determinism-awareness being the intermediate but not final goal of religious mental transformation. Valentinian Gnosticism affirmed cosmic determinism but also transcended it, and formulated two contrasting schemes of thinking about moral culpability (Pagels 1992).

Simplified 2-stage initiation themes actually reflect a 3-stage progression that is centered around determinism. Mystic metaphor both endorses and disparages the realization of determinism, because determinism is only an intermediate destination on the path to salvific regeneration. The first demon or stage of egoic delusion to be cast out is the assumption of simple independent self-command and freewill. The second demon to be overcome is the mental model of cosmic determinism or fatedness, a model which is rationally coherent but raises the practical problem of control instability.

In Mark 9:14-29, Jesus exorcises the ego-demon from a youth supported by his father; these four figures are aspects of the psyche.

Fatedness and Control in Astral Ascent Mysticism

Heimarmene or universal fatedness was centrally important in ancient astrological cosmology (Barton 1994), and was a major theme in Hellenistic-Roman astral ascent mysticism and religion (Cumont 1960). Transcending astral fatedness involved ingesting holy food, ambrosial water, and astrological medicine (Fowden 1986).

Astral ascent mysticism centers around the dangerous gateway or “fatal” boundary crossing – the sphere of the fixed stars – representing the apprehension of Heimarmene and its control of one’s thoughts. The stars wind around the world in a spiral pattern over time; this pattern is depicted by the Heimarmene-snake wrapped around the cosmos, cosmic egg, or Mithraic lion-headed gatekeeper figure.

Saturn, as governor or gatekeeper of the outermost planetary sphere, rides in a serpent-drawn chariot and eats the child or youthful self-concept. The boundary of cosmic determinism is defined by the orbital sphere of Saturn and the sphere of the fixed stars. “Consuming the child” refers to giving up and repudiating one’s initial conception of oneself as an autonomous control-agent. Sacrificing one’s “childish”, initial self-conception is the necessary price of passage across the cosmic determinism-boundary, to ascend into the transcendent heavens.

Ancient Jewish writings metaphorically describe mystic-state experiences, including the problem of how to get past various threatening gatekeepers that are encountered during ascent (Arbel 2003). Pre-modern Christianity held that the body (the lower self) was controlled by Fate, but that the regenerated spirit (the higher, ultra-transcendent part of oneself) was above Fate, residing outside the sphere of the fixed stars.

When harrowing hell and rescuing the elect from limbo, Christ tramples the gates of the underworld prison, which are shown crossed in an X shape. In the pre-modern multi-level cosmology, trampling the gates of the underworld is thematically equivalent to trampling the celestial cross, representing transcending cosmic Heimarmene. Limbo is the experience of how personal control-power is impotent in the face of cosmic determinism and fatedness.

The hidden transcendent thought-source has been depicted as a hand behind a cloud controlling the world-soul, whose spirit transcends material Necessity. The world-soul, in turn, wields a chain that controls creatures, who are subject to Fate.

Self-Control and the Hidden Source of Thoughts

The ego is the sense of being a metaphysically free, sovereign agent that originates and controls its own thoughts, actions, and movements of the will while moving through time and space.

Ego death is the cessation, in the intense mystic altered state, of the sense and feeling of being a control-wielding agent moving through time and space. The sensation of wielding control is replaced by the experience of being helplessly, powerlessly embedded in spacetime as purely a product of spacetime, with control-thoughts being perceptibly inserted or set into the stream of thought by a hidden, uncontrollable source.

The Goal of Understanding Ego Death

Ego death leaves one’s initial, youthful “lie” behind. The “lie” is the confused mental worldmodel which assumes that oneself is the ultimate creator of one’s thoughts, actions, future, and movements of the will. The goal of testing control in the altered state is not to act out the loss of control in any way, but rather, to gain fundamental self-knowledge and correction of self-frustrating error and confusion. The goal of putting control to the test is to understand the nature and limits of control across time by exploring ideas of loss of control and transcendent restabilization of control.

The promise of increased power over oneself leads to realizing the logical impossibility of that mode of power, but produces instead a viable alternate conception, of secondary-level, reflected power. The vexing attempt to gain properly functioning self-control while holding a confused model of self-control ceases. The misleading sensation that the time-voyaging continuant agent is the originator of its power of will is recognized as a conventional misperception and mental oversimplification.

The image of the Lone Soul in Purgatory shows the soul as imprisoned in chains, purified in flames, and lifted up in redemptive release by transcendent power.

In Gnosticism, the completed initiate belongs to the Immovable Race and is able to stand stably in the face of overwhelming, autonomy-undermining controllership that emanates from the hidden, primary control-level. Insights about the limitations of personal control-power result in a wounding of pride, but the mind is otherwise unharmed, and made more durable (or “imperishable”). A personal control system becomes compatible with transcendence, or becomes “divinely approved”, when it repudiates the assumption that it can depend on its own internal power to save itself during a control-limit violation.

Deliberately Postulating Coming Control-Loss

The religious path and method is to ingest entheogens; think about your self-control power; disprove the possibility of forceful cross-time control; then depend on transcendent power, rather than your own local power, to provide coherent self-control. This method of testing the limits of control transforms your ideas about self and control to conform to transcendent experiential dynamics, “conforming to the image of God”.

The efficient method of enlightenment about the dynamics of control-agency is to test self-control power by deliberately supposing that loss-of-control is lying fated on the worldline ahead, and then struggling to use one’s personal control-power to avoid that potentially given control-loss event. The dissociative state makes it easy to examine the dynamics and limits of control-agency while thinking outside of the ingrained perspective.

The ability of one’s immediate self to violate the accustomed desires or will of one’s overall cross-time self, including overriding the accustomed self-preservation restraints, disproves the impression that the time-voyaging continuant control-agent ever was in control as the originator of personal thoughts. Exploring the limits of control across time reveals that the true origin of the movements of the will the whole time was a hidden transcendent source other than the self conceived of as a time-voyaging continuant control-agent.

What’s revealed in religious revelation is that our self-control power has the potential to be visibly canceled, and that one’s control-thoughts are given by a more ultimate source of control-power. The mind is directly drawn up into heaven on Elijah’s whirlwind or fire-chariot, by deliberately thinking about being helplessly, inevitably, and irresistibly drawn into the thought of near-future loss of control, while in the dissociative state.

The Potential for Control Breakdown and Transformation

After drinking mixed wine at the Last Supper, in the garden of Gethsemane prior to the court trial, Jesus began to be deeply distressed, amazed, and fearful (Mark 14:33), saying like an initiate who had to poison the lower self, “Father, remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” The mind’s local control-agency becomes distressed and apprehensive about whether and how it can retain control, upon turning attention around, perceptibly recognizing its vulnerability to thought-coercion and control-instability, and seeing the illusory aspect of personal autonomous power.

The mind is accustomed to assuming that the cross-time phantom-self can wield power over each time-slice self in the near future. When this assumption is explicitly recognized and tested, the onset of self-control seizure occurs. Ever-tighter, more forceful application of rationality that’s premised on the assumption of wielding control-power across time cannot save the control-system from this seizure. Testing our control-power and discovering our dependent puppet-like status entails deliberate disproof and self-cancellation of cross-time control, which can threaten to lead to panic attack, seizure, and self-destructive control-chaos.

Relying on one’s conventional power of control-logic and will, when fully developed and perfected, leads to system lock-up – the self-cancellation of personal control power. Demonic reason taken to its full development creates an impossible mess and gets itself tangled up, paralyzed in its own net of reasoning about control, power, and will.

King Pentheus resisted Dionysus, who was an intruding foreign ruler coming in from outside the king’s domain. Dionysus’ mad, divine power was undermining king Pentheus’ ruling power as the established sovereign. When king Pentheus resisted this competing power, he was tricked into participating in an ecstatic-state initiation excursion, was lifted and caught up helplessly in a tree, and was defeated and torn to pieces by his mother and other raving Dionysus worshippers.

One’s role as the independent creator and controller of one’s thoughts was an illusion. The current time-slice self or time-voyaging continuant self is helpless to control or restrain the future time-slice selves while playing with the idea of having, keeping, or losing control; the result is like an army of lookalike time-slice selves, fighting against each other.

‘Idol worship’, ‘pride’, or ‘vanity’ is the assumption that the power of egoic control agency is real and substantial. “Pride before the fall” is the futile attempt to depend on that doomed pseudo-power configuration to save oneself from the catastrophic failure of cybernetic self-control, a failure which is inherently, systemically entailed.

Julius Caesar was authorized for power by his seizures, and the bull in his military’s Mithraic mystery-cult was wounded in the side, so the figure of Jesus was shown as similarly authorized by the spear-wound in his side, and the figure of the apostle Paul was portrayed as suffering from seizures. The ability to make self-control seize or cancel itself dramatically is an afflicting thorn (2 Cor. 12:7-10), hole, or wound in our side, the innate cybernetic governance-failure through which the new, transformed life is born. The new transcendence-aware self is given birth through the pride-killing disproof-wound in the side.

The Transcendent Solution to Restoring Viable Control

A different approach and solution is required, to restore order from the chaos of trying to use a self-dependence that’s based on incoherent premises. This solution provides a more robust basis than reliance on personal power wielded by the semi-illusory conventional self. Something that transcends personal control-power logic is needed to provide an alternative to the seized, useless logical scheme of egoic control power. After being shown this cybernetically fatal potential, a rescuing miracle of transcendent magic arrives from outside the system of egoic control-power logic.

The mind’s transcendent potential kicks in, realizing that the logic of control-agency power originated by the phantom self cannot be the solution to the very problem that such an inaccurate configuration generated in the first place. One must put one’s reliance on a self-existing faith, compassion, heart, love, or benevolent Holy Spirit, which cannot have any ordinary rational control-logic basis and that one does not experience as a product of one’s own egoic control-power or will, but is consciously experienced as being given by the hidden source of thoughts.

Solving the problem of true and justified mental order of personal self-government instead of control-chaos comes through a transcendent Zen jump. Depending on the egoic system of reasoning, which is constructed around inherently self-frustrating premises, ultimately leads to control lock-up and a catastrophically ineffective self-cancellation of control. Buddha recognized that his destiny was to touch the ground in an act of compassion and harmonious integration with the unity of the Ground of Being, causing Mara and his army of demons to instantly disperse – then he experienced enlightenment.

Viable and coherent control is provided by recognizing that personal control depends on transcendent givenness of your thoughts by a mysterious hidden source that ultimately caused the control lock-up and that independently saves your controllership, restoring it in a newly coherent form. The hidden source of thoughts that provides a viable, transcendent personal control system is personified as a merciful and compassionate God.

The figure of Caesar was plugged into the routinized mystery-cult format utilizing ‘mixed wine’. The imperial mystery cult incorporated themes related to imperial government, and had initiation rites for mystai using ‘mixed wine’ heavily, along with symposium drinking parties (Pleket 1965). Political themes were intermixed with mystic-state experiencing, as was common in ancient culture.

The defeat of egoic autonomy and power in the mystic ecstatic state was similar to the defeat of rebellious nations. Caesar was positioned as divinely authorized and led by Jupiter to bring peace, prosperity, and stable government across the entire world. The imperial mystery cult used parallels between Caesar’s pardon of the rebellious kings when they sacrificed to him in homage and obeisance, and the sudden calm and restoration of stability that follows the mind’s sacrifice of the egoic claim of wielding autonomous power.

Our control-power has the Judas capability, which is the ability to betray the illusory aspect of personal power, through divine, transcendent power-seizure. By betraying our illusion of sovereignty, our Judas potential thereby delivers our lower, “rebellious” claim of independent kingship-power over to the transcendent level of governing power.

In John 11, Lazarus is transcendently lifted up from ego-death control-power paralysis by Jesus as the representative of the separate, higher-level source of thoughts. Jesus told his disciples “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Then Thomas (called Didymus, the twin) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Maria the Divine Shepherdess of Souls, Divina Pastora, as benevolent and trustworthy thought-provider rescues and protects the person from the direly threatening wolf, which is the threat of loss of control or hostile control-usurpation by the hidden thought-source. The mind begins with a system of thinking about personal control that assumes independence, but personal control is only pseudo-independent. After being transcendently moved out from that doomed system of logic, one experiences the joyful sense of relief and thankfulness. The person, as a time-voyaging locus of control, has been rescued from certain peril, from outside their own local resources of control-power.

Sin as Misattribution of Control-Thoughts

Upon initiation, the concept of ‘sin’ is reinterpreted and revised, producing a transformed mental model which understands ‘sin’ to be a logical error about the nature of control-agency and agent-culpability. Sin is a matter of understanding and meaning-shift. The secret of the kingdom of God has been given, but cloaked in double-meanings so that those on the outside may see and hear but not understand, lest they turn about and their sins be forgiven (Mark 4:12).

In mystic metaphor, misunderstanding moral agency is considered the fundamental sin and immorality; God was most angry about the king’s rebellious worship of idols that are fashioned out of created materials – a metaphor for taking pseudo-autonomous personal control-agency as though it were genuinely autonomous. Reformed theology affirms the predestination of who God gives salvific grace to, while holding to the moral culpability of created persons. This Augustinian compound model is not simply an inconsistent combination of beliefs; rather, it is a technique of metaphorical meaning-shifting that is bi-modal, designed to span and contrast the egoic and transcendent systems of thinking.

A person’s will appears to be originated and controlled by the time-voyaging continuant agent that’s projected out from each time-slice along the person’s timelessly frozen worldline. The conception of personal control agency that is built around this illusion is ‘sin’ and the ‘lie’.

Wrath, Compassion, and Making Peace

‘Wrath’ means the threat that Fate or blind, machine-like determinism is ultimately in control of your coming thoughts but is set against your claim to exert independent power over your thoughts.

Mystic-state ‘compassion’ and ‘rescue that narrowly averts divine wrath’ means that that which ultimately gives you your thoughts is intimately united with you and is good or benevolent toward you, bringing you into a harmonious, reconciled, integrated relationship with the compassionate and beneficent controller of all that happens, including your own near-future thoughts.

The wrath/compassion polarity is portrayed as paired deities of wrath and compassion in Tibetan Buddhism; dual traits of the Creator (justice and mercy); and Jesus as harsh righteous judge with Mary as compassionate intercessor. The god of battling and the goddess of love – Ares and Aphrodite (or Mars and Venus) – were caught together in a near-invisible net, producing the child Harmonia (or Concordia).

Jupiter Optimus Maximus means ‘all-good’ and ‘all-powerful’, as is hoped for from a protective deity when one is vulnerable to awareness of Heimarmene in the intense mystic altered state.

Mithras demonstrates that his arm wields control over the power of the bull’s shoulder. Sol is reconciled with Mithras in a pact, and given transcendent power. Sol becomes an authorized charioteer, steering the quadriga with Mithras, guided by Mercury (or Hermes), who is holding a Fatedness-snake on a time-pole.

Sacrificing to End Battling the Thought-Source

‘Sacrifice’ is a mental attitude of cooperative dependence on that which gives thoughts, your will having been overcome and made to will its own demise as an empty delusion, turned against itself by now-revealed transcendent power. Sacrifice offers up and hands over your claim to effective independent power, as opposed to battling against your near-future self and the inherently overpowering source of all thoughts and movements of will.

Sacrificing your autonomy-claim, acknowledging your dependency on that which ultimately gives you your thoughts, brings mental peace and harmony and calms turmoil, because you are relieved from increasing your attempt to grasp and secure power over your own power; relieved from testing the power of your autonomy and the limits of your self-control thoughts.

Roman sacrificial altars are typically shown with a libation of concentrated, psychoactive unmixed wine being poured on the altar, which opens up a channel to the gods, along with the sacrificial animal such as the unresisting, cooperative bull. The sacrificer pouring the libation has a cloth behind the head, representing the spiritual ecstatic state, where awareness is positioned outside of the usual mind, perceiving its functioning.

Mithras overpowering and sacrificing the bull represents the delusion of self-originated control-power being given over to the transcendent level, with Mithras’ arm wielding the bull’s shoulder and his knife piercing and fatally wounding it. The wound in the bull’s side indicates Mithras demonstrating his power over the bull’s control-power. Mithras wrestles and overpowers the initiate’s control of their will, reconfiguring their understanding of control-power to account for the transcendent givenness of one’s thoughts.

Sol represents the mind’s awareness, which in the dissociative state is positioned ecstatically outside the mind’s functioning. The mind is possessed and overtaken by Mithras. Pure awareness passively watches the sacrificial disproof of the mind’s claim to wield independent personal control-power.

A tauroctony fresco in a Mithraeum shows the self-command bull being sacrificed near the shoulder. A Heimarmene-snake is inevitably drawn toward ingesting the entheogenic blood; often the snake approaches a wine-mixing bowl below the bull instead. A blue-stemmed Psilocybe mushroom appears in Mithras’ leg and garment, with the stem proceeding through 7 steps, up to the stars. The billowing cape behind Mithras indicates the ecstatic state. The sphere of the fixed stars is shown on Mithra’s cape, inside the underworld cave. The god forcefully pins the bull, who is paralyzed and unable to stand. Mithras’ feminine features indicate the soul abducted and married by divine power. Mithras turns to knowingly look back behind the conventional self-concept to see the source of thoughts and movements of the will.

Vertical Atonement for Rebellion-Guilt

Vicarious atonement entails a vertical shift upward of guilt and responsibility to a higher-level controller, not a horizontal shift sideways to a morally better person. A vertical 2-level legal and moral relationship applies to all controller/agent scenarios: master/slave, commander/soldier, potter/clay, puppetmaster/puppet, creator/creature, and virtual-world creator/virtual agent.

Releasing a prisoner who is a rebel slave (a false claimant to autonomy), and punishing a mock king in their stead by death sentence, is found in the Roman Saturnalia and in the mystic allegory of Jesus’ trial; the rebel Barabbas (son of father) is released.

The Jesus figure was portrayed in the New Testament as the earthly representation and manifestation of the Jewish creator God (Thompson 2001), who was defined as all-powerful and all-controlling. Jesus is held to be innocent in the sense of not himself rebelling against God; that is, he never mistook the pseudo-autonomy of personal control-agents as literal autonomy. However, given that he was the Creator’s representative figure within the created world, he was ultimately responsible or guilty for all instances of such ‘rebellion’ which did occur by other people.

The dissociative-state revelation that higher-order power stands over the source of our control-thoughts is described as rendering the initiate no longer under the sentence of death, making them mature, washed clean, perfected, imperishable, or possessing eternal life, in that they have already died as an autonomous moral agent, following the pattern metaphorically expressed in the figure of Jesus. “Anyone who follows me must deny himself and take up his cross, for whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matt. 10:38-39, 16 24-25; Mark 8:34-35; Luke 9:23-24)

Lucifer fell from heaven, as Adam fell, due to pride through the illusory power of his virtual free will. Justice that is consistent with this metaphorical meaning-mode requires that he suffer a virtual death-sentence for his rebellious autonomy-claim; this sin is “punished” in the appropriate sense through mystic-state ego death and thereby done away with. Justice about ultimate responsibility is thereby fulfilled, and the initial, youthful error about our independent self-command is corrected.

The Sacred Marriage

The sacred marriage or pact with the divine provides a transcendent personal control system that is viable and stable. The resulting personal control system is based on mature, refined understanding about personal control agency, instead of misperception and frustrating confusion. The sacred marriage integrates one’s personal control activity in the mundane realm with the transcendent realization that thoughts originate from outside one’s realm of control.

In the ancient Greek tradition, marriage incorporated the themes of abduction and death of the girl, together with entheogenic initiation (Ruck 1978). Similarly, Christ raptures-away and marries his Church, the initiated elect, as his bride.

Dionysus rides with the abducted and married soul, Ariadne, in Dionysus’ victory procession, in a chariot drawn by four mushroom-tigers.

The uncontrollable, hidden, higher-level controller abducts and overtakes your innermost locus of control-power, as though that innermost wellspring of your thoughts is your generative organ, and ego death is the climax of the source of thoughts. This rapture of the soul by the divine realm gives birth to the new self that is married to the higher controller. The sacred marriage of the visible and hidden levels of control, producing new life, is celebrated in the wedding banquet with entheogenic mixed wine.

Bibliography

Michael Hoffman has been developing the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence since 1985, including the maximal entheogen theory of religion; see Egodeath.com.

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Fishbane, M. The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism. Seattle: University of Washington, 1994.

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Michael Hoffman. All rights reserved.

2020 Corrections and Commentary

Todo

Format.
De-link/re-link within page.
Outline indent the TOC.
Add the pics.

Fix the defaulting of index.html, to go to correct site. PRI 0. Damn Host Provider breaking my sites all the time. Home link is broken on some other pages at ED site. Links that start with just # are broken.

Bibliography Lacks First Names

I dislike the lack of first names; I regret that I copied this senseless academic convention.

Slight Sentence Restructuring in 2007

2006 was a final 2007 was merely just tiny changes (specifically, breaking up “Hey, I have an idea: I’ll insert a clarifying sentence within an already over-complicated sentence structure, to make it clear; great idea!“) just to enable reading-aloud; like: short words + short sentences + short paragraphs.

To delta the 2006 vs 2007 version, see Egodeath Yahoo Group, do a Compare Documents in Word – to confirm that the article was really 2006, not 2007.

Correction: Moses’ Brass Serpent on a Pole

The “time-pole” explanation is the worst shortcoming, off-base, of mytheme-decoding in the article, as I knew when I published this in 2006-2007.

To solve the mytheme {healing brass snake on a pole to look at to heal from fatal snake-bite} (that is, to identify how that mytheme is analogous to specific “things that are observed and experienced in the altered state”) required a huge successful build-out of deciphering/translating/ decoding the entire language of mythemes.

I had a huge math-like discovery Thanksgiving week climaxing on November 29, 2013, that was required to solve that Nehushtan snake-on-pole:

{tree vs. snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism.

{Moses’ serpent on a pole for the Israelites to heal rebellious Israelites from fatal snake-bite}, not solved in this Main Article of 2006, is an example of “an unsolved problem within the New Theory”. Solved Nov 2011 & esp. Nov 2013/Dec 2013, as posted at Egodeath Yahoo Group in major announcements in Dec 2013.

This picture doesn’t show debranched tree, or Y at top: hard to decode from this; I had to do a web image search in Dec 2013 to corroborate that some artists show the pole as a debranched tree.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f13.item.zoom

Dionysus Triumph – 6 Mushrooms

On the left, Dionysus’ garment hem has a Psilocybe.

Article title:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
Subsection:
Mushrooms Hidden and Visible in Fabric Folds: Dionysus’ Triumph
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/#mhavif

On November 14, 2020, and then further on December 14, 2020 when I found and uploaded my photograph, I proved that the leopard is drinking from an Amanita in Holy Grail format, partly by my own specimen observations and photograph.

Article title:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
Subsection:
Identifying the Leopard-watering Bowl as Amanita
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/#Identifying-the-Leopard-watering-Bowl-as-Amanita

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• Why Didn’t Wise Guys in 500 B.C. Document How Mystery Religion Initiation Works, a la How the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in 1999 Started Explaining Religious Mythology?

• I Wrote Core/Cybernetic Theory First (Needed Dictionary), Mytheme Theory Second (Needed Alphabetical List) – Why Did Ancients Have Myth Nailed, But Positively Sucked at Documenting Mystery-Religion Initiation in the Form of “Philosophy”, or Declined to Try?

• 3 Tabs with Articles Open for Editing: Idea Dev, Mytheme List; Glossary

• The Decoded Mytheme Language as Speaking in a Unknown Foreign Tongue; {speaking in tongues}

• Mytheme decoded: {billowing cloth, breath} = hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts made visible in the loose cognitive state

• mytheme {spear in side, wound, female vulnerability}

• Got Egodeath Yahoo Group Backup as Web-Ready HTML Files

• Email to Wouter Hanegraaff

• Copied Main Article (2006) and Core Theory Specification Outline (1997) to this WordPress Site

• How to Market a Mushroom Sacrament that Causes Seizure and Reset? Frame It as the “Sacrament of Apolytrosis”, Leveraging Today’s Popular Mythemes, of {ransom price paid (= the sacrifice), to release prisoner tied to physical object with ropes, threatened with death/ inexorably destined for death}

• Mythemes Page & Glossary (Referent Domain) Page Design

• Top Priority: Stop Repeatedly Defining & Re-Typing-out the Basic Terms/Concepts; Leverage the Glossary! Forget the Newbies!

• Multiple Mytheme-Clusters Cross-Decoded: {ransom, embedded in tree trunk, apolytrosis}

• Gnosis Issue 26 (Winter 1993) – Psychedelics & the Path: Intro Quote

• The Entheogen Diminishment Industry: The Very Definition of Con, Scam; Targeting “Marks”

• Gnosis Issue 26 (Winter 1993)
  Psychedelics & the Path: TOC

• Sacrament of Apolytrosis, Setting Free from Cybernetic Seizure Trap

• Correctly Identifying Isomorphism (from the Mytheme to the Referent Domain) Is Vastly More Important than “What Did that Artist Think It Meant?”

• Lyrics Poetry Mytheme Decoding: {Necromancer}

• Email to Joshua Bempechat at Ancient Psychedelia

• Email to Richard Smoley

• Infuriating, Arbitrary, Smug Smear-Piece Article Against Psychedelics (Go Absolutely to Hell, All Entheogen-Minimalists, Frauds, Charlatans, Thieves, Counterfeiters) – An Academic Exercise in POMPOSITY Like Wasson’s Hall of Shame Quotes; as Smug and Condemnatory, as Full of Baloney

• Email to Sam Woolfe

• Pursuading Scholars to Convert to the Egodeath theory’s Maximal Mushroom Theory of Christian Art

• What Does the Phrase “Big Breakthrough” Mean? Define It, Like Yesterday’s Defining of “Complete Decoding” (of a Mytheme)

• A Given; a Fact: All Religions Everywhere Always Have Some Entheogen Use

• Questions from Cyberdisciple

• Mytheme: {clothing/ flesh removed, revealing naked body/ skin/ skeleton}

• What Makes for a Good, Thorough “Decoding of a Mytheme”?

• Topics Covered in “Idea Development page 1”

• Topics to Focus On

• This Isn’t a Cubensis with Liberty Caps; It’s an Impressionistically Rendered Italian Pine with Umbrella Pines
  👈 These aren’t the shrooms you’re looking for.
  “These aren’t the shrooms we’re looking for.”
  👈 Move along.
  “Move along. Move along.”

• Quotes from Panofsky & Wasson — The Cover-up, Censorship by Order of the Pope, Fraud camp, Pure Argument from Authority
  The hucksters foisting Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism on the populace, suppress mushrooms (the real flesh of Christ) along with suppressing Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

• Those Bickering Soma Entheogen Scholars

• Why There Are No Psychoactives in Medieval Texts: Ye Old War on Druggs, but How to Correctly Characterize It? Aaron Leich’s Forward to Chris Bennett’s book

Why Didn’t Wise Guys in 500 B.C. Document How Mystery Religion Initiation Works, a la How the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in 1999 Started Explaining Religious Mythology?

Why Did All Eras of “Smart” People (Ancient, Medieval, Classical/ Early Modern Esotericism) FAIL to Document “Mystery-Religion”-type Initiation (eg the Canterbury Mushroom/ Sword/ Bible-Reader Self-Threatening Image) a la my 1988 Cybernetic Theory or 2006/2013/2020 Mytheme Decoding?

certainly the order of “which comes first” (in my OWN history, not in Greek history!) In Greek history, first they had Mythemes, then they had PHilosoophy but — FOR WHATEVER REASON — they didn’t document how Initiation works. WHY NOT????? That is a BIG question. Was there a law, “you may only write using mythemes? Was it beyond their capa’y?

Why no surviving Antiquity writings, “HOW EXACTLY, M-R INITIATION WORKS”???

The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
BY JOE SHMOE COPYRIGHT (C) 550 B.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I Wrote Core/Cybernetic Theory First (Needed Dictionary), Mytheme Theory Second (Needed Alphabetical List) – Why Did Ancients Have Myth Nailed, But Positively Sucked at Documenting Mystery-Religion Initiation in the Form of “Philosophy”, or Declined to Try?

is: 1) dictionary/glossary, = Core theory 1985-1997. I’m getting confirmation that yes, there were no mythemes in 1997 theory-summary. That Prin Cyb’a Pri-o-Disco theory-spec’n to prove I was first, has almost no mythemes, and does express pretty 100%, the Core theory; the Cybernetic theory; the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
2) mytheme list extravanza

Nifty, I’m using some of my 1997 article in the glossary (not really in the Mythemes list, so far) — but definitely, how I’d write-up a subject, one of the 12 principles of the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence per 1988, or one of the 9 sections of the 1997 article, would be different were I to do a fresh writeup today.

It is turning out that, each entry in the Mytheme List or in the Glossary of Egodeath, is a paragraph; but a free-form paragraph — I’m going to have to add horizontal lines between each entry:

_____

It’s a Dictionary of Egodeath Terms & Concepts, with the link labeled as “Glossary”.

formal def’s are from Oxford Dictionaries, below.

diction – The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.
“Wordsworth campaigned against exaggerated poetic diction”
synonyms:
phraseology · phrasing · turn of phrase · choice of words · wording · language · parlance · usage · vocabulary · terminology · expression · idiom · style · locution · lingo · idiolect

Possible page titles:

Altered State Glossary
Glossary of the Altered State
Glossary of Egodeath
Glossary of Egodeath and Loosecog
Glossary of the Egodeath Theory and the Loose Cognitive State
Glossary of the Egodeath Theory
Glossary of Egodeath Theory Terms
Egodeath Glossary
Dictionary of Egodeath Theory Terminology and Altered-State Phenomena.
Domain-specific dictionary of the Egodeath theory and altered-state phenomena.

Mytheme List
Mytheme Dictionary
Dictionary of mythemes in terms of the Egodeath theory.

dictionary

“A book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, or gives the equivalent words in a different language, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin, and usage.”

“A reference work on a particular subject, the items of which are typically arranged in alphabetical order. eg “a dictionary of quotations“.”

synonyms: lexicon · wordbook · glossary 

Dictionary of the Egodeath Theory
Dictionary of Egodeath
Egodeath Dictionary

glossary

an alphabetical list of terms or words found in or relating to a specific subject, text, or dialect, with explanations; a brief dictionary.

“brief” is debatable;
how long is a dictionary entry?
how long is a glossary entry? 1-2 full sentences.

Glossary of the Egodeath Theory <– elaborate construction sounds odd; ‘dictionary or ency’ would sound ok
Glossary of Egodeath
Glossary of Egodeath Terms <– sounds natural
Egodeath Glossary <– sounds natural

For a 1-word link, ‘Glossary’ definitely works better than ‘Dictionary’. Implies topical; giving domain-specific term usage.

lexicon

the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.
eg “the size of the English lexicon”

a dictionary, especially of Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, or Arabic.
eg “a Greek–Latin lexicon”

Lexicon of the Egodeath theory
Lexicon of Egodeath
Egodeath Lexicon
the Egodeath lexicon <– the only lexicon term that makes sense

encyclopedia

a book or set of books giving information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject and typically arranged alphabetically.

from enkuklios paideia; ‘all-round education’.

encyclopedia of the Egodeath theory
encyclopedia of Egodeath
Egodeath encyclopedia

3 Tabs with Articles Open for Editing: Idea Dev, Mytheme List; Glossary

I could do a ton of mytheme-related theory-development work purely by updating the mytheme list + glossary – which is really like a… an encycopedia format, what do they call that, not a “word dictionary” but a “concept dictionary” for a domain, like a “dictionary of mythology”, in particular.

In fact, my 1997 writeup was a merely adequate time-buyer, a placeholder, a Priority of Discovery stake in the ground, and – main point:

My 2007 Egodeath website is so good, aside from needing more mytheme work, that you could consider this WordPress site to be largely, a re-organization, particularly, serving to deliver the Dictionary/ or Glossary as I probably posted around 2012 saying that a Glossary is needed. When I envisioned making an Egodeath Wiki-pedia, … that’s equivalent to whatn I’m doing now, not at ED at the moment but at WordPress site;

A most notable thing about the WP site, is the Dictionary/Glossary of egodeath terms/concepts — and also, not so much envisioned as needed in 2007 & ~2012, the Dictionary of Mythemes.

The Decoded Mytheme Language as Speaking in a Unknown Foreign Tongue; {speaking in tongues}

I’m speaking in tongues, the mytheme language.

A mytheme is a description by analogy, of something that is experienced or perceived in the altered state (loosecog).

A (weak) idea I got, a minute after the following start-point.

Video:
Explaining the Faith: Understanding the Holy Spirit
57:30 (57:42-58:13)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eexDHK9Xhtc&t=3430

Mytheme decoded: {billowing cloth, breath} = hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts made visible in the loose cognitive state

[30:3 a.m. hs December 1, 2020]

Mytheme decoded: {billowing cloth, spirit, ASC} = hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts made visible in the loose cognitive state. I didn’t understand why the ASC is depicted as billowing cloth. Now I understand, or hav identified a good way to make sense of an isomorphim, how is ASC like a billowing cloth? power that propels, (a ship) that’s invisible, except when there’s a cloth, that makes the wind visible, like a horizontally blown flag, rippling. The billowing cloth makes the wind’s invisible power visible. Let’s see if I can make a satisfying Mytheme-glossary entry.

Hey lets for the first time make a hyperlink destination halfway down in a different page:

{billowing cloth}

Glossary entry: mytheme

mytheme {spear in side, wound, female vulnerability}

_______

mytheme {spear in side, wound} = {Zeus drove a shaft through Prometheus’ middle} = the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts in the mind = {female, initiate, vulnerable to penetration, giving death and new birth}

[9:38 p.m. November 30, 2020] I may have something re: decoding {spear in side}.

Connect it to the massive connections I already have — did I decode this particular connection already?

It doesn’t feel like it. Sort of, not.

The process of decoding includes requirement, mapping mytheme-clusters to other mytheme-clusters.

I got the idea reading Egodeath Yahoo Group 2001 archives – supporters gave me a very good format, not like the garbled archive Yahoo corp emailed me.

You may think this is a rerun. My main article might have seemingly these same connections.

Yet I still struggle to make this particular new(??) connection until now: remember how I posted like 2011 about (or 2006 main article?

No, I think my 2011 era figured out that initiate = female because the mind is (now perceptibly revealed as) helplessly subject to the forced unstoppable injection of thoughts.

Doesn’t main article 2006 say exactly this – or not?? I’m sure my “female” decoding work was 2011.

The {spear, blade, knife} goes into the wound/side/vulnerability — that THAT EXISTING DECODING-MAPPING IS CONNECTED NOW TO IDEA: thought-injection of control thoughts — isn’t this the first time I connected these two ideas, so, DECODED: why the spear wound kills and gives birth through that vulnerability in the side opening: that opening is, where the control-source injects thoughts; that spot is normally {veiled}, where Zeus {in the dark penetrates Semele every night}, but when she begs to see him, Semele sees Zeus injecting thoughts into her; ego death, she gets zapped to smithereens.

spear = wound = hole in side = vulnerability = see the control-thought-injecting going on causes ego death = helpless female thought-receiver so THE WOUND THAT THE BLADE/SPEAR/SACRIFICIAL KNIFE GOES INTO *IS* THE PREVIOUSLY IDENTIFIED, FEMALE, HELPLESS THOUGHT-RECEIVER.

Here’s the Yahoo Group log that solved the un-closed decoding, bringing closure — pretty big for me., my understanding. Been struggling to Complete this mytheme decoding of “spear in the side”.

I conjoined the two solutions, to complete this solution:

female helpless thought receiver, receptacle for control-thoughts.

spear wound side vulnerability

It SEEMS SO OBVIOUS/simple/natural NOW, but I actually believe this is the first time I hooked up those two idea-clusters.

bottom of super-long post: apparently I’m replying to a question about the Egodeath theory from Erik Davis, author of TechGnosis, and recent books/podcasts: 2001 I wrote of Prometheus: “Zeus drove a shaft through his middle.”

I propose that {spear in side} or {shaft through one’s middle} describes the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts in the mind.

Group: egodeath	Message: 32	From: Michael Hoffman	Date: 22/06/2001
Subject: Reason forces postulating Transcendent Reason

[… start of another superlong, big brain post. I go for more the 200-character posts, myself]

Got Egodeath Yahoo Group Backup as Web-Ready HTML Files

Got Egodeath Yahoo Group Backup as Web-Ready HTML files, by date (not by thread), with dates, and with all group participants’ posts. Thanks to supporters.

My 1997 Theory Summary at Principia Cybernetica

Section removed from WordPress copy of article.
Thanks to supporters for help with URLs and copies.

This 1997 announcement-outline, Theory-specification, should represent my Core theory (the Cybernetic theory; the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence) portion of the entire Egodeath theory — it should not represent my Phase 2 work, the Mytheme theory. I want to frame them as two distinct, co-corroborating component-theories, making up the entire whole Egodeath theory.

The question of the moment is, how much mytheme-decoding is here? This supposedly is a pure representation of my 1988 Core theory; the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, without any dependence on, or coverage of, religious mythology.

To what extent does this outline-summary use religious mythology, or descriptive analogies from acid-inspired Rock lyrics (you might be able to find, because I decoded that, from around 1991)?

_____

1997 was the early search engine era; D.E.C.’s Alta Vista website.

Post 1 of 2 b/c length-cap. I followed up in Feb 1997 by making a 2nd post with the missing section.

todo: My Egodeath.com site is missing the final section:
http://egodeath.com/intro.htm

This is a backup copy of my 1997 World-Wide Web posting as a comment on the “Philosophy, Introduction” article at the Principia Cybernetica website.

Location of this article at Principia Cybernetica

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/PHILOSI.0.html
Bottom section:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/PHILOSI.0.0.html 
Annotation on the “Philosophy, Introduction” article:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PHILOSI.html

See also:
The Egoic and Transcendent Mental Worldmodels
http://egodeath.com/egoictranscendentmentalmodels.htm

Email to Wouter Hanegraaff

Hi Professor Hanegraaff, 

Topics in this email:
1. My new articles are available.
2. I bought your book on New Age when it first came out.
3. I’ve read many of your books and articles.
4. Clarifying what Religionism is, given that you want to make religion relevant and appealing to students, and place Religion (including Esotericism history) front and center in the Humanities.
5. Two recent books I want to read. Criticism of two entheogen scholarship books.

1. My new articles

Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/
One of my flagship (top 5) articles.  Huge ramifications.

Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/
Written at the request of Jerry Brown, author (with Julie Brown) of the book The Psychedelic Gospels.

Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/
The top half is a good summary of the situation.

Ptolemaic Astral Ascent Mysticism
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/ptolemaic-astral-ascent-mysticism/
Cool subject. Just a casual page, but it’s by me, so: Transcending astral fatedness involved ingesting holy food, ambrosial water, and astrological medicine (Fowden 1986).

2. I bought your book on New Age when it first came out

Around 1995, in Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park near Stanford University, I asked the bookseller: “Are there any books analyzing the New Age, like from an Esoteric Tradition point of view?”  His answer was “No; you should write a book on that subject.”

Then your book came out in late 1997, conveniently saving me a slight hassle, of writing your book.

New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought
Wouter Hanegraaff
http://amzn.com/0791438546
1997

I don’t think I read much of that book by you, though; I may have analyzed the section headings, and read a few sections.
I went to thin out my library and throw away a New Age book, and I couldn’t: it contained some legit traditional esoteric knowledge.  

3. I’ve read many of your books and articles

Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge In Western Culture
Wouter Hanegraaff
http://amzn.com/1107680972
February 2012; March 2014

Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed
Wouter Hanegraaff
http://amzn.com/1441136460
February 2013

I like your expose articles that revealed semi-covert use of entheogens in New Age. 

4. Clarifying what Religionism is, given that you want to make Religion (including scholarly research of the history of Esotericism) relevant, appealing, and front and center in the Humanities

I’ve found it difficult to understand what you mean by ‘Religionism’, after reading many pages about it.  

My own approach was first not esoteric, but an Engineering, Science, Cognitive Science approach. 

Only after I formed my core theory of ego transcendence in the altered state, did I investigate Esotericism and religious mythology.  

I know a lot now about ego death and Esotericism, yet, I’m not entirely sure of your distinction between a good scientific empirical approach to studying the history of Esotericism, vs. a Religionist approach.  

Are you forbidding students and other scholars of the history of Esotericism from having religious experiencing, or being fully interested in first-hand, intense, transformative, esoteric religious experiencing?

That doesn’t sound like a way to appeal to students, at all, which you are trying to do, to frame Religion as the centrally important topic in the Humanities.

How can an Empiricist (rather than Religionist) approach to Esotericism historical scholarship, possibly help and contribute to, the personal, first-hand, esoteric, higher-than-exoteric, intense religious experiencing of students?  

Youths and maidens desire and are innately drawn to intense Mystery Religion initiation; the classic, full-on, self-transcendence experience.  

It sounds like that desire, that draw, is thwarted, if Religionism is to be avoided like the plague, when doing historical scholarship, using the scientific, objective, Empirical approach.  

How can a student be motivated to study Esotericism, how can that be at all appealing, if the rule is, all Religionism must be totally avoided?  

It sounds like a contradiction.  

You are trying hard to promote Esotericism study, and yet you seem to assert that Religionism (whatever that means), must not be allowed or permitted, as a factor that motivates and spurs-on students in their eagerness (as you want them to have) to do research and scholarship in the history of Esotericism.

You are trying to advocate Western Esotericism and Religion studies as the most important and central topic of all, yet I don’t think you have written a simple, clear explanation of the difference between the Empirical vs. Religionist approaches, that is appealing, for a popular audience.  

I’d expect a popular audience to reject a boring, sterile, reductionist, too-straight-laced, experience-forbidding approach, called “the Empiricist approach to the study of Esotericism & Religion.” 

It sounds dull and inhumanly narrow; reductionist — it appears that all the excitement and motivating appeal is in the forbidden approach, Religionism.

I’d expect students to be much more attracted to what you disparage and reject, and demonize, as “the Religionist method” (read: the cool, fun, interesting, forbidden approach — don’t let Professor Hanegraaff catch you; you could get kicked out of the programme!  Be sure to keep it on the down-low — Professor No-Fun is strictly anti-initiation!

The subject of Empirical vs. Religionist method in scholarship of the history of Esotericism is crucial for you, so maybe you’ve written a popular introductory article on it, in the style of the book:

Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism
Marco Pasi (Editor), Peter Forshaw (Editor), Wouter Hanegraaff (Editor)
http://amzn.com/9463720200
July 2, 2019

One article of yours that I read recently, seemed like it had an incidental definition of ‘religionism’ that finally clarified what you mean.  I think your idea is probably simple enough, but is expressed unclearly.

(I’m trying to recall which article, has a surprisingly clear, succinct summary of Empirical vs. Religionist methods, though that wasn’t a focus of the article.)

Maybe I’ll check: 
“For an early programmatic statement on empirical versus religionist and reductionist method in relation to esotericism, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Empirical Method in the Study of Esotericism,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 7, no. 2 (1995): 99–129.

5. Two recent books I want to read. Criticism of two entheogen scholarship books

I’ve been taking a break from books – I have 100 boxes of books in storage, my library became a monster I had to suppress back into hiding in the wellspring in the storage cave.

I want to read:
Studies in Hellenistic Religions
Luther Martin
http://amzn.com/149828308X
February 26, 2018
“Essays on Graeco-Roman religions, mystery cults, Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. 
Spatial, communal, and cognitive(? check this) approaches to the study of ancient religions. 
Structures and dynamics of religions past.
For scholars using recent historical research to confirm, evaluate, extend, or refute the hypotheses offered here.”
Nice cover art of Ptolemaic spheres cosmology. 
Table of Contents looks extremely relevant, and his book Hellenistic Religions was essential.

I want to read:
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ
Richard Carrier
http://amzn.com/1634311949
October 20, 2020
New book (looks similar to Earl Doherty’s book on the subject, The Jesus Puzzle).
Inferior art on front cover, an unworthy depiction of Ptolemaic cosmology – I hope his text is more inspired. 
It should be highly readable and an efficient summary of his thick research books.

Disappointing book:
Hatsis’ book was a huge disappointment (but I’m not that surprised) — practically no coverage of mushrooms in Greek or Christian art, and what little he writes on those topics, is a solid wall of basic, embarrassing mistakes – he’s completely unqualified to write on those particular topics; he hasn’t read the scholarship in the field.
Psychedelic Mystery Traditions [not really]: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, and Ecstatic States
I guess he contributes to other topics in the field of entheogen scholarship, but I’m only really interested in mushrooms in Greek and Christian art, in the field of entheogen scholarship now.

Disappointing book:
The new book The Immortality Key by Muraresku isn’t very good or worthy scholarship.  
The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
September 29, 2020
#1 New Release in Ancient Civilizations.
He has a weak, very inadequate understanding of Mystery Religions, and entheogens throughout Hellenistic religion.
The book is selling well and is considered influential.
The book is not very effective at all, in trying to cover entheogens in Mystery Religion.
The qualified reviewer, Cyberdisciple, panned The Immortality Key (dismissed it), after extensive analysis and critique of the book’s scholarship: 
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=Muraresku
Hopefully, scholars do better, more well-informed Empirical historical scholarship on Esotericism, than the book The Immortality Key.

Cheers
— Michael Hoffman
the Egodeath theory

I need to link my 2007 website, http://egodeath.com, to my new WordPress site.

Copied Main Article (2006) and Core Theory Specification Outline (1997) to this WordPress Site

It worked out well, copying the main article from ED site to here. Nice to see another framing of the article. Damn, my 1997 & 2006 articles are so well-written, makes me look a fool. I have made zero progress in 23 years.

Those articles look pretty good, the author seems mostly solid. I should probably read them to see what’s in them, especially the 1997 article, now that I know mytheme-decoding.

‘trap’ is discussed in the 1997 theory-specification/summary, an idea/ write-up worth reviewing (ie critically reading), to help future mytheme-decoding — I should not have had to so struggle to grasp why mushrooms were called “the sacrament of apolytrosis“; it’s straight out of my 1997 article. Mushrooms entrap personal control agent, and then set free.

“sacrament of apolytrosis” is a half-description, saying only Part 2 of the high drama, that mushroom mysticism “releases you from a trap” — yeah, from the {trap} & {pit} (Jonah’s prayer) that you discovered and fell into thanks to mushroom mysticism!

{pulled from out of the pit/trap/net-entanglement by your own struggle to secure control that’s increasingly evading control the harder you try}

Alan Watts was pretty good at describing “the ego is a trap set to catch itself”, in my Oct-Dec 1987 intensive reading his book my father gave me for my 21st birthday, The Way of Zen — but he lacks block-universe loosecog no-free-will/monopossibility.

In Dec 1987, when I figured out what Watts was trying and failing to communicate, I was mad at him for his failure there, to realize that the solution to his explanation was to bring-in the missing concept of no-freewill; or ‘determinism’ as I said at the time.

In early 1988, I read good thin red book cast as discussion of freewill problem.

Thin book by Cliff Blah: A Conversation on Freewill and Determinism.

Watts’ His later, L-25 books don’t cover those either (block universe non-power no-free-will, no-free-will/monopossibility , loosecog — all the 4-5 key topics which I brought together systemically, successfully, for my giant January 11, 1988 breakthrough, forming the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, summarized in article drafts throughout 1988, then finally posted 1997 at Principia Cybernetica (pretty good job of boiling down the most intense mystic sh*t).

Then I tried to write a proper article as planned & intended from Jan 1988 onward, VERY DIFFICULT.

My Egodeath Yahoo Group literally personally assisted me in boiling down my greedy article — I paid one group member — GET THAT WORDCOUNT DOWN to a particular number — to boil it down, producing my 2006 main article, not read-aloudable, it turned out; too complex sentences.

I broke up the overcomplex-structured sentences in 2007, to produce the unexpected final draft, which has been unchanged ever since.

I’ve been writing 1 sentence per paragraph, ever since that failure to be read-aloudable (for my voice recording of the main article), in 2006. 8th-grade readability = short words; short sentences; short paragraphs; short subsections. Don’t be all “apolytrosis” 5-syllable words, or you’ll never catch on.

Around 2010-2012, I started planning a wikipedia-clone (topical break-out) of the Egodeath theory, but this WP is good.

How to Market a Mushroom Sacrament that Causes Seizure and Reset? Frame It as the “Sacrament of Apolytrosis”, Leveraging Today’s Popular Mythemes, of {ransom price paid (= the sacrifice), to release prisoner tied to physical object with ropes, threatened with death/ inexorably destined for death}

Valentinian Gnostics’ product marketing plan for framing their mushroom mysticism as positive-only, leveraging mystic themes of the day, {ransom price paid (= the sacrifice), to release prisoner tied to physical object with ropes, threatened with death/ inexorably destined for death} – frame our mystic “seizure-and-reset” product as the “sacrament of apolytrosis“!

1. You have a problem! (I do?) You are trapped and destined for seizure-death! (I am?)

2. Buy our product, which solves your problem! Our product is called “Release from Entrapment by Our Product”! aka:

the sacrament of apolytrosis

I copied my pair of posts from 1997 Principia Cybernetica site, to here. 12-point, 12-paragraph summary of the Core theory; the Cybernetic theory; the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (which has no significant mytheme decoding). I posted that to the Egodeath Yahoo Group, in a dedicated thread.

Principia Cybernetica
Welcome to Principia Cybernetica Web
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/

no fkkin way, found it, by “Mark Hofmann” (me):
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/PHILOSI.0.html
Annotation on the “Philosophy, Introduction” article:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PHILOSI.html

That article is also at:  http://egodeath.com/intro.htm

Copied to WP as:
Self-control Cybernetics, Dissociative Cognition, & Mystic Ego Death
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/self-control-cybernetics-dissociative-cognition-mystic-ego-death/

_____

{electric chair} – Metallica’s album cover Ride the Lightning seems like a restylization of ELO’s album cover Face the Music. todo: Create separate WP “Rock Music Alphabetical Mytheme list” page about decoding Rock lyrics?
Mystic-State Allusions in Rock Music
http://www.egodeath.com/#mysticstaterockallusions

Argument in favor: 3-way co-confirmation of the Egodeath theory as I’ve always leveraged since 1998-2013 a 2-way cross-corroboration or, an
n-way cross-corroboration of the New Theory:

o the Egodeath theory (the Cybernetic theory + the Mytheme theory including peak-experiencing Rock lyrics; the Mytheme theory of religious mythology and of acid-inspired Rock lyrics):
agrees with
o Religious mythology
agrees with
o Acid-inspired rock lyrics peak themes
agrees with
o Gnostics/esoterics (vs. what she labels as “Orthodox”/exoterics) per Pagels’ 1st 3 books
agrees with
o Canturbury Psalter entire image with mushroom tree/ sword/ hanging/ freaking-out self-threatening Bible reader in center of the image next to happy upside-down self-blading guy.

Reminder: re: exo/eso term’y: As I posted i’m sure at Yahoo Group: I determined that:
Pagels in her first print run of hardcover The Gnostic Gospels which I have, she botched a typo which was later corrected, of ‘s’ vs ‘x’. In her first 3 books, I think she uses the term’y “Gnostic vs Orthodox”; she never (through her 3rd book, TGG) switches to F&G’s terminology in their book The Jesus Mysteries, “exoteric vs. esoteric” Christians.

_____

intersting: how decoding / breakthrough works: sheer quantity of connections! I’m successfully, very, SOLVING the concept of “apolytrosis” by sheer force of sheer QUANTITY of mappings to isomorphic other mythemes … and by the ability to so ramp-up the rate of connection-making; (that’s the “rush of success/ jackpot” that I sense and experience upon “breakthrough”) — the TRAJECTORY, the rate-of-increase of connection-making, proves the New Theory. vs. loss of control: the rate-of-increasing-failure heading straight down to hell.

Is the New Theory (or “the old way of thinking about control”) leading ever-upwards, or ever-downwards? Every time I grab that power of my old egoic control thinking, it yanks me down, pulls me into vortex of FAILURE — that is cybernetic control death.

“Release me from that failure/downward spiral — every time I think about control (while still relying on egoic-premised, Possibilism-premised thinking), it faster and faster yanks me into total loss of control; instability “shrieks”.

apolytrosis: deus ex machina.

deus ex machina rescues, resets from outside that failed, fully seized system where mind was made to will its destruction in order to grasp the nature of control in order to try to save itself by increased understanding of control which led to total failure and loss / disappearing/ vanishing of all control. APO LYTROSIS SET THE CONTROL-SYSTEM FREE WITHOUT HARM.

decoding = sheer quantity of seeing/ recog’g same theme, isomorphic theme, across many images — when you get in the headspace to look for the theme (like I was the first in Modern times to do toperceive “rock”as a maximally widespread top-5 mytheme) — the theme of “release from death/ doom/ seizure/ hell/ purgatory”.

for more about this idea-development, & pics, see Glossary: {release}. including “deus ex machina”.

_____

Consider image; woman = Heimarmene. God controls Fate; Fate controls the mind:

_____

an idea-flit at main article sarcastic “john” (shows totally a maiden) – the “initiate” is shown as emphatically female. i felt a “deepening of understanding/connections”. (?) what is that “deepening”, generally? caption: “John the Evangelist has been shown as blessing a cup of the Eucharistic sacrament shown as a snake.” almost seems an error — part of the idea-flit — isn’t that picture an error ie its isomorphic with the Hygeia daughter of (prove this w/ image search) Aeslecipius instead? mislabelled as “JOhn”?! example of “pagan” mythemes rebranded as Christian.

nov 30 my main article says cup — its a mini-krater
http://www.egodeath.com/images/egodeatharticle/HighRes/SnakeCup_HiRes.jpg

personal-size krater

{bowl of hygeia}
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bowl+of+hygeia
the worldline {snake} brings together the mind and the entheogen, causing {healing} of mental self-conflict of personal control power seizure (it introduces the seizure problem and (irony reversal) solves that problem, same as the promise of apolytrosis: marketed as:
the Mushroom of Release from Certain Entrapment and Destruction
downplay the truth: it’s actually:
the Mushroom of Seizure Panic Ego Destruction and Then Release http://www.egodeath.com/images/egodeatharticle/HighRes/StJohnSnakeCup_HiRes.jpg

here we go, high-res color orig: https://poisonhistory.wordpress.com/
A copy at pinteerest is captioned “St. John the Evangelist Expelling Poison” (? Should read like “expelling demon, purging impurity/pollution”?

{branching, non-branching, ironic branching, multi-headed snake, ivy non-branching, underside of mushroom cap has branches that are alarming/remarkable to see as a message/revelation}

___

I just [10:23 nov 29 2020] got vindication of a speculation of maybe 2015, that the Omphalus has a net. I didn’t research it then, not sure why not. It’s the cybernetic struggle that causes control-death and reset, {entrapment by the mind’s own struggles, death, and rebirth (release)}.

wik–“Most accounts locate the Delphi omphalos in the adyton (sacred part of the temple) near the Pythia (oracle). The stone sculpture itself (which may be a copy), has a carving of a knotted net covering its surface, and a hollow center, widening towards the base. The omphalos represents the stone which Rhea wrapped in swaddling clothes, pretending it was Zeus, in order to deceive Cronus. (Cronus [compare Jupiter -mh] was the father who swallowed his children so as to prevent them from usurping him as he had deposed his own father, Uranus).”

This wording is good: I was having trouble seeing how any defeat could be “ineveitable” and “surely doomed” so that you can prophecy, “the king is usurpingthe throne and is , at banquet , inveitably, INEXORABLY going to be overthrown”, but now I remembered! — here’s how teh sstye system crash is known to be inevitable, why the mind can predict the future doom with certainty:

{net, trap, omphalus} = the cybernetic struggle that causes control-death and reset, {entrapment & defeat by the mind’s own struggles, death, and rebirth (release)}. The harder the personal control system inspects and probes itself, and inspects it vulnerability and defends against it, the system has to identify and probe what the vulnerability is, in order to defend better against it, and the system heads increasingly toward system crash, self-cancellation, instability.

I really like this webpage frameowrk: of the PAIR OF PAGES:
1) MYTHEME-GROUP ALPHAETICAL LIST. Now, I always have a place to go, ROUTINELY, *mass-production* assembly line, when I make progress decoding a mytheme — can work it out at bottom of the mytheme page. and/or here in an “Idea Development page”. I have a place to put the worked-out, “new”/completed-decoding mytheme.
2) TECHNICAL the Egodeath theory REFERENT ASC-PHENOM GLOSSARY.

Mythemes Page & Glossary (Referent Domain) Page Design

Design 1: Top-of-site menu, left 2 items load pages titled:

Mytheme List

Egodeath Glossary

_____________________________

Design 2: Top-of-site menu, left 2 items load pages titled:

Mytheme List

Altered State Glossary

_____________________________

Design verdict: “Egodeath Glossary” is heaveyhanded, a very specific tone/emphasis, “all-in” on the {death} aspect. “Altered State Glossary” is more broad, open, neutral.

Mytheme List
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/

Altered State Glossary
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/glossary-for-the-egodeath-theory/

There’s a lot to like, in this design. 👍

_______________________

This DOES give me a weird idea: have the hot-text read:

Mythemes –> Referents

Mythemes –> ASC Phenomena

Mythemes –> Phenomena

Mythemes –> Observables

Nah, pro

There is only one possible way: PROTOTYPE IT; TRY IT.

fail; no overall gain. remember, the more words/junk you add, the more confusion goes w/ it. I tried:

Mythemes –> Glossary

It looked weirder than simple current design. Added cleverness, NO GAIN.

Now, past hour, I have odd idea of 3 such lists:

1. Mythemes

2. Referents — things that the mind perceives in the ASC.

3. Theory junk — entries such as “the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence”, “the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art”… these are NOT things you see… well, kinda. In a way, you DO see “the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence” in the altered state.

WTf is a word for “things perceived”? observables?

jeez hold on, hands are falling off, talk about keyboard shortcuts:

Top Pri (now that I created a Glossary):
Add to the Glossary, my keyboard shortcuts.

In the top-of-page menu for my WP site, I added a Mythemes link in upper left, and a Glossary link in upper right. The problem of context: in my lexicon, I think of it as:

Mytheme domain
Referent domain

But the hyperlinked word ‘Referents‘ in a top-of-page nav menu, lacks context, so lacks any meaning. ‘Glossary’, the meaning is well-understood, standard, familiar. When you load that “Glossary” page, the title of the page is:

Glossary of Altered State Phenomena

When you click the “Mythemes” link to the left of it, the title of the page is:

Top Priority: Stop Repeatedly Defining & Re-Typing-out the Basic Terms/Concepts; Leverage the Glossary! Forget the Newbies!

Glossary for the Egodeath Theory
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/glossary-for-the-egodeath-theory/

removed from Glossary – self-evident:

About this Domain-Optimized Lexicon

This domain-specific lexicon (the terms and their definitions) enables both efficient writing and thinking, and clarity for beginners.

The field of Loose Cognitive Science; Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism; the Egodeath theory, needs this efficient field-specific, tailored, professional, tuned lexicon, for efficiency — including acronyms.

I broke through to high efficiency of idea-development in April 1987 when I leveraged acronyms, in conjunction with a new style of concepts, such as “mental construct processing”.

This lexicon, defined in a centralized location here, helps obviate having to define terms for beginners every time I use the term. I no longer have to write so many verbose inline definitions.

This Glossary page enables me to write both for peers and for rank beginners/outsiders.

Each entry’s definition first presents an 8th-grade level, plain, common-language sentence, then a 200-character chat-postable phrasing, and then a technically precise sentence.

/ end of section “removed from Glossary – self-evident”

Multiple Mytheme-Clusters Cross-Decoded: {ransom, embedded in tree trunk, apolytrosis}

Note Nov 30 2020: main article at egodeath site: “The entheogenic altered state was integrated into culture, using metaphor to map all domains together. Altered-state experiencing served as a standard point of reference for banquets and parties, civic processions, punishment, release of captives, sport, taxation, and alliances.”

Mytheme-systems/ mytheme clusters decoded: LONG LIST: {Dionysus/Caesar held captive for ransom payment, to release unharmed} -> side-decoding burst out from that: {Osiris embedded in TREE TRUN)

[here’s how I did it re: completely decoding Osiris {encased in tree trunk}] –

the connection from Dionysus to then Caesar I couldn’t fit in “rock” so I substituted “tied to woOd”, that reminded me of Isisis embeedded in rock”, CROSS-SOLVING MYTHEME-STORY DECODING;

I “KNOW ALL PARABLES”. How the entire language of mythemes works; I HAVE DECIPHERED THE ENTIRE HIEROGLYPHIC LANGUAGE OF TEH WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS EGYPSHUNS!

I AM FLUENT AT MYTHEMESE, I was *fluent before, but less fluent than now*.

UNLIKE 2002 OR 2006, OR EVEN 2011 & 2013, I HAVE NOW ATTAINED COMPLETE FLUENCY AT MYTHEMESE.

Assisted by yesterday’s realization that a “complete” “decoding” of “a mytheme” has a high requirement, A REQUIREMENT THAT AS A GRADER, I NOW HAS A SYSETM TO GRADE THE “COMPLETENESS” OF A DECODING OF “A MYTHEME”, THE STUDENT MUST / TRANSLATOR MUST LIST MAPPINGS:

A “complete decoding” of a mytheme requires identifying connections:

1. among mythemes

2. from mythemes to referents

3. among referents

look, i’ve already defined ‘referents’ a miilon times, SEE THE GODDAM GLOSSARY!!!! I HAVE *GOT* –TO STOP NEEDLESS TYPING!

Top Priority: Stop Repeatedly Defining & Re-Typing-out the Basic Terms/Concepts; Leverage the Glossary! Forget the Newbies!

I *LOVE* THIS RECENT USE OF “ABSOLUTE MINIMUM # OF WORDS”, KISS!! YOU ond’t alays have to spell out greedily the full spec’n tech’l accuracy every time.

WHAT – IS – THE – BASIC – IDEA :

As a grader, all I’m looking for is: DO YOU HAVE THE 3 KEY WORDS, OR NOT?!!

fck this keyboard’s too stiff 😥 my hands!

—–

2 things about my discovery process of in-tree-trunk that I dondt know at the moemnt; it is interesteing that I don’t know testhese at the moemtn:

Unknown #1

o PRESENTLY UNKNOWN: Was it Osiris, or someone else, who was encased in tree trunk? Fact-check the facts of this historical event. No time; maybe i’m bothching the hell out of the myths and getting the facts all wrotng but i emphasize here: IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT WAS DIONYSUS ENCASED IN TREE TRUNK OR OSIRIS RANSOMED BY PIRATES AND HE TURNEED INTO LION AND SACRED THEM TO “JUMP OFF THE SHIP OVERBOARD”;

the *essential* point is the mythems, not the stupid bedtime storytime-narrative names:

In the narrative story “there was an {evil ungodly king} named “Bob”, who wanted to {kill the hero}, so sent him on a {mission} in a {strange remote land} to {retrieve a treasure} of {snake-rock-fruit} {guarded by a serpentine monster}.”

The stupid name “Bob” (ie “Osiris”) doesn’t matter at all. What matters is, the mythemes. The name “Bob” is the very least important part.

I copied the above mytheme-narrative to the Mytheme List page, cleaned up/expanded as:

Mytheme List, with Decodings
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/

{evil ungodly king} wanted to {kill the hero}, sent him on a {mission} in a {strange remote land} to {retrieve, bring back a treasure} of {snake-rock-fruit/ a rock-sacrificed flying ram on a tree} {guarded by a serpentine monster} won by a {potion from sorceress} to {avert and un-summon} {serpent-monster’s gaze}
(“avert monster’s gaze by giving it an entheogen” is a mytheme reversal/ inversion.)

Unknown #2

o PRESENTLY UNKNOWN: (meta-theory/Thagard: these unknowns are “post-experiment follow-up adjustments and priority-of-discovery checks”, “mop-up after the rush of discovery”)

Did I already LARGELY decode the mytheme {encased in tree trunk} in the 2002 era [ie sometime near the middle of the 1999-2006 period] (short of, my 2013 complete decoding of {tree vs. snake})?

Check Yahoo Group posts/dates.

[8:55 a.m. November 29, 2020] – SOLVED IT!! I GRASPED FOR THE FIRST* TIME.

*Doubtful ackshually… these things (decodings) always have roots.

I probably wrote a completely awesome explanation of {pirates holding Dionysus captive for ransom to set him free} in 2002 and just forgot.

I do remember reading & discussing/posting about the mystic-metaphor tall-tale of Caesar held captive on the shore, {held tied fastened to solid wood} (block universe) by {ropes (worldline) with rising tide; held in a cybernetic situation that will surely {inevitably, inescapably lead to doom/death/catastrophe} (shown in HBO series Rome, seen in 2005/6) in 2002 and forgot it), THE PIRATES .

mytheme decoded (COMPLETELY; more than previous, incomplete decoding of ~2002(?): Osiris in TREE *TRUNK*, GET IT?! GET it? HUH HUH HUH!!

I have “more connections explained in a build-out of the New Theory” compared to ~2002(?) work on this mytheme of {encased in tree} — because NOW I also possess, now I have grasp/ mapping, decoding, of the ENTIRE {tree vs. snake} / huge group of mythemes of “non-branching” which I LACKED in the 2002 era (that’s the middle of the period from:

1998: tried to map the Cybernetic theory to “what Jesus knew”, and wwas given book on Roman or Mystery Religion; & got Strange Fruit book. that led me to start work on mytheme decoding. roughly 1998.

By 2006, I wrote great article about essentially, decoding mythemes by mapping them to the Cybernetic theory.

Later, in 2011/2013 I IMPROVED (added many many connections ) onto the already pretty darn fluent 2006 language-skill, a huge build-out of the 2006 theory in 2011 then 2013. <– to understand the process of “you get it, now you GET IT, NOW YOU REALLY REALLY GET IT COMPLETELY”, COMPARE MY “FIGURING OUT” OF BRANCHING TREE/SNAKE IN NOV 2011 VS “COMPLETING THE MAPPING” IN NOV 2013.

That distinction right there, between my “understanding” in Nov 2011 vs. my “complete understanding” in 2013, says “everything” about how exactly, “theory expansion/addition (not so much, “theory-replacement”) works.

I’m always right, so I have zero experience with “theory-replacement”, only “unstoppable ever-expanding universe” of the Egodeath theory’s the Mytheme theory. j/k, 1988 was a kind of “theory-replacement”… hm.

otoh, you could say that my new articles on mushrooms in Christian art, & Greek art, based on CYBERNETICS which NO ONE* BUT ME understands ; my theory is totally unlike any existing Old Theory of myth or entheogens.

my theory = the Egodeath theory = the Cybernetic theory + the Mytheme theory.

The latter 2 component theories (Cybernetic & Mytheme), incorporate and integrate the topics of loosecog & Eternalism; Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, contrasted against Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism.

heading

The ‘literalist vs. analogy’ part of the terms “Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism” and “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” does not apply within the 1988-1997 Core theory; the Cybernetic theory; the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.

Any analogy/metaphor/mythemes beyond the minimum that scientific explanation requires, are to be considered, by definition, part of the Mytheme theory, not part of the Cybernetics theory.

_____

My theory is uncontested; there IS NO “Old Theory” to be replaced by my “New Theory”.

The “Old Non Theory” vs. the “New Theory” — Thagard’s concept is a flop, inapplicable, my constribution is NOT “theory replacement”; it is pure Discovery.

Check Thagard’s book Conceptual Revolutions for that distinction in each topical chapter (each area/field of Science, one per ch.)

Conceptual Revolutions
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/conceptual-revolutions/

I do “theory creation”, not “theory replacement” — unless you want to grace Hatsis/Wasson/Letcher / Minimalists by calling them a “theory” (choke) — a fragmented heap of confusion, more like. my theory covers / connects too many topics

The Old Theory = 10 fields, each one fragmented heap of confusion

The New Theory = 1 grand integrated scheme i have contributed for the FIRST TIME, where previously there was NONE; there was , prior to my system, NO SUCH “EXPLANATORY SYSTEM” sweeping acorss & integrating 10 “separate” domains.

the fragmented “set” or motley fragmented assortment of “old theories” eg lame theories of myth based in OSC, that made no connection toloosecog or cybernetic self-control instbility/reset/reconfiguration.

Scholars come to my site, my articles, they see my Actual Theory (of myth mushrooms cognition cybernetics block-universe-Eternalism), and they have NOTHING to compare my theory against! They are either a scholar of ahistoricity of Jesus eg Earl Doherty (& Richard Carrier trailing behind him), or of Esotericism (Richard Smoley), or of Entheogens (Carl Ruck & Clark Heinrich (they map mushrooms to myth but fail to map cybernetics & block universe Eternalism ), or of No-Free-Will (as an isolated topic) eg Sam Harris,

Incomparable in scope of even ATTEMPTED explanatory power.

There simply is no “Old Theory” that can even be compared to my “New Theory”.

What does Thagard say about this????

Name one other theory that explains/connects myth & mushrooms & cognitive-cybernetics & block-universe Physics models of time: there is NONE!!!

what a joke, to characterize this si

*(among published mainstream scholars of myth & mushrooms)

side note while writing-up a big rush of decoding of {captive by pirates} mytheme: Osiris {embedded in a tree} = embedded in {block universe {rock} – idea! [9:14 a.m. November 29, 2020] — “branching tree’s trunk” is non-branching solid matter like rock; embedded in tree TRUNK (non-branching) = snake carved in stone on rock altar of sacrifice to the gods to honor them.

“Groking” is alwas a MATTER OF DEGREE/ # OF CONNECTIONS.

Sacrament of Apolytrosis, Setting Free from Cybernetic Seizure Trap

Until you sacrifice (“pay”) your childish Possibilism-thinking, you are threatened with cybernetic death.

Upon payment of the release-price, you are released from the threat, of inexorably escalating cybernetic anti-control, cyber-death.

Like Caesar held captive for ransom, tied with rope to wood while the tide rises and rises, inevitably bound to escalate to the point of killing him. Things keep going toward a direction of ratcheting tigher, with more paranoia, more self-testing, the ram gets itself stuck in the thicket of self-challenging, self-battling, probing the power of control, and its vulnerability-opening right at the source where control-thoughts enter the mind and the local control system is incapable of stopping those thoughts being injected by the pre-existing frozen worldline as time moves forward into the near future.

mushrooms = the sacrament of apolytrosis =

the sacrament of {demanding payment}

the sacrament of being {captured}

the sacrament of {paying the release-price}

the sacrament of being {threatened with death} unless the {price is paid}

the sacrament of release from {threat of death}, {upon payment of the price}

Upon payment of the {release-price} (which is, repudiating Possibilism-thinking, converting to Eternalism-thinking), you are released from the threat (or, from the frustration of the still-polluted, unresolved self-testing & investigation problem), of cybernetic anti-control, cyber-death.

Why did mushroom-Christians (aka gnostics, esoterics, the race of Pneumatics) refer to mushrooms as “the sacrament of apolytrosis”?

Why did esoteric Christians refer to mushrooms as “the sacrament of apolytrosis”?

How are mushrooms like {releasing from captivity and threatening-to-death}?

How is {releasing from captivity and threatening-to-death} like the referent domain, of [things that are experienced in loosecog]?

How is:
{releasing from captivity and from threatening-to-death unless a ransom price is paid}
isomorphic with:
loosecog experiences

Put so rightly, the question answers itself.

self-control is threatned to death until the mind (is made to; passive sense/tense)

Until you sacrifice your childish Possibilism-thinking, you are threatened with cybernetic death.

like the referent domain, of [things that are experienced in loosecog]?

ychedelicHY did they refer to mushrooms as “the sacrament of releasing from captivity and threatening-to-death”

apolytrosis: a ransoming; some kind of “paying” of some kind of “price” to “set free, release” a person from some kind of “trap”.

DO NOT THINK IN TERMS OF “WHAT DID PAUL MEAN 2000 YEARS AGO”;

THE MATH PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED IS:

IN WHAT WAY IS XYZ ISOMORPHIC WITH THE EXPERIENCES IN THE PEAK ALTERED STATE AFTER A SERIES OF ALTERED-STATE SESSIONS COMBINED WITH DEEP PHILOSOPHY/ MENTAL WORLDMODEL RE-CONSIDERATION AND TESTING OF PERSONAL CONTROL POWER IN THE ALTERED STATE?

passage copied from “Idea Development page 2” from maybe Nov 26, 2020, Thanksgiving Day:

Take what’s buried and covered-up (hidden and secret occluded “sacrament of apolytrosis“), and instead, make it the primary identifier.

Speak Plain English: call a mushroom a mushroom. [1-2 days later, I’m thinking about it differently. YES, NO PROBALEM, THE SACRAMENT OF APOLYTROSIS IS CERTAINLY MUSHROID, BUT THE *POINT* OF THE NAME, YOU HAVE TO DECODE!!! The question we’re faced with here is, WHY did they refer to mushrooms as “the sacrament of releasing from captivity and threatening-to-death”? -mh Nov 29 2020 11:58 a.m.]

sacrament of apolytrosis

Strong’s: apolýtrōsis
https://www.biblehub.com/greek/629.htm —

apolýtrōsis (“redemption, re-purchase“),

[Christ takes a wrecked, broken, failed, destroyed, doomed-for-harm, accursed, control-seized, sunk-ship, DEFEATED, CAPSIZED CYBERNETIC PERSONAL CONTROL SYSTEM, and re-sets it, “deus ex machina”, rescuing from certain shipwreck, salvation and rescue from outside the system as his slave owing him his life, transformed and un-harmed. -mh]

[“from outside the system” — Carrier: “Christ from outer space”, ie: from Empyreumoutside the heimarmene-ruled spheres]

“apolýtrōsis (“redemption, re-purchase“), emphasizes the distance (“safety-margin”) that results between the rescued person, and what previously enslaved them. For the believer, the prefix (575 /apó) looks back to God’s effective work of grace, purchasing them from the debt of sin and bringing them to their new status (being in Christ)“

/ end of passage from “Idea Development page 2” from maybe Nov 26, 2020, Thanksgiving Day

Math Proof/Solution

Procedure:

Don’t let complexity detail obscure. Quite simple 3 aspects of decoding:
BASICALLY: COMPLETELY DECODING A MYTHEME REQUIRES DOING THE FOLLOWING:
o Identify the connections among mythemes.
o Identify the connections among referents.
o Identify the connections from mythemes to referents.

Draw the following diagram:

Circle 1: Mythemeland; the domain of mythemes, colorful stylized analogies/metaphors.
Arrows/lines among the mythemes inside this domain-circle.

Circle 2: Referentland; the domain of referents (ASC phenom); the domain of things experienced/seen in the ASC; of control instability/ cancellation/ reset/ transformation of mental model.
Arrows/lines among the referents inside this domain-circle.

Arrows between the two domains (mythemes & referents): mapping-arrows/ lines between the two domains.

/ diagram specification

More detail of those 3 regions /domains of making connections:
o List the mythemes
o Inter-map the mythemes to each other
o List relevant items from the referent domain (things seen/experienced in the advanced altered state, including things perceptible/experienced in OSC + things perceptible/experienced in the ASC)
o Discuss the relation among the referent things; discuss the cybernetics, loosecog phenom (not primarily relying on or leveraging mytheme analogies, but speaking as directly, scientifically, explicitly, clearly as possible).

GIVEN the mythemes:

{ransoming, ransom price, [here’s where I grokked dionsys lion pirates, a story i (re-)read yesterday! [8:55 a.m. November 29, 2020] youth Dionysus kidnapped and held for ransom by pirates who demand a price for his release, to set him free/ release him from captivity and threatening his death}

{ransom payment}

{paying price ” to “set free, release” a person from some kind of “trap, prison, captivity, unfreedom leading to death”}

{set free, release}

trap, prison, trapped, caught in a terrible disastrous entrapment, captivity, unfreedom leading to death

The following mythemes to map to the referent domain:

Referent domain to map mythemes to:

THE EXPERIENCES IN THE PEAK ALTERED STATE AFTER A SERIES OF ALTERED-STATE SESSIONS COMBINED WITH DEEP PHILOSOPHY/ MENTAL WORLDMODEL RE-CONSIDERATION AND TESTING OF PERSONAL CONTROL POWER IN THE ALTERED STATE

In the peak state, doom and dire sinking ship, no hope, accursed, the doom is certainly on its way, as remembered timelessly, this is how it went when at this specific particular place of dread and doom.

It’s over; but yet, one ends up walking way, transformed, unharmed, set free from the trap of doom.

link to blade , re “caress of steel” the close call of the self-threat blade that instructs and transforms thinking upon fully grasping and seeing the vulnerability and the nature of the control-source.

re: caress of steel: a close call with self-threatening; that close call is cybernetic death and forced mental transformation to fully grasp the vulnerability which completely counters personal control power and forces a change of mental model.

Mytheme: {blade & harvest} = ripe for sacrifice, to gain Eternalism
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/mytheme-blade-harvest-mature-for-sacrifice-to-gain-eternalism/

Mytheme: {spear/dagger/wound} = cybernetic death & rebirth
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/09/mytheme-spear-dagger-wound-cybernetic-death-rebirth/

Correctly Identifying Isomorphism (from the Mytheme to the Referent Domain) Is Vastly More Important than “What Did that Artist Think It Meant?”

It doesn’t matter what the artist thinks they meant when they were inspired writing poetry.

What matters is thoroughly mapping the domain of mythemes to the domain of altered-state-experiencing referents (aspects of altered-state experiencing; which includes things that you can see in the ordinary state plus things that you can perceive only in the altered state).

I don’t care what the Plaincourault painter thought {Eve’s skeleton remains and is revealed} means; I care only:

In what way is {skeleton} isomorphic with:
mental worldmodel transformation in loosecog, from Possibilism to Eternalism, as the model of personal control, time, and possibility. It’s a math problem, not a historical problem of “what, in fact, was that particular person actually thinking?”

This point isn’t an issue with Rush lyrics, because Neil Peart has a solid understanding of mythemes.

Lyrics Poetry Mytheme Decoding: {Necromancer}

Rush Lyrics Alluding to Mystic Dissociative Phenomena
http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22913
Lyrics are used here for academic analysis.
Album: Caress of Steel
Song: The Necromancer [ego death, vanished sense of self, under the control of the uncontrollable hidden controller]

the forbidding lands of the Necromancer. [altered-state land]

the intensity of his dread power can be felt, weakening the body [the mind’s sense of power shifts from local autonomous control, to the outside, uncontrollable controller]

they will become empty, mindless spectres, stripped of will and soul [control-power and the usual apparent ability to control the will, vanish]

their thirst for freedom [experiencing no-free-will]

Three trav’llers ford the river [cross into altered state]
The road is lined with peril, [self-control seizure, loss of control, while pursuing highly desired Transcendent Knowledge about control]
and the air is charged with fear. [fear of non-control due to future control-thoughts already being cast in stone in the block universe along the worldline lying ahead unavoidable]
The shadow of his nearness [the uncontrollable controller is sensed, perceived almost directly, with no personal locus-of-control over that sensed, inner-penetrating control-force]

the Necromancer keeps watch with his magic prism eyes. [visual distortion in ASC]

He views all his lands [awareness is raised up out from its usuall embededness & immersion in egoic mental construct processing and self-control ystesm, to be able to now look at self-control function from outside that system, a God’s-eye view]

and is already aware of the three helpless invaders trapped in his lair… [apolytrosis to set free … resume here. below are old v1 comments, replace; redo-from scratch.

Brooding in the tower, [non-compassionate higher-level all-powerful control agent]
watching o’er his land,
holding ev’ry creature,
helplessly they stand. [helplessness]

Gaze into his prisms, [altered-state perceptual blurring, compare “sea spray blurs my vision”]
knowing they are near.
Lead them to the dungeons.
Spectres numb with fear,
they bow defeated. [search “bow”] [defeat of ego power during ego death]

Enter the Champion.

Prince By-Tor appears

to battle for freedom from chains of long years.

The spell has been broken…

the Dark Lands are bright,

the Wraith of the Necromancer

soars away… in the night.

Stealthily attacking,
By-Tor slays his foe.
The men are free to run now <– apolytrosis
from labyrinths below.
Wraith of the Necromancer
shadows through the sky;
another land to darken
with evil prism eye.

Apolytrosis

Cyberdisciple’s clear definition helped; it’s strange how I start muddled, and then when I “get it”, it can seem so obvious.

Cyberdisciple wrote:
“The captive is freed and returned home, once something has been paid [the mind is made to sacrifice its illusion-based presumptions; paying that, causes reset and release] as ransom to the captor.”

https://logeion.uchicago.edu/ἀπολύτρωσις

Valentinians/ Gnostics/ esoterics / higher Christians used the mushroom sacrament of apolytrosis.

“after-redemption”, “after-release” —
Cyberdisciple applied Greek + the Egodeath theory to explain meaning of “apolytrosis” clearly, relevantly, simply.

_____

Email to Joshua Bempechat at Ancient Psychedelia

Hi Joshua,

I fully decoded the complete, hi-res image that contains your cropped “mushroom tree/ hanging/ sword” image.

New article:
Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/
That decoding revealed enormous ramifications.

Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/
The article from which I broke out the Canterbury article when it quickly took off and became long.

Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/

You have a cropped portion of the image at:
https://www.ancientpsychedelia.com/canterbury-psalter/

Happy Thanksgiving!

— Michael Hoffman, the Egodeath theory

Email to Richard Smoley

Hi Richard,

My new articles are ready to read.

Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/

Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/

I have, and have read, the set of Gnosis issues.

Happy Thanksgiving!

— Michael Hoffman
the Egodeath theory

https://www.gnosismagazine.com/back_issue_list/back_issue_list.html

Infuriating, Arbitrary, Smug Smear-Piece Article Against Psychedelics (Go Absolutely to Hell, All Entheogen-Minimalists, Frauds, Charlatans, Thieves, Counterfeiters) – An Academic Exercise in POMPOSITY Like Wasson’s Hall of Shame Quotes; as Smug and Condemnatory, as Full of Baloney

Why do I even read these gravy-train conventional thinkers? No wonder I tore up some representative books and pissed on the pile in 1995 — best thing I ever did, GARBAGE. Served me well!

These huckers of confusion, these failures at mystic transformation, who fail to engage the demon dragon, serve to put off real mysticism, DRY WELLS; THEY NEITHER PASS THROUGH THE GATE, NOR LET ANYONE ELSE ENTER IN.

Article title:
Drug-Induced Mysticism Revisited
2011
https://charles-upton.com/2018/02/25/on-psychedelics-and-or-entheogens-drug-induced-mysticism-revisited/

https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Drug-Induced+Mysticism+Revisited%22%2C+Charles+Upton

It would be amusing to modify and invert his article (hit-piece) to smear and defame his group instead of the entheogenists as he does.

INFURITATING ARTICLE SUGGESTED TO ME (AGAIN) BY ACADEMIA.ORG, (SECOND TIME READING, IS JUST AS MADDENING. IT’S NOTHING BUT A CHEAP, UNCONTESTED SMEAR-PIECE, A HIT-PIECE AGAINST PSYCHEDELICS, AN ATTACK TO DAMN THEM WITH FAINT PRAISE – nay, to wholesale demonize the flesh of Christ given by God, vehicle of the Holy Spirit!

“Since religions are founded by Divine action through prophets and avatars (Buddhism possibly excepted yet Gautama Buddha is considered to be the ninth Avatar of Lord Vishnu within the Hindu tradition), to say that they have been initiated by psychedelics is to deny that God can act on His own initiative, and consequently to deny God.

“It is to make “religion” an entirely human affair, and thus to posit something that does not fit the definition of that word.”

A SOLID WALL OF ARBITRARY BRAIN-SALAD BULLSH*T. WHAT ARE YOU SELLING IN PLACE OF ENTHEOGENS — AND WHY DOESN’T YOUR PRODUCT WORK?

“No religious tradition claims to have been founded on the basis of psychedelic experience; such claims emanate from users of psychedelics who like to project their fantasies upon traditions they in no way intend to follow.”

“Anyone who thinks that Moses met God on Sinai or Jesus became “Christ” after eating some mushroom, because how else could they have done it, has no sense of the sacred whatsoever.“

WELL $&&&*&#@$ YOU, TOO! What an aggressive bully!

The gods have a message for him, and it’s not a Y-shaped message; it’s closer to an upside-down Y configuration.

He’s dead wrong, and totally nasty, rude, and demeaning — a classic combination.

“Within certain contexts and in certain yugas it might have been spiritually possible to open initiates to the graces of an already established spiritual Way through the use of psychedelics, but such things are certainly not possible to us in our own time, except at great cost—and with what coin could we pay that cost, poor as we are?”

“In any case it is certain that the establishment of a legitimate spiritual Way through the use psychedelics has never been either possible or necessary.”

OH, IS THAT SO? ON WHAT AUTHORITY?

“BECAUSE I SAY SO.” Wow, real convincing.

We have heard QUITE ENOUGH; INDEED, FAR MORE THAN ENOUGH, of YOUR guys’ lame view, your salesman schtick.

YOU GUYS HAVE HAD YOUR CHANCE.

YOU FAILED, NOW GET (the hell) OUT OF THE WAY.

Our question in response is:

What ELSE is on offer, from other quarters? Does anyone have a product on offer, that ACTUALLY WORKS?!

He SPEAKS FALSEHOOD –*PROVED* RIGHT HERE RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES, HE BLASPHEMES the REAL FLESH OF CHRIST, THE HOLY SPIRIT:

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f134.item.zoom

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom

We reject your bogus proposal — frauds, cons, hucksters of verbal spaghetti, driven by pure prejudice; empty, false words piled up so high they fall over; arbitrary verbal spew meaning nothing.

You are trying to replace Christ with yourself, your bunk non-product you are hawking —

PACK UP YOUR SNAKE OIL AND GET OUT OF TOWN AND DON’T COME BACK

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%22snake+oil%22

Gnosis Issue 26 (Winter 1993)
Psychedelics & the Path: Intro Quote

___

Gnosis #26 (Winter ’93): Psychedelics & the Path
https://www.gnosismagazine.com/issue_contents/contents26.html
Includes interview with Ram Dass, psychedelic trips by Jean-Paul Sartre and Adele Davis, Roger Walsh on “Mysticism: Contemplative and Chemical,” Bruce Eisner on Ecstasy, more.

“I see psychedelics as a catalyst and a door opener; I don’t see them as a full path.”

-Ram Dass, from The GNOSIS Interview with Ram Dass

oh stfu, wtf does that mean? It’s the main (read: only) tool that can be, and traditionally has been used, reliably and immediately, for complete mental-model transformation. No funding of fake gurus required.

What f*cking snake-oil bullsh*t that doesn’t work, are YOU selling, Rammed Azz?

STOP PARTICIPATING AND COLLABORATING IN THIS DAMNED ACCURSED DEMONIC COVER-UP!

I read this issue when it came out, and I recognized it — and the Tricycle Buddhism special issue on Psychedelics, the same sh*t, as a way to COVER-OVER the topic, not “cover” the topic.

My historical entheogen scholarship since 1993 or 1999 has been a reaction to these bullshit issues of Gnosis & Tricycle, which damn psychedelics with faint praise, when it’s psychedelics that are the real deal — not ersatz “Esotericism”, ersatze “the Mass”, and ersatz “Meditation” — hucksters all, selling snake-oil, that doesn’t work, while badmouthing the plants that created and provide actual mystic altered state.

What brand of bullsh*t do you want to buy, sucker?
Fraudulent Esotericism?
Fraudulent Catholicism?
Fraudulent Buddhism?

BOW DOWN to psychedelics, you PRETENDERS trying to foist Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism on people and calling it “mystic enlightenment”.

You want actual mystic enlightenment, instead of EMPTY CLAIMS from fake religion, fake “esotericism”, fake “meditation”, and the phony magical-thinking “Mass”?

Important Profoundity Paragraph of Mythem-Clusters Decoding

important paragraph came out of the rebuttal to the quote from R.A.:

Honor, worship, reverence, fear, respect, and honor the true {flesh of Christ} the {savior} from outside the mind’s personal self-control system, who {fishes you out} and {purifies you of polluted thinking} (Naive-Possibilism-thinking) and {regenerates} your mind, and makes your mind {sacrifice illusion to pay the ransom to release you from cybernetic disaster, catastrophe, entrapment and doom}, that invokes and {summons} the actual, real {demon, bedevilling} viable self-control, and then {saves the helmsman’s ship from sinking}, {paying the price} — your {firstborn child}-self/thinking — that {pays the price to set you free from peak-state self-harm demonstration, apolytrosis}, and then {releases you for free}, unharmed, back into the remaining peak-window of the altered state session, now laughing and shaking your head and praying in trembling, God-fearing and grateful prayer, giving thanks for your close-call demonstration release, the {caress of the threatening and instructive steel blade of death and cybernetic disaster}, then after that loose cognitive association session subsides, back into the ordinary-state world, now {reborn} and {made complete, purified, garment washed white}, without an illusion-premised mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and control.

—

From my critical discussion of Muraresku’s chicken-out-while-bragging-to-the-heavens claims, of having out-done Mystery Religion:

😱

as the Chorus, I can’t bear to watch;
shielding my eyes to avert the wrathful gaze
of the madness-inducing fury of the gods
as they strike him down, King Muraresku

Gods, please do not strike me down; I bow to you; I honor you; I sacrifice to you, Zeus Meilichios, all-powerful over my control-thoughts. 🙏🐍🐉

These fraudsters always brag to the skies about how superior their methods are, over those flimsy and ineffectual psychedelics; their heavily marketed bunk product that they are selling instead, trying to foist-off onto their marks; then when you call them on their bullsh*t products that in fact don’t work, they puss-out and say “We only claim that meditation delivers relaxation, why you being so mean to us? 😢”

Define the concep of “mark”; victim/target of a con artist selling bunk counterfeit product that doesn’t work:

The Entheogen Diminishment Industry: The Very Definition of Con, Scam; Targeting “Marks”

Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick
Redirected from: Mark (victim)

Gnosis Issue 26 (Winter 1993)
Psychedelics & the Path: TOC

group this h2 section w/ the intro quote maybe w/ my reaction.
Want only 1 section/TOC entry, for this mag issue.

Gnosis Issue 26 (Winter 1993): Psychedelics & the Path
https://www.gnosismagazine.com/issue_contents/contents26.html

10
Alternative Realities
Viewing Drugs Rationally
A column by Stephan A. Hoeller

14
Introduction: The Fires of Artifice
by Richard Smoley
Do psychedelics really tell you the truth about yourself?

18
Mysticism: Contemplative and Chemical
by Roger Walsh
How “artificial” experiences compare with the ecstasies of contemplatives.

22
Drugs and the Path
Truth, illusions, and punctured auras – a variety of spiritual teachers give their views.

26
Using Drugs Wisely
by Myron J. Stolaroff
A veteran researcher suggests how to get the best out of psychedelic experience.

31
Psychedelics: A First-Amendment Right
by a Psychedelicist
Should mind-changing drugs be protected by the Constitution?

34
Two Classic Trips
by Thomas Riedlinger
Adelle Davis loved it, but it was a bummer for Jean-Paul Sartre.

42
The GNOSIS Interview with Ram Dass
by Jay Kinney and Richard Smoley
A lively discussion about LSD, spirituality, the ’60s, and gurus.

51
The Sobriety That Surpasses Intoxication
by Kabir Helminski
Does traditional spirituality offer something better than drugs?

54
Ecstasy Revisited
by Bruce Eisner
What the rave scene and cutting-edge psychology have in common.

60
Gracie’s Visible Language
by Gracie & Zarkov
Why language may be “the most alien artifact we have.”

64
Gerald Heard: Soul Guide to the Beyond Within
by John V. Cody
A glimpse of the visionary who turned on the California elite years before Timothy Leary.

71
Book Reviews
Brother Twelve by John Oliphant, foreword by Colin Wilson
Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis by G.R.S. Mead
Plotinus: The Enneads: A New, Unabridged, and Definitive Edition of the Classic Translation by Stephen MacKenna
Egypt: Moulids, Saints, Sufis by Nicholass H. Biegman
The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey edited by Raymond Lifchez
Islamic Spirituality II: Manifestations edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review edited by Hershel Shanks
The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe by Valerie I.J. Flint
Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self by Kabir Edmund Helminski
The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation by Thomas Keating
The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry edited by Stephen Mitchell
The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, read by Sidney Lanier
The Boy Who Made Dragonfly: A Zuni Myth as told by Tony Hillerman, read by Debra Winger
The Golden Key: A Fairy Tale by George Macdonald, read by Michael Zebulon
The Mystic Quest: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism by David S. Ariel
When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession by Irvin D. Yalom
Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann
The San Francisco Oracle Facsimile Edition edited by Allen Cohen

Email to Sam Woolfe

Hi Sam, 

After seeing your images at:

The Psychedelic Origin of Christianity
https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/the-sacred-mushroom-and-cross-by-john.html

I fully decoded the complete, hi-res image that contains your cropped “mushroom tree/ sword” image.  

New article:
Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/
That decoding revealed enormous ramifications.

Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/
The article from which I broke out the Canterbury article when it quickly took off and became long.

Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/

Happy Thanksgiving!

— Michael Hoffman, the Egodeath theory

> Thank you for sharing this, very interesting!
> — Sam

Pursuading Scholars to Convert to the Egodeath theory’s Maximal Mushroom Theory of Christian Art

At my weblog posting:
Difficulties of Being an Esoteric Christian
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/25/difficulties-of-being-a-christian/comment-page-1/#comment-80
Wrmspirit wrote:

“Wishing you a peaceful Thanksgiving, and to let you know how grateful, how thankful, I am for the Egodeath Theory and to be able to read your writings and witness your uncovering discoveries for the world to see.

“I also give thanks to all the scholars who don’t quite get it yet as they provide the contrast necessary for growth through differentiation and hope that one day they may move through their boundaries and open into the space of clarity that is theirs to see and breathe from too.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

/ end of comment on weblog posting

comment 2 at that page:

w wrote (condensed):

Regarding suppression of mushrooms, and the controversy around whether mushroom trees in Christian art represent psychoactive mushrooms (together with suppression of the entire framework of Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism that goes along with entheogens):

History repeats itself.

The political realm (externally and internally) has always plagued egos.

The more power that egos get, the stronger the greed and desire for control.

Suppression (of mushrooms, and of the concomitant Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism) was enforced, to try to maintain power and control over the masses.

It wouldn’t be surprising at all if the Catholic Church was partly responsible for suppression of the authentic Eucharist.

This isn’t an intellectual opinion; this is simply based on common sense, and an awareness of human nature.

A political force has been tightly braided, throughout history, from the beginning.

Where there’s politics, there’s suppression, including of mushrooms & the concomitant Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

/ end of w’s comment 2 on weblog

What Does the Phrase “Big Breakthrough” Mean? Define It, Like Yesterday’s Defining of “Complete Decoding” (of a Mytheme)

> I love your emojis.   They tell a whole story just like cave drawings have always done.

I absolutely love emojis. I’ll consider using them more.

https://emojipedia.org

> Christmas and Easter and the transition of seasons in the ordinary world have so much more meaning and depth now through the Egodeath Theory’s possibilism/eternalism.

I can probably find a million exceptions, but it seems like October (start of mushroom season), November, December, & January are my “big breakthrough” season:
October 1987 – January 1988 
November 2011
November 2013
November 2020

But what does “big breakthrough” mean?

What, specifically, does the phrase “big breakthrough” mean?  

How can I prove that I made a ‘big breakthrough’?  

How can I measure / quantify “big”?

I made huge progress yesterday defining what, specifically, a “complete decoding” (of a mytheme) must mean.

Defining what the phrase “big breakthrough” must mean for the Egodeath theory, must be similar to defining what a “complete decoding” (of a mytheme) means.

I should express that in terms of Paul Thagard’s model of how theory-revision and theory-replacement works, such as [need to identify good examples]:

o Replacing a large set of connections by a different set;

o Inverting a hierachy (simply b/c I remember this from Thagard)

o Moving the center — as in, correcting a “category error” about what kind of writings (genre) the books of the New Testament are.

A Given; a Fact: All Religions Everywhere Always Have Some Entheogen Use

Yes there is Some Usage of Entheogens in Christianity in the Modern Era

A book by someone like Huston Smith (he’s “cool”), said that an Orthodox monk told him “we have a better way to reliably induce the mystic state” (pretty clearly implying the way that works).  

There are stories about Hasidics found carrying things.  

It is not clear to what extent, in modern era.  It IS clear that there is SOME usage in modern era.  

eg some number of people have been alchemically inspired during church service; “far from unheard of”.  

“Usage exists.”  

Do they use some, yes or no, in the modern era?  The answer is Yes.

Defining “some” – that’s another matter.

Questions from Cyberdisciple

Additions from Cyb Nov 28 2020:

“Evidently there has been suppression in the Prohibitionist 20th century.

“What sort of suppression was there before Prohibitionist laws?

“That’s the question that Moderates should answer, instead of projecting back 20th century-style Prohibition onto earlier eras.”

_____

“Moderates start by assuming a negative: that mushrooms were not used commonly.

“They assume they were somewhat rare, or are self-contradictory on this point, and act as though they were completely suppressed somewhere by someone.

“Moderates assume that the knowledge was lost until c. Wasson in the 50s.”

/ end nov 28 additions

What profit in suppressing Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, and selling Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism?

What is the motive for suppressing mushrooms and promoting literalist ordinary state possibilism?
Answer: $
eg Brown didn’t even bother to specify why it’s a total, worst-case problem (a problem that mitigates against the credibility of Wasson re: mushrooms in Christianity), that Wasson was Pope-buddy/banker.

[joke: what’s the meaning of any mytheme; mytheme {m}?
Answer: rebirth in the ASC.
A shallow tautology answer, that fails to differentiate mythemes or ASC phenom/ experien/ observ.

What’s 248 x 84.3?
Answer: a number. <– um, correct?]

When did supposed entheogen suppression start, in Christianity?

If we argue against all the Moderates that want to assert some sort of priest suppression in antiquity (middle ages, renaissance), when did it start?

When did the Catholic eucharist stop normally being psychedelic?
Answer: According to Pagels, during Valentinus’ time, Valentinians/ Gnostics/ esoterics / higher Christians used [mushroid] sacrament of apolytrosis (“after-redemption”, “after-release” – pls apply Greek + the Egodeath theory to explain meaning of “apolytrosis” ), while at the same time, lower Christians / “orthodox” / exoteric Christians, used the inert Mass.
In the same, oil & water congregation.

Prot stopped shrooming when?

When did the various Protestant churches stop offering a psychedelic eucharist?

I’m thinking it was certain factions/ circles eg groups of monastic monks who taught each other how to use it; how accomodate their mind to harmless seizure & mental model transformation, how to interpret myth — the Lesser Mysteries book-learning preparatin training and exams you have to pass before real deal firsthand.

_______

“Your idea development is tending towards the Reformation and Counter-Reformation as the key battle ground.”

w/ Chron’y Revisionism, there’s an interesting foreshortening: everything before the printing press appears at the same distance (Edwin Johnson argues); there’s no difference in tone/character of writing, between 1525 vs. 1200 vs 400 vs 100 A.D. According to Johnson. It all has the same undifferentiable character: Church Fathers, Luther, read like the same factions of monks wrote them all, he argues. Same battles, same writing style.

“I know antiquity the best,

“I know fairly well the middle ages and renaissance in Italy (or what the unrevised chronology conventionally understands those periods to be). They seem psychedelic to me, with not obvious suppression of psychedelics.”

Chrono-Vertigo

“It is a major challenge to think in the Edwin Johnson chronology.

“It is mind blowing to think about, always has been since I encountered it via your work in the early 2000s.

“Makes me feel like the rug has been swept out from under me.

“The simple take away is to be agnostic about all historical narratives before the printing press (c. 1440, in conventional dating).”

___

From the main article:
http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm#_Toc177337612

The adept use and comprehension of metaphor faded after the battle between politicized Christianity and Scientism around 1700, leaving a long-term standoff between mystically neutered religious literalism versus exclusively ordinary-state-based Science.

The culturally predominant type of religion in the modern era neutralized and reduced the traditional initiation system by a combination of non-transformative surface ritual and intellectual speculation based only in the ordinary cognitive state. 

—

The modern cultural experience resulted from the predominance of the ordinary cognitive state.

The lack of culturally integrated altered-state initiation caused the egoic mental world-model, which is based in only a single cognitive state, to become completely predominant.

/ main article excerpt

—

“I had to catch myself while working a the post about Muraresku.

“I was going to write something that implied that The Egodeath Theory and the Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion draws down the date for widespread drug use in Western religion to c. 1700, but that’s not right.

“I was thinking of the above part of the main article, but had misremembered its import (or perhaps never sorted it out very clearly).

“The statement is not about psychedelic use, but about metaphor.”

—
“I’m interested in the topic of literalist interpretation’s rise to dominance in the modern era.

“Public and scholarly discourse about religion is hampered by it. Modern books are constrained by their failure to comprehend religious metaphor.

“I want to read more about the c. 1700s period, and now also the Reformation/Counter-Reformation that directly preceded it.”

—
“Hanegraaf’s Rejected Knowledge book fits in with the above, since he relates the rejection of esotericism with the Rationalist, Science-first, Enlightenment.

“The Moderate position is that mushrooms, even if used somewhere at some time, were definitely suppressed, so much that mainstream culture forgot about them until the 60s.”

—
“When does the Maximal Theory ‘end’, chronologically speaking?

“Per the Maximal Theory are we to say that mushrooms have always been used in religion?

“Is it tied to the fading of ‘adept use and comprehension of metaphor’ per the above in mainstream culture?”

—
“When did Christian churches switch from authentic initiation to ‘non-transformative surface ritual’?”

Mytheme: {clothing/ flesh removed, revealing naked body/ skin/ skeleton}

This particular decoding led to a meta-level really great re-definition of what the very idea of “decoding” outght to require, to adequate deescribe per Thagard “I kinda got it before, but now I had a breakthrough and now i REALLY REALLY GET IT” — UM could you be more articulate? Did you “understand” “Eve saw she was naked”, mystically, or do not not undersatnd it? How well do you understand it? –> what doese or should that mean, “How well did you decode that mytheme?”

This is not the first time these ideas have flickered half-consciously through my mind, to background-churn and work on them. I immediately read Browns’ eagerly awaited, pre-ordered book The Psychedelic Gospels, and read his {skeleton} passage that I think is in there, so you could say that my “sudden solving this decoding out of nowhere” has roots going back to when that book came out, and you can trace my decoding back to … 1986 or something crazy, getting ever weaker, weaker, right now I’m just about to score an ‘A’, I’m on the verge of earning an ‘A’ grade, regarding my mytheme-decoding of {removing clothing, revealing/exposting the skeleton}. Back in 1986, “I heard of {naked}, but I would now score MH1986 with an ‘F’ for my richness of grasp of {naked/skeleton/exposed} mytheme. Suppose (quick sketch): in terms of theory-connection-growth per Thagard:

1986 ‘F’ grade

1999 ‘D’ grade – sparse, vague answer

2002 ‘C-‘ grade

2006 ‘B’ grade – superior, but w/ room for improvement

2013 ‘A-‘ — got the essentials, need polish — [at this point had/developed/worked out brilliant idea/list on how to define “adequate decoding of a mytheme“]

2020 solid ‘A’ grade, reached pretty easily

What Makes for a Good, Thorough “Decoding of a Mytheme”?

Answer bubbled up from far down below in this page: [8:44 p.m. November 27, 2020]

What constitutes a good, complete, satisfying decoding?
1. Map the isolated mytheme to the referent domain (something experienced or perceived in ASC).
2. Mapping the mytheme to other mythemes of some 4 types: duo-pairs/complements; near-synonyms, & antonyms. 
3. Mapping all the related mythemes to the referent-domain.

What’s the difference between ‘decoding’ vs. ‘mapping’ a mytheme?

A decoding is a set of mappings. ! YAY! totally makes sense, for lexicon! I been sloppy using these terms but only intuitively. So glad to define this true SYSTEM. Copy to the “theory of myteheme…. page

I retitled the Theory of Mythemes article to:

Theory of Mythemes; Decoding a Mytheme; & Mappings in a Decoding

retitle? eg Theory of Mythemes, Decoding, and Mapping. I find that I use those terms ‘decoding‘ & ‘mapping‘ and think about them thus: a decoding is a simple grand single thing. ie: eg:

“I decoded {foot/leg}! yay!”

But what’s involved in that “decoding”? MANY MAPPINGS.

Mappings among mythemes, w/ the new/incoming mytheme.

Mappings from that set of mythemes to referents.

Mappings (? relationships?) among referents. <– UNCLEAR if it makes sense to have this category. This would be “the ‘Core theory’ component of the Egodeath theory, ie the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence”.

I don’t think or feel that the concept of “mapping” applies.

My main sense of the term ‘mapping’ was simple: you map 1 mytheme to 1 referent. Oversimplistic.

Consider instead, 3 terms:

Among mythemes in Mythemespace, you “relate” them (4 types of relations).

Between a mytheme and a referent, you “map” the m to the r.

Among elements of Referentspace, you … “connect”??? eg:

In ASC, awareness or mind is able to observe the workings of the personal control system, and see the snake} worldline and {wellspring w/ dragon hiding} unstoppable/uncontrollable source of thoughts.

Maybe this form of formulation could be good:

A decoding of a new incoming mytheme consists of:

Specifying the set of relations among new mytheme and other mythemes

Specifying the set of mappings from those mythemes to referents

Specifying the set of connections among referents in REferentspace

A decoding of a mytheme is a set of mappings: ( say 5 things about those “mappings” — in the Mythemes domain (“Mythemeland”),

1. you must show the relation of the “new mytheme” with all known mythemes — there are 4 types of relationships — and,

2. you must map all mythemes that connect w/ the “new mytheme”, to the Referent domain (aka “Referentland”) — and,

3. thirdly, to complete the set, you must make sure to cross-map and items in Referentspace to each other, that are affected by the above mappings from Mythemespace to Referentspace.

To fulfill Paul Thagard’s model.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/theory-of-mythemes/
Cross-link that page with:
Scientific Reproducibility of Mytheme Decoding
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/scientific-reproducibility-of-mytheme-decoding/

Toward a “complete” decoding of the mytheme {flesh removed, revealing skeleton}:

___________________

2 hours earlier:

content below was started in the line above, “2006 ‘B’ grade – superior, but w/ room for improvement”:

add-in mappings ACROSS MYTHEMES. SO:

WHAT CONSTITUTES A “GOOD MAPPING/DECODING” IS *NOT ONLY* MAPPING TO A REFERENT, BUT, ALSO, MAPPING TO OTHER MYTHEMES.

You often have pairs; mytheme-contrast-pairs, eg {tree vs. snake}, or {clothed vs. naked} — the most oversimplistic, inadequate notion of what’s involved in decoding/mapping, is to have, in total isolation, a singl mytheme (and only one variant of it — eg, fail to connect snake to ivy), mapped to a referent, and, FAILING TO MAP THE ANTONYM-MYTHEME, THE COMPLEMENT-MYTHEME in the case of contrasted-pair, duo-mythemes like {clothed vs. skeleton-revealed}.

Not only is Eve {naked} (no clothing), she goes further: which Brown seems to get and grasp: her very skeleton even *under*, hidden by her skin, is revealed (MUST map to “burn away the perishable flesh” or you cannot score an ‘A’ grade for “decoding/mapping”.

My definition in the past failed to emphasize enough, the types of OTHER mythemes that you MUST map to, to score an ‘A’ grade and do an “adequate mytheme decoding/mapping”.

Even in the present section of this idea-dev file, I falsely inadequately define “decoding” as “map a mytheme to its referent”.

That definition of “decoding a mythem” is bad, it gets an ‘F’ or a ‘C’ at best. My feeling is, you have done a poor job of decoding if:

o you vaguely map all mythemes to the “universal referent”, Possibilism vs Eternalism.

o you specifically map an isolated mytehem to a single referent: {rock} = block universe}. but fail to discuss:

o the paired mytemes (eg {snake} is paired with {block universe}),

o the complementary mythemes (eg {tree} is the mutually exclusive opposite of {rock}),

o the alternative adjacent mythemse eg {branching vs nonbranching}.

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p142.xml

Reading Brown’s (ie Jerry & Julie Brown’s) article, I had a little(?) idea —

[note a few minutes later, [6:48 p.m. November 27, 2020]:

It’s going well, I have somethiung like 10 (?) other mythemes mapping-reconnections falling into place, the ivy tendrils are reconnecting (per Thagard’s model of theory-expansion/revision).

I want to take snapshot for Brown (just as a token & soveneir of appreciation), but I don’t want to psychologically disrupt and block my flow of successfully turning-the-crank to see how big my jackpot winnings are;

how many mytheme-language items are connected (that I must discover/recognize) to the {clothing-hiding vs. skeleton-seeing} mytheme?

{veil/unveil; lid on basket/ lid off basket to reveal hidden serpent; hidden vs. revealed; darkness vs. light (illumination)} —

the {skeleton} has special connotation, of “there is an underlying systemic structure of yourself” –

eg the specific mytheme {skeleton) with its distinctive connotations & emphases, directs the attention to Eve’s “body”, NOT to “seeing a serpent” or “frozen into block universe”.

Lazy vague “mytheme decodings” that get an ‘F’ or a ‘C’ grade — it’s like my joke:

“Here’s a geernal key to this Canterbury puzze

From
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/22/mytheme-a-ram-caught-in-a-thicket-by-his-horns/ —

General decoding key:
o Abraham is you.
o Isaac is you.
o The bush is you.
o The sacrificial knife is you.
o The rock altar for sacrifice is you.
o The ram is you.

Hope this helps.

/ joke

New joke for this {clothing} decoding problem:

All mythemes mean “Possibilism vs. Eternalism”. So, here’s a universal solution (mapping-to-analogy-referent) for all mythemes:

{mytheme M} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!

THEREFORE:

{clothing vs. skeleton} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{veiled vs. unveild} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{hidden then revealed} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{child vs. adult} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{darkness vs. light} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{xx} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!
{xx} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism– in the entheogenic altered state!!!

Hope this helps.

Q.E.D.

This raises the great question:

WHAT CONSTITUTES AN ‘A’ GRADE, “ADEQUATE” OR “COMPLETE” DECODING (MAPPING TO REFERENT ITEM OF THE ALTERED STATE) OF A MYTHEME)?

‘F’ grade: All mythemes refer to (or describe-by-analogy, in the altered state) Possibilism vs. Eternalism

‘F’ grade: All mythemes refer to Possibilism vs. Eternalism. Therefore:

{removing clothing, revealing skeleton}

{Eve saw that she was naked} = the mind in the ASC sees its underlying functioning. (true, but vague — not an ‘A’ grade answer/mapping, to referent itesms/aspects of the wordl of the altered state, let’s make NEW TERM/LABEL/CONCEPT akin to “Mythemeland” —

Mythemeland

Alteredstateland — confusing, ambiguous — it sounds more like Mythemeland, than referentland.

Referentland (I dislike the tone of OSC, but, that’s kinda good exagerrating the difference between Mythemeland vs. Referentland[ASC]). To confuse the matter: in OSC, the truth that’s visible only in the ASC is veilded —

Eternalism is the case when in OSC and when in ASC.

When in OSC, the appearance of Possibilism overlays the occluded reality of Eternalism.

Possibilism-thinking overlays the underlying hidden truth, of Eternalism) .

“Altered-State-land” (or: Referentland, but I agree on emphasing ASC!, NOT OSC, DUMMIES!), meaning, all things that can be observed and experienced in ASC, including eg the block universe, one’s own worldline, or {wellspring} of thoughts (which you are powerless to stop, and you have no control over).

The set of {all possible “things” or dynamics or reality-aspects that can be noted and observed and experienced in the altered sate — especially the distinction between “things in reality ” vs. “workings of the mind”.

So we want to “map” from Mythemeland to Referentland (domain). A domain-mapping.

Examples of things in Mythemeland

Simply copypaste from my Mythemes page:

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/

Added {clothing removed, naked, revealing skeleton} to that page, with decoding(s)/ mappings to Referentland items.

Need like “mythemes” a term “referents”.

Map mythemes to referents.

That’s good terminology/lexicon.

{king, tree, wine, snake, rock, dragon, treasure, sacrifice, branching, non-branching}

Narrative Sequence Clusters in Mythemeland

{wine cup with apprehension, speared dead king fastened to tree, lifted up like healing snake, reborn from rock tomb}

{man rides without steering-reins, carried by donkey/horse along path to see debranched tree trunk with snake winding up it, carved on on rock sarcophagus}

{king steering in a tree, drinks wine, becomes snake in rock}

Examples of things in Referentland

block universe, worldline, source of control-thoughts, mental model, Possibilism mental model, Eternalism mental model, personal steering-control power}

‘C’ grade: {rock} means block universe. {clothing} means lower, deluded thinking.

‘B’ grade: {removing clothing, thus revealing maiden’s/female-minds skeleton} means getting rid of egoic control thinking.

By “little”, I mean, a mytheme-decoding breakthrough solution that I just had a few seconds ago, or 1 or 2 minutes ago, that still has as-yet-unknown magnitude, regarding how many other interconnected mytheme-meanings are also unlocked/decoded/ successfully reconnected systemically.

Brown comments on:

Eve has been reduced to a skeleton in Plaucourault fresco —

the entheogen state the ASC, gnosis, in the peak state upon the moment of seizure and power-cancellation and mental conversion, and purification, the egoic thinking is like clothing that has been removed; the self control [6:13 p.m. November 27, 2020; day after Thanksgiving Day] system is perceptible, revealed, x-ray vision ; the egoic perishable “clothing” has …

Brown has shown capability/aptitude at mytheme-decoding, which is largely a perspective, one that Hatsis shows zero aptitude for.

At this point, I can only say this *could* be a significant-sized decoding, a mini-breakthrough…. still playing-out the solution-idea to see where it leads.

It is correct, but I’m not sure how “big” of reconnections of the New Theory (per Paul Thagard’s book Conceptual Revolutions) result from playing-out this “vein” of “mining” this mytheme to decode it: how widespread is the mytheme of “ego is like clothing”; “Possibilism-thinking is like clothing”?

When you remove Possibilism-thinking in the ASC, {clothing ~= child/youth/maiden} = the perishable part of the mind’s freewill-premised self-control system and the branching-possibilities worldmodel that’s concomitant with it, that leaves the real, hidden, skeleton, underlying part of the mind’s control-system that was hiding there underneath the clothing the whole time but your mind just couldn’t see it.

{clothing removed; perishable part removed, burned away} means something about:

The known referent-targets that mythemes likely refer to are:

Naive-Possibilism-thinking <– clothing

Eternalism-thinking <– able to see just the remnant, what remains of the mind’s now-perceived underlying self-control system after the clothing of egoic thinking has been removed

but x-thinking won’t work.

What is underlying isn’t “x-thinking”, it is X as reality about how thinking works; the hidden nature of the mind’s control-system, the hidden uncontrollable source of thoughts; the (in the ASC, the mind as) FEMALE’S HELPLESS RECEIVING OF THOUGHTS INJECTED WITH NO ABILITY TO STOP AND RESIST THEM (rapture of Ganymede by Zeus’ eagle; Christian rapture where the female maiden (the initiate) is swept away by force, overpowered at the wellspring of thoughts which the mind cannot control.

The skeleton must be decoded, and clothing. {clothing} vs. {skeleton}; decode (ie map/resolve the analogy to direct identified mental things)

decode mytheme {clothing vs. skeleton}

{clothing} = the overlay, of delded illusory thinking; Possibilism-thinkiing. Done., QED

Now, rightly specify what {skeleton} analogy resolves to, refers to: the underlying reality. Be more specific. The fact of Eternalism (not Possibilism), in the world of spacetime, time, control, source of thoughts, and how the mind really works.

{normally hidden skeleton that’s revealed when child-thinking is removed & seen through} = the block universe, the pre-existing personal worldline of self-control thoughts unveiled; veil removed, (I feel comfortable with {veil} , what do I always say, what’s been my decoding of {veil}? {lifting the lid}. {clothing = lid of cista mystica}.

Qualified-Possibilism-thinking <– I wouldn’t so much say that “this is the part of the mind’s self-control mental worldmodel that remains after the perishable part is burned-away in the ASC.

Decode the mytheme {removes clothing; underlying skeleton revealed/exposed}; ie, map the mytheme to a directly identified referent, about how the mind works and transforms in the ASC/ loosecog state.

Other major mythemes that don’t seem directly mapped by {removes clothing; underlying skeleton revealed/exposed}

{fire/light} of ASC/ loose cognitive association state

{rock} = block universe

{serpent, vine, ivy} = worldline embedded in block universe (thus making personal control power vanish, upsetting egoic control stability)

“What Remains” is basically, Eternalism-reality, now consciously mapped & modelled by the mind, as Eternalism-thinking.

The underlying reality hidden by Naive-Possibilism-thinking, is, Eternalism. {skeleton under clothing} = the Eternalism reality that’s normally (in OSC) and initially (until initiation) hidden underneath Naive-Possibilism-thinking.

Draft 1 of Email to Jerry Brown

Hi Jerry, 

The little news: I’m making good progress on decoding {revealing skeleton}, which you insightfully started to decode in your book, as I recall, which I read and noted at the time.

The big news: similar to your question about what constitutes compelling evidence & criteria of proof, I’m now in the process of formulating a much richer definition of what exactly it means to do a good, complete job of “decoding a mytheme” — the answer is:

A *good*, ‘A’ grade (vs. ‘C’ or ‘D’ grade) mytheme-decoding requires identifying network-connections among related mythemes (opposites, paired-items, variants, synonym equivalents.

All of those interconnected mythemes must also be mapped to non-mytheme referents (eg aspects of how the mind works in the ASC), not just a simple mapping from one isolated mytheme to one isolated referent.

When there’s the feeling of satori-like, revelatory breakthrough of “full, rich understanding of all things”, that means, you grasp not merely the isolated mapping of 1 mytheme ({no clothing, no skin/flesh}, but rather, much more:

understand “all things”, ie cross-mapping synonym-mythemes, antonym-mythemes, duo-paired mythemes or complement-pair mythemes, variant mythemes, — all of them mapped to non-mytheme-domain referent items, in the referent-domain.

One vivid helpful idea or picturing — almost a mytheme in itself? like the word “the Otherworld”:

Mythemeland, and Referentland — (two domains) — don’t juust map 1 item from Mythemeland (a domain) to Referentland (the other domain);

to score an ‘A’, you must map systemically, a given mytheme to other mythemes that fit 5 different types of relationships (complement or dyad/duo-pair; synonym, antonym) AND map all of those to Referentland. 

Ultimately, like Paul Thagard’s model in the book Conceptual Revolutions, when you add-in another mytheme (as I’m doing these days) into a well-mappped-out explanatory framework, that requires showing ALL ways that the “new” mytheme maps to *all* related mythemse (relationships of ~5 types) AND,

map the “new” mytheme to all the referents that are releavnt — so,

You really have to map the new mytheme into a system-of-mythemes, (so, a set of mappings within Mythemeland domain) and then,

you have to do many new connections/amppings from the Mytheme domain to the Referent domain, that involve the new myteheme.

______________

Draft 2 of Email to Jerry Brown

Hi Jerry, 

I’m in the midst of thoroughly decoding/mapping {revealing Eve’s skeleton}, which your book smartly started analyzing. 

I think you (the Browns) have the right mentality for decoding mythemes; an aptitude, in contrast with some other, too-brittle scholars.

Maybe because of your “assignment” of specifying what constitutes “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof”, in the course of “decoding“(?) the mytheme {removed flesh, revealing skeleton}, for the first time, I broadened my definition of what an “adequate decoding/mapping” of a mytheme requires.  

What constitutes a “complete” decoding of a mytheme:

1. Mapping an isolated mytheme to the referent domain, is only the start.  A complete, satisfying mapping also requires:

2. Mapping the mytheme to other mythemes of some 4 types: duo-pairs/complements; near-synonyms, & antonyms. 

3. Mapping all the related mythemes to the referent-domain.

As soon as I intuitively felt I had a jackpot, that I had “decoded” your mytheme, the question arose, though:

What exactly constitutes a “breakthrough” or a “full decoding” of a mytheme?  

Specifying that, turned out to be almost more valuable than your particular mytheme puzzle.

Cyberdisciple and I boiled down the answer to your original question “what constitutes “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof””, to (shown in the ToC at top):
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/

A Spectrum of Criteria of Proof, for Identifying Mushrooms in Art or Texts
Six types of evidence: [text|art] x [literal|stylized|effects]
1. Literal depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
2. Stylized depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
3. Depictions of mushroom effects (in art & in texts)

Your book identified the following mytheme to be decoded: {flesh removed, revealing skeleton}

In the course of decoding that mytheme, at the meta-level, for the first time, I asked:

What, specifically, constitutes a good, complete, satisfying decoding?

Answer:
1. Mapping an isolated mytheme to the referent domain.
2. Mapping the mytheme to other mythemes of some 4 types: duo-pairs/complements; near-synonyms, & antonyms. 
3. Mapping all the related mythemes to the referent-domain.

Toward a “complete” decoding of the mytheme {flesh removed, revealing skeleton}:

Draft 3 of Email to Jerry Brown

While decoding the mytheme {exposed/revealed skeleton} which you present as a problem to solve, I was happy to “get traction” and make good progress.

But then I went up to  meta-level and I came up with a nice, far more adequate definition of the whole exercise, what it really should mean, to do a “complete decoding & mapping of a mytheme”.

I initially was happy that my flash of solution was panning out and I wanted to send you a souvenir of my in-process successful decoding — but then, the higher-level question I started working out successfully, is, What exactly is a “good, satisfying, successful decoding of a mytheme?

So I’m not sending you a messy souvenir or summary here of my decoding of {exposing skeleton}.  

My progress so far on that particular question, and the higher-level questions:

What constitutes a “good”, “complete” decoding?

What’s the difference between ‘decoding’ vs. ‘mapping’ a mytheme?

Draft 4 Email to Jerry Brown

Hi Jerry, 
fyi
I made progress toward full success in decoding the mytheme-cluster 
{clothing/ flesh removed, revealing naked body/ skin/ skeleton}
which is great, but — due to critically observing my successful rapid process of “decoding”, I ended up going to the meta-level, to theorize and finally adequately specify what a “complete” decoding should amount to.
That build-out of my Theory of Mythology was influenced by your question:What constitutes “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof”?

It’s rough, not cleaned up yet, and given my wonderful new, specified criteria for “complete” decoding of a mytheme, I can estimate I’m 80% done decoding this mytheme-cluster, including your specific mytheme, {clothing/ flesh removed, revealing naked body/ skin/ skeleton}.

Therefore the remaining work would be:
o  Finish the remaining 20% of mappings from your mytheme: 
{flesh removed, revealing skeleton}
to other mythemes, eg 
{clothing/ flesh removed, revealing naked body/ skin/ skeleton}
o  Format/write-up my decoding.

I should re-check what you wrote about it. 

pssh I laughed when I saw you refer to Eliade — good luck (doubtful): 

eh, I’d grade it like ‘C’ grade.  oooh, ouch, ding — the grader’s red ink: LOL you wrote:
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p142.xml

“Eve is not a weak-willed[<– extremely ambiguous & maximally problematic; heart of the matter]woman [<– oh no ooh ouch you missed it — “woman” means “vulnerable part of the initiate’s self-control system in the mind; you took ‘woman’ literally] who is responsible for the original sin … she … leads humanity to exercise-free will [<– max’ly problematic!] and achieve higher consciousness. [<– correct] “
“Mircea Eliade (1974), one of the world’s preeminent authorities on shamanism, writes that “Bone represents the very source of life, both in humans and animals. To reduce oneself to the skeleton condition is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, mystical rebirth” (p. 63). [<–bleh, ‘D’ grade. vague, trite, superficial, pop jargon. I’VE GO TO STOP READING YOUR GUYSS’ INTERPRETATION– MY IQ IS FALLING FAST -mh]

“Medieval churches frequently preserved the bones of saints as sacred relics. [<–EH, ok, i grant you 1 point: I can do a little of interest w/ that: a cross-mytheme mapping, of type “synonym”: the {imperishable} part of a person is like {bones} -mh]

“In this context, the skeletonization of Eve suggests that she has crossed the threshold of an entheogen-inspired journey of death and rebirth, [<– eh nah, that’s like my joke, “all mythemes mean enlightenment in the ASC”. a truism — lacking all detail. Student scores are based on amount of detail/mappings, both among mythemes, and from mythemes to referents (referents = things that can be observed in the ASC”)] a central theme in shamanism.”

Interesting realization: I can “grade” others’ attempts to decode.

“Mytheme {m} means enlightenment in the mushroom-induced altered state”
— I want to give 0 points for any mapping like that, due to lack of specificity, but, some ppl are far dumber than that and aren’t in the ballpark at all — they think it’s about OSC; they try to map mythemes to items that are observed/experienced in the OSC. I grant you 1 point, bc you found the ballpark, congrats.

“the skeletonization of Eve suggests that she has crossed the threshold of an entheogen-inspired journey of death and rebirth, … shamanism.” <– I grant 1 point out of … 100 (?) for that correct truism.

You wrote: “{skeleton} means something about entheogen-induced ASC”. Correct. What’s shocking to me is, Brown & Co. — his field of scholars — they think it is a “daring observation” and “bold conflusion” that “the skeleton means entheogens”.

For the Egodeath theory, that’s simply a GIVEN — not an “explanation” of a mytheme’s meaning!

sub-junior -level enteheon scholarship. the fallacy: “the discovery is, ITS entheogens OMG!!! uh, yeah, so, but… what’s the specific meaning of {skeleton} GIVEN that it must map to “something experienced in ASC”.

What aspect of ASC experience is “like a skeleton”? You FAILED to specify THAT.

My joke:

Give Brown and his group of scholars these mythemes to decode, and their answers are like parrots, truisms & tautologies that show they aren’t quiet brain-dead: CONGRATS, you realize “these mythemes have something to do with ASC rebirth”.

But this whole exam, I’m grading on, this homework, is the question,

GIVEN that all mythemes are descriptions of things experienced/observed in ASC, WHICH specific things, WHICH specific aspects of ASC experiencing/observation, do these particular mythemes describe, by analogy? Why pick the particular theme, “skeleton”?

I’m not seeing analogies mapped, here.

Sure, skeleton = death…. = spiritual death and rebirth. any fool knows that. Its a kinda literalistic, physical-limited mode of reading of mythemes.

That low-grade, low-quality explanation reminds me of the low, mundane hypothesis “The {snake} mytheme means, toxin poison death, and it sheds its skin, like rebirth”. FAIL.

Topics Covered in “Idea Development page 1”

Not sure why I created this section, but I did add headings and TOC in that file:

Idea Development page 1
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/realtime-discovery-log/

That page contains some cool pics and very good explanations of Theory, and history of how I first got started decoding the complete “mushroom tree/ sword” Canterbury image.

I’m not sure how the above page relates to the following page:

Methodology for Decoding the Canterbury Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/21/methodology-for-decoding-the-canterbury-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree/

I added a heading & phrase in “Idea Development page 1“:

Canterbury Mushroom-Thicket Image Shows There’s Been a Big Cover-up; Blowing the Lid off “the Minimal-Mushroom Cover-up“

New phrase!
the minimal-mushroom cover-up
instead of:
the minimal mushroom theory/scholars/theorists

This image, the paragraph before & after it, are copied from “Idea Development page 1:” When I saw this image, around [7:06 a.m. November 23, 2020], that’s the moment when I grasped — clearly, more than in 2002 with Pagels’ first two books when every single view of the Paul/Gnostic crowd exactly lined up with my system of views — that there’s been a big cover-up.

copied section:

But I’m happy because the very first page I looked at [in the Canterbury Psalter, other than the mushroom-sword image], the first image to meet my eye, on another page, praise the Lord, is a long-shot that I was trying to link to the Bible reader image in the hanging-mushroom image —

The mind’s self-control system in the loose cognitive state is like a ram caught by its own struggling power become powerless, in a branching mushroom tree.

Topics to Focus On

Info about these topics is in
Idea Development page 2
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/idea-development-page-2/

Entheogen Scholars Are Converging on Perceiving a Medieval “Ye War on Druggs” – What Kind of Cover-up Was It?

Per Pagels, Paul/Heracleon/Valentinians held that:
“Greeks” = Mushroom “Gnostic” Esoteric {Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}
“Jews” = Fake-Eucharist “Orthodox” Exoteric {Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}

Real Protestants Hold to Mushroom (Esoteric, Gnostic) Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism

Luther Protested Against For-profit Suppression of Mushrooms (= Entire “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” view/ framework/ paradigm/ revealed worldmodel) and Substituting for It Bunk, Literalist, Mushroom-Suppressing, “Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism” – Luther Was Not Just Arguing About Mushrooms (or Freewill btw)

Luther’s “Greeks”/ Gnostic/ Esoteric camp protested for 
the Entire View/ Worldmodel:
{Mushrooms/ Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}, 
against 
Insti Cath Ch’s “Jews”/ Orthodox*/ Exoteric camp
the Entire View/ Worldmodel:
{Mushroom-Suppression/ Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}
*Orthodox in Elaine Pagels’ sense; opposing the “Gnostics”.

Gnostics vs. Orthodox = Greeks vs. Jews = Esoteric vs. Exoteric

Pagels: “Gnostics vs. Orthodox“

Freke & Gandy: “Esoteric vs. Exoteric“

Paul (Heracleon? Valentinus?) per Pagels: “Greeks vs. Jews“

Hoffman: Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism vs. Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism

Hoffman: ASC vs. OSC

Hoffman: Loosecog vs. Tightcog

Blowing the Lid off the Huge Cover-up of the “Mushroom Mystic-State Analogies” Nature of Christianity:
“Gnostic” or”Esoteric Christianity” Means Mushroom Christianity

Books About Mushroom Christians (“Gnostic/Esoteric” Christians)
The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (1973)
The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (1975)
The Gnostic Gospels (1979)
My set of views matches the mushroom Christians in the 3 books above.

The Age of Entheogens [, The Pharmacratic Inquisition, and The Entheogenic Reformation] & the Angels’ Dictionary (1995)

The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1999)

Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (2020)

Helleno-Christianity
Forming a label of my religion, which combines Greek “Paganism” (Mystery Religion & religious mythology decoding) with Christianity (an esoteric version of Barton/Stone Restorationism).

The Cover-up of Mushrooms [together with the concomitant Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism] in Christianity and in Buddhism [selling snake-oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism in place of it, for profit]
The malformed “secret mushroom cult” notion serves to mask the actual situation, that there’s been a cover-up of normal mushroom use in Christianity. Priests are huckster who suppress mushrooms and sell snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] for personal profit. Ott’s Entheogenic Reformation.

Chronology Revisionism: All Ancient Texts Were Written in “1500 A.D.” in Competing Monastic Forgery-Mills
Blow open your mind & theory-possibilities with Edwin Johnson’s Chronology Revisionism.

This Isn’t a Cubensis with Liberty Caps; It’s an Impressionistically Rendered Italian Pine with Umbrella Pines

👈 These aren’t the shrooms you’re looking for.
“These aren’t the shrooms we’re looking for.”
👈 Move along.
“Move along. Move along.”

From High-Resolution Complete Canterbury Psalter, folio 11
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item

There are Liberty Cap mushrooms in the cap of the mushroom tree, depicted literally; this is an example of “Literal Depictions of the Physical Form of the Mushroom”.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=liberty+cap+mushroom

Actually, for those on the outside, that mushroom-tree is a “schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree“, as art historian Brinckmann explained in his 1906 book, as cited by the top art historian, to the Pope’s banker, Wasson.

The umbrellas depicted on the cap are further proof that it’s an umbrella pine ( Italian stone pine; Pinus pinea); therefore this image definitely does not represent a Cubensis mushroom with Liberty Cap mushrooms on the cap.

You see, unbeknownst to mycologists, medieval artists worked off of templates, which got screwy over the years, as the top art historian Panofsky explained in a letter to Pope-banker Wasson.

When re-printing Panofsky’s letter in his book SOMA, Wasson, probably to save on printing costs, replaced Panofsky’s citation of Brinckmann by elipses; and so the matter was settled by the top art historians, based on discussions that settled the matter back in 1906.

Panofsky’s letter citing Brinckmann’s book is typewritten on “THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY” letterhead; therefore, the matter is settled.

The image above, and paragraphs below it, were copied from:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/

High-Resolution Complete Canterbury Psalter, folio 11 with the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree, also called an umbrella pine, so you can plainly see for yourself that it is an Italian pine tree, not a mushroom.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item.zoom

Quotes from Panofsky & Wasson — The Cover-up, Censorship by Order of the Pope, Fraud camp, Pure Argument from Authority

The hucksters foisting Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism on the populace, suppress mushrooms (the real flesh of Christ) along with suppressing Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

“… the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms … and the similarity with Amanita muscaria is purely fortuitous. The Plaincourault fresco is only one example – and, since the style is provincial, a particularly deceptive one – of a conventionalized tree type, prevalent in Romanesque and early Gothic art, which art historians actually refer to as a ‘mushroom tree’ or in German, Pilzbaum. It comes about by the gradual schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree in Roman and early Christian painting, and there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this development – unknown of course to mycologists. … [<– Wasson, be sure to censor Brinckmann’s book here – thx – the Pope] What the mycologists have overlooked is that the medieval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable. – Erwin Panofsky in a 1952 letter to Wasson excerpted in Soma, pp. 179-180

The above quote is copied from the article:
Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita
Section: Panofsky, 1952
http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889188

Section/clip added to the “Criteria” article; more Sick Burn

Further proof that Pope Wasson is correct and you shouldn’t trust your lying eyes:
Italian Stone Pine Information – How To Care For Italian Stone Pines
Pine
By Teo Spengler
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/pine/italian-stone-pine-information.htm
“Italian stone pine (Pinus pinea) is an ornamental evergreen with a full, high canopy that resembles an umbrella. For this reason, it is also called the umbrella pine. These pine trees are native to southern Europe and Turkey, and prefer warm, dry climates.”

As you can plainly see, it’s a match; this Psalter image isn’t a Cubensis with Liberty Caps; it’s an impressionistically rendered Italian pine, with Umbrella pines in its canopy.

Here’s what you need to know, from the topmost art historian, to stop making your blunder:

“the style is provincial, a particularly deceptive one – of a conventionalized tree type … which art historians actually refer to as a ‘mushroom tree’ … It comes about by the gradual schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree … there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this development … the medieval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable”

— Panofsky quote excerpts

I strongly agree with Panofsky that this artist’s botched attempt to depict an Italian pine with Umbrella pines in its canopy “became quite unrecognizable”; it became so unrecognizable, it accidentally ended up looking exactly like a Cubensis with Liberty Caps in its cap — unbeknownst, of course to the artist, who was working off prototypes; who “hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable.” I’ll say!

/ end of added section/clip

Brown’s article showing the Panofsky letter — without Brinckmann’s book being censored and replaced by ellipses:
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p142.xml
Find: May 2, 1952 (3rd hit)

Especially note the citation of Brinckmann’s book at the bottom of the second paragraph, which Wasson in SOMA quietly replaced by ellipses.

Wasson’s silent replacement of the Brinckmann citation by ellipses is outrageous hiding of scholarly work which would be needed, to substantiate the extremely bold claim (thus extremely in need of substantiation) of the top art historian Panofsky, that “art historians have already discussed” mushroom trees in Christian art.
[see “hall of shame” below, or nearby, for exact quotes]

Some excerpts from my article; wasson writes: (bold-ital is mine)

I checked with other art historians including Meyer Schapiro, and found that they were in agreement. I was struck by the celerity with which they all recognized the art motif. [translation: all the Establishment art historians are in cahoots with the Minimal view, to suppress the many mushrooms they found in Christian art. -mh]

One could expect mycologists, in their isolation, to make this blunder. [YOU are the “blunder”, Wasson! and your crony “top art historians”, liars & dolts, imbeciles and cover-up history-artists, the whole damned lot of them — THOSE ON THE OUTSIDE. -mh] Mr. Allegro is not a mycologist but, if anything, a cultural historian. On page 229 of his book, in his notes, he shows himself familiar with my writings. Presumably he had read the footnote in which I dismissed the fresco on page 87 of Mushrooms, Russia & History and, more especially, Panofsky’s [censored-by-Wasson!! no Brinckmann cite. why not??] letter reproduced on page 179 of SOMA. He chooses to ignore the interpretation put on this fresco by the most eminent art historians.” / end of wasson quote

doozies from Wasson; Hall of Shame, of Wasson quotes (ie the minimal-mushroom cover-up camp‘s quotes):

Hall of Shame, of Quotes from the “minimal-mushroom cover-up camp” (in this case, Wasson)

[top, most-eminent] art historians … were in agreement

the celerity [swift immediacy] with which they [ie the top, most-eminent art historians] all recognized the art motif

mycologists, in their isolation, … make this blunder

the most eminent art historians

/ Hall of Shame quotes

WASSON’S ARGUMENT IS 100% *ARGUMENT FROM AUTHORITY*, ONLY; HE CENSORS BRINCKMANN’S BOOK!

The situation is a perfect example of the “argument from authority” fallacy.

Excerpt from my Plaincourault article:

Wasson wrote in a public letter, about whether the Plaincourault tree was Amanita:

Sir, I have just read John M. Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (reviewed in the TLS on May 28 [1970]). I will refrain from passing on his philological evidence, which others have already treated thoroughly. But I will call your readers’ attention to a question of art history, that I have not seen mentioned in the various reviews that have come to my attention.

Facing page 74 of his book Mr. Allegro exhibits a photograph of what he calls “a Christian fresco showing the Amanita muscaria as the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden”. His publishers have reproduced a mirror-image of this on each of the end-papers of the book and also on the jacket.

This fresco, an expression of French provincial Romanesque art, was first called to the attention of the learned world in the Bulletin of the Société Mycologique de France in 1911 (vol. xxvii, p. 31). It has been picked up frequently in mycological publications, especially in England. Mycologists speak only to each other and never to art historians. Had they done so, the story would have been different.

I drew attention to this error in our Mushrooms, Russia & History (1957) and at greater length in my SOMA: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1969). In this last book I quoted from a letter that Erwin Panofsky had written me in 1952: [Wasson presents again here the entire [my article is misleading – it’s the entire *censored* excerpt; missing the Brinckmann cite -mh Nov 28 2020] Panofsky excerpt shown in Soma].  I checked with other art historians including Meyer Schapiro, and found that they were in agreement. I was struck by the celerity with which they all recognized the art motif.

One could expect mycologists, in their isolation, to make this blunder. Mr. Allegro is not a mycologist but, if anything, a cultural historian.  On page 229 of his book, in his notes, he shows himself familiar with my writings. Presumably he had read the footnote in which I dismissed the fresco on page 87 of Mushrooms, Russia & History and, more especially, Panofsky’s letter reproduced on page 179 of SOMA. He chooses to ignore the interpretation put on this fresco by the most eminent art historians. – Wasson, “The Sacred Mushroom”, letter to the editor in The Times Literary Supplement, August 21, 1970

/ end of excerpt from my Plainc article:
Title of my article:
Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita
Subsection:
The Shallow Wasson/Allegro Discussion of the Plaincourault Amanita Question
http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889198

Wasson’s hiding of Panofsky’s citation of Brinckmann’s book is censorship by the order of the Pope, who was evil, and tried to suppress mushrooms and substitute a fake, demonic, inert “Mass”, to knowingly trick people into magical thinking, in order to personally profit from lying and replacing the real flesh of Christ (mushrooms) that actually regenerates and leads to knowledge of God, by a demonic substitute.

The Pope ordered Wasson to censor this lead to Brinckmann’s flimsy-as-can-be book, in order to make money for himself and his gangsters, the entheogen-cover-up hucksters who sell the snake-oil of Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism, who, along with covering-up mushrooms, also, in the same vein, strategically cover-up the entire framework which mushrooms bring, Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

Those Bickering Soma Entheogen Scholars

A Rebuttal to Criticisms of The Cannabis Soma Theory in “Secret Drugs of Buddhism” by Mike Crowley
By Chris Bennett, February 4, 2020
https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2020/02/04/a-rebuttal-to-criticisms-of-the-cannabis-soma-theory-in-secret-drugs-of-buddhism-by-mike-crowley/

“This article is Part 4 of a series on The Soma-Haoma Question, and other articles thus far include:

1) The Soma-Haoma Question

2) The Cannabis Soma/Haoma Theory: A Synopsis Based on the Latest Textual and Archeological Evidence

3) The Mushroom Soma Theory: A Critical Analysis

5) ‘Secret Drugs of Buddhism’, Soma, and the Sad State of Entheogenic Anthropology

6) Haoma and Harmaline: A Critical Analysis

Why There Are No Psychoactives in Medieval Texts: Ye Old War on Druggs, but How to Correctly Characterize It, without Committing the Presentism Fallacy?

This section has been Cancelled — Topic Forbidden, by the Order of Pope Wasson. The mushrooms you are seeing, you are not seeing.

Audience for article: Hanegraaff, Hatsis.

Book:
Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult
Chris Bennett, 2018
http://amzn.com/1634241657 — Description keywords/excerpts:
“cannabis and other psychoactive plants held a prominent and important role in the Occult arts of Alchemy and Magic,
in ritual initiations of certain secret societies.
the important role cannabis played in helping to develop modern medicines through alchemical works.
spagyric alchemy,
alchemists such as Zosimos, Avicenna, Llull, Paracelsus, Cardano and Rabelais. medieval and renaissance magic
recipes with instructions for its use appear in a number of influential and important grimoires such as the Picatrix, Sepher Raxiel: Liber Salomonis, and The Book of Oberon.
Detailed historical references
Allegations the Templars were influenced by the hashish ingesting Assassins of medieval Islam
whether myths of the Grail are derived from the Persian traditions around the sacred beverage known as haoma, which was a preparation of cannabis,opium and other drugs.
Many of the works discussed have never been translated into English, or published in centuries.
The unparalleled research in this volume
a potential perennial classic on the subjects of both
medieval and renaissance history of cannabis
the role of plants in the magical and occult traditions.”

End of Aaron Leich’s Forward to Chris Bennett’s book:

“Cannabis and other mind-altering substances have been an underground and occluded fact of the Western Mystery Tradition all along.

“So buckle in!

“You’re about to learn some of your favorite occult philosophers most likely took a few strange drugs in their day.”

Articles by Chris Bennett:
https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/author/chris-bennett/

https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2020/05/29/ancient-judaic-use-of-cannabis-for-shamanic-ecstasy-verified-by-archeological-evidence/

Ancient Judaic Use of Cannabis for Shamanic Ecstasy Verified by Archeological Evidence

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• Top of this Page = Messy Construction Zone; Realtime Idea Development

• Entheogen Scholars Are Converging on Perceiving a Medieval “Ye War on Druggs” – What Kind of Cover-up Was It?

• Email to Chris Bennett

• Expanded Section for Outline of Evidence-Types, in Criteria Article

• Per Pagels, Paul/Heracleon/Valentinians held that:
  “Greeks” = Mushroom “Gnostic” Esoteric {Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}
  “Jews” = Fake-Eucharist “Orthodox” Exoteric {Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}

• Real Protestants Hold to Mushroom (Esoteric, Gnostic) Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism

• Luther Protested Against For-profit Suppression of Mushrooms (= Entire “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” view/ framework/ paradigm/ revealed worldmodel) and Substituting for It Bunk, Literalist, Mushroom-Suppressing, “Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism” – Luther Was Not Just Arguing About Mushrooms (_{or Freewill btw})
  Luther’s “Greeks”/Gnostic/Esoteric Camp Protested for the Entire View/ Worldmodel {Mushrooms/Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}, against the Entire View/ Worldmodel {Mushroom-Suppression/ Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}

• Blowing the Lid off the Huge Cover-up of the “Mushroom Mystic-State Analogies” Nature of Christianity:
  “Gnostic” or”Esoteric Christianity” Means Mushroom Christianity

• Books About Mushroom Christians (“Gnostic/Esoteric” Christians)
  • The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (1973)
  • The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (1975)
  • The Gnostic Gospels (1979)
    My set of views matches the mushroom Christians in the 3 books above.
  • The Age of Entheogens [, The Pharmacratic Inquisition, and The Entheogenic Reformation] & the Angels’ Dictionary (1995)
  • The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1999)
  • Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (2020)

• The “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” theory of mythemes
  A proper descriptive, useful label for the mytheme-decoding component of the Egodeath theory

• Labels for Components of the Egodeath Theory
  the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
  the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of mytheme-decoding
  the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity
  the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art
  the maximal mushroom theory of Greek and Christian art
  the maximal entheogen theory of religion
  the “mixed-wine mushroom wine” theory
  Helleno-Christianity

• No One at the Bridge – Fresh Explanation of Song Lyrics
  These are extremely relevant, highly descriptive poetic lyrics, which describe the peak experiencing of the altered state, by use of analogies. This is the song “No One at the Bridge” by Rush, lyrics by Neil Peart.

• {helm, helmsman}, Dionysus, King Odysseus/Ulysses Tied to Mast

• mytheme decoded: {caduceus}
  I finally decoded {caduceus}!! Figured out how to think about it, relate it to other mythemes, & explain it.

• How I Decoded the Bestiary Salamander Image
  A “math logic proof”-style of walking the reader through the mytheme-decoding process.

• mytheme: {maiden, kore, Kore, Persephone}
  I discovered that Persephone’s other name is “The Maiden”!! SCORE

• Entheogen Scholars Are Currently Reading the Present Weblog & Linked Pages

• Thankful for Hatsis & Muraresku
  Ways in which Hatsis and Muraresku helpfully contribute to entheogen scholarship.

• Mytheme {lamb} Decoded, Like Harmless {dove, Holy Spirit}
  Big unexpected breakthrough! Isaac’s powerful {ram} vs. Jesus as gentle {lamb}, like {dove} vs. {eagle}; completing {dove} decoding too!

• The Story of My Moment of Conversion, Rescue, & Purification from Sin
  The story of my moment of mystic-state conversion/ salvation/ regeneration/ redemption/ purification/ completion/ sacrificial purging of sin; then baptism in the blood of the [gentle, harmless!] lamb afterwards.

• The Requisite Non-violence of Successful Mental Transformation Implies the Ahistoricity of Jesus
  The “harmlessness” idea behind the mythemes {lamb} and {dove} implies the ahistoricity of Jesus (in his function as redeemer in the mystic altered state), instead of pointless & ineffectual violence against a bodily historical Jesus.
  • The Problem of the Pointless, Excess, Physical Bodily Death of Jesus, Leading to Ahistoricity as the Resolution of the Problem: Saved by Receiving the Vision of Christ Crucified in the Heavens

• Helleno-Christianity
  Forming a label of my religion, which combines Greek “Paganism” (Mystery Religion & religious mythology decoding) with Christianity (an esoteric version of Barton/Stone Restorationism).

• A Week of Manically Possessed Religious-Mythology Breakthroughs and Accidental Fasting
  I was manically possessed and driven by inspiration in the ordinary state, and accidentally fasted for a week during breakthrough decoding of the entire Canterbury “mushroom/ hanging/ sword” image, which extremely confirmed my Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of religious mythology and the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art.

• The Cover-up of Mushrooms in Christianity & Buddhism (together with Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism); the “Mass & Meditation” Substitution Industry
  The malformed “secret mushroom cult” notion serves to mask the actual situation, that there’s been a cover-up of normal mushroom use in Christianity. Priests are huckster who suppress mushrooms and sell snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] for personal profit. Ott’s Entheogenic Reformation.

• Bad Mushroom Scholarship
  Several fulmination screeds against the sorry, worst-case state of what passes for mushroom scholarship.
  • Against Garbage, Politicized Scholarship Polluting the Field and Driving It Backwards
  • My Clean Comment About Bad Mushroom Scholarship, Posted on Cyberdisciple’s Article Listing My Recent Articles
    Brief summary of Psalter {nonbranching}, then good civilized polished reply re: be nice to “scholars” trampling the field.
  • Against Minimalist Mushroom Scholars
    Written in the middle of 1st pass of reply to comment at Cyberdisciple’s site.

• Clarifying the Explanation of {branching vs. non-branching}, as in the Entire Canterbury “Mushroom/ Hanging/ Sword” Image
  Here I work out a good, clear way of explaining {branching vs. non-branching}, as in the entire Canterbury “mushroom/ hanging/ sword” image.

• Chronology Revisionism: All Ancient Christian Texts Were Written in “1500 A.D.” in Competing Monastic Forgery-Mills
  Blow open your mind & theory-possibilities with Edwin Johnson’s Chronology Revisionism.

• My Comments on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key” – Part 1, November 24, 2020

• My Comments on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key” – Part 2, December 2, 2020

/ end of section “Contents”

Top of this Page = Messy Construction Zone; Realtime Idea Development

Skip around in this page.

Scholars skim & skip massive quantities of material by skipping around and only sometimes reading top-to-bottom.

Non-scholars tend to always read top-to-bottom and not aggressively skim & skip around, and they leave as soon as they hit a bump; a typo, or an unclear point, or an uninteresting point.

THERE’S LOTS OF EXTREMELY INTERESTING SH*IT WAY DOWN BELOW in my pages.

Note re: Messiness at top of this file — maximum slop, by nature, is going to be at top of this file bc I’m showing realtime idea dev’mt; it is the cutting edge leading edge, so IS A CONSTRUCTION ZONE. TOP OF THIS FILE, INCOMING SPECULATION IDEAS, MIGHT ALL BE BULLSH*T

But usually I turn out to be mostly right; able to integrate incoming ideas so as to produce a strong explanatory power theory w/ greater expl’y power.

The material down below the top of this page has had more time to clean up typo’s & formatting & organization.

/ end of section “Top of this Page = Messy Construction Zone; Realtime Idea Development”

_________________________

Entheogen Scholars Are Converging on Perceiving a Medieval “Ye War on Druggs” – What Kind of Cover-up Was It?

Chris Bennett

Aaron Leich

Wouter Hanegraaff expose of psychedelics in New Age, and in Western Esotericism

Michael Hoffman – Clear Evidence of a Conflict Between the Mushroom Mystics and the Catholic Mass Snake-oil Profiteers Luther Railed Against

Incoming Idea Development Here

Email to Chris Bennett

Hi Chris, 

I see you have some scholarly debate articles — I haven’t read them yet. 
https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/author/chris-bennett/

I’d be pretty interested in how the debate is conducted; debate and evidence-methods.  You can see my “Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof”” article, below. 

My recent articles assert that there was very heavy, hardly hidden, mainstream use of Psilocybe in Greek & Christian religion, and that there’s been a cover-up — there are many Psilocybe in Christian and Greek art (literal depictions, stylized depictions, & depictions of their highest experiential effects).  

In the past few days, I’ve begun to suspect there’s always been a major standoff between two parties in Christianity: mushroom vs. inert Eucharist.  

None of this “secret cult” notion though, please; scholars need to stop centrally thinking in terms of “secret cult”.  

There was a mainstream ongoing battle between two camps (neither one could be rightly characterized as a “secret cult”): normalized mushroom use in Christianity, versus a substitute fake Eucharist that does nothing — to sell people snake oil (the Mass & Meditation scam).

I wrote some new articles, with almost nothing to do with Amanita  — though I finally gathered my wits, engaged my facilities, and positively identified Amanita in a “Dionysus Triumph” mosaic.  In my “Criteria” article.

I consider Amanita an “Honorary Psilocybe” — it was shown in Christian and Greek art more for its striking form, than for actually ingesting it.  

I’m also open to Scopolamine plants in Christianity, eg Lily = Datura, and Mandrake, but again I think they were considered a cheap/widely available fallback for the desirable, classic entheogen, Psilocybe.

I think in art, Amanita really represents the classic, ergonomic mushroom, Psilocybe.

I decoded an image, “bestiary salamander roasting/ branching mushroom tree/ so-called ‘dancing man'” — did you assess that image?  Hatsis may have mentioned that Irvin got the “bestiary salamander roasting” image from your book.  I cover that image in my “Criteria” article, below.

I was going to notify you of my articles — now I see you’ve been in the critique/debate mode, so you might be even more interested in the scholarly dispute I’ve been engaged in, against those who claim things like “No evidence for mushrooms in Christian art” (or, in Greek art).  They claim that, by ignoring 5 out of 6 types of evidence.

Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/

Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/

Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/

Hope you enjoy these new articles.  There are lots of interesting images you can flip through quickly.

Cheers, and Happy Thanksgiving!

— Michael Hoffman

/ end of section “Email to Chris Bennett”

Expanded Section for Outline of Evidence-Types, in Criteria Article

…

Thus there are six types of evidence which the scholar must take into account:
[text|art] x [literal|stylized|effects] =
1. Literal depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
2. Stylized depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
3. Depictions of mushroom effects (in art & in texts)

If the would-be “scientific, historical scholar”, allegedly using “sound historical criteria”, only considers literal descriptions or depictions of mushrooms, in texts, and fails or refuses to look through the lens of the other five of the six types of potential evidence, they are blinding themselves to five of the six, 5/6 = 83% of the types of potential evidence for mushrooms in Christian materials, and then claiming “there is practically no evidence for psychoactive mushrooms in Christianity.”

Such an out-of-hand dismissal of 5 out of the 6 types of potential evidence for mushrooms in Christian art is not, as falsely claimed, “proper, scientific, historical scholarship” or “sound historical criteria”, but is a travesty of it.

We must consider all six types of evidence, not just one arbitrarily chosen type of evidence.

This article proves that in Christian art, there is ample evidence of mushrooms; evidence of all three types: literal, stylized, and effects.

There is definite evidence even for the ultimate peak effects of mushrooms in Christian art: the experiential mushroom effects, of transforming the mental worldmodel from Possibilism to Eternalism, through suspension and cancellation of the illusion of autonomous personal control power that operates by wielding steering-power within a tree of open, branching possibilities.

The three levels of evidence for mushrooms in Christianity (literal, stylized, & effects), that are potentially found in art and in texts, are described below.

/ end of section “Expanded Section for Outline of Evidence-Types, in Criteria Article”

Per Pagels, Paul/Heracleon/Valentinians held that:
o “Greeks” = Mushroom “Gnostic” Esoteric {Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}
o “Jews” = Fake-Eucharist “Orthodox” Exoteric {Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}

This is the next R&D question.

What the New Testament presents to us as:

Paul railing against the Jews in 30 A.D.

is actually a late, forged proxy for; that’s actually debating about:

Luther’s protest-camp railing against the for-profit institutional Catholic Church in 1525 A.D. with their fake-Eucharist Mass replacing the actual Eucharist, which is mushrooms (and the resulting conversion from Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism to Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism)

I think it’s re: the epistles of Paul? & Gospel of John? & 4 gospels?

In the “Pauline” epistles, none of which were written by a Mr. Historical Paul:

“Greeks ” means:
Helleno-Christianity mushroom esoteric gnostics;
Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism;
ahistoricity of Jesus

“Jews” means ersatz Eurcharist/Mass,
Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism,
selling & pushing magical-thinking onto the masses, that somehow by magic, violence & literal sacrifice, on the Cross and every day in the mass the they claim that the crucifixion-literal-violence is done, to clear a little bit of your freewill-premised moral sin, to get to heaven instead of literal hell after you bodily literally die.

• The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (1973)
• The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (1975)
• The Gnostic Gospels (1979)
  My complete coherent set of views matches the mushroom Christians/ higher Christians/ gnostics/ esoterics, in the 3 books above.

The very first thing I listed at the top of the comparison table, is “Greeks” vs. “Jews”.

http://www.egodeath.com/pagelsgnosticpaul.htm —

Probably add on the left: early & late-period “Augustine” (Luther’s camp of forgers?)

Probably add on the right: middle-period “Augustine”. (The anti-Luther, pro-Pope camp of forgers?)

The “Church Fathers'” writings are all fake; a late, recent forgery, written in the style of 1525, Edwin Johnson says.

The “late, mid, & early-period” writings by “Augustine” are all fake – two parties making “Augustine” (and “Paul”, etc.) spout 2 opposing views. I guess he probably didn’t even exist; just an empty fictional writer-character.

Unknown by me at the moment:

Does “Augustine” evidence any awareness of the earthly life of Jesus?

Paul has not heard of Mr. Historical Jesus and his earthly storyline.
(Don’t give me that “brother” b.s., insulting my intelligence; obviously we’re all brothers, such FLIMSY arguments!)

Not sure, but I felt like Johnson suspects that the story of Jesus’ earthly life was invented in 1450, and no one before that shows any awareness of such a lifestory of Mr. Historical Jesus; we back-project such assumed familiarity, onto the “ancient” writers (who aren’t actually ancient, but are recent).

Per Edwin Johnson:

YOU MUST INTERROGATE THESE PURPORTEDLY “ANCIENT WRITERS” AND DEMAND OF THEM:

HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE EARTHLY STORYLINE OF MR. HISTORICAL JESUS?

HAVE YOU A COPY OF THE GOSPELS/ STORIES?

OR, IS SUCH AWARENESS STRANGELY ABSENT FROM YOUR WRITINGS, WHICH ARE ALL THEOLOGICAL AIRY-FAIRY VISIONS IN THE HEAVENS?

Does Richard Carrier cover this, in his brand new book Jesus from Outer Space? I have Earl Doherty’s 2nd Ed & 1st.

Pages / Resources at Egodeath.com

See also below, my book reviews of Pagels: 1) Johannine Gospel, 2) The Gnostic Paul.

Study Version of Edwin Johnson’s “The Pauline Epistles – Re-Studied and Explained”, 1894 — Reformatted copy for increased comprehensibility by Michael Hoffman Oct. 8, 2003. Proposes that the years 700-1400 didn’t exist, and that Christianity, the “early” Christian texts, Paul, the Gospels, the Church Fathers, the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages were literary inventions fabricated in competing monasteries around 1500.

Edwin Johnson, A Radical Advocate of Chronology Criticism — Uwe Topper on Edwin Johnson
The webpage has clean formatting of the messy copy/pasted links below:

He passed away, I think — copy his articles/webpages while you can:

Detering, Hermann (1995): The falsified Paulus. The Urchristentum in the twilight (s. l.)
html (German) pdf (German)  (English version not found.  Possibly similar: http://www.radikalkritik.de/content.htm)

Gabowitsch, Eugen (2001): Did the Mongols come from the west to Russia? (Efodon synesis No. 4/2001, Hohenpeissenberg)

Johnson, Edwin (1887): ANTIQUA MATER, A Study OF Christian Origins (Truebner A. CO, London)

http://www.radikalkritik.de/antiqua_mater.htm

Click to access AntiquaMater1.pdf

(1894): “The Pauline Epistles” (Watt and CO, London)

http://www.radikalkritik.de/pauline_epistles.htm

Click to access PaulEpistles.pdf

/ resources

“Augustine” 1 is made to argue for no-free-will;
“Augustine” 2 is made to argue for freewill

Tall-tale about “the writings of Augustinian” (fake!)

The two camps of battling forgers in the monastery forgery-mills gave us this preposterous situation:

early-period Augustine believed no-free-will

middle-period Augustine believed freewill

late-period Augustine believed no-free-will

(find ‘augustine’ & ‘macarthur’ below)

/ end of section “Per Pagels, Paul/Heracleon/Valentinians held that:
o “Greeks” = Mushroom “Gnostic” Esoteric {Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}
o “Jews” = Fake-Eucharist “Orthodox” Exoteric {Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}”

Real Protestants Hold to Mushroom (Esoteric, Gnostic) Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism

[9:13 a.m. November 27, 2020]

… AND FROM NOW ON , I WILL OPENLY CONDEMN FAKE PROTESTANTISM that pushes this institutional “Catholic Church (TM, (R), (C))” fake Christianity, like most so-called “Protestant” FAKE churches that sell magical thinking in place of mystical ASC actual mental pis spiritual salvation and regeneration.

I like the Valentinians’s “{two races} of Christians” idea of how to combine oil and water in one allied universal church-congregation, or totally equivalently, their “{three races} of Christians” view. “Races” here is an analogy, a mytheme, not literal.

{the mushroom-given, Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism “race“} – including the Heavy Metal poets; Diary of a Madman, Ride the Lightning, Caress of Steel, 2112, Neil Peart — but with their no-free-will/monopossibility revelation “taken to completion” per the Egodeath theory, forming a fully developed “‘complete’ explanatory framework” in a Paul Thagard Conceptual Revolutions book’s sense.

{the “fake Mass & meditation”, Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism “race“}

Framework : Luther was railing against the institutional Catholic Church’s for-profit suppression of mushrooms (= the *entire* “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism”, *not* just mushrooms (_{nor just freewill, btw})) and Luther was condemning the fake churches’ substituting for mushrooms, the fake Eucharist; bunk, Literalist, Mushroom-Suppressing, “Ordinary-state Possibilism” – Luther was *not* just arguing against the evil suppression of mushrooms, as everyone assumes (_{or the little accompanying topic of freewill, btw}).

Luther’s camp was arguing against not only suppression of mushrooms, but the entire accompanying worldmodel that is produced by the lack of mushrooms: Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism.

Luther’s camp was arguing against the entire framework, Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism, which is produced by the lack of mushroom.

It is ironic/fitting, that literalist Catholics are always railing against “those evil, Protestant gnostics” — own it. Protestant gnostics = mushroom-revealed Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, against the lie of Mr. Hiostircal Jesus, against the institutional Catholic lie that the Protestant Joh MacArthur still repeats [todo: link my WordPress MacArthur page of his video sermon], that:

“There is no “Transcendent Knowledge”, no “hidden wisdom”, no “esoteric gnosis”.”
— John MacArthur the Catholic “Protestant”

John MacArthur – Strange Fire, Transcendent Knowledge
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/john-macarthur-strange-fire-transcendent-knowledge/

Luther’s camp, aka the “gnostics”, aka the “esoteric Christians”, wanted Christianity to be centered around the entire set, of mushrooms along with the resulting thing they produce, which is Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

Note re: Historical records/trace of my idea development sequence:

I’m going to flip the emphasis — this section began as sketchy, uncertain, poorly founded idea of “Chronology Revisionism” and inside it, the idea developed and came out of it, the more solidly based, strong, good idea, to expand the good idea:
“priests suppressed mushrooms”,
broadening that idea to:
“priests suppressed mushrooms including the entire Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism”.

Chronology Revisionism: All Ancient Christian Texts Were Written in “1500 A.D.” in Competing Monastic Forgery-Mills

Chronology Revisionism: All Ancient Church Fathers Texts & Pauline Epistles (Which Are Unaware of the Life Story of Mr. Historical Jesus on Earth, Invented ~1450-1525) Were Written in “1500 A.D.” in Competing Monastic Forgery-Mills

Blow open your mind & theory-possibilities with Edwin Johnson’s Chronology Revisionism.

A new emphasis that came out from working within the topic/section orig’ly titled “Chronology Revisionism: All Ancient Texts Were Written in “1500 A.D.” in Competing Monastic Forgery-Mills”:

Need major section at top of this Idea Dev page, titled “Luther Protested Against For-Profit Suppression of Mushrooms (= Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism) and Substituting for It, Bunk, Literalist, Mushroom-Suppressing, Ordinary-state Possibilism”

Chronology Revisionism: Protestant Monks Wrote the New Testament in 1525 (which was 825 Sun-Orbits After 1 A.D.)

eg the Church Father writings , Johson says they read like they were written in Luthers day. so I try to group two opposite camps like Pagels’ first 1 or 2 books:

Luther , gnostics, esoterics, mushrooms, Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, no-free-will/monopossibility , “the Greeks” per pagels 1st or second book, “the authentic Pauline epistles” (Johnson laughs at”authentic”) Luther wrote Paul’s “authentic” epistles? something along those lines

The Catholics who were against Luther; Orthodox[in pagels sense], the exoterics, fake eucharist, Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism , freewill moralism, “the Jews” per pagels early book(s) on John gospel or book on Paulines, they wrote the “fake, pseudonymous Pauline epistles” of the New Testament; those anti-Luther forgery factories in 1525 represent their views by the Peter character in the New Testament, which they wrote (the so-called fake epistles, as if any were real, as if Paul were a real character.).

[Johnson says] the writings of “Paul” in the New Testament were written in the year we call “1525”, by Luther’s camp, who [Hoffman says] used mushrooms and held Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism incl the ahistoricity of Jesus [per Pagels], and battled against the authors of teh “fake” espitles, who asserted (for financial profit) Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism.

Doesn’t Luthers early camp of forgers know about Mr. Historical Jesus, if they wrote the all-fake Church Fathers writings? MacArthur, John, says in his video lecture against Cath’m(TM) [not lowercase c catholic church]: the writings of the Chruch Fathers are useless to settle theological disputes, because you can find support for anything and everything in them. Johnson says that’s because the writings of the Church Fathers were ALL forged, in 1525, by the gnostic (mushroom) Luther-camp of monks, battling against the mushroom-suppressing, profit-driven, anti-Luther camp of forgers.

Setting aside all that chronology speculation, a solid takeaway is: expand my idea that “priests suppress mushrooms in order to sell fake religion, snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry], for profit” — chjange taht expand that to:

NOT ONLY [7:50 a.m. November 27, 2020] WAS MUSHROOMS SUPPRESSED BY PRIEST HUCKSTERS FOR PROFIT, ALSO Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism WAS SUPPRESSED — THE ENTIRE PARADIGM THAT IS FUSED PACKAGED TOGERH WITH MUSHROOMS.

PRIESTS SELL SNAKE OIL [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] OF Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism AND THE SUPPRESS MUSHROOMS TOGETHER WITH SUPPRESSING Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

Priests suppress mushrooms in order to sell fake religion, snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry], for profit; selling fake Eucharist & Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism, which requires suppressing mushrooms & Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

_____

tracing my steps to the above positition-definition breakthrough: I’m typing paragraphs out-of-order in this section, I must write about that, an official explanation of the tension between laving a historical record of my thoughts sequence, vs, I have to jump all around in this “Idea Development page 2” webpage in order to develop ideas. solution: need a template keyboard shortcut macro to expand “dts” to: [25:00 a.m. November 32, 2020] <– todo

The solution is lots and lots of timestamps in this Idea Devmt file.

the below was written a few minutes before the above, leading to the above breakthrough of perspective expanding “huckster priests suppressed mushrooms” to “suppressed Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism to sell snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] of Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism”. the Protestant reformation literally was Ott’s Entheogenic Reformation; Luther wanted ppl to know about mushrooms and Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, against the priests who were selling for profit snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] of non-mushrooms, fake eucharist, Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism , with clearing of sin by magical thinking requiring blood literal sacrifice – which John MacArthur condemns wonderfully resoundingly, “Catholics” (Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism snake oil [the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry] salesmen).

“Catholics say that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross isn’t enough; they re-sacrifice (literally, in their minds/ in their for-profit sales literature scam) Christ in every Mass.” The Mass of the evil Church Institution which mushroom-advocate Luther condemned, uses fake, non-mushroom eucharist that has no power to save.

my proposal that “Augustine” writings were writteen by two warring camps that’s why he waffles like Johnson notes about Paul, do you beliefeve the unbelieveable official story :

The early-period Augustine early believed no-free-will

The middle-period Augustine believed in freewill

The late-period Augustine believed no-free-will

BS!!! poppycock & rubbish nonsense! it’s all forgery by Luther and his opponenents

Johnson says the earthly life of Mr. Historical Jesus is unknown to the church fathers, that tale was made up in the year we call “1525” (825 sun-orbits after 1 AD) — or Johnson says something along those lines, something like that. He exclaims there was no Bible until so, so, so late!

Johnson mocks the phrase “not yet, not yet, still not yet???!!! at such extremely late dates, what in the living F?!” — see my articles at [link todo] egodeath.com re: Johnson, Edwin.

he’s like HOW THE F CAN YOU BE SAYING IN 1450, 1500, “THERE STILL NOT YET WAS A BIBLE”? (todo: Quote Johnson, what’s he talking about, that is so ludicrous and breaks the narrative and strains credulity past the breaking point?) about English texts of Bible in 1500?

In effect, something like: the allegedly “ancient” Gnostic “Valentinus” is actually the nom de plume of Martin Luther. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinus_(Gnostic)

My Intuition Has Proved to Be Better than Others’, and I keep sensing that the New Testament was written in 1525 per Edwin Johnson.

All “ancient” religious writings are forgeries written in 1500 in monastic forgery-mills.

History is rubbish; fiction; tales.

Protestant Monks Wrote the New Testament in 1525? I feel and sense that this would be a profitable assumption-framework, helping keep an open mind.

I’ve been open to this, agnostic about chronology, since like 2005. What we know, we don’t actually know.

Our timeline calendar (chronology) rests on a foundation of mush, likely to be jumbled, hard to unravel the reality.

I believe that history prior to the printing press is a mushy pile of complete uncertainty. History is fiction.

Per Edwin Johnson, I don’t know how many times the sun travelled around the earth between Julius Caesar and the printing press. 1500 times? He thinks 800 times; the timeline’s been artificially stretched by 700 years, between 1 A.D. and 1500 A.D.

Johnson suspects that Martin Luther, a “Valentinian Gnostic” in Pagels’ sense (ie Luther was a follower of my Egodeath theory), wrote “Paul’s authentic epistles” in 825 A.D. (which we call “1525 A.D.”), and the Catholic Church corporation wrote the “pseudonymous Pauline epistles” in rebuttal.

Pagels’ book The Gnostic Gospels posits the battling teams as:
“Gnostic vs. Orthodox” Christians.
Freke & Gandy label those teams as:
“Esoteric vs. Exoteric” Christians.

Luther’s “Greeks”/Gnostic/Esoteric Camp Protested for the Entire View {Mushrooms/Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}, against the Entire View {Mushroom-Suppression/ Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}

Luther protested not only about freewill, but about mushrooms and about the whole entire group of ideas , the raft of ideas that mushrooms bring, such as the ahistoricity of Jesus; his was not only Ott’s “Entheogenic Reformation”, not only did Luther argue for no-free-will/monopossibility; he argued against the whole entire framework/view (the “Gnostic” side of the 2 opposed sets of ideas as I extracted in 2002 from Pagels’ first two books, on

Pagels’ book 1) the Gospel of John as “gnostic” writing (= mushrooms & their “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” that they bring); as esoteric Christianity.

Pagels’ book 2) Paul as a gnostic (‘gnostic’ actually means “mushrooms and Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism”).

/ end of section “Luther’s “Greeks”/Gnostic/Esoteric Camp Protested for the Entire View {Mushrooms/Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism}, against the Entire View {Mushroom-Suppression/ Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism}”

Blowing the Lid off the Huge Cover-up of the “Mushroom Mystic-State Analogies” Nature of Christianity:
“Gnostic” or “Esoteric Christianity” Means Mushroom Christianity

Where outsider scholars speak of so-called “gnostic Christians” and “esoteric Christians”, the Egodeath theory (or, the maximal entheogen theory of religion) instead speaks directly in terms of mushroom Christians.

[I moved the apolytrosis 1 page of definitions from here into “Idea Development page 3”. Probably researched on November 26, 2020; Thanksgiving Day.]

I’m mad at how good my Egodeath.com (to 2007) writings are. The bar is too high for MH2020 to kick azz over MH2007-and-earlier. I GOTTA UP MY GAME! I USED TO BRAG THAT NO ONE COULD OUT-RAD ME, THAT I WOULD DEFINE A POSITION SO ALREADY MAXXED OUT, THAT THER… THAT… I wrote that:

“I would rather be wrong, than allow the possibility for anyone to take a more radical position than me.”

You have to stick to your guns and double-down on the Diamond Hammer of Interpretation, even though some people will more doubt the Egodeath theory because of one of the 10 radical postulates that tear to pieces everything in the world that we think we know for a fact, the foundation of our reality, undermining our exoteric world of illusions and presuppositions.

Ahistoricity isn’t a make-or-break postulate which could disprove the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence or the Egodeath theory. It’s not in the Core; it’s in the Periphery.

The ahistoricity of religious founder figures is relevant to the Core theory, and is highly productive to consider, in order to develop the Egodeath theory, of Transcendent Knowledge, and Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.

___

continuing from above:

But that MH2007 f’d up, because I now MH2020 am able to out-radical that feeble, hesitating, half-baked, lukewarm, TIMID AND HALTING MH of 2007.

The Egodeath.com site (2007) is dense and half-blind.

Why in the hell didn’t I have the good sense to simply EQUATE Gnostic Christians and Esoteric Christians as, simply, Psychedelic Christians?

Page at Egodeath.com: Entheogens
Section of page: Great entheogen divide in scholarship
http://www.egodeath.com/Entheogens.htm#_Toc64388187
Especially notice the mapping:
RADICAL ENTHEOGEN SCHOLARS =
GNOSTIC = ESOTERIC = PSYCHEDELIC = MUSHROOM Christianity

Maximal entheogen theorists = gnostic esoteric mushroom Christianity

The maximal entheogen theory of religion says gnostic Christians and esoteric Christians are mushroom Christians.

That’s still backwards.

The maximal entheogen theory of religion focuses on mushroom Christians, which other scholars refer to as “gnostic Christians” and “esoteric Christians”.

Where outsider scholars speak of so-called “gnostic Christians” and “esoteric Christians”, the Egodeath theory (or, the maximal entheogen theory of religion) instead speaks in terms of mushroom Christians.

I’m thankful for being driven to blow the lid off the cover-up of mushrooms in Christianity.

Characterizing my “November Breakthrough” (not an easy case to make); how to convert my subjective manic FEELING of breakthrough, plus my long list of major mytheme decodings, plus my work btfo’ing the mushroom naysayers, how to wrap that up defensibly as “a breakthrough”? Gut says it is; but my skeptical mind says:

“Breakthrough? Thats’ big talk, buddy. “Breakthrough” is cheap talk. Breakthrough? Oh yeah? what is it, you’ve been shining brilliantly for decades, what makes you think this earns such honor? It’s just the same transcendent junk on Repeat. Yawn. Congrats, for treading in place.”

I discovered a ton of evidence, by forming the right perspective and attitude, so that I discovered in a manic week of blasting away the confusions and biases and presuppositions, many revolving around totally non-scholarly, politicized fights over punching-bag Allegro,

Christianity was really all about using mushrooms to enter the intense altered state, and transform your mind regarding the real nature of self-control, without causing self-harm in the altered state.

There was an entire initiation routine in the Mystery Religions very much including Christianity, of how to use mushrooms to enter the intense mystic altered state, and get full satisfactory permanent transformation of your thinking about how personal control works across time, without harming yourself.

The Christian Mystery Religion was and is a technology and technique to allow people to see God’s truth and yet live; to see God and know God, and yet go-on to live, without reverting to deluded illusion-based thinking about control, without suffering any harm or panic and seizure and destruction, only destroying one thing: illusion and being in contradiction of God’s truth, the truth about the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.

Everyone in the field of mushroom scholarship regarding “our” religions, has been scared away by the ghost of Allegro, by the politicized fighting over the idea of mushrooms in Christian art.

I showed that Allegro is not that important and he was motivated by wanting to discredit Christianity but he was basically correct, that Christianity is indeed based on mushrooms.

There wasn’t a “secret cult” but there has been a huge cover-up of the actual, mystic altered state nature of Christianity.

Priests took this religion, that firmly comes from mushroom experiencing, and they suppressed that truth, they suppressed mushrooms, in order to sell people a bunk substitute instead.

I had to write a second article or three, (or four) to stop scholars from being trapped in the refusal to look for mushrooms with an open mind.

• https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/
• https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/
• https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/
• https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/scholars-failure-to-debate-mushrooms-in-christian-art/

Scholars and the field are biased and politicized as hell, and when you propose or assert “mushrooms are the central focus of Christianity, which is analogies that describe ego death in the altered state and how to have complete full ego death without harming yourself,” scholars have a politicized, closed-minded, knee-jerk response: “Allegro’s been discredited!”

Mushrooms are the central focus of Christianity, which is analogies that describe ego death in the altered state and how to have complete full ego death without harming yourself.

I had to shove aside their bias by force, and insist ALLEGRO WAS ANTI-Christianity BUT HE WAS ESSENTIALLY RIGHT, EVEN MUCH MORE SO THAN ALLEGRO HIMSELF COULD HAVE IMAGINED.

Plaincourault is merely the tiniest tip of the huge iceberg, I’m thankful that God made me persevere and reveal a SH*T-TONNE OF MUSHROOMS, right in the very heart of Christianity.

Mushrooms are found IN SPADES, all thoughout Christian art. Brown reported incredible, utter blindness & ignorance of mushrooms by scholars, recently! An art expert [todo: quote Brown’s article] said: “I don’t know what that shape could be.” [todo: facepalm image here]

Not in texts explicitly; that proves nothing; there was a CONFLICT OF INTEREST, and texts were a poor vehicle due to needing copying by hand, and censorship, but art images reveal the truth, together with the high-level analogies in texts, describing the ultimate peak effects of mushrooms, without out doubt.

Hatsis demansd that evidence be restricted to 1 orf the 6 types: literal, in text. Not inart, not stylized, not descirption of fx. 6 am nov 27 2020

6 types of evidence — ıADD TO “CRITERIA” ARITCLE TOP:

text | art/visual

x

literal | stylized | effects <– NICE! 1-word summaries, very useful shorthand.

There are 6 types of evidence for mushrooms in Christian art:

[text|art] x [literal|stylized|effects]

Literal depictions of mushrooms in art
Literal depictions of mushrooms in texts
Stylized depictions of mushrooms in art
Stylized depictions of mushrooms in texts
Depictions of mushroom effects in art
Depictions of mushroom effects in texts

NICE!

Hatsis’s camp (the minimalists) rejects 5/6 of the types of evidence, then claims that “Proper historical scholarship shows there s no evidence for mushrooms in Christian art.” He’s 83% blind!

Hatsis is omitting 83% of the evidence, then claiming there’s no evidence.

The ideas of the gentle {lamb} and the gentle, harmless {dove of the Holy Spirit} are all about describing by analogy how to not harm yourself when purging sin, mental self-contradiction about control, in the mushroom altered state.

There’s been a massive cover-up of this sensible fact, this reality that totally makes sense. Entheogenic Reformation is needed! (Ott).

Jupiter or Zeus’ {eagle} was presented as threatening and overpowering; in contrast, {lamb/dove} helps everyone avoid self-harm during full purging of sin, mental impurity and self-contradiction about control, in the intense mystic state from mushrooms.

I had to forcefully slide aside — despite everyone’s fixation on “Allegro’s been discredited”, slide aside the huge cover-up and bias, preconceptions and senseless baseless presumptions, just slide-aside the entire cover-up and the whole fixation of Allegro, to reveal that — although he sought to and was motivated by trying to discredit Christianity —

o Allegro was right about the mushroom origin, basis, and ongoing (not that he was good enough of a theorist to think it through and make a coherent position statement)

o I believe and can defend as correct, against-physical-harm, and well-fitting within a proper, developed, coherent theory of mystic experiencing:

Allegro was also right about the ahistoricity of Jesus — and, I add: the ahistoricity of Paul, and of various other religious founder figures; there’s a gigantic category error on what kind of writings are religious texts.

Bad people tried to push psychedelics on people to give them a poisoned version of “spirituality” and “entheogenic religion” designed to harm them, as Irvin blew the lid off that motivation.

The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms
Jan Irvin
https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject

But God has the last laugh, given that –even if the pushers of entheogenic spiritual enlightenment believed they were harming and delivering illegitimate garbage, it happens they inadvertently spread the flesh of Christ the redeemer, healer of sin.

Quote bible’s gnostic verse:

⁷ But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

⁸ Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

1 Corinthians 2

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+2&version=KJV

1 Corinthians 2 (KJV):

2 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

² For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

³ And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

⁴ And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:

⁵ That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

⁶ Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:

⁷ But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

⁸ Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

⁹ But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

¹⁰ But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

¹¹ For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

¹³ Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

¹⁴ But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

¹⁵ But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

¹⁶ For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.

Books About Mushroom Christians (“Gnostic/Esoteric” Christians)

The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis (1973)

The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis
Elaine Pagels
1973
Heracleon’s Commentary on John
Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series
http://amzn.com/1555403344
My review at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RY2KUAP5C0RTJ/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1555403344 — holy sh*t its long – it’s probably at Egodeath.com too and more readable there.
Damn, MH2013(?) is making MH2020 look lazy and dumb: Has page #s so you know I’m not just making things up, projecting my wishes onto Pagels/ Heraclitus.

Review of “The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis”

Michael Hoffman
5.0 out of 5 stars 
The elect vs. moralists, sacrament of apolytrosis (redemption)
Reviewed on January 19, 2013 <– not 2002?

This reprint of Pagels’ 1973 book based on her dissertation …

I provide a summary here, assisted by decades of original work on my theory of religious experiencing and metaphor.  The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God?  is a readable preparation for Pagels’ early books. Pagels’ book shows that Valentinians presented the following 2-level system. See my comparable contrast summary in my review of Pagels’ book  The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters .

Higher Christians (‘pneumatic’; spiritual): … [first bullet of each pair]
Lower Christians (‘psychic’; mental): … [second bullet of each pair]

o Don’t rely on the historicity of the Bible (page 12). What matters is the mystic-state meaning and metaphorical analogies. Deny the uniqueness of the Christian revelation (page 15).
o Believe in the uniqueness of the Christian revelation, emphasizing the literalness of its occurrence of historical events.
Pagels discusses ahistoricity, or the unimportance or irrelevance of Jesus’ literal historical life and crucifixion, on pages 12-16, 44, 46, and 118.

o Received the higher Eucharist; they are given grace through receiving the sacrament of apolytrosis (which I point out is entheogenic-equivalent, like the “sacraments of Phrygia and Eleusis” mentioned on page 15).
o Only have baptism by water, associated with forgiving sins but in such a way that free-will moral thinking is still implied (various pages in Pagels). They only eat literal ordinary bread and drink literal ordinary wine.
Pagels discusses the Eucharist, wine, feast, banquet, eating, drinking, sacrament of apolytrosis, bridechamber, marriage wedding banquet, and other entheogen-equivalent topics, on page 15 (sacrament of Eleusis), 62-65, 76-82, 92-96, and 115. See my review of  Gnostic Visions: Uncovering the Greatest Secret of the Ancient World  and  Flights of the Soul: Visions, Heavenly Journeys, and Peak Experiences in the Biblical World .

o Are masters of metaphor interpretation, describing experiential insights received through the sacrament of apolytrosis (redemption). Are able to interpret all brands of mystic writing (page 15).
o Are literalists. They depend on a historical reading of events in the Bible, assuming that those events literally happened. This prevents them from understanding spiritually (which I explain explicitly: they don’t understand the entheogen Eucharist and its revelation of no-free-will).

o Think in terms of this higher vs. lower understanding, making this distinction.
o Don’t believe in or understand higher Christianity and metaphor reading in terms of spiritual experience.

o Redemption and heaven is now, for the elect.
o Redemption and heaven is in the future, in the age to come.

o Receive redemption, purely by God’s grace (matching Reformed theology, my theory points out). Though veiled as “election” and explained indirectly through symbolism, these Christians basically are brought to believe the supposedly “pagan” idea of no-free-will, upon discovering that they are among the elect and receive their redemption though grace — though they initially and originally think, mistakenly, using the lower way of thinking.
o The lower Christian reaches, if they are morally good, Salvation (still reifies the free-will moral premise). These can earn salvation through works. Receive a lower salvation, a forgiveness of sins, while that forgiveness still reifies free-will moral thinking; ‘ethics’ per Pagels. They believe in free-will moral agency. They conceptualize religion in terms of freewill ethics and moral conduct as the way to earn salvation.

____

Pagels discusses determinism, election theology, grace, works, and moral ethics on pages 49, 57, 72, 82-83, 98-113, and 120-122 especially (that is the end and climax of the book). Pagels explains how Valentinians enabled treating both higher and lower Christians both as authentic Christians.

Valentinians are interesting Christian Gnostics because they define an ‘asymmetric theology’ (a term from my theory) that enables treating both higher and lower Christians both as authentic Christians.

Pagels’ doesn’t point out (but my theory does) that Augustinian theology has this same asymmetry: those who are not saved, are condemned by their own freewill-type moral guilt; the elect are chosen for redemption by God in a no-free-will type of framework.

_____

Mainstream writer Origin accuses Gnostics of asserting a fatalistic determinism theology of salvation like the pagans (page 49).

How can Pagels not mention Reformed theology here, as my theory covers?

Pagels writes “To counter the fatalism of pagan religion and philosophy, mainstream Christians stress freewill ability against fatalism, and dismiss this election theology as determinism, if not arrogance.

Plotinus also criticizes the Valentinians for not discussing ethics, the soul, purifying the soul, and right conduct.” (page 122)

She characterizes ‘the soul’ as being a factor that’s part of free-will ethics in lower Christianity, in Valentinian Gnosticism.

_____

Per Pagels, Valentinians as a concession to the mainstream Church that was trying to maximize its member count, Valentinians didn’t demonize freewillist Christians as “not real Christians”, but rather, included them as lower Christians, who could be saved after death, in the future time to come.

But per Pagels, page 112, Gnostics tend and want to posit 2 races:
o The race of the elect.
o The race of perdition.

_____

But Valentinians wanted to define an inclusive framework, so they posited 3 races, as a concession to the mainstream church:

o The race of the elect. (I point out these are those destined to believe in no-free-will, amply supportable by quotes in this book, though per the end of the book, that “pagan determinism” was veiled.)

o The race of the freewillists, who seek a freewill morality type of salvation, that the higher Christians should humor them about and theologically affirm per Valentinian theology)

o The race of those who are predestined definitely for perdition. Pagels says little (page 104) about this group and why Valentinian theology even had this grouping.

_____

Pagels (page 104) points out that the Gnostic Heracleon doesn’t use the term “free will”, but discusses “their only choice is whether to obey the will of the Father or the will of the devil”.

Heracleon’s scheme of characterizing psychic (lower) Christians is essentially thinking in the mode of freewill moral agency.

Heracleon’s Valentinianism is a veiled no-free-will theology that sort of reifies a freewillish moral salvation system, for lower Christians.

Heracleon’s 2-level theology tries to keep freewillist moralists on board as legitimate but lower members of the same inclusive church.

_____

The mainstream church tried to maximize its member count and that the Valentinian broad-church Gnostics also held that goal.

Regarding the Social Gospel: I point out that Gnostics are accused of being anti-world, and that recently, salvation-focused Protestants are accused of “Protestant Gnosticism”, meaning that these Protestants demonize the world and seek only to individually escape from it, supposedly like Gnostics sought.

But this book about Valentinian Gnosticism doesn’t support that “anti-world” accusation made against Gnostics at all; rather, this book shows Valentinian Gnosticism was concerned with accepting both higher and lower Christianity into the mainstream church.

_____

This book doesn’t discuss the social gospel (flat egalitarian society) as the New Testament Christianity’s driving goal, by either the mainstream church, nor by Valentinian broad-church Gnostics, nor by supposed elitist, supposed anti-world Gnostics.

The book does mention Gnostic cautions against elitism and arrogance on the part of higher Christians — I point out that the same caution is found in Reformed Theology.

_____

The grand finale of Pagels’ book shows why it’s taboo, silently forbidden, to bring together the topics of no-free-will and Reformed theology (as my theory does): to openly admit that Christian theology asserts no-free-will would be to admit an equivalence of Christianity with paganism, and shuts out the freewillist majority of people, or threatens to eliminate the beloved, popular, and lucrative church-friendly idea of human freedom.

_____

Her grand finale of the book, the Synthesis section, inspires me to define the church as being “universal” in the sense of using a veiled combining of two incompatible theologies: no-free-will as higher theology, together with a provisional freewill theology for the lower mass of Christians.

Pagel’s Synthesis section is the summary of the book, and describes the Valentinian “complexity of their doctrine”.

She describes how Valentinian theology veiled its determinism (election theology) aspect, “to express their apprehension of election in mythical and symbolic terms … imagistic and symbolic.” (page 122; the last sentence of the book). ‘Election’ means being fated for redemption.

_____

Election theology was used by the Gnostic Heracleon and the mainstream Origen to obscure and deny the “pagan” fatalism and determinism, by relabelling the terms to enable indirectly asserting fatedness and by avoiding discussing fatedness in general but instead restricting the topic to election and using roundabout wording.

_____

Pagels’ grand finale section is titled Anti-gnostic polemics: the development of a theory of “free will”. She explains how two incompatible theologies — elite determinism and popular freewillism — were combined into an oil-and-water or two-level hybrid system, “valid on different levels”, in an effort to maximize the size of the church.

It’s great that Pagels’ dissertation essentially points this out, though her presentation is ineffective at communicating this big revelation, which aptly describes theology in general: an exercise in combining distinct systems of elite no-free-will theology (veiled, occluded, evasive, obscurantist, or in-denial) and popular free-will moralism.

_____

After reading her conclusion, I describe all religion as deliberately veiled no-free-will, disguised as freewill moralism promises of rewards, of salvation, per the scheme of both Valentinianism and the mainstream writers such as Origen, as revealed by Elaine Pagels.

— Michael Hoffman

/ end of section “The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis”

The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters

http://www.egodeath.com/pagelsgnosticpaul.htm
Profound summary by me.

Damn it, it’s such a good analysis, it makes me feel like I have made zero progress since writing my 2002 book review.

My November 2020 breakthrough [todo: characterize] completely confirms these forgotten things I wrote in 2002.

My latest perspective-insight totally confirms what the gnostic version of the Paul character asserts according to Pagels.

The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters
Elaine Pagels
1975
http://amzn.com/1563380390
Here’s my 2002 review at Amazon — same as egodeath.com page.

WHAT PAGELS AND MH2002 ARE MISSING IS:

THE CONFIDENT CERTAINTY THAT:

THE ‘ESOTERIC/GNOSTICS’ SIDE OF HER “ESOTERIC/GNOSTICS VS. EXOTERIC/ORTHODOX” COMPARISON WAS *POWERED BY MUSHROOMS*.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2D7ZEG0WAOQZN/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1563380390
Copied from Amazon, probably same as egodeath site but without the nice side-by-side contrast-table:
5.0 out of 5 stars 
Contributes toward 2-level model of Christianity
Reviewed by Michael Hoffman, January 14, 2002 —

I’m surprised this book does not summarize the distinctions it constantly makes between the two main conceptions of Christianity according to the Valentinians’ reading of Paul.

_____

This book has a lot to offer for the Christ-myth theory.

The book explains the Valentinian gnostic reading of Paul’s early epistles.

“Jews” means literalists, the uninitiated, lower Christians.

“Greeks” means spiritualists, the initiated, higher Christians.

Paul encouraged the higher Christians to feel united or married with the lower Christians.

_____

The book would greatly benefit from a 2-column listing of the ideas the Valentinians associated with the higher and lower Christians.

As a philosopher and theorist of ego death who is looking for a rational reading of the Christian scriptures, I agree with everything that falls into the group of ideas the Valentinians associated with higher Christians, and I disagree with all the ideas that fall into the group of ideas the Valentinians associated with lower Christians.

_____

The two sets of doctrines — the book The Gnostic Paul divides the religious ideas as follows, from the Valentinian reading of Paul’s early writings:

HIGHER, ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY
“Greeks“
The religion of Heresy
Early Paul
The Truth, wisdom, enlightenment
The initiated, adults
A secret mystery is revealed to some apostles, but not to other apostles
The sacrament of apolytrosis [<– *MUSHROOMS* ROUTINELY USED — THE GASOLINE PROPELLING THE WHOLE DAMN CAR!! – MH2020 far more confident than MH2002] (apo- can mean after-, post-, and separate redemption) in addition to common eucharist
Redemption
Spiritual freedom from moral codes — but metaphysical determinism/fatedness, predestined election
Reject idea of responsible moral agency and idea of our culpability of sin/guilt
The apple was a gift of gnosis
All blame is placed on the Ground, not us
No death on the Cross (it was mythic and could be seen as a pseudo-death)
Sacrifice is mythic, mental, conceptual, a mental experience
No bodily resurrection
Mythic Christ
Belief in higher and lower Christians (with a principled respect for the lower)
No point in moral-reward heaven or moral-punishment hell
We are spirits, controlled by God

LOWER, EXOTERIC CHRISTIANITY
“Jews”
The Orthodox religion
Peter, The Church Fathers and their forged later Paul
The Lie, error, darkness, foolishness
The uninitiated, children
No secret mystery; all apostles have authority through simple ordinary seeing of miraculous resurrection
The common eucharist, only
Salvation, baptism
Spiritual enslavement to morality — with delusion of free will and choosing faith oneself
Belief in responsible moral agency and our culpability for sin/guilt
All blame is placed on us
The apple was bad
Jesus died on the Cross
Sacrifice is bodily, bloody, magically effective, physical <–
Bodily resurrection
Supernaturalist Jesus
Disbelief in higher level of Christianity — to obtain unity and harmony of the Church
Moral-reward heaven and moral-punishment hell exist, for the responsible agent/soul
We are souls, controlled by ourselves

Each point I listed above should have page references to Pagel’s book to prove that the ideas break out this way in her book.

_____

An important reason why Christ-myth scholars should read this book is that Pagels shows how to read the scriptures in a 2-valued ambiguous way, where the meaning deliberately toggles between two distinct readings.

It’s not just that Paul was misinterpreted; Pagel’s treatment seems to indicate that Paul deliberately wrote in an encoded, ambiguous way that flips between the two conceptual systems.

If people were confused, it is because Paul meant for them to be confused and carefully chose his words so that they could support both readings: literal and spiritual. The epistles were written as encoded mysteries and should be read as such.

_____

The most remarkable thing presented repeatedly in this book is the idea that the Pauline writings intentionally withheld the higher view from the uninitiated.

[I’m skeptical about the way I worded it there. Am I or is Pagels mischaracterizing?]

Pagels never ventures to explain why.

Perhaps the Valentinians wanted to protect and preserve the delusion of the ego just as we protect children.

This problem extends beyond the Christian mystery-religion; the Greek mystery religions forbade, by punishment of death, publically revealing the things shown in the mysteries.

There were political reasons to veil a deterministic belief system, because cosmic determinism has been used to justify an oppressive status quo (“I was meant, fated, and divinely ordained by Necessity to dominate you”) rather than democracy.

So the Pauline writings were deliberately written in a way that would be read in a supernatural, Literalist way but could be read as a non-supernatural, mystery-religion, mystic allegory.

/ review by MH at Amazon

/ end of section “The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters”

The Gnostic Gospels

The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels
http://amzn.com/0679724532
1979

The Age of Entheogens [, The Pharmacratic Inquisition, and The Entheogenic Reformation] & the Angels’ Dictionary (1995)

I might have to check Egodeath.com and Amazon both, for comments written by me. I guess most of my Amazon reviews are still at Amazon.

Book:
The Age of Entheogens & the Angels’ Dictionary
Jonathan Ott
1995
http://amzn.com/0961423471
My review:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R22RVGR2PFJN69/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0961423471 —
Michael Hoffman
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best on the entheogenic origin of religions
Reviewed on March 23, 2002
A solid 5 stars. 2 excellent short books in 1:

“Mini-book 1:
The Age of Entheogens, The Pharmacratic Inquisition, and The Entheogenic Reformation
Describes that the ancients used psychoactives all the time, then the power establishment suppressed them, but now entheogens are becoming available again.

“Mini-book 2:
The Angels’ Dictionary
A dictionary of entheogen religion terminology.

“This book is widely available new; simply search. Highly recommended. Ott is one of the very few writers, even one of very few entheogenists, who have their head … on right about psychoactives, in this twisted world. He tells it straight about the motives behind the prohibition-for-profit gravy train. See my Amazon info area for more information.

11 people found this helpful
/ review of Ott

Web search on the term “Entheogenic Reformation“, which isn’t the title of the book:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22jonathan+ott%22+%22entheogenic+reformation%22
“The Age of Entheogens [book] is a radical reexamination of the history of western civilization, exploring the brutal suppression of ecstatic, experiential religions by the 1600-year-old Pharmacratic Inquisition, [misleading – per the Maximal theory, there was heavy normal use of mushrooms within the heart of Christianity -mh] leading up to the contemporary Entheogenic Reformation, or frank replacement with genuine entheogens of the placebo sacraments at the hollow center of today’s purely symb…”

JONATHAN OTT: ENTHEOGENIC REFORMATION 1/8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR-jXiIX3Es

/ end of section “The Age of Entheogens [, The Pharmacratic Inquisition, and The Entheogenic Reformation] & the Angels’ Dictionary (1995)”

The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1999)

Book:
The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ
1999
later, vague title:
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
http://amzn.com/0609807986
Editions & subtitles – at Egodeath.com

/ end of section “The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1999)”

Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (2020)

Book:
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ
Richard Carrier
http://amzn.com/1634311949
October 20, 2020

/ end of section “Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (2020)”

The “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” theory of mythemes

A proper descriptive, useful label for the mytheme-decoding component of the Egodeath theory.

I badly need a slick name for my decoding-theory! I mean my interpretive theory that items in religious mythology are decoded by mapping them to Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism. The Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of mythemes in religious mythology.

the “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” theory of mythemes

That’s a pretty good label for this component of the Egodeath theory.

/ end of section “The “Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism” theory of mythemes”

Labels for Components of the Egodeath Theory

the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of mytheme-decoding
the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity
the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art
the maximal mushroom theory of Greek and Christian art
the maximal entheogen theory of religion
Helleno-Christianity
the “mixed-wine mushroom wine” theory

Favorite Labels for Components of the Egodeath Theory

the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity

the maximal mushroom theory of Greek religion

the maximal mushroom theory of Greek and Christian religion

the maximal mushroom theory of Hellenistic religion

the maximal mushroom theory of Helleno-Christianity

the maximal entheogen theory of religion

the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of mytheme-decoding

the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of religious mythology

Comments on the Above Preferred Labels/Terms

To go fully big in scope, only then, switch to the technical, offputting, obscurantist term ‘entheogen’, which makes the Theory sound like it’s complicated and obscure.

Consider/debate/analyze, for normal main usage:

the maximal mushroom theory of religion (? consider its merits over:)

the maximal entheogen theory of religion (seems justified; if you’re going to go so broad as to say “all religion”, it is consistent to say “entheogens” instead of just “mushrooms”.

The “favorite labels” defined here are the primary-use labels for most general-purpose coverage/discussion: notice the strategic simplicity-first, simple clarity first, principle of “point to the center, not edge”.

Normally, most of the time, unless there is a topical special reason to focus on special cases, point to the center/normal main case, not greedily “the edge, with broadest possible scope”.

Also: whenever possible, use common English words, not neologisms (‘entheogen’).

‘Helleno-Christianity‘ means Hellenistic religion, Christianity, and Gnosticism. Includes Egypt, and equivalent ideas in Ancient Near East eg ancient Persia. BUT, centered around, as paradigmatic, Greek religion and early Christianity before Mr. Historical Jesus arrived.

Just because I specify the *center* (that is: ‘mushrooms’, ‘Greek’, ‘Christian’, ‘Helleno-‘) does NOT mean that the scope is restricted to that!

Do not (normally, usually) use the broadest possible terms; instead, use strategy of simplicity leveraging pointing to the very center.

Focus on the center, not the edge!

Examples of the problem-introducing, problem-freighted “edge” would be: “all entheogens” – oh now we have to debate Scopalamine, Oopium as “visionary”, cannabis, NO END OF CONFUSION AT THE EDGE-CASES.

The ahistoricity hypothesis is not required; it is peripheral, but I’m honest and clear what I’m thinking.

Don’t say ‘entheogen’ unless there’s a specific compelling reason to draw attention to exceptions; special-cases (Lily Datura Scopalamine; Acacia/Rue DMT) — don’t be greedy in scope of coverage; prefer *SIMPLICITY* to BROADNESS.

Simplicity of expression is more important than completeness of scope.

The word ‘mushroom’ is a MILLION times clearer (ie incomparably clearer) to a general audience than the offputting term that no one has ever heard of, “complicated alien term ‘entheogen'”.

The term ‘entheogen’ complicates the Theory. ‘psychedelic(s)’ has its own raft of problems, connotations, ambiguity of :
‘psychedelic’ is an adjective;
‘psychedelics’ is a noun.
The term ‘mushroom’ is wonderful b/c it is both a noun and an adjective, nice; eg: the mushroom theory

With the term ‘entheogen’ (variants), you have to decide between “Entheogenic” (adj) vs “entheogen” (acts as adj & noun). ‘mushroom’ is great grammatically, zero problems, SO CLEAR!

___

I like the above two labels/phrases a lot, for most general-purpose usage and ease of typing, and utter maximum simplicity of expression. Unpretentious, uncomplicated, and if you are obsessed with Acacia/Rue, you are free to piggyback onto the MAIN idea, which is Mushrooms. Fixated on Amanita? The above labels can handle that; as a variant nuance detail to support the basic main idea/label, ‘mushroom’.

The following are NOT the main labels, but are very useful secondary variant forms for topical writings that focus on art:

the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art

the maximal mushroom theory of Greek art

They above are easiest to type, very forceful, use plain common words, no Shift key, no extra quotation marks, no italics key-combinations. KEEP – IT – SIMPLE. Make the Theory LOOK AS DIRT-SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE.

I like that phrase / label a lot – both the Christianity and the “Greek religion” versions, above.

In general-purpose usage, I like ‘mushroom‘ more than ‘entheogen‘, which signals a bad message connotation:
“THIS THEORY IS COMPLICATED AND OBSCURE”.

Do not need to italicise, quote, or capitalize! eg:

Have you heard of the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity by Cybermonk?

I like that phrase (& non italic, non upppecase, non-quotation marks) a lot. easy to type, very forceful, plain common words.

Not good idea:
the mushroom theory of Christianity <– lose the term ‘maximal’? can; therefore, should? Maybe. ‘maximal’ helps press the point, it earns its keystrokes/character-count.

the maximal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian religion

lowercase is easier to type than

the Maximal Mushroom Theory of Greek & Christian Religion

the maximal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian religion

See, even if you settle on the words, there’s still variants of casing! and italics! Capitalize “the”?????

There’s no end of quibbles! Or, of options/variants that one should use on an as-needed basis.

BE FLEXIBLE AND EXPRESSIVE AND DIRT-SIMPLE while still being able to handle variants, exceptions, nuanced distinctions.

200-character limit for a general audience with no context.

SPEAK SIMPLE PLAIN ENGLISH.

KISS — KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID, regarding terminology, labels, names of the Egodeath theory and components of it.

DON’T MAKE IT COMPLICATED AND OBSCURE.

8TH-GRADER HALLWAY CONVERSATION.

140-character posts for a random general audience CAN AND SHOULD BE CLEAR.

Keep it as simple and basic, as main-line-of-reasoning, as possible. No one knows what ‘entheogen’ means, what ‘Possibilism’ means, or Eternalism. So flip back and forth; mix it up.

Today I am going to work out whether to italicize “the”. I must create a WordPress article for that. Be sure to include a Table of Contents, Acknowledgements, peer review, and Bibliography.

Labels of Parts of the Egodeath Theory

re: labels of parts of The Theory (not completely resolved; I should attempt to tighten phrase-usage definitions – later, not now).

the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (named 1988 therefore = the Core theory)

Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism

the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity <– my focus this past week, proving this theory. ‘mushroom’ means Psilocybin eg Cubensis & Liberty Cap. Amanita represents Psilocybe; Amanita is an honorary Psilocybe.

“Amanita is an honorary Psilocybe” is not quite the same as per the Entheos journal article Lily Datura; that “Any psychoactive represents all entheogens“.

Any psychoactive represents all entheogens.

Amanita is an honorary Psilocybe.

I will stick with elegant term ‘mushroom’, forget about the confusing details of Amanita vs. Psilocybe, or Cubensis vs. Liberty Cap, etc.

Added Cutting, Sarcastic, Burn, Call-them-out “Italian Pine Tree” Paragraph

Added the following CUTTING sarcastic Brinckmann paragraph to the “Criteria Proof” article:

High-Resolution Complete Canterbury Psalter
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f11.item

There are Liberty Cap mushrooms in the cap of the mushroom tree, depicted literally; this is an example of “Literal Depictions of the Physical Form of the Mushroom”.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=liberty+cap+mushroom

Or maybe that mushroom-tree is a depiction of an Italian Pine tree, as art historian Brinckmann explained in his 1906 book. You see, unbeknownst to mycologists, medieval artists worked off of templates, which got screwy over the years, as the top art historian Panofsky explained in a letter to Pope-banker Wasson.

_____

The weirdest thing about writing: the more words and qualifiers you add, the more confusion you bring in.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID. (KISS) when possible, unless there’s a special reason/context. Cyb seems to choose well, in saying the broad obscure term ‘entheogen’ in the intro/summary of the Maximal position, for the Muraresku quasi-academic context.

Use these two great labels:

The Maximal Mushroom Theory of Christianity

The Maximal Mushroom Theory of Greek and Christian Religion

The Maximal Mushroom Theory of Mystery Religions

etc., arb. variants.

the Core theory (1985-1997)
vs.
(the Myth & History portion of the Egodeath theory) 1998-2013-2020

the Egodeath theory

https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/correcting-key-points-in-muraresku-the-immortality-key/ — Cyb’s formulation/characterization of part of the Egodeath theory: the maximal entheogen theory of Religion (well not exactly; that’s a theory about history) —
“drugs routinely trigger the loose cognition state, enabling the transition from the possibilism model of time and control to the eternalism model, and that religious art depicts this via analogy.”

Longer context at start of Cyberdisciple’s post: Note his labels for the theory or portions of the Theory: ‘mushroom’ is a good variant, also ‘entheogen’ as he uses, is great. BUT I want to more emphasize Mushroom, than Entheogen, re: Christianity. the Maximal Entheogen Theory of religion –> more emphasis now moving fwd, I’ll say when possible:

the Maximal Mushroom Theory of Christianity

the maximal mushroom theory of Christianity

the maximal mushroom theory of Hellenistic religion

the Maximal Mushroom Theory of Hellenistic Religion

‘Hellenistic Religion’ includes primitive Christianity, which is the Hellenized version of the Old Testament religion. Good book by Luther Martin.

re: the importance of SIMPLIFIED THEORY-DESCRIPTION/LABELLING:

KEY POINT: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS, PSILOCYBE MUSHROOMS; “MUSHROOMS”. You don’t NEED nuance about acacia/rue dmt, Lily Datura, diff’c between Amanita vs. Psilocybe, etc.

I use a “minimal sufficient explanation” strategy. ie: “Mushrooms”. No need to use WORDS THAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS:

WTF IS ‘ENTHEOGEN’???? It obscures, it does not help. That’s one argument, anyways. Give it (simplification to ‘mushrooms’) a shot.

In the end, I’m flexible; sometimes ‘psychedelics’, mushrooms, entheogens. Terms ‘Possibilism’ and ‘Eternalism’ have big pros & big cons.

There is no 1 correct label for a thing, for the entirety or for part of a multipart explanatory framework.

Cyb’s Intro to New Post; Labels of the Theory

Cyb writes:

“This post is for correcting the main claims in Muraresku’s The Immortality Key about drugs in Western religious history. All the confusions in the book on this topic can be resolved by adopting the Maximal Entheogen Theory of religion. The book creates a muddled mess by employing a Moderate Entheogen Theory of religion when speculating about religious history and a Minimal Entheogen Theory of religion when evaluating evidence.

“By Maximal, I mean: drugs have been used commonly throughout the world and throughout culture. The question typical of the Maximal approach is “to what extent were drugs used in x religion?”

“Authors in the Maximal camp are inherently aligned with the Egodeath Theory’s formulation that drugs routinely trigger the loose cognition state, enabling the transition from the possibilism model of time and control to the eternalism model, and that religious art depicts this via analogy.

“The Egodeath Theory points out drugs in religious art and text, but more importantly decodes the religious art and text. [“as x y z”, I think is needed here.]”

/ end of section “Labels for Components of the Egodeath Theory”

No One at the Bridge – Fresh Explanation of Song Lyrics

These are extremely relevant, highly descriptive poetic lyrics, which describe the peak experiencing of the altered state, by use of analogies.  This is the song “No One at the Bridge” by Rush, lyrics by Neil Peart.

[10:14 a.m. Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2020]

I added this section to the About page, which I’m building-out.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/about/

Lyrics are shown here for academic analysis and commentary.

“The sky is pitching violently [perceptual distortion in the altered state: visual undulation]
Drawn by shrieking winds [the egoic control system doesn’t propel its thoughts, in the altered state; thoughts are driven forward by mystic {wind} without egoic control]
Seaspray blurs my vision [perceptual distortion in the altered state: blurring of vision]
The waves roll by so fast [perceptual distortion in the altered state: visual undulation]
Save my ship of freedom [the experience of freewill-premised control power vanishes, but is desperately needed, as control increasingly seizes and is cancelled in the loss of the experience of having personal control; a “deus ex machina”, artificial transcendent rescue from outside the entire egoic control system and alien to it, is required]
I’m lashed helpless to the mast [the altered-state experience of non-control; suspension of the familiar experience of wielding control-power; an allusion to the myth of Ulysses]

Remembering when first I held [when first discovered the altered state]
The wheel in my own hands [the illusion of egoic control power, supported in the ordinary state but not in the altered state]
I took the helm so eagerly [naively expected to be able to control the experience]
And sailed for distant lands
But now the sea’s too heavy
And I just… I just don’t understand
Why must my crew desert me? [vanishing of the accustomed experience & perspective of being a control agent wielding personal control power]
When I need… I need a guiding hand… [the power of the egoic control hand vanishes]

Call out for direction
And there’s no one there to steer [the egoic control agent illusion vanishes in the altered state]
Shout out for salvation [a good time-tested idea; to rescue viable control and return control-stability, the mind has to learn to consciously place trust its own uncontrollable source of control thoughts, which was secretly always the case anyway]
But there’s no one there to hear [not that God doesn’t respond to prayer; the meaning here is “there’s no egoic control agent here”]
Cry out supplication [pleading, begging for control-stability earnestly & humbly]
For the maelstrom is near [cybernetic control seizure and nullity, cancellation]
Scream out desperation [continuing to rely on the premise or presumption of egoic control power, is futile and leads to increasing panic and seizure and instability until changing the mental worldmodel from Possibilism to Eternalism per Mystery Religion initiation]But no one cares to hear [not that there’s no God or rescuer; that would contradict all mystic tradition and experience; the emphasis here has to be on “no one”; no egoic control agent.  The survival-protecting sense of caring and values and self-preservation is suspended and transcended, in the altered state] 

— song No One at the Bridge, album Caress of Steel, Rush / Neil Peart, 1975

My Version 1 analysis, at the Egodeath site:
http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22921

At Egodeath.com, I need to rewrite my comments that read like “there is no God to save me”, which contradicts all mystic and Mystery Religion.

When I commented on those lines at some point in 1997-2007, I helplessly felt I disagreed with those lyric lines, instead of doing a better, stronger-handed interpretation.

Today above, I wrote a better interpretation of the apparently disagreeable lyric lines.

At Egodeath.com, I need to rewrite my comments that read like “there is no God to save me”, which contradicts all mystic and Mystery Religion.

When I commented on those lines at some point in 1997-2007, I helplessly felt I disagreed with those lyric lines, instead of doing a better, stronger-handed interpretation.

Today above, I wrote a better interpretation of the apparently disagreeable lyric lines.

I focused today on interpreting the seemingly incorrect lyric lines as “there is no ego-as-god”, instead of assuming they had to be interpreted as asserting “there is no transcendent god outside the egoic control system, to provide and restore control-stability.”

/ end of section “No One at the Bridge – Fresh Explanation of Song Lyrics”

{helm, helmsman}, Dionysus, King Odysseus/Ulysses Tied to Mast

Ship Helm images:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ship+helm

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/ships-helm-clifford-beck.jpg —

https://press.rebus.community/mythologyunbound/chapter/dionysusbacchus
“While at sea, the crew tried to tie him up, but the bonds fell away of their own accord. At this point the helmsman recognized that this was no ordinary boy and tried to prevent any harm coming to Dionysus, but the captain [vs. the helmsman] ignored the helmsman’s warning and told the sailors to hold on to the boy. Suddenly, wine began to flow all over the ship; vines began to grow from the sails and ivy began to twine around the mast. Then Dionysus turned into a lion and a bear appeared on the deck. The lion seized the captain and began to tear him apart, and the sailors jumped into the sea, turning into dolphins [rescuers]. Dionysus, now back in human form [a youth], prevented the helmsman from following his comrades into the sea and told him that his aid would be rewarded and no harm would come to him.”

mytheme decoded: {captain vs. helmsman}:

Hypothesis [quickly elevated to “postulate” or “principle” or successful “mytheme mapping” (ie to the direct real referent of how the mind works in the ASC)]:

{captain} = false, illusory aspect of personal control system

{helmsman} = redeemable portion of personal control system

{King} Odysseus/Ulysses {tied helplessly} (cybernetic power embedded in spacetime block as a worldline) to the mast, lest he be attracted to the siren song altered-state attractor that leads toward cybernetic control-seizure death on the {rocks} (block universe):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Mosa%C3%AFque_d%27Ulysse_et_les_sir%C3%A8nes.jpg —

_____

/ end of section “{helm, helmsman}, Dionysus, King Odysseus/Ulysses Tied to Mast”

mytheme decoded: {caduceus}

I finally decoded {caduceus}!! Figured out how to think about it, relate it to other mythemes, & explain it.

Meta-Theory:

In terms of Paul Thagard’s Conceptual Revolutions meta-theory:

I succeeded at connecting-in an explanatory datum case (the mytheme {caduceus}), into the new explanatory framework (Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism)

mytheme: {caduceus}, early & late forms: Y configuration; Y symbol (non-branching bottom vs. branching top); a form of snake vs tree, contrasting 2 parallel lines vs a single line, is “the message from the gods” that “heals”/cures.

For the first time, I lost a little data at WordPress. Not much I think, but I lost this:

MY HANDS HURT FROM SLAMMING OUT BREAKTHROUGHS ALL WEEK

Gotta keep an eye on that “Update” button state. Continue to hit Save after every sentence.

It’s hard to keep my typing linear from top-to-bottom in a section — so I lose the history of which paragraph I wrote first.

Who cares, I decoded it amidst the below text — I came up w/ the hypothesis while briefly glancing at the “Hatsis Roasts Himself” article; all the below is just
testing that hypothesis,
trying to find the pictures,
comparing the newer form,
writing out the argument,
raising doubts, and
resolving those doubts by further “experimenting” and
analysis/ theory development:
can the theory’s interpretation approach handle the odd shapes?

What is a generalize form of the theory; what are all possible shapes to express

Some of the text writeup is just articulating the claim of discovery; what does it mean to “represent Possibilism vs Eternalism” as a “message” that “cures”?

Y or
a snake on a tree or
a snake on a debranched pole; or
a debranched tree trunk (of rock) with snake around it; or
a debranched tree trunk (of rock) with with a lizard running up it, etc.
snake body with human torso w/ arms
a salamander-serpent next to a Y-branching mushroom tree
etc

Compare the early Hermes’ caduceus to a snake on a pole.
[12:01 a.m. November 26, 2020]

Equivalent to Moses’ rigid serpent on a pole (de-branched tree) to heal fatal snake-bite.

I almost need a screen recorder. The below “I GOT IT” line looks sedate and calm but it was more excited wording originally.

Then I became doubtful, made my wording less boldly certain of breakthrough, then I realize my original insight held up to critique.

My instinct was, as soon as I saw the word ‘caduceus’ in his article, I knew that {the message that heals} has to be — I don’t care what shape it is — the Theory dictates that “message from on high” has to be some equivalent of “snake vs tree”, something about branching, something equivalent to the staff of Aesclepius, rod “, and Moses’ healing serpent on a pole.

Many mythemes are inherently “a message from on high” eg {king fastened helplessly to cross/tree}, or {serpentine dragon monster guarding treasure}.

My original announcement was like the following, which idea instantly appeared in my mind as soon as I glanced at Hatsis article and saw the word ‘caduceus’ — the solution-perspective immediately hit, and I hastened here to write:

The original version of my breakthrough announcement:

OK I GOT IT [12:15 a.m. November 26, 2020] I solved the original caduceus!

The boring rewritten sedate version of the breakthrough announcement after I hesitated and became critical in a minute of doubt:

OK I GOT IT [12:15 a.m. November 26, 2020] I believe I have decoded the original caduceus.

I hesitated because of the “U on top of O” shape, but, they ARE agreed to be snakes — so, it IS a non-branching pole topped with a branching pair of snakes, even if they appear fused to form a U-topped O shape.

This means that that TWO snakes in the modern caduceus still MEANS branching, and the pole in the middle continues to mean non-branching.

Ball and wings means the altered state looking at the revealed non-branching.

It looks like a circle on a pole and a U on top of the circle, but if we think of it as a branching pair of snakes, that crosses over each other fused together at top of the circle for stability, then it’s essentially a Y branching configuration formed with branching snakes — an example of ironic unnatural branching, like
legs on a snake, or
wise men showing no arms, or
a snake with multiple heads, or
a human head on a snake body (no limbs) or…

Similarly, for modern caduceus, note the non-branching central pole, and two snakes, forming a branching-like V shape around the pole. Not that different than snake winding up a tree or debranched tree/pole.

The forms can become unrecognizably distorted like the botched staff of Aesclepius (aka rod of Aesclepius) on ambulances, that has lost all traces/hints of {debranched tree}.

Moses’ snake / staff.

Here is the most profound message from the Gods:

|

omg nonbranching! hope that didn’t blow your mind too much. To reiterate:

Y

That’s like the entire Book of Revelation, right there.

Y = mental model transformation from Possibilism to Eternalism.

Check on this: when art shows an entire torso of human coming forth from snake… ok this is a new point/observation/connection:

The man or Eve often has two arms, same topography as early original caduceus: nonbranching snake body, then two arms coming forth (branching).

___

I searched so hard for the woodcut of the andro-gyne holding the Y shape — profound and utterly obscure to people who don’t know it’s all about branching vs non-branching.

mytheme: {caduceus}, early & late forms: Y configuration; Y symbol (non-branching bottom vs. branching top); a form of snake vs tree, contrasting 2 parallel lines vs a single line, is “the message from the gods” that “heals”/cures.

Reading the article Hatsis Roasting Hatsis, he mentioned caduceus, that gave me a thought — his articles are so inspiring, for all the wrong reasons – and I may have added some mytheme decoding connections.

Generally and abstractly, {the message from the angel on high} is, “Eternalism, not Possibilism” or something to do with that, like “but do not harm the child-thinking and violate your control harmfully”.

The revelatory message that Eternalism, not Possibilism is the case, can be expressed by top-10 mythemes including branching vs. non-branching.

Moses’ rigid bronze serpent on a de-branched tree pole, is a transcendent message from on high in the altered state: looking at it, comprehending it, cures snake-bite; knowing Eternalism-thinking makes the mind compatible with the altered state instead of {dying}, seizing, panicking, loss of control.

/ end of section “mytheme decoded: {caduceus}”

How I Decoded the Bestiary Salamander Image

A “math logic proof”-style of walking the reader through the mytheme-decoding process. It got shoved way down – see section “Summary of Decoding the Bestiary Salamander Image“, below.

I kinda should add this “how I decoded the image” recounting, into the too-long “Criteria” article (linked below). Done, and copied the added section below the following post, down below.

I posted at https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/moving-on-from-muraresku-the-immortality-key/ —

Hatsis Roasting Hatsis: Critical Historical Inquiry vs. Pseudointellectualism

wtf does “Historical Inquiry” mean? Seems like a hollow, empty phrase.

[All the “big-brained historical scholarship” in the universe is worthless pretentious dross if, in the end, it fails to recognize a mushroom in mythological art as a psychoactive mushroom and fails to decode a message of “Possibilism vs. Eternalism” as such. -mh]

Link is at bottom of this comment.

He’s an expert on the topic of Pseudointellectualism. See article for details.

I’m glad his messed-up article brought my attention to the bestiary salamander (around 2015 I think).[sic, 2017]

My right/left leg speculation on that image, paid off, in decoding Canterbury.

I feel slightly embarrassed that I didn’t attack the picture with the Diamond Hammer of Interpretation hard enough to crack the whole puzzle, back then.

How I solved the stuff to the left of the “dancing[sic] man”, a week ago: fire, means ASC — that’s been known by me more or less clearly for … long time.

I failed to notice in 2015[sic, 2017], the salamander’s tail is serpentine; a salamander-serpent.

I failed to think of, until a week ago, that there is only 1 salamander: it’s a “before vs. after” photo.

After put salamander-serpent in ASC fire, it then goes “next to” the branching, so you have then, next to each other, therefore, CONTRASTED:

salamander-SERPENT VERSUS BRANCHING mushroom TREE.

Which means: contrast Eternalism vs. Possibilism.

How best describe {right hand on forehead}?

“Oh my God, I just realized that my thinking was Possibilism, but reality is Eternalism! I just understood Possibilism vs Eternalism!”

My 2015[sic, 2017] decoding got about 50% of that — couldn’t I have done better; I was well-armed, fluent at mytheme-decoding by 2015[sic, 2017].

But experience shows, it takes time to unravel the message.

It took me a full week to grasp the “class of students” including “3 levels of students”, in the class session in upper right of Canterbury!

This decoding process makes me feel dull-witted — after I have the answer in front of me.

Find ‘salamander’:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/

I did lots of improvement on your scheme section, with nice, highly usable short-form at top of TOC:

Section 3: A Spectrum of Criteria of Proof, for Identifying Mushrooms in Art or Texts

1. Literal depictions of mushrooms
2. Stylized depictions of mushrooms
3. Depictions of mushroom effects

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/
Has links to his articles at bottom, including:

Roasting Jan Irvin: Critical Historical Inquiry vs. Pseudointellectualism
Tom Hatsis
November 2017 [?? not 2015? we were posting about his writings in 2015/2016… maybe his old site was marked 2015?]
https://psychedelichistorian.com/roasting-jan-irvin

/ end of my comment at Cyberdisciple’s site.

The image at issue:

I decoded this image, just before I found the blurry image of the Canterbury mushroom tree with no context at all, so I was able to import this same decoding to quickly decode that Canterbury mushroom tree in a series of easy steps.

I had to sharpen my skills at decoding and explaining {blades}, because the Canterbury mushroom tree is packaged together with {God’s sword}, as well as {left vs. right hand/arm/foot/leg}.

The bestiary image has {fire} (altered state; loosecog); in contrast, the Canterbury image has {sword} (cybernetic death/seizure/cancellation).

Why bother showing {fire}, since the mushroom is already shown? It’s a bestiary, of a salamander, and there’s a traditional motif of roasting salamanders.

I added the below section to my Criteria article (it had a good writeup already, but I like the new format shown below, also).

Summary of Decoding the Bestiary Salamander Image

When you put the salamander-{serpent} in the {flames} (the altered state from mushrooms), it then goes “next to” the branching tree — so you then have, placed next to each other, therefore contrasted:

salamander-{serpent} versus {branching} mushroom {tree}

You could omit or ignore the now non-essential (that is, non-mytheme) “carrier” aspects or features (salamander, mushroom), leaving:

{serpent} versus {branching tree}

We know from my November 2013 formula:

{tree} vs. {snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism

In this image, the order is the opposite:

{snake} vs. {tree} = Eternalism vs. Possibilism

therefore:

salamander-{serpent} versus {branching} mushroom {tree} means Eternalism vs. Possibilism.

How best decode {right hand on forehead}?

His {left hand} is floating in thin air like his {left foot}, not giving any stability; his {right hand} is stably planted on his head, like his {right foot} is solidly and stably on the ground.

It is increasingly clear that in Greek & Christian myth, {right} = Eternalism. Therefore:

{right hand on forehead} = “Oh my God, I just realized that my mental worldmodel was Possibilism-thinking, but reality is Eternalism! I just understood & recognized Possibilism vs. Eternalism!”

Q.E.D.

/ end of section “How I Decoded the Bestiary Salamander Image”

mytheme: {maiden, kore, Kore, Persephone}

Mytheme decoded/connected/corroborated; A MAJOR SUDDEN THEORY-CONFIRMATION DISCOVERY EVENT:

I was delighted to unexpectedly connect {Persephone} to my existing {maiden} decoding by discovering that her other name is {the maiden}: {maiden, kore, Persephone} = initiate who still has Naive-Possibilism-thinking.

Persephone’s other name is “The Maiden”!! SCORE

[8:59 p.m. November 25, 2020]

Ah sh*t!! I just noticed the Persephone wiki statement, “Kore” – THE MAIDEN! Total confirmation of the Egodeath theory again! See my usage of the technical term ‘maiden’ in my Canterbury article. (I’m writing notes down below instead now.)

Mytheme decoding: {after death, turn right to remember, left to forget}

Not entirely new, but more mental connections than before: Filling-in the New Theory with more detail; more interconnections.

{after death, turn right to remember, left to forget}: In the ASC (loose cognitive binding association state; loosecog), it’s hard to remember the ego death perspective, of Eternalism-thinking.

The mind tends to forget that experiential perspective, the first 10 times/glimpses, until the mind finally constructs Eternalism-model permanently.

{Looking left} means, the mind returns to childhood-suited Possibilism-thinking and forgets the Eternalism-experiential perspective that was briefly grasped in the ASC.

{Looking right} (after ego {death} in ASC) means remembering the Eternalism-thinking experiential perspective, finally being able to hang onto it upon returning to the OSC (tightcog; tight cognition; tight mental construct binding; the tight cognitive binding state).

Persephone & Demeter = Possibilism-thinking & Eternalism-thinking

{Persephone when alive} = Naive-Possibilism-thinking

{Persephone after abduction/death} = Qualified-Possibilism-thinking

{Demeter} = Eternalism-thinking

From the section I added to my Canterbury Proof article today:

“The mind is made to demonstrate its inability to control itself, in order to eliminate Possibilism-thinking, and receive its mature form of mental worldmodel: Eternalism-thinking together with Qualified-Possibilism-thinking.”

= Demeter & her now-in-Hades daughter, Persephone.

Persephone still exists, but now in the underworld of illusions.

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone —

Insertion later in the day, [8:59 p.m. November 25, 2020]
Persephone’s other name is “The Maiden”!! SCORE

Ah sh*t!! I just noticed the Persephone wiki statement, “Kore” – THE MAIDEN! Total confirmation of the Egodeath theory again!

See my usage of the technical term ‘maiden’ in my Canterbury article.

{Youth} = {maiden} = initiate still thinking in terms of Naive-Possibilism.

Oddly, I didn’t format “maiden” as a mytheme in that article, did I?? Just plain text? I marked like 1 out of 18, youth & maiden 😦 At least I got 1.

This Greek incoming content, combining with the Christian Canterbury content, increases the status of the word ‘youth’ and ‘maiden’, promoting them to full-on mytheme.

Funny how that works; quantity drives up (promotes upward) quality (ie “nature of”, or “categorization” of; repetition changes a 1-off idea into a recurring mytheme).

Like when you see “left/right” once, vs. 3 times in both Christian and Greek art, then it is promoted in my Theory into a full-on official mytheme.

Damn, but I didn’t totally fail: ONE time out of 19, I had the good sense to format “maiden” as {maiden}. 18/19 fail. I’m not a total failure. Fixed; formatted them all.

What about “youth”? Did I have the sense to mark it as an official mytheme, in the Canterbury article? I had at least 1. Fixed; formatted them all.

“In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore (/ˈkɔːriː/ KOR-ee; Greek: Κόρη; “the maiden“), is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen [a ruler; a cybernetic center of control-agency] of the underworld through her abduction [rapture, invasion, overpowering, passive helpless receiver of control-thoughts] by Hades, the god of the underworld [where my 1995 self went to when finally purged, the completed initiate weeps for one’s beloved lost child taken away to the underworld of illusory beings — still with me as now merely Qualified-Possibilism-thinking, self-model]. The myth of her abduction represents her function as the personification of vegetation, which shoots forth in spring and withdraws into the earth after harvest; hence, she is also associated with spring as well as the fertility of vegetation.”

/ end of section “mytheme: {maiden, kore, Kore, Persephone}”

Entheogen Scholars Are Currently Reading the Present Weblog & Linked Pages

http://wassonwest.com
WASSON WEST —
Home of the Wasson-Ruck Entheogenic Research Institute and Archives
http://wassonwest.com/our-team
Officers:
Dr. Carl A. P. Ruck
Mark Hoffman:
o http://entheomedia.net
o Entheos: The Journal of Psychedelic Spirituality
Brian Muraresku
Advisory board: the whole crew

/ end of section “Entheogen Scholars Are Currently Reading the Present Weblog & Linked Pages”

Thankful for Hatsis & Muraresku

Ways in which Hatsis and Muraresku helpfully contribute to entheogen scholarship.

Cyberdisciple’s weblog posting:
Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/correcting-key-points-in-muraresku-the-immortality-key/
My comment posted there:

I’m thankful for any parts of Hatsis’ and Muraresku’s writings that are valuable and true and move the field forward, and popularize the field, and cause readers to think of ideas.

_____

---

Hatsis is a strong advocate of sound scholarship.

Hatsis’ article that discussed the much bandied-about bestiary salamander image caused me to think of the mytheme decoding {left vs. right} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism.

Hatsis’ article brought the bestiary salamander image to my attention — a good mytheme-decoding exercise as a warm-up to solve the puzzle of reading the entire Canterbury mushroom/hanging/sword image.

The bestiary salamander image may have been analyzed by Chris Bennett, then Irvin, then Hatsis, then me.

Hatsis’ article mentioned the caduceus, and when I glanced at that word, I immediately knew that the caduceus, as a {message from the gods that heals} must be some depiction of “Possibilism vs. Eternalism”; I merely had to form a compelling specification of in what way the old and new caduceus express “Possibilism vs. Eternalism”.

[10:05 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2020]
Added in this Notes file:

In what way is the following symbol-shape isomorphic with “Possibilism vs. Eternalism?” |

In what way is the following symbol-shape isomorphic with “Possibilism vs. Eternalism?” Y

_____

---

Muraresku’s book is popularizing the field.

I’m thankful that Cyberdisciple read and analyzed Muraresku’s book from the perspective of the Egodeath theory.

Cyberdisciple’s weblog postings about the book The Immortality Key by Muraresku:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=Muraresku

/ end of section “Thankful for Hatsis & Muraresku”

Mytheme {lamb} Decoded, Like Harmless {dove, Holy Spirit}

Big unexpected breakthrough! Isaac’s powerful {ram} vs. Jesus as gentle {lamb}, like {dove} vs. {eagle}; completing {dove} decoding too!

Central Mytheme {lamb} Decoded Unexpectedly!
{lamb} = {dove} of Holy Spirit (H.S. = ‘frenzy, mania’) =
“Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him” =
Non-harmful climax; made to do no harm during complete purge of egoic self-control delusion

Section added to Canterbury Proof article:

Gentle {lamb}, {dove} and {Holy Spirit}, Contrasted with {ram}, {eagle}, and {frenzy} or {mania}

Contrasted with {lamb} and {dove}, the mythemes {ram} and {eagle} have connotations of harm, such as {burning the ram on the altar}, during or after the climactic, final full demonstration of nullity, vulnerability, and cancellation of self-control power.

The mind is made to demonstrate its inability to control itself, in order to eliminate Possibilism-thinking, and receive its mature form of mental worldmodel: Eternalism-thinking together with Qualified-Possibilism-thinking.

In this transformation struggle, or {wrestling with an angel}, the mind is made to purify and purge itself of {sin}, {impurity}, and {pollution}; this way, the mind is finally rid of self-contradiction about self-control.

Compare the violent connotations or tone of Zeus’ {eagle} who abducts the {youth} Ganymede by force, along with {frenzy} and {mania} (the altered state); versus the {power of the Holy Spirit} (the intense, cybernetically overpowering altered state) figured as a gentle, peaceful, harmless {dove}.

Compare the powerful {ram} of Isaac, versus the gentle, non-harm-toned analogy of Jesus as {lamb}.

Together, the mythemes {Holy Spirit} as a {dove} instead of Zeus’ {eagle}, and Isaac’s {ram} now figured as a gentle {lamb}, emphasize the angelic thought that saves the completed mystic from harm, “do not harm the child”, while the mind is finally purged of the remnants of Naive-Possibilism-thinking.

[12:48 p.m. November 25, 2020]

Central Mytheme “lamb” Decoded Unexpectedly!
{lamb} = {dove} of Holy Spirit (= ‘frenzy, mania’) =
“Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him” =
Made to do no harm during complete purge of egoic self-control delusion

Got it! Key breakthrough mytheme decoding: Jesus as the “Lamb” instead of Ram; why? Answer:

Isaac’s powerful ram caught helplessly in the thicket

vs.

The gentle, harmless, Do Not Harm LAMB. Relenting, Backing off the self-testing attack of the mind’s control-system against itself. The gentle lamb breaks his bow (Canterbury climax image), uses charitable mercy and good judgement that enables continued, healthy life yet also full demonstration of truth about non-control, of personal control in relation to the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.

Same pattern as — here it comes, another decoding-connection to the above breakthrough, as fallout — I’ve written for a long time, the “Dove” of Christianity (Holy Spirit is gentle) as opposed to the Eagle, implying violence, of Zeus.

{dove} = {lamb} = Dunamis/power of the {Holy Spirit} = gentle harmless merciful power of overcoming personal control delusion

ALL THIS “WUSSY PEACEFULNESS” theme in Christian mythic language is not about mundane conduct of life in the OSC; IT IS ABOUT ONE NOT HARMING ONE’S OWN SELF DURING TRANSCENDED-AND-CANCELLED SELF-CONTROL in the climactic peak state of the final purging of childhood Possibilism-thinking.

Genesis 22:8-18; Genesis 22:12-13 (KJV) —

¹² And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

How I just now stumbled onto this unexpected back-of-mind decoding outstanding unsolved problem:

In my fancy grand titling of my previous section about my Salvation experience moment, I wanted to write:

“Saved by Christ Crucified, by the Blood of the Ram”

but I went — “wait — Jesus is never called “ram”; he’s called “lamb”, darn, that won’t work– WAIT!! OMG… LAMB, NOT RAM… LAMB IS *GENTLE*, AS I’VE BEEN WRITING ARTICLE-LENGTH IDEA-DEVELOPMENT ABOUT MOST-RECENTLY!

Find ‘burn’ in https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/realtime-discovery-log/ for much writing against any harm; expressing my strongly pacifist values & philosophy/belief; I spell out and explain my belief and values and theory, that:

Any physical harm as part of the climactic Proof Demonstration of Fully Knowing Cybernetic Truth would probably indicate the failure to mentally ideally and fully transcend egoic thinking.

I had also been bothered today and recently, that the Proof article lacked any mention of Jesus — Jesus the lamb — today at this breakthrough moment, that idea was in the queue, waiting to combine with these other connections. So I added dove/eagle, lamb/ram, and Holy Spirit/mania-frenzy, into the climactic center of the article, near the image of Isaac’s mushroom-horned ram caught in a mushroom-thicket.

[4:18 p.m. November 25, 2020]: I found in my pre-breakthrough writeup of central salvation paragraph, look: I wrote (apparently around [10:48 a.m. November 25, 2020]): “Christ the ram“!

That led up the to breakthrough, you can see I was trying to connect Isaac’s “do not harm the boy” ram, to Jesus and “blood of the lamb”:

So you can see my trajectory leading up to the breakthrough making of the connection that we don’t say “Jesus the ram” or “Christ the ram” or “saved by the blood of the ram”, BECAUSE WE WANT TO INSTEAD TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO EMPHASIZE NON-SELF-HARM during finalizing purging of sin and washing the mind’s garment white and clean; gentle during the final full, complete, permanent, and higher-thinking-satisfying disproof of egoic self-control power:

“At that moment I had a vision of the crucifixion with bloody king fastened to the cross and I was completed in regeneration and saved by a vision of Christ the ram fulfilling my non-control seizure, in peak meditation, which by default I thought in terms of, but —”
(emphasis added at [4:21 p.m. November 25, 2020])

The sequence in this page is a little out-of order, non-linear; I need to add timestamps more often, near each group of paragraphs.

/ end of section “Mytheme {lamb} Decoded, Like Harmless {dove, Holy Spirit}”

The Story of My Moment of Conversion, Rescue, & Purification from Sin

The story of my moment of mystic-state conversion/ salvation/ regeneration/ redemption/ purification/ completion/ sacrificial purging of sin; then baptism in the blood of the [gentle, harmless!] lamb afterwards.

[10:48 a.m. November 25, 2020]

The story of the moment of my salvation through a vision of Christ Crucified while in the Holy Spirit.

My brand of religion is esoteric restorationist Helleno-Christianity.

I was saved in Christ, about 1995 just before my baptism, same meditation session I think as the guitar buzz/feedback cassette recording at Egodeath.com, when I relaxed profoundly deeply lying on the bed with a sense of profound mind-body relaxation, relaxing (in Ken Wilber’s sense) the egoic thinking structure.

And then — THE CAT YAWNED, dionysus present — and then in profoundly mentally relaxed state lying on the bed, I sensed/perceived SAW A VULNERABILITY OF CONTROL —

I then got up, thought about mental control vulnerability in the meditation state, I saw my continued thinking (at that late time way after my January 1988 block-universe ego death breakthrough and my subsequent 1988 theory-documenting.

(~1995-1988 = After 7 years of Core theory development, my thinking was still tainted, polluted with freewill-premised Possibilism-thinking.)

I at that moment was made to sacrifice/ see through/ repudiate childhood-thinking finally; I was made to mentally repudiate the remaining pollution of freewill egoic thinking that I embarassingly (after 7 years of Core theory development) saw that I STILL had egoic thinking polluting my thinking.

At that moment I had a vision of the crucifixion with bloody king fastened to the cross and I was completed in regeneration and saved by a vision of Christ the ram fulfilling my non-control seizure, in peak meditation, which by default I thought in terms of, but, I was saved by a vision — not somehow by the literal actuality of harm done to a man.

By 1998, I felt puzzled about Jesus’ motives for crucifying himself.

I wanted Jesus to confirm my the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, and I saw no reason why he, being as rational as me, would deliberately get himself physically harmed.

/ end of section “The Story of My Moment of Conversion, Rescue, & Purification from Sin”

The Requisite Non-violence of Successful Mental Transformation Implies the Ahistoricity of Jesus

The big event of my salvation through a vision of Christ Crucified while in the Holy Spirit left me with the problem of what function Jesus’ bodily physical death served.

In 1998-1999, I was trying to identify how Jesus preached and corroborated my certainly true the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.

Then I read Heinrich, who mentioned Allegro re: Amanita (which I pursued Allegro for, to find out more), but Heinrich failed to say Allegro asserted ahistoricity, then I didn’t find Allegro’s book but I found a priest’s book amusedly reacting to Allegro’s book.

It was in that priest’s book that I discovered the hypothesis of ahistoricity, which solved my problem of what purpose Jesus’ allowing bodily harm to himself accomplished, given that my salvation I received from Christ Crucified violently, was an *idea*, for which actual violence served literally no function or purrose and even contradicted the mechanism by which I was rescued during my mental transformation, transfiguration.

_____

My brand of religion is esoteric restorationist Helleno-Christianity.

_____

The “harmlessness” idea behind the mythemes {lamb} and {dove} implies the ahistoricity of Jesus (in his function as redeemer in the mystic altered state), instead of pointless & ineffectual violence against a bodily historical Jesus.

For the Jesus Christ figure to serve as a mystic rescuer and savior from self harm-also-full-completer-of-healing, physical bodily harm done to him is useful purely as an idea, not as a literal actuality.

A “demonstration” of an idea, has no need to be anything other than an image, an idea.

Were Jesus actually harmed, which would require his historicity, that would directly contradict the whole key theme of “gentle, harmless, do not harm the child-thinking

The “Abrahamic” angelic idea that saves and rescues, received by the mind from on high (from the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts) is the idea or mytheme {do not harm the child}, which means:

Do not harm oneself during doing-away-with and firmly, permanently disproving child-thinking by making the control-system cancel itself, to secure mental integrity, coherent viable thinking about personal control and time.

Literal violence done to a Mr. Historical Jesus would be pointless, futile, and irrelevant, would accomplish nothing, is magical thinking that irrrationally tries in vain to substitute for actual mental transformation, and would have no power to save (rescue and regenerate the mind regarding the personal control system).

If someone defends Mr. Historical Jesus ( the historicity of Jesus) — wanting Jesus to exist and be literally harmed on the cross — indicates magical thinking, belief in “salvation through physical violence”; indicates the person doesn’t believe in non-violence per “dove” and “lamb” and “do not harm the child”.

The Historicity premise contradicts the religion of the “lamb” (Christ) and “dove” (Holy Spirit; peak altered state, overpowering frenzy, mania, loose cognition).

Similar to my previous ~200x realization that “dove” is like Zeus’ eagle, but (for no reason clear to me at the time) “more wussy and gentle, just because that’s the Christian style”. “Our brand is better b/c gentle.”

I had no idea (or too little grasp) that “gentle dove” meant, the ASC context, of: non-harm to self during purging delusion of egoic control.

NOW I ADD PROFOUND UNDERSTANDING (increased explanatory power by adding new reconnections among theory-components) OF THE DOVE AS “GENTLE” EQUIVALENT OF ZEUS’ EAGLE:

DOVE MEANS DO NO SELF-HARM TO PURGE AND COMPLETE MENTAL TRANSFORMATION/DEMONSTRATION OF NON-CONTROL IN RELATION TO HIGHER UNCONTROLLABLE CONTROLLER TO PROVE FULL RATIONALITY AND KICK-OUT, PURGE, REMAINING EGOIC DELUSION/ HABITUAL EGOIC Possibilism-THINKING.

Praise the Lord! I understand the mystic peak-state meaning of “Dove” and “Lamb” vs. “Ram” of Isaac! Lamb and Ram in Jesus and Isaac story co-strengthen each other; the two analogies contrast in a way to shine meaning on each other and co-strengthen each other!

Lamb means also, non-violent crucifixion in the heavens, not harming a Mr. Historical Jesus, which would accomplish nothing.

Thus the {lamb/dove} (non-violent) contrast against {ram/eagle} (violent), increases my theory-connection weighting of my belief in ahistoricity.

By 1998, I felt puzzled about Jesus’ motives for crucifying himself. I wanted Jesus to confirm my the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, and I saw no reason why he, being as rational as me, would deliberately get himself physically harmed.

In 1999, thanks to Heinrich’s book Strange Fruit (1995), I heard about Allegro’s work on Amanita, which led me to the rebuttal book by a priest against Allegro, and led me quickly to discover — unlike Heinrich, who didn’t understand that Allegro = ahistoricity of Jesus — Heinrich said that Allegro said Mr History Jesus used mushrooms, a huge error on Heinrich’s part.

Heinrich not Allegro, taught me about the Amanita solution to Rev’n scroll eating.

Allegro was valuable to me because his good picture of the Plaincourault Amanita mushroom tree, and because Allegro taught me about the ahistoricity thesis — well actually, the priest’s reply book against Allegro [citation] is how I learned of ahistoricity.

Later I obtained Allegro’s book.

That’s the end of value I got from Allegro.

Soon in that same library I read book about ahistoricity of Peter or Paul [citation possible?].

1995-1999, I thought in terms of, but was puzzled by — couldn’t logically reconcile – Mr Historical Jesus; his physical existence was contradictory and served no purpose.

It was a problem outstanding to be solved, not supporting the Egodeath theory as I was looking to fit-in how Jesus’ life and meessage confirmed the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.

contradiction I resolved, how I was saved by the crucifixion of Jesus but there was no role for his physical crucifixion, there was no identifiable purpose or function for that extra, excess, hypothesis dangling.

Jesus getting himself physically literally killed on the cross served no function, compared to the salvific vision that Christ Crucified gave me salvation and rescue, curing and purification purging of egoic control thinking in ~1995.

So, from my conversion about 1995, followed quickly by baptism in Restorationist Barton/Stone congregation Church of Christ, to about 1999, I was trying to — especially in 1998/1999 — I found the solution to my theoretical problem that:

MENTAL CONVERSION IS MENTAL, NOT PHYSICAL VIOLENCE, which would serve no function, is magical thinking if anything, and would probably prevent mental conversion, because would be an ineffectual substitute for mental conversion.

I discovered ahistoricity roundabout, by reading Heinrich’s garbled Amanita/ahistoricity lead (Heinrich saw Allegro’s Amanita interest, failed to grasp Allegro’s ahistoricity; so I didn’t know about ahistoricity from reading Strange Fruit in 1999), then the priest’s book which I should get or see at my university library again.

I can look up in their card catalog.

The first time I ever heard of ahistoricity was that priest’s book, his rebuttal to Allegro (in an upbeat, humored tone).

That solved my cognitive dissonance problem of the “dangling useless excess bodily physical purpose of Jesus getting himself literally crucified”.

I want Carrier’s book Jesus from Outer Space — ie beyond the Ptolemaic spheres, Christ the ram savior, given to us for our salvation, from HEAVEN EMPYRIUM – DWELLING PLACE OF GOD AND OF ALL THE ELECT.

In 1999 I read Strange Fruit (1995), heard of Allegro’s interest in Amanita, so Heinrich identified a big question: which psychoactive is the {scrolls} eaten in the Book of Revelation? (KJV, in 1987-1987 I was trying to figure out the which psychedelic (didn’t know term ‘entheogen’), identity).

So in 1999 I looked up Allegro or his book in my university library, (I hadn’t heard of ahistoricity). They didn’t have it, they had the priest’s rebuttal book, which I looked at then.

/ end of section “The Requisite Non-violence of Successful Mental Transformation Implies the Ahistoricity of Jesus”

Helleno-Christianity

Forming a label of my religion, which combines Greek “Paganism” (Mystery Religion & religious mythology decoding) with Christianity (an esoteric version of Barton/Stone Restorationism).

Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction
Luther Martin
https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Religions-Introduction-Luther-Martin/dp/019504391X
1987 (a good year leading up to Jan 1988 the great block-universe loose-cognition ego transcendence breakthrough)
Heimarmene etc.

Look into the following new 2018 book: Looks extremely relevant, must-have, Has Look Inside.

Studies in Hellenistic Religions
https://www.amazon.com/Studies-Hellenistic-Religions-Luther-Martin/dp/149828308X
February 26, 2018 — “This selection of essays by Luther Martin brings together studies from throughout his career–both early as well as more recent–in the various areas of Graeco-Roman religions, including mystery cults, Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism.

“It is hoped that these studies, which represent spatial, communal, and cognitive approaches to the study of ancient religions might be of interest to those concerned with the structures and dynamics of religions past in general, as well as to scholars who might, with more recent historical research, confirm, evaluate, extend, or refute the hypotheses offered here, for that is the way scholars work and by which scholarship proceeds.”

Nice cover art of Ptolemaic spheres cosmology.

I learned/confirmed ‘heimarmene’ = no-free-will, around 2005(?), in his book Hellenistic Religion, which was a much-wanted corroboration of Hellenism matching & mapping to the Egodeath theory.

The Egodeath theory has gone from success-to-success, this way; always ratcheting in 1 direction: more confirmation; more confirmation; yet more, always more confirmation.

I never get “less confirmation”; the evidence pretty much always has corroborated the Theory, as my reading /checking on Western esotericism & religion in Antiquity proceeded.

I feel like I posted about that book in 2018.

Richard Carrier needs better artwork for his new book Jesus from Outer Space, looking like Ptolemaic cosmology — missed opportunity.

Mushrooms caused Helleno-Christianity.

By ‘Helleno-‘, I mean Hellenistic, not Hellenic.

By ‘Helleno-Christianity’, I mean broad Hellenistic religion plus primitive Christianity, including Old Testament mythemes.

Hellenisto-Christianity — doesn’t work, but it’s what I mean.

The term ‘Hellenic is too narrow; restricted to specifically Greek/Greece.

‘Pagano-Christianity’ can piggyback on that main line of argument.

The exceptions, the details, must not be allowed to confuse the Main Theory Model.

Acacia-Rue & Amanita and Lily Datura Scopalamine Mandrake can readily piggyback on that main line of Simple & Strong, Guiding, Theory Construction.

Helleno-Christianity, con’t

I advocate Helleno-Christianity, and don’t object if people say ‘Pagano-Christianity’.

In 1998 I was given a great book, my first book on ancient Greek/Hellenistic Religion. [cite would be nice]

I was saved and rescued and redeemed in a vision of Christ on the cross in 1995 (don’t have exact date) without knowing anything yet about Greek religious myth. (1998 was working on: how does Jesus’ gospel that he taught/advocated/ asserted, confirm the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence?)

3 years after I was saved in Christ’s cross (like Isaac’s ram that got itself powerlessly trapped in a thicket, which I decoded late – check Egodeath Yahoo Group posts for ‘isaac’, ‘ram’ for date stamp), I got pointed to decoding Greek religious mythology & Hellenistic Mystery Religion. Only a day or two ago, I got full confirmation of my tentative hypoth, about the bush — thciket actualy, — being equivalent to the tree that the king is caught up into (Pentheus/Jesus).

Pentheus’ tree = Jesus’ cross = ram’s thicket, confirmed 1 of 2 days ago, first hypothesized maybe 2003(?).

The term “Pagano-Christianity” doesn’t work, for two reasons:

o I didn’t and don’t know enough about N Euro Pagism, tho mother interested in Irish and I snagged a book on that when dealing w/ her possessions.

o The term Pagan is too overloaded. Northern? Mediterranean? Many problems.

The term “Helleno-” is perfect for describing my konwledge, my intersest, my sure-footed, the Hellenistic nature of primitive Christianity. Christianity was Old Testament filtered through Hellenism. What would happen if Hellenistic thinking processed the Old Testament? You end up w/ Christianity.

There are nothing but problems with Pagano-, and nothing but benefits of Helleno-.

Pagano-Christianity doesn’t work at all, it’s nothing but problems.

The only thing wrong with the term Helleno-Christianity is that is leaves a question mark around Northern European religion, which I know no more about than Buddhism; all World Religion describes the human mind’s experience in the ASC from entheogens.

N Euro Paganism supports the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence the same way as Buddhism does, or rainforest Shamanism. I can’t speak for N Pagism, except to say, the Egodeath theory explains its mystic experiencing and mythemes — eg king on tree w/ snake.

I could right now practice Hellenistic religion paganism, but in contrast, I know nothing about practicing Northern European Paganism even though I mostly come from broad entirety of Europe incl far north but less of the southern, ironically, but that’s how it went.

Use Mainly the Term ‘Helleno-Christianity’, Sometimes ‘Pagano-Christianity’

N Pagans didn’t so much document their religion.

I’ll use ‘Pagano-Christianity’ w/o objection, but speak sure-footed about in terms of ‘Helleno-Christianity’. Equivalent.

In University, studied Southern … ie Mediterranean culture. In 7th/8th grade I drew a giant map of ancient Med Trade Routes. I learned a tiny bit of Greek, Roman, then European — school didn’t teach N Paganism; I am blank there.

I know exactly what I mean by Helleno-Christianity. There’s nothing but blur and uncertainty about the term Pagano-Christianity; it does nothing but raise questions.

I can readily answer any question about Helleno-Christianity, I feel. It is essentially a specific, defined term, definable with the knowledge at hand.

The term ‘Helleno-Christianity’ totally allows N Euro Pag’m to come onboard, w/o the huge confusions of the term ‘Pagano-Christianity’. NO SOLUTION IS PERFECT — THIS IS WHAT I GOT, IN FACT.

I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO GO W IT, COMMIT TO IT.

Pagano- is simply , I can’t do it. Labels are hard to formulate, as you know I never was able to find the 1 perfect name of the Egodeath theory. Must have variable multiple labels.

What I bring is not Pagano-Christianity; I don’t know what that means and how to unravel the confusion of questions it produces.

I know what Helleno-Christianity means, and it doesn’t produce hard questions. I can readily deal w/ the questions and defining it and justifying it.

I love Hellenistic Mystery Religion and myth, I know it, I relate to it. I’m from N Euro but its paganism is unknown to me, I cannot authentically represent it; in contrast, I perfectly represent Hellenistic religion, sure-footed, natural, native for my thinking.

/ end of section “Helleno-Christianity”

A Week of Manically Possessed Religious-Mythology Breakthroughs and Accidental Fasting

I was manically possessed and driven by inspiration in the ordinary state, and accidentally fasted for a week during breakthrough decoding of the entire Canterbury “mushroom/ hanging/ sword” image, which extremely confirmed my Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of religious mythology and the maximal mushroom theory of Christian art.

[8:48 a.m. November 25, 2020]

I was possessed by the spirit, in the OSC, the past week driven to inspired decoding of the Canterbury leg-hanging mushroom tree entire image. I didn’t eat, except 1 meal finally at the end of the day, for like 5 days, I was way way too busy writing and writing and decoding. Forgot to drink any coffee though addicted.

Slamming out typing and decoding as fast as I can type, for past week, accidentally fasting — no time for stop and eat, busy typing out breakthrough ideas.

My explanation here is extremely simple and very easy to spin-out the theory that results from this extremely useful hypothesis, useful b/c simple. Nuance doesn’t help, here. Acacia/Rue DMT is a distraction, but generally is COMPATIBLE. <– I like that idea of, “the nuanced exceptions are COMPATIBLE with the main line of the POWERFULLY DIRT-SIMPLE BASIC MAIN LINE OF THEORY.

Stated in a simplified and that much more powerful version/ statement/ formulation. Leverage the simplicity, stay focused on the Primary Case. Don’t put edge-case exceptions in the middle of the core, in the center.

The center of the Theory , max

I push esp:

[10:17 a.m. November 25, 2020]

THE MAXIMAL MUSHROOM THEORY OF BUDDHISM & CHRISTIANITY.

Non-entheogenic Buddhism is fake and fraudulent, a substitute.

Non-entheogenic (eg non-mushroom) Christianity is fake and fraudulent, a substitute. It has no Eucharist; it has a substitute for the real Eucharist, WHCIH DOES NOT SAVE AND REGENERATE.

This right now is Jonathan Ott’s The Entheogenic Reformation, upon my discovery and proof that the Canterbury Psalter is emphatically, mainline mushroom Christianity.

There’s been a cover-up, the usual pattern of fake priests suppressing mushrooms.

Exceptions (Datura, Amanita, eaten Cannabis, even Opium) don’t disprove that theory; they corroborate it as additional variants elaborating and supporting the main-line theory/ model/ summary.

/ end of section “A Week of Manically Possessed Religious-Mythology Breakthroughs and Accidental Fasting”

The Cover-up of Mushrooms in Christianity & Buddhism (together with Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism); the “Mass & Meditation” Substitution Industry

The Cover-up of Mushrooms in Christianity and in Buddhism (together with Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism); selling snake-oil: the Meditation industry & the fake-Eucharist Mass industry; selling Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism in place of it, for profit

The malformed “secret mushroom cult” notion serves to mask the actual situation, that there’s been a cover-up of normal mushroom use [together with the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism which mushrooms produce] in Christianity. Priests are huckster who suppress mushrooms and sell snake oil [Meditation & fake Eucharist, together with Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism] for personal profit. Ott’s Entheogenic Reformation.

[5:00 p.m. November 25, 2020]

“secret entheogen cult” — false.

mushroom cover-up in Christianity and Buddhism — true.

This is the REAL version of “secret cult”; a cover-up of a normal, mainstream use of mushrooms (not a cover-up of a secret cult usage of entheogens).

earlier in day, wrote:

Mushroom Cover-up by Professional Priests in Buddhism, Same as in Christianity

There has been a cover-up of mushrooms in Christianity; that’s clear, from the Canterbury Psalter. Same shiite as the meditation hucksters; here’s the pattern:

Mushrooms created Buddhism, then professional monks suppressed mushrooms and sold people ineffectual snake-oil instead.

Mushrooms created Christianity, then professional priests suppressed mushrooms and sold people ineffectual snake-oil instead.

Protestantism was a complaint about that, in some way.

/ end of section “The Cover-up of Mushrooms in Christianity and in Buddhism”

Bad Mushroom Scholarship

Several fulmination screeds against the sorry, worst-case state of what passes for mushroom scholarship.

[10:00 p.m. November 24, 2020]

It is actually required, to “police” the field (of mushrooms in Greek & Christian art) and call people on their B.S. attempts to derail and abuse the field for their own gain, and mis-characterize the field, such as by dredging up Allegro and using him in a highly distorting way, with grossly lopsided coverage that has no connection with actual state-of-play in the field.

To write a Pop Psych book, it’s too hard to figure out where the state of play is in the field; it’s easier to declare that the game that’s being played is “follow Allegro”; then declare yourself victorious over this strawman target, this false picture of what the field is currently about.

Just re-print a few mushroom-in-art examples; simply deny they are mushrooms; show the complete lack of evidence for your– I mean, Allegro’s– Secret Amanita Cult theory; done. A popular bestselling formula. You get to be the heroic vanquisher of the Allegro Secret Amanita Cult — again.

I don’t know what exactly these “hot new rising scholars” think they’re doing, but it’s manifestly not leading-edge scholarship, informed by the built-up Body of Knowledge to date.

They’re outsiders from nowhere, completely ignorant of what’s going on in the actual field, crowning themselves winner, on a field where there’s no game being played.

L & Pseudo-S are the biggest “followers of Allegro” of all, now that Irvin’s left the field. They are “negative orbiters of Allegro”. Who’s next?

The only reason I wrote about Allegro in 2006 and 2020 is because those who dismiss mushrooms make Allegro their driving reference-point, and I’m forced to clear that obstacle.

Frankly, I think — against Irvin circa 2010 — Allegro is wholly irrelevant to the topic of mushrooms in Greek and Christian art.

I couldn’t care less about the whole idea of “Secret Amanita Cult”; it’s a baseless idea not worth considering. It’s a bizarre framing of the concerns of the field. It shouldn’t be a touchpoint.

Maybe with Irvin out of the picture, we can finally let Allegro rest in peace. I gave him his due, showed where he was right, and wrong, on selected topics.

Allegro didn’t contribute much, for my field as I see it.

People keep coming along, new people, who frame all their thinking in relation to Allegro, bizarrely.

Thanks to this little weird industry of “vanquish Allegro’s Secret Amanita Cult theory”: go to the man on the street, say “mushrooms in Christian art” and he is liable to say “the Allegro theory”. ffs.

Something smells “off” with this situation, designed to be perpetually used to prevent scholars from looking into the field of mushrooms in Christian art.

The “no Secret Amanita Cult” industry has to keep resurrecting Allegro, in order to re-kill him — and the field of mushrooms in Christian art, along with him.

Some sorceror has made the ghost of Allegro stand guard over the field of mushrooms in Christian art, to prevent anyone from entering into it.

Right now some publisher is prepping a book by another “up and coming new star young and edgy scholar, who has a new book out about Shrooms, proving that Allegro’s camp is wrong, about Secret Amanita Cult!” Allegro’s camp? What the hell are you talking about? Weirdly out of touch.

Negative-orbiting Allegro is a fkking indu$try.

All on board the 1970 anti-Allegro train! It’s tricked-out w/ infinite-loop 8-track tape deck! Publishers are looking for fresh new talent! Hot topic! Bestseller placement deals!

/ end of start of major section “Bad Mushroom Scholarship”. Subsections are below.

Against Garbage, Politicized Scholarship Polluting the Field and Driving It Backwards

[8:40 p.m. November 24, 2020]

Cyb does a great job of policing and correcting the field, examining motives and intent and exposing corrupting biases that shovel garbage-pails of falsehood and distortion onto the field, for personal gain, thus polluting and setting back the very field that they pretend to be advancing.

New, corrective content from Cyb:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/correcting-key-points-in-muraresku-the-immortality-key/
I pasted his article at bottom below. To read my comments, find: -mh]

I meant this earlier, negative critique; a good example of a much-needed scholarly expose, directly related to that constructive correction of the field which cyb just posted:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/moving-on-from-muraresku-the-immortality-key/

Important point:
SCHOLARS MUST USE HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION AND ACCURATELY SPOT ANY DISTORTING COVERT SCHEMING SLY MOTIVATIONS AND WARPED MOTIVES, ULTERIOR AGENDAS. That’s mandatory: people would ideally state their FULL DISCLOSURE OF their CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

eg Wasson kept secret, in effect, that he’s buddies with the Pope — we HAVE TO take that into account when Wasson prints Panofsky’s letter “no mushrooms in Christian art” — and Wasson *CENSORS* BRINCKMANN’S NAME AND BOOK RECOMMENDATION FROM PANOFSKY’S LETTER, IN SOMA.

“The Pope and I command you, DO NOT LOOK BEHIND THAT BRINCKMANN CURTAIN! NOTHING TO SEE HERE! THE MUSHROOMS THAT YOU SEE, YOU ARE NOT SEEING! — IN FACT, DON’T EVEN LOOK!

“AS FAR AS YOU KNOW, THE “ART HISTORIANS” HAVE SETTLED THIS, and you do not need to worry your little head over this matter. I have written some highly turgid and ambiguous sentences on how this matter has been finalized, so that settles it.” — Wasson, in SOMA.

—

This is such NAIVE advice, that WILL continue to lead to failure in the field of “mushrooms in Greek & Christian art”:

“Don’t assume people have conflicts of interest and polluted motives that cause them to distort and hold back the field out of self-serving interest.”

It is bad advice; or has to be weighed rightly and followed with great defensive caution.

We’re not “assuming”; WE KNOW FOR A FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE ABUSING AND TWISTING THE FIELD, blocking it forcefully. eg Brown’s article, below, has to waste time unravelling someone else’s garbled distortion of scholars’ positions, and Pope Wasson had an extreme, worst-case conflict of interest in this field, as Irvin and Brown rightly emphasize.

Calling people on their self-serving LIES that BLOCK progresss in the field, is TOTALLY RELEVANT and mandatory!!!!

It’s a fundamental inherent part of scholarly work. Good scholars do this mop-up and policing work all the time, to “check” each other’s bad intent.

YOU MUST TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE THAT IS POLLUTING THE FIELD.

You cannot accomplish anything unless you are SAVVY and know the CORRUPTING BIASES of what you read, it is “f@ke news”.

Don’t be a sucker, easily manipulated by those who TRY to TWIST the field and COVER-UP — for real, in fact — mushrooms in “our” religious history.

Wasson had a MAJOR, MAJOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST! Pope-level!
BROWN AGREES WITH ME!
IRVIN AGREES WITH ME! This is absolutely unacceptable! The field HAS TO CORRECT THIS BULLSH*T, TO MOVE FORWARD!

Wasson LIED about Christianity not having mushrooms, because it would put his buddy the Pope out of business.

People ARE lying, in fact! You are a failure of a scholar, you have no chance of finding the truth, or convincing the field of what the truth is, if you gullibly believe these insincere writers such as WASSON – Boo!!!

Liar Wasson — but, understand, Allegro too is guilty of smearing / discrediting Christianity by framing mushrooms in a defamatory, embarrassment-motivated way.

I AM SICK OF MUSHROOMS BEING A RUGBY BALL KICKED AROUND BY WARRING PSEUDO-SCHOLARS [re: this topic]; IT’S A POLITICIZED FIGHT, NOT SCHOLARSHIP, and for 68 F*CKING YEARS this Allegro-centered non-scholarly fighting has been ruining and polluting and dragging backward the field of mushroom scholarship.

L & Pseudo-S keep insisting on abusing Allegro as the star that they force the entire field to steer by, and Brown is rightly incensed at being shoved into the smear-Allegro garbage-can which Pseudo-S has constructed, against all truth.

This is garbage fighting, not scholarship; the opposite of scholarship. Brown and I are FAR from steering by the star of Allegro, and it is malicious and self-serving, harming the field, for Pseudo-S to falsely persist in Allegro-izing the entire field, just b/c it’s so easy — they think.

Are you a poor scholar, ignorant of the field (of mushrooms in Greek & Christian art), but want — I literally saw Robert Price do this to Acharya, and I got him to fully retract the 8th-grade-level, mistake-riddled BS he wrote abusing Allegro — want to make yourself APPEAR superior? And you only have to read 1 or 2 books? Here’s an illegit cheap shot — it ruins the field, but who cares? f*ck the field! — simply cast the entire field into a mold that YOU created, and “Allegro’ize” the entire field! L did it, Pseudo-S did it.

Article:
Entheogens in Christian art: Wasson, Allegro, and the Psychedelic Gospels
Jerry Brown & Julie Brown
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p142.xml – SEE HIS REBUTTAL OF PSEUDO-SCHOLAR S CALLING EVERYONE DISCIPLES OF ALLEGRO find ‘ALLEGRAE’
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
Volume/Issue: Volume 3: Issue 2
Pages 142–163
June 1, 2019; online pub. date: September 9, 2019

// Excerpts from Brown article:

Pseudo-S [on this topic] writes:

Here is where the discipuli Allegrae and I part company. While they believe that the key Christian psychedelic mystery traditions rest in the forbidden fruit that Eve and Adam ate in the Garden, I hold a different opinion. There isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that medieval artists secretly signified entheogens as the fruit by depicting the Amanita muscaria into art. (pp. 113–114)

Brown rebuts that, writing:
Let us analyze one by one the oversights and oversimplifications found in this passage.

First, Hatsis (2018) sets up a bogus straw man by classifying all researchers who support the “holy mushroom theory” as “discipuli Allegrae,” which he defines as “a general term I use to refer to those who agree with the theories of John Marco Allegro, whose book The Sacred Mushrooms and the Cross (1970) argued that Christianity evolved out of a magic mushroom-eating sex cult” (p. 108).Since footnote 4 (first paragraph of the above quote) cites The Psychedelic Gospels, Hatsis obviously considers us to be “discipuli Allegrea.” This is false since we state unequivocally in The Psychedelic Gospels that:

…our theory differs from Allegro’s in three fundamental ways. First, [Brown continues]

/ excerpts from Brown article

Dirty scholar A w/ conflict of interest, Allegro, battling against dirty scholar B, Wasson — a sh*tshow, dragging back the whole field, and you tell ME to “be nice”?

That won’t work. You HAVE to identiyfy sleaze scholarship as such!!

A scholar would be inept, ineffectual, and incompetent if they didn’t push back against the opportunists’ attack on the field; it would be hard to clear such obstacles, to move the field forward.

My Clean Comment About Bad Mushroom Scholarship, Posted on Cyberdisciple’s Article Listing My Recent Articles

My Clean Comment About Bad Mushroom Scholarship, Posted on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Recent articles on: Criteria & Proof of Mushrooms in Christian Art. Branching Mushrooms. Confirmation and Reproducibility. Canterbury Psalter”

Brief summary of Psalter {nonbranching}, then good civilized polished reply re: be nice to “scholars” trampling the field.

[7:02 p.m. November 24, 2020]

I posted the comment at the weblog posting:
Recent articles on: Criteria & Proof of Mushrooms in Christian Art. Branching Mushrooms. Confirmation and Reproducibility. Canterbury Psalter
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/18/recent-articles-on-criteria-proof-of-mushrooms-in-christian-art-branching-mushrooms-confirmation-and-reproducibility-canterbury-psalter/

I’m interested in what Cyberdisciple thinks about Strategy to counter the presumptions and confusions that fill and distort the books that have been coming out lately.

Confusions that spread and propagate and reproduce, holding the field back while in some ways moving the field forward.

_____________

this little section is about branching – it’s probably a copy from of the full work-up section, maybe in different paragraph order:

My “finished” article is probably much clearer and more appealing & inspiring, than my decoding-process while building-up that article — unless you’re really into the decoding-process itself, which I have to be interested in.

Here’s a succinct summary of the Message of the entire Canterbury “hanging-from-mushroom” image:

The mytheme {branching tree} means (by analogy) branching possibilities, which implies the *entire* Possibilism worldmodel, which is unstable and non-viable in the altered state.

The mytheme {de-branched tree} means (by analogy) monopossibility, which implies the *entire* Eternalism worldmodel, which is stable and viable in the altered state.

‘worldmodel’ here means, the mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and personal control.

_________

I try to be both tough in pushing back against the field’s strong, forceful assertions, and constructive in stating what is the case, and helping people to see clearly.

As I see it, some advice above is:

Write positively about what is the case; don’t write against the confused people; don’t write against the entire confused field.

That advice from someone worked well, for my 2006 main article.

_________

You always have to sort the wheat from the chaff, in any author’s writing — that’s the nature of advancing scholarship in any field.

We must be realistic in judging the reliability of any author on a given topic, just as I made 2 or 3 missteps while decoding the Canterbury image, and had to go back and re-word my initial characterization.

Scholars need to tell other scholars warning them that a given author is not reliable on a certain topic.

I am telling all scholars that everything they think they know about mushrooms in Greek and Christian art is the opposite of the case.

There is a ton of evidence of all 3 types of evidence for mushrooms in Christian art, and it is *not* hard to find, and it is compelling and highly coherent.

1. Literal depictions of mushrooms
2. Stylized depictions of mushrooms
3. Depictions of mushroom effects

My message has to counter the publications of vociferous scholars who loudly, strongly proclaim that they have demolished the case for mushrooms in Christian art.

It is not easy for me to shake off the mental confusions that permeate the field, for me to wake up and be able to see — against everyone else — the (now) plain, obvious evidence yelling out to us:

Greeks & Christians used mushrooms, routinely and normally, and their mythology describes how they thought of the resulting effects and how to survive those effects by changing their thinking to accommodate the effects.

If only we can shake off confused presumptions, that try to entrench and re-assert themselves, we can at last SEE CLEARLY, that Greek & Christian initiation was mushroom initiation following a clear readily discernible pattern, seeing clearly that they moved from Possibilism to Eternalism in the mushroom state.

That is the solution to the Mystery — it is that simple, and finally we can see that simple solution to the Mystery of Mystery Religion and religious mythology; we can at last clearly read, with this very simple KEY, religious mythology.

To get to that treasure, that key, we have to battle the dragon of entrenched presumptions that forcefully and assertively cloud the mind of the entire field.

_________

The Great Key, The Master Solution to the Mystery Puzzle:

Greek & Christian religious mythology is a description of mushroom initiation that converts thinking from Possibilism to Eternalism.

It is near-impossible to think that thought, when the entire field is firmly biased against it — I had to work so hard to shake off their confusion, to formulate around 2001, the Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion.

Carl Ruck published a pull-quote of my boldly against-the-field assertion that “’Mixed wine’ was mushroom wine.” A forbidden thought in the field.

_____

Or how about the cajones, the sort of “counter-aggressiveness” that it required, for me to assert, against *everyone else*:

“Meditation is bunk, and is proven to not work, and is pushed by hucksters, who are thieves who steal credit from entheogens, wrongly steering people away from them because they actually work; they try to damn entheogens with faint praise.”

Can I move the field forward, with me pushing against literally everyone else, while being Nice?

Jesus had no shortage of harsh words for the Pharisees of his day.

Scholars should all be nice.

That’s not very helpful in battling the entrenched, strong, mentally censorious biases that cast a mind-clouding spell on everyone in the field.

/ comment posted to Cyb site re: Bad Mushroom Scholarship

Against Minimalist Mushroom Scholars

Written in the middle of 1st pass of reply to comment at Cyb’s.

Not Posted in Reply to W at Cyb site. This was written in the midst of a copy of W’s post which I was point-by-point replying to.

[2:00 p.m. November 24, 2020]

I’m operating on Defense, not Offense, against uneducated, under-informed, muddle-headed, self-confused, pseudo-scholars who think they know enough about the state of the field, that they can write a book — but they don’t.

They are ignorant of the evidence, the arguments, what the state of play is.

They go on the attack, a mean-spirited personal attack, against their betters, as Pseudo-S attacked Irvin, and lost as far as I’m concerned, but Pseudo-S went on to publish through Park Street Press 2 books, and he cleaned up his website and changed the domain name to look not 100% unprofessional.

I don’t know what Irvin thought about the poorly reasoned, aggressive, and underinformed attack-and-discredit articles, whether Irvin wanted to do a rebuttal of S, or ignore him.

Around that time 2015, Irvin was doing remarkable expose of the whole field as badly motivated, w/ nefarious ulterior motives – fact.

Don’t criticize me for accusing others of what’s been exposed as fact: some have ulterior motives that seek to corrupt the pop field.

I pretty much ended up ignoring Brinckmann/ Panofsky/ Wasson/ Letcher/ S, because they are SO confused, and pope-buddy Wasson has a total conflict of interest making him want to cover-up mushrooms, and Pseudo-S may be trying to “sell” Mandrake instead of mushrooms in Christianity so he acts like he has a conflict of interest distorting his thinking. “Don’t buy Brown; buy me. Mandrake is the answer, not mushrooms.”

His thinking is so distorted, he’s confusing other people in the field — and he’s writing against other people as if his arguments have merit, when they have none, on the topic of mushrooms in Greek and Christian art; his belief is the opposite of the truth, but he is hopelessly confused due to fixation and obsession on Irvin (L probably fell into that same mistake) who is the most Allegro-follower there is; in fact, the only person who could rightly be called an “Allegro follower” is Irvin circa 2010.

S doesn’t even have a sensible grasp of the concept of “esoteric art within Christendom; look at his HOPELESSLY CONFUSED CATEGORY ERROR of “bestiary vs. religious art”.

His own confusion and category errors, combined with HIS — not mine, HIS — bad mean attitude personally attacking Irvin — are a hindrance to the field. And you say *I* should be nice? Tell that to them instead. I’m f*cking rainbows and unicorns compared to their attitudes.

There is GOOD REASON to see Pseudo-S as a mean problem; the usual toxic combination of being dead-wrong, and mean, and totally self-confident.

It is a real problem, that is difficult to see how to proceed. The Establishment eggs-on horrible writers who can’t think their way out of a paper bag, and encourages them to publish their mental knots of confusion, while attacking for example Brown as a “follower of Allegro” — TOTAL STRAWMAN!

Brown is NOT a “follower of Allegro”. There is only 1 person in the entire world that can generally be seen as a “follower of Allegro”, and that is Irvin of circa 2010, who has now flipped his values against entheogenic gnosticism and left the field.

What’s happening is, Pseudo-S has very poor, inadequate understatnding of the field (like everyone else except for ~10 scholars (Ruck, M Hoffman, M Hoffman, Salvini, Ott, Ratsch…), and his lack of knowledge, combined with extreme overconfidence totally overestimating his knowledge of the field, comgbined with a vulgar personality, leads him to hallucinate and grossly misread, MISREAD THE FIELD, MISREAD SCHOLARS’ POSITION, MISREAD THE STATE OF PLAY, OVERESTIMATE HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE FIELD, MISTAKE HIS KNOWLEDGE ON ONE TOPIC, FOR KNOWLEDGE OF ALL TOPICS when in fact he is TOTALLY IGNORANT of Greek & Christian art that’s relevant to mushrooms.

He thinks that because he read ONE single book, by Irvin, that now he’s an expert on the whole state of play in teh field re: mushrooms in Christian art.

He wrongly thinks, and acts on his error, thinks he can lump together as “Allegro followers” every single mushroom theorist. He lacks all nuance and ability to differentiate one scholar’s position from another’s.

Until he gets a civil attitude and an accurate reading of the field, he must be rebuffed. He is a problem. Not me. I’m pushing the field forward despite his effort, his HALLUCINATION that he’s trying to push on others, to cloud THEIR thinking too, — all these comments apply to Letcher as well.

My god, decoding Mystery Religion Mythemes is hard enough, without mytheme-illiterate people who know nothing about it, publishing attack-and-discredit articles, and publishing books, that work to confuse others and discourage people from investigating – they weork hard to get other people to have the same, muddled thinking, and make it look like there’s NO evidence for mushrooms in Christian art, when in fact, there are TONS of mushrooms — just look at the Psalter!!! Shortage of mushrooms?

That’s the opposite of the situation; we have a PLETHORA of mushrooms all over the art.

But what in the hell spell has been cast, that prevents scholars from seeing , that makes them dismiss and ridicule any attempt to read mushrooms as mushrooms? how to get the sleeping, confused minds to wake up, when they work hard to spread their sleep, their confused thinking, through their articles and books, to propagate their confused blindness, to steer everyone away from looking and seeing the countless plain-as-day mushrooms all throughout Christian and Greek art?

It’s looking like it might as well be, in effect, a cover-up attempt.

It’s like an “interpretation frameworks war”. With one side, highly confused, so much so, they are incapable of stating what their position exactly is, in a consistent way.

The Canterbury Psalter is DRENCHED with mushrooms, all over the place! Who is casting a spell to spread their own blindness, onto the whole field?

They pull the same confused, mean, false moves, with total overestimation of their grasp of the state of play in the field. Have you watched the debate of S vs Brown?

Have you seen Brown’s castigating S for strawmanning Brown’s position, ludicrously smearing brown as a “follower of Allegro”?

S has no idea what he’s talking about, and yet LOUDLY (yet vaguely) TRUMPETS his alleged demolition “the mushroom theory”, whatever the hell he thinks that theory is supposed to mean — he shifts his meaning constantly. -mh

/ end of section “Against Minimalist Mushroom Scholars”

/ end of major section “Bad Mushroom Scholarship”

Clarifying the Explanation of {branching vs. non-branching}, as in the Entire Canterbury “Mushroom/ Hanging/ Sword” Image

Here I work out a good, clear way of explaining {branching vs. non-branching}, as in the entire Canterbury “mushroom/ hanging/ sword” image.

Clarifying Possibilism vs. Eternalism descriptions, at length

In the entire Canterbury “hanging-from-mushroom” image,

The mytheme {branching tree} means (by analogy) branching possibilities, which implies the entire Possibilism worldmodel, which is unstable and non-viable in the altered state.

The mytheme {de-branched tree)} means (by analogy) monopossibility, which implies the entire Eternalism worldmodel, which is stable and viable in the altered state.

My “finished” article is probably much clearer and more appealing, than my decoding-process while building-up that article.

_________

familiar 2013 formula:

{tree vs. snake} = Possibilism vs Eternalism

The Image’s less familiar way of the same point, using non-mythemes formula:

branching vs nonbranching = Possibilism vs Eternalism

or, its main point is:

branching = unstable = Possibilism

non-branching = stable = Eternalism

stability there means, of personal self-control in the loosecog state; in the altered state from mushrooms.

Is branching …

the word ‘branching’ means both a mytheme and a direct statement/label:

{branching tree} refers to branching possibilities

Summary/takeaway point:

Note:

Shorthand definition:
When I say:
model
or better:
worldmodel
that is shorthand for:
mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and control

‘model’ = mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and control

‘worldmodel’ = mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and control

Way of saying it #1:

branching stands-in for the entire worldmodel, Possibilism.
non-branching stands-in for the entire worldmodel, Eternalism.

Way of saying it #2:

[Whether you think in terms of branching or non-branching] indicates
[your entire giant mental worldmodel]:

Way of saying it #3:

_branching –> *POSSIBILISM*
_{non-branching} –> *ETERNALISM*

Way of saying it #4: (very clear, and read-aloudable):

Direct English statements:

If you think in terms of branching possibilities, that indicates that your entire mental worldmodel of control, possibility, and time is Possibilism.

If you think in terms of non-branching possibilities, (also known as monopossibility), that indicates that your entire mental worldmodel of control, possibility, and time is Eternalism.

even though
branching is only 1 of a whole set of attributes of Possibilism,
and
non-branching is only 1 of a whole set of attributes of Eternalism.

Using analogy-equation syntax:

branching: non-branching :: Possibilism: Eternalism

True, but we want to specify that branching has a specific relationship, even more than “branching is a subset of Possibilism”. We want to indicate that

IF YOU BELIEVE “BRANCHING” (REGARDING THE LITTLE TOPIC OF POSSIBILITY), THEN YOU BELIEVE THE ENTIRE WORLDMODEL “Possibilism”.

IF YOU BELIEVE “NON-BRANCHING” (REGARDING THE LITTLE TOPIC OF POSSIBILITY), THEN YOU BELIEVE THE ENTIRE WORLDMODEL “Eternalism”.

This communicates the exact point well:
The tiny little system attribute

[Whether you think in terms of branching or non-branching] indicates
[your entire giant mental worldmodel]:

_branching –> *POSSIBILISM*
_{non-branching} –> *ETERNALISM*

the little view on little topic “bran

A possible notation, meaning “a small attribute stands-in for a big entire system”; X “indicates” entire Y, or
“holding X, indicates that you hold entire worldmodel Y”:

branching –> Possibilism
non-branching –> Eternalism

Given these copied blobs: …

Possibilism = the branching-tree universe containing autonomous steersmen steering with freewill-power control in trees

Eternalism = the non-branching block universe containing puppet-steersmen steering with no freewill-power non-control in worldlines

____________

Possibilism =
the branching-tree universe containing
autonomous steersmen steering
with freewill-power control
in trees

Eternalism =
the non-branching block universe containing
puppet-steersmen steering
with no freewill-power non-control
in worldlines

… we can use the –> notation to say, little x attribute-position is an indicator of Big System Y:

the branching-tree universe –> Possibilism
autonomous steersman steering–> Possibilism
freewill-power control–> Possibilism
trees–> Possibilism

the non-branching block universe –> Eternalism
puppet-steersman steering–> Eternalism
with no freewill-power non-control–> Eternalism
worldlines –> Eternalism

we have seen similar notation/formulations/expressions, in my 2013 breakthrough formula / formulation:

{tree vs. snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism

it’s like a syllogism:
X:Y = a:b
or
X:Y :: a:b
even though X might be 100x bigger than a.

{tree} is to {snake} as Possibilism is to Eternalism

or math ratio

tree/snake = Possibilism/Eternalism

or SAT analogy notation:

{tree}: {snake} :: Possibilism: Eternalism

That includes the basic idea I’m presently focusing on, that a little small attribute indicates the presence of a whole entire total worldview/ way of thinking.

Eternalism is an experiential mode, more than a “philosophy” set of propositions

I haven’t expressed enough, that it is an EXPERINTIAL MODE, not just a “way of thinking” — it is a whole mode of experiencing/feeling/thinking/perceiving.

When Sam Harris writes asserting no-free-will, most of the time he is thinking of “no-free-will” as a set of propositions held in the OSC.

But that’s a bit improper; the Native Worldmodel of the OSC is definitely Possibilism; that’s why after regerenation climax, you still think 99% in terms of Possibilism and only remind yourself 1% that metapysically, Eternalism is the case.

After gaining gnosis/ Transcendent Knowledge, you end up with 99% Qualitified-Possibilism-thinking, and 1% Eternalism-thinking.

Whenever a mind is in OSC, its thinking is 100% or 99% Possibilism.

% of the time the mind is in Possibilism vs. Eternalism thinking

before Transcendent Knowledge:

100% Naive-Possibilism; all the time

During peak ASC climax, the mind has:

100% Eternalism

When the mind returns to mundane daily OSC, it ends up with:

99% of the time: Qualified-Possibilism;
1% of the time: Eternalism-thinking.

________________________

in the Canter Image:

expressed as division or ratio-equation:

branching/non-branching = Possibilism/Eternalism

SAT analogy-question format:

branching: non-branching :: Possibilism: Eternalism
that’s a weak statement; it fails to say that
“branching is a component of the entire Possibilism system; and
non-branching is a single component of Eternalism, that’s a giveaway telltale indicator that your entire worldmodel is Eternalism”.
Not expressive enough.

tree: snake :: Possibilism :: Eternalism

using non-mytheme direct expression, that formula becomes:

{tree vs. snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism

analogy formula syntax:

tree: snake :: Possibilism :: Eternalism
not expressive enough, per above comment.

“branching” or “non-branching” is just 1 aspect of two giant opposite worldmodels (Possibilism & Eternalism).

Your view regarding
the little particular topic of branching
(whether you affirm it, or deny it), is a “marker” that indicates
which of the two giant buckets you subscribe to
(Possibilism, or Eternalism). so, matching “little scope” to “big scope”:

branching stands-in for the entire model, Possibilism.
non-branching stands-in for the entire model, Eternalism.

your view regarding branching, is a small indicator, that reveals your entire worldmodel.

Possibilism = the branching-tree universe containing autonomous steersmen steering with freewill-power control in trees

Eternalism = the non-branching block universe containing puppet-steersmen steering with no freewill-power non-control in worldlines

Canter Image is a bit different than my usual analysis, b/c it so totally uses 1 little topic — branching — as the primary indicator to point to one or the other of two giant different worldmodels (Possibilism or Eternalism).

Canter Image = … i need a better label for the whole cartoon-page than “the entire image which contains the leg-hanging mushroom tree”. It’s more like…. “the cybernetic mushroom initiation Image” or
“the non-branching/blades mushroom tree [whole entire complete] image“; not obsessed/fixated on ONLY the mushroom tree in it, but how the whole image functions. damn, would be easier to paste the damn thing: THIS::::::

darn, I don’t have good phrases to refer to these 4 images:
it is difficult & awkward to write about these things w/o good phrases:

the distinctive scope-keywords to label the 4 zoom-levels on the image are:

o the mushroom tree
o the top row
o the entire image
o the page

the “mushroom tree with sword and hanging with right-limb” image

the “mushroom initiation top row” image

the “__ entire cartoon ” image

the entire page

/ end of one of the sections in major section “Clarifying the Explanation of {branching vs. non-branching}, as in the Entire Canterbury “Mushroom/ Hanging/ Sword” Image”

1st Pass of Prepping Reply to W’s Post at Cyb’s Article –
Long work-up to create short summary about branching, within in my “Bad Scholarship” comment

[2:10 p.m. November 24, 2020]

Prepping reply for Cyb weblog comments thread:
[outcome: I didn’t use the below writeups. See above, same URL, for final fresh-written reply; it’s solid.]

https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/18/recent-articles-on-criteria-proof-of-mushrooms-in-christian-art-branching-mushrooms-confirmation-and-reproducibility-canterbury-psalter/

“I couldn’t quite figure out why
the Canterbury Psalter isomorphism was so non-inspiring and quite difficult to comprehend as per the Egodeath Theory, until explained.” /W

[outcome: I posted this good summary, after *much* work, above, to best state concisely as follows:

Here’s a succinct summary of the Message of the entire Canterbury “hanging-from-mushroom” image:

_____

The mytheme {branching tree} means (by analogy) branching possibilities, which implies the *entire* Possibilism worldmodel, which is unstable and non-viable in the altered state.

The mytheme {de-branched tree} means (by analogy) monopossibility, which implies the *entire* Eternalism worldmodel, which is stable and viable in the altered state.

_____

‘worldmodel’ here means, the mental worldmodel of time, possibility, and personal control.
or: “personal control power”; I should say ‘power’ more often.

A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist

https://genius.com/Rush-the-body-electric-lyrics

]

Image very, very heavily uses {blade} and the complex mytheme equation:
o {branching vs. non-branching} = {left limb vs. right limb}
Image tries to convey entire Egodeath theory / Transcendent Knowledge by only:
blade
branching vs non-branching
emphasizing:
if you depend on “branching”-thinking, in the ASC, you get the blade of death (cyber-seizure, non-viable, chaos, destruction, bad, out of control in worst way).
If you construct another basis in your mind, Eternalism ({non-branching, {rock} block univ; snake), and rely on it instead of illusory Possibilism-power : you avoid the {blade/death/ non-viable/} seizure/chaos.
That is 90% of the message of the image. (doesn’t use {rock} or {snake}; instead, to carry that weight of “block univ” & “worldline”, Image depends very heavily on instead, {non-branching}.

Image is over-pressing , over-burdening the {non-branching} idea to carry the weight of rock block universe and embedded serpent worldline.

I suspect that’s the “jump” that’s difficult for me and for you, in jumping from the Egodeath theory to this Image: you must “unpack” or “overload” {non-branching} to force it to ALSO mean block universe rock AND worldline {serpent}. The problem is, {non-branching} goes hand-in-hand with the rest:

System 1 = all of the following: {king sterring in branching tree}, instability in ASC.

System 2 = all of the following: {serpent embedded in rock} non-branching (block universe & worldline).

The difficulty of relating to the Canter Image even though you and I understand the Egodeath theory, may be my fault for not defining , in the past, that the “block universe” idea goes with “non-branching”.

Important Expansion of the Titles of the 2 Worldmodels of Control, Possibility, and Time:

Possibilism = one entire broad set of attributes/views;
Eternalism = the other entire broad set of attributes/views;
the topic of BRANCHING is only 1 of those various traits that contrast the two mental worldmodels. YOU CAN USE ANY 1 OF THE DIFFERENCES (eg branching vs nonbranching) THAT SET APART THE TWO MODELS, TO REPRESENT THE ENTIRE WORLDMODEL or worldmodel-pair or -contrast.

The Canterbury image strictly focuses on two differences between the two giant worldmodels, or just one difference: BRANCHING.

How you believe about the one little topic of Branching, = which of the two giant worldmodesl (that contain much more than just the Branching issue/view) you hold. It’s like saying,
“If you tell me how you feel about wearing a mask all the time, I can tell you your entire political view.”
The way you feel about wearing a mask all the time, is an indicator of your entire way of thinking, your entire worldmodel that you inhabit.

If you tell me 1 little thing — how you think about possibility branching: is it real or not? — then I can tell whether you believe in
the entire giant Possibilism worldmodel or
the entire giant Eternalism worldmodel.

[I liked this construction and copied it to above, to break out in –> type of expression for each component; each component of one of the two models implies that entire giant model:]

Possibilism = the branching-tree universe containing autonomous steersmen steering with freewill-power control in trees

Eternalism = the non-branching block universe containing puppet-steersmen steering with no freewill-power non-control in worldlines

____________

Possibilism =
the branching-tree universe containing
autonomous steersmen steering
with freewill-power control
in trees

Eternalism =
the non-branching block universe containing
puppet-steersmen steering
with no freewill-power non-control
in worldlines

If you try to bring Possibilism-thinking into the ASC, it “breaks”, panics, seizes, goes unstable, non-viable, it perishes. The Image doesn’t talk of “Possibilism” or “Eternalism”; it only latches onto 1 aspect of those 2 models: only the “branching vs non-branching” aspect.

All sorts of things fit together, into these 2 giant Master Buckets:
the Possibilism giant bucket, and
the Eternalism giant bucket.
one contrasting thing, a difference between what’s in those giant buckets, is: branching vs. non-branching.; or, in brief:
BRANCHING (& how it differs between the 2 buckets, which are Possibilism & Eternalism.) Do you want to focus on CONTROL; “(egoic) control vs non-control”, equating the different in control, between the 2 systems, with the entire difference between Possibilism vs Eternalism giant buckets/worldmodels? Do you instead want to latch onto the topic of the difference in model of TIME?

Good News: very very simple: THERE ARE ONLY 2, VERY OPPOSITE WORLDMODELS.
Bad News: inside each model, is an entire universe of aspects, which contrast between the 2 systems.

Possibilism = this big set of distinctive attributes:
branching (that’s just 1 of the distinctive characteristic aspects of the giant Possibilism worldmodel) =
autonomous king (that’s another one of the distinctive characteristic aspect of the giant Possibilism worldmodel) =

Eternalism = this big set of opposite distinctive attributes:
non-branching = (that’s just 1 of the distinctive characteristic aspects of the giant Eternalism worldmodel) =

/ important groups of concepts, required for seeing the Canter Image as broadly covering all of the two models, Possibilism vs Eternalism.

_____________

You followed my decoding during the construction project, that’s both easy & hard, following my confusions along the way to clarity. In a way, my article / formatting/ TOC is much easier to follow now that it’s “done”.

It’s like tagging along with a Science researcher/experimenter at the leading edge — he’s not working on – or able to — stop and most clearly explain each step by step step in the Hypothesis formation stage; he has to go very fast, and when he makes a breakthrough he has to stop and try to make Log entries of how he got there, reconstructing his steps.

The nice clean textbook presentation of his experiment results make it look easy, when the proofs are laid out all nice. Like my “finished” article is now. I did a lot at the end, yesterday/today, to put the appealing marketing onramp at the top of the Proof Canterbury Mushroom Tree Leg Hanging article. -mh

“And then I realized that [I had trouble following the in-progress Canterbury decoding b/c] it’s because it isn’t foundational. ” – W

The Image is challenging b/c no Snake, no Block Universe — they restrict themselves to only 3 mythemes:
o mushroom,
o {blade} – very heavy use.
o {branching vs. non-branching} = {left limb vs. right limb} – very heavy use.

Not used in Image:

o {king, serpent, rock…}

Concise version of Cyb’s 3 tiers of evidence to look for mushrooms:
1. Literal depictions of mushrooms
2. Stylized depictions of mushrooms
3. Depictions of mushroom effects

– mh

/ clarif of a subection about branching Canter decoding

_____

W wrote:

“And that came to me last night from the following sentence in a common prayer:

‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.’

“Bible metaphor, isomorphism, is foundational
“Heaven/Earth

“A common denominator.”

“Ego transformation from Possibilism into Eternalism
using {feet pointing, direction of hands, hanging from tree, wrinkles in clothing}, are more in-between Heaven and Earth [compare Cyb’s middle categ] and do not have a common and strong denominator, except for when there is the use of branching and non branching, trees and snakes, etc..

“Which makes it all harder to grasp.

“In the ordinary world we know it’s common for right-side brain to be more intuitive, left more analytical.

“But we don’ t grow up learning a meaning for pointing left
and right as related to ‘heaven.’ That has been made new (at least for myself) as metaphor through the Egodeath Theory.

“Now, maybe there has to be a required level of intelligence to grasp the entire Theory, and if so then the Theory automatically becomes limited and exclusive.” – W

In the Class Session scene, 1 out of 4 students passes the exam. -mh

W: “Or maybe the Theory requires being sowed and reaped umpteen times, and if so, then the Theory becomes dependent on time and repetition.”

You know that’s how it goes: rewrite 20 times, to work-out a clear way of talking about these very difficult topics. -mh

W: “I just don’t know how else to describe this other than to say that the sense of a foundational common denominator for possibilism into eternalism is missing in parts (at least for myself) and might just be a factor for people in understanding the Theory.

“Bible metaphor is easy for the mind to grasp. It uses Earth as foundation.

“Last night I was able to come up with a good metaphor (for myself) regarding the difference between childish egoic possibilism and qualified egoic possibilism.

“I simply call them immature ego/mind of possibilism and mature ego/mind of possibilism.

“The immature ego/mind of possibilism is a ‘bud’, not yet open to the ‘sun’

“The mature ego/mind of possibilism is a flower, fully open to the ‘sun’ and which bares nectar for the ‘ascent of the butterfly’.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”

________________

W’s paragraphs, con’t – a different post by W:

mix of “Bad Scholars” & “Branching”?

“There is a separation of life throughout the history of writings about spiritual attainments, whether in new age spirituality, religion, or in the history of entheogenic mind transformation.

“These occur commonly within the written and historical references to life, such as being pure or impure, insider or outsider, esoteric or exoteric etc.

“Whether the words that appear to separate life are used metaphorically or not, the written word does not decide that.

“The minds of the readers do.

“And although it is important to distinguish differences in the world, the rise of critiquing, which can border on attacking integrity, is either an unwanted side effect or it becomes intentional.

“And it makes me wonder what type of world is being created from the advancement of the mind.”

“I hope that love and respect, acceptance and compassion will never get pushed aside for the want of achievements, myself included.” – W

Tell that to the bullies who abuse the field for their own self-serving gain, holding back the field.

“There is never a thought of the people as to whether they are this or that.”

“They are ordinary people just like myself. I love the world that I live in, and it’s not always just good times…there are hard times too.” – W

Yeah well you’re not battling at the front lines pushing the field ahead despite the naysayers who are — in effect — through their muddled, self-confused thinking, trying to hold it back.

You’re not in the fray of the “interpretation framework wars”.

Your advice is good valid advice like a friend advised me about my 2006 main article; they said: Don’t write against others; positively write what is the case.

I am the field, shaking itself awake, shaking off the muddled-thinking, shaking off and zapping the delusion that clouds the mind of the field.

“That’s when I hold on tight to ‘the string.’

“I wish for all of you a peaceful Thanksgiving and a wonderful Christmas, if those are holidays that you celebrate.

“Never forget your heart. ” / W

/ branching sections are above

My Comments on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key” – Part 1, November 24, 2020

[9:30 p.m. November 24, 2020]

Cyb’s new article is copied here, for my interactive reading-by-editing.

https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/correcting-key-points-in-muraresku-the-immortality-key/

Cyb’s New Article, for my interactive reading-by-editing speculates about drugs in Greek and Christian religious history using a Moderate approach.

He speculates that drug use was reserved for elites and monopolized by powerful families and kept secret by mystery cults. Some occasional instances of drug use can be found outside of such groups, but they are always secret and related to those groups. Against these groups, the cults of first Dionysus and then of Jesus sought to spread drugs to more people, but they were suppressed by the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. The cult of Dionysus and early Christianity were threatening because they distributed drugs.

[what?! is this a fantasy novel? the “make sh*t up” school of scholarship?-mh]

“Muraresku’s is a relatively broad, but still firmly Moderate approach. He cannot imagine widespread drug use across all culture, including the mainstream, even as he keeps citing evidence that suggests knowledge of drugs was widespread and not limited to secretive elites or suppressed groups. His Moderate approach to speculation is typically shaky. Moderate approaches always totter toward the Maximal Theory, or seem to when viewed through the superior lens of the Maximal Theory.

In conflict with his Moderate speculation, Muraresku uses a Minimal approach when it comes to evaluating evidence for drugs. Again and again he concludes that we cannot really be sure about drugs in Greek and Christian religion, becuase we don’t have “hard evidence.” His criterion for good evidence is extremely restricted: only a residue from a cup from a religious site that shows evidence of a psychedelic when analyzed in a chemical lab will count for Muraresku. Everything else is merely suggestive, but not enough to conclude.

–

Summaries of sections of the book and corrections of key claims.

Part 1 is dedicted to Eleusis.

Chapters 2-5 (pp. 37-105) are on the topic of drugs in the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. Muraresku discusses Wasson …

[i totally slammed Wasson in email to Ruck today. forget wasson. he’s a — evasive writer, too; can’t form a clear position statement to save his life. he’s harmed the field, badly, unlike Graves. Wasson is the –. He abused scholarship as a tool to conceal, not to reveal. Irvin has comparable cynicism about Wasson and his covert motives.-mh]

… , Hofmann, and Ruck’s The Road to Eleusis and laments that chemical analysis is possible of surviving cups found at the site, because they were cleaned after excavation, at a time before chemical analysis was performed in archaeology. Without that chemical analysis, Muraresku cannot decide whether or not drugs used at Eleusis.

Were drugs used at Eleusis? Yes. It was not a secret, and Wasson erred in presenting it as a secret to be revealed in The Road to Eleusis. The secret to be revealed at Eleusis is that of the switch from possibilism to eternalism in the loose cognition state induced by drugs. We do not need a chemical analysis to conclude that drugs were used at Eleusis. A convincing case can be made using evidence from visual art and text. Eleusis was also not unique in ancient Greece in its use of drugs in religion; it would be strange if drugs were not involved.

Muraresku is wrong to start his investigation with Eleusis and with The Road To Eleusis. It is distorting to focus so much attention on Eleusis

[Eleusis, Eleusis, Eleusis… and Allegro, Allegro, Allegro — L E T – I T – G O !!! reductionistic MONO-MANIA. Eject your infinite-loop 8-track tape and join the 21st C discussion! -mh]

at the expense of the rest of ancient Greece. Eleusis did not have the cultural standing that Muraresku attributes to it, as some sort of spiritual center of ancient Greece or the Roman Empire. He can only tell that story through ignoring all the other temples, cults, and stories.

[that ol’ move. same pattern: Put all focus on Allegro, make Allegro the star that you force the entire field to steer by. Easier than real scholarship, reading all those books and doing broad research -mh]

As I’ve written earlier, The Road to Eleusis is not the place to start with the topic of drugs in Greek religion. If he wanted to start with the beginning of the 20th century’s investigation into drugs in Greek religion, he should have started with Robert Graves. Better still would have been to start after surveying all the books produced since then [1957] on the topic. Best would have been to learn eternalism and the Maximal Entheogen Theory via the Egodeath Theory

Framing the question as “were drugs used at this one specific site?” (i.e. considered in isolation from other sites) is a sign of a Moderate Entheogen Theory. The Maximal Theory would never ask such a question in that way.

[true; alien to my thinking; my framework can’t present that question, loaded with the requisite background assumptions -mh]

–

Chapter 6 is on the topic of drugs in prehistory in the Mediterranean, specifically at Göblekli Tepe.

Were drugs used in prehistory and the ‘origins of religion’? Certainly; the Maximal Entheogen Theory of religion has no problem asserting that.

It would make sense, then, for drugs to have been used in connection with a religious ceremony at Göblekli Tepe… if indeed it was the site of religious ceremonies; nobody knows for sure. Nearly everything about the site is speculative.

Muraresku is wrong, however, to speculate about a continuity of transmission along cultural and genetic groups from Göblekli Tepe to Eleusis. Such a continuity is unprovable and implausible, and weakens his book.

Regardless, the case for drug use in religion does not need such a continuity.

[how does the mind work, in the altered state? that’s the driving common factor. My theory is a theory of how the human mind, every human mind at every time & place, works in the altered state, indep of where/when. -mh]

Looking for such a continuity is a sign that an investigator is using a Moderate Entheogen Theory of religion. The Maximal Theory does not need to map out tenuous connections between places and times of drug use in order to prove drug use.

–

Chapter 7 and the Epilogue to Part One are on drugs at an archaeological site in Spain. Muraresku seems to have his ‘hard evidence’ here: ergot was found on the chemical residue of a cup found at a site and on the teeth of a human jaw bone found at the same site. This ‘hard evidence’ is however thrown into doubt in the Epilogue to Part One. Muraresku reports that another scientist warns that the results are uncertain because the original samples analyzed cannot be found, and so cannot be tested again. So much for the criterion of ‘hard evidence’ via archaeochemistry.

Were drugs used across the Mediterranean and across culture? Certainly; the Maximal Theory has no problem. The evidence from the site in Spain is just another bit of data for the Maximal Theory, not of any particular importance.

For Muraresku’s speculation, however, it becomes a grandly important sign that the mysteries of Eleusis were being spread in secret

[#1 word signalling the self-contradictory Moderate theory: ‘SECRET'(re: the fact of drug use) -mh]

and that particular Greeks who founded the colony were especially spiritually sophisticated and took this special spiritual sophistication with them also to their colonies in Southern Italy.

However, there’s no clear, good evidence that the site in Spain was a cult site. Muraresku follows the archaeologists who excavated the site in this interpretation. But archaeologists frequently resort to saying that a site had a ritual purpose when they have no idea what the site was for. It’s a well-known joke in the field, and spoofed in books and articles.

Motel of the Mysteries — 1979

https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf
daily modern life as alien ritual

“Furthermore, if it was indeed a cult site to Demeter, this is not an indication that it was a version of the mysteries at Eleusis or in any way connected to Eleusis. Muraresku literalizes the Eleusinian myth that Triptolemus spread knoweldge of grain around the world

[i’m increasingly doubtful that grain means grain; in Mythemeland, everything mainly means the mind in the ASC. {grain} = some aspect of the altered state; the only question is, WHICH aspect/WHICH analogy-referent; WHICH isomorphism? “grain” is like X in the ASC; isomorphic, in that, Y-aspect -mh]

and thinks that the Demeter cult at Eleusis was some sort of proselytizing cult.

[? Evangelicalism meets Antiquity?? -mh]

Why Muraresku thinks that the Greek from Phocaea who founded the colony Emporion near the farm site in Spain and also founded the city of Elea/Velia in southern Italy were especially spiritually sophisticated is beyond me. Presumably this would mean that they are sophisticated in way that other Greeks were not, but Muraresku cannot bring forward anything particularly special. Embossing Persephone on their coins and producing the philosopher Parmenides at Elea/Velia do not especially set apart the Phocaeans and their colonies from other ancient Greeks.

The Minimal approach to evidence and the Moderate approach to speculation traps

[GOOD WORD, the field is caught in a trap, a dead-end snare to “violently” bust out of. “get caught in ticking traps” -mh]

Muraresku into over-estimating the importance of the site in Spain discussed in these chapters. He wants it to be a slam-dunk evidence that proves the kykeon …

[I side with Graves: ditch the complicated speculation about alien lost strains of ergot that used to work.

FROM NOW ON, ALL MY SPECULATION ASSUMES relig myth = PSILOCYBIN, with tiny footnote of Scopalamine as “if i have no other option” fallback cheap substitute that just makes you wish for real deal.

Because we KNOW the effects are 100% reliable, 100% classic entheogenic.

No Speculation Required.

trip reports of Scopalamine gave zero impression of classic enth effects, fwiw.

the Real Deal = Psilocybin.

others are side-curiosities/ poor 3rd-rate alternatives to fall back on reluctantly.

Psilo is universally considered top-shelf “the good stuff”, The Standard of Excellence.

better than 12-16-hour kinds, too: shorter duration = more control of the session-intensity curve.

reconstruct exact ancient mixed-wine usage technique of “rounds” of redosing, like at banquet; their perfected application technique is optimized. -mh]

… at Eleusis hypothesis of The Road to Eleusis right, but it is too marginal and dubious to accomplish even that limited task. The Maximal Theory does not need to rely on such special pleading.

–

Part 2 focuses on Dionysus and Christianity.

Chapter 8 is on drugged wine in ancient Greece and Dionysus. This topic is not new, and Muraresku’s narrative of looking at broken vase paintings in a museum focuses on weak evidence. He ends up presenting an uncompelling case of [on/for] a topic of great importance.

Chapter 9 focuses on establishing Dionysus in ancient Galilee, in order to justify linking Mr. Historical Jesus to Dionysus and drugged wine.

Chapter 10 focuses on drugs in the ancient Near East, including Egypt and the Canaanites. He claims that the drugs were exclusively for the elites, such as pharaohs and Canaanite elites. He then makes the cult of Dionsyus and Christianity about providing drugs to more people, non-elites.

[the make-sh*t-up school of scholarship? -mh]

He then claims this was the reason that the cult of Dionysus and Christianity were

[allegedly – Believe All Martyr-pron Tales -mh]

oppressed.

Why he is so confident that drugs were restricted to the elites, when he has just argued that wine was widely drugged, I cannot say.

[Moderate = self-contradiction -mh]

I would ask Muraresku: what evidence is there for the suppression of drugs in antiquity? As he knows, drug use was not exclusive to the cult of Dionysus and Christianity, and was found all over the Mediterranean. On what basis, then, does he think that the cult of Dionysus and Christianity were suppressed because of drugs?

Muraresku’s Moderate approach teeters and totters.

[that’s a sign, indicator, hallmark, characteristic trait of Moderate -mh]

–

I’ll add summaries and critiques of the remaining chapters. Reading the book is slow going because I want to throw the book across the room after every other sentence.

/ end of section “My Comments on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key”” — part 1. His added part 2, Dec 2 2020, is below.

My Comments on Cyberdisciple’s Article “Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key” – Part 2, December 2, 2020

Cyberdisciple added the following sections at the bottom of page:

Correcting Key Points in Muraresku, The Immortality Key
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/correcting-key-points-in-muraresku-the-immortality-key/ —

[His sections are copied below, for my commenting. -mh]

________

Chapter 11 finalizes the first sequence of part 2, consisting of Chapters 8-11, on the similarities between Dionysus and Jesus and on the Eucharist as psychedelics.

[That sounds like the original title of Freke & Gandy’s book:

The Jesus Mysteries: How the Pagan Mysteries of Osiris-Dionysus Were Rewritten as the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, 1999
http://amzn.com/0722536763

-mh]

It is not particularly new

[The above popular book is from 21 years ago, and we’ve been discussing it at the JesusMysteries Yahoo Group for 21 years, sometimes with the authors, and many heavy research scholars and book authors – the whole gang of them. The subject of ahistoricity, including Dionysus parallels, has gone quite mainstream, some years ago. -mh]

or groundbreaking to point out that a source for the Jesus figure is Dionsyus, though Muraresku acts as though he is contemplating some new breakthrough.

More importantly, it is misleading to focus so exclusively on Dionysus as the source of the Jesus figure.

The Jesus figure was derived from many sources, not only Dionysus.

[I’ve been yelling that on the world-wide web for decades. Scholars persist in the ridiculous industry of grand pronouncements of the same old preposterous 1-dimensional approach; let’s name the damn thing:

the “Single Source for the Jesus Figure” fallacy

-mh]

“Jesus figure” is my addition, since Muraresku is committed to Mr. Historical Jesus.

Muraresku invents the idea that the early Christians needed a psychedelic Eucharist, to appeal to Greeks.

[AS IF Israelites and primitive proto-Christians DIDN’T have what EVERYONE ELSE EVERYWHERE had, the mushroom (or equivalent) engine that powered the whole damn thing, Mystery Religion initiation, UBIQUITOUSLY throughout ALL of Antiquity, ALL of Hellenistic religion. -mh]

Lurking behind this idea is the implication that a mystery cult could have had some other sort of sacrament, some non-psychedelic sacrament.

[agghhhh KILL ME
fortunately i have an image handy b/c need it so often:

Can you imagine what a complete failure and laughingstock, totally uncompetitive, a “Mystery Religion with no psychoactive sacrament” would have been, in the Hellenistic era?

Such an ersatz, non-Mystery Religion “Mystery Religion” would have been the laughingstock and embarrassment of the entire Mediterranean.

The very notion is a complete contradiction in terms, like an automobile with no engine; a brand of mysticism with no mystic experiencing.

It would have been a complete, instant flop; a total non-starter, seen as pure, utter folly — a direct contradiction in terms. -mh]

We see Muraresku’s Moderate approach stumbling here.

Per the Maximal approach, there was no such thing as a non-psychedelic mystery meal.

—

Even apart from the contrast between Moderate and Maximal approaches, the idea fails on its own in the context of Muraresku’s book.

Why would it matter to the Greeks if the Christian sacred meal were psychedelic, if they already had psychedelic sacraments at Eleusis, around the Mediterranean in cults in farmhouses, and in Dionysiac initiations?

[Psychedelic initiation was as secret as awareness of the snake-shaped worldline hiding veiled in the mind, visible to anyone in the altered state, shown in all the art, literally paraded before everyone’s eyes, in the snake-basket in the (“sacred”, needless to say) parades. -mh]

A psychedelic Eucharist wouldn’t make Christianity especially appealing or noteworthy to Greeks.

What about a psychedelic sacrament would make Christianity distinctive?

—

In the heavily psychedelic and heavily mystery cult-oriented Mediterranean, Christianity’s distinctive appeal lay primarily in its counter-empire stance.

Muraresku, knowingly or not, has some awareness of this.

He makes the cult of Dionysus and early Christianity deviant and in danger of suppression from the Roman Empire.

However, he exaggerates the degree to which either was suppressed and misfires when he names the cause of suppression.

With no evidence or basis, he fantasizes that the Roman authority suppressed the cults because they used psychedelics.

[PRESENTISM FALLACY MUCH? -mh]

Because of this fear of Roman SWAT teams, the Greeks would have found it appealing for Christianity to have a psychedelic sacrament, you see.

—

Far from being hostile to psychedelics and mystery initiation, the Roman imperial hierarchy in fact incorporated the use of psychedelics and mystery initiation to support and prop up the socio-political arrangement.

To the extent that mystery cults and other religions threatened that socio-political arrangement, to that extent were they interfered with by the Roman power.

Most mystery cults and religions adapted to the hierarchy and became subordinate to it.

—

It is true that the Roman historian Livy (64/59 BC – AD 12/17) and an inscription of a decree of the Roman Senate indicate that the Roman Senate in 186 BC regulated and suppressed a particular manifestation of the cult of Bacchus/Dionysus in Italy.

—

Muraresku wants that one instance of regulation/suppression to mean that Bacchus/Dionysus was a threatened cult everywhere in every instance.

This is not the case.

Bacchus/Dionysus was not some taboo and suppressed god for the Romans.

Before the importation of the mystery cult of Dionysus/Bacchus into Italy, the Romans/Italians had their own equivalent, Liber (or Pater Liber).

Over time Liber and Bacchus/Dionysus became identified with each other.

In whatever manifestation, Liber/Bacchus/Dionysus was always a standard member of the pantheon in Greece and Rome.

His worship was completely normal and regularly incorporated into the culture of ancient Greece, ancient Italy, and the Roman Empire, from the bottom of the social order to the top.

—

As I’ve pointed out in other posts, a source as obvious, banal, and entry-level as Wikipedia shows the inaccuracy of Muraresku’s story: 

Article: Dionysus
Subsection: Worship and festivals in Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus#Worship_and_festivals_in_Rome

—

There is indeed a history of back-and-forth relations between the Roman authority and the worship of Dionsyus/Bacchus/Liber concerning the activities of worshippers.

But this does not amount to a blanket threat of suppression of the altered state in the way Muraresku implies.

The altered state via psychedelics was common and easy to come by in the ancient Mediterranean.

[ G E T – I T – I N – Y O U R – H E A D S, – S T U P I D – D E N S E – M O D E R A T E – E N T H E O G E N – S C H O L A R S !

GET MAXIMAL

-mh]

The uneasy relations of a particular brand of cult with the Roman authority did not affect the widespread and common altered state experiencing via psychedelics.

—

In turn, early Christianity stood out not for its psychedelic sacrament, but because it stylized itself as a direct counter to the Roman hierarchy and applied itself to the set-up of an alternative society.

It is another mark against Muraresku’s ‘scholarship’ that in a book on Christian origins he makes no mention of the many books on counter-empire themes in early Christianity.

The psychedelic sacrament was nothing special, and
it would have been unusual (impossible) not to have one.

—

Secondarily, the reason for Muraresku’s selective focus on Eleusis, Dionysus, and early Christianity becomes clearer in Chapter 11.

He has been so selective because he wants to tie the preparation and administering of psychedelic beverages to women.

He fantasizes that women had exclusive knowledge of psychedelics.

[as followers of the Egodeath theory know, I posted a severe criticism maybe in 2002, of the absurd and presentism-speculation-based idea, in some entheogen scholarship book, that only masters, but not slaves, knew about mixed wine mushroom wine. -mh]

—

He wants his book to participate in an intra-Catholic or intra-Christian debate about the legitimacy of women priests.

This is why he ignores all other mystery cults and the widespread use of psychedelics throughout Mediterranean culture.

Ignoring it allows him to tell his fantasy story that women held the special knowledge of psychedelics until they were suppressed by ‘the patriarchy.’

[oh fkking NO COMMENT -mh] 🗑️

—

He is committed to the Moderate approach because of cultural commitments, not because of a commitment to historical accuracy or plausibility.

[STOP HOLDING ENTHEOGEN SCHOLARSHIP HOSTAGE TO IRRELEVANT, POLITICIZED FACTORS!

TRY to do entheogen scholarhip based on strict critical historiography, but I guess that’s too much to ask. -mh]

Eleusis and Dionysus appear to be easy targets because the cult mythology at Elusis focuses on female goddesses and because Dionysus had his maenads.

[Maenads are initiate dudes, for all we know. Ruck and everyone is an uncritical literalist here, making uncritical presumptions, committing a category error, a genre error; a fallacy: shall we dub it —

the “literalistic reading of Hellenistic Mythemese” fallacy

-mh]

Early Christianity appears to be an easy target because evidence can be arranged to show its popularity among women.

Yet Muraresku has not produced any evidence that women alone knew of and administered psychedelics.

It’s implausible. Why would only women know how to mix psychedelics into wine?

Can Muraresku prove what is implied by his story, that men did not know how to mix psychedelics into wine?

[uh, I’M OUT, if we’re abandoning all sense –

I don’t have time for this sub-sub-critical scholarship,

Just go ahead, use psychedelics to project anything and everything your culture-addled mind wants to, on ancient entheogens abused as your modern-day, mid-20th C Rorschach ink blotter image.

I thought we were doing scholarship, not “fantastic-tales storytime”. Preposterous! -mh]

—

It’s a story he wants to be true, so he’ll distort everything to make it so.

—

Muraresku on the topic of women is an example of his literalizing of religious myth.

‘Female’ in analogical mythemes refers to:

“{female}: the mind’s vulnerable thought-receiver, normally {veiled}, unable to resist the uncontrollable source of thoughts. When that source-situation becomes visible, perceptible in the ASC, the female {maiden} is consciously overpowered and {abducted} to the {underworld}.”

—

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/mytheme-list/#fterms (scroll down to find).

[hyperinked above -mh]

—

The presence of females in the religious imagery of the cult tells us nothing about the historical reality of the cult’s practice.

[Mithraic initiation included the soldiers dressing as a {bride}, per their inner female helpless thought-receiver, following the Herme-Aphrodite Andro-Gyne, Mithras, who injects control-thoughts unstoppably, just as Mithras inserts the blade into the vunerable side of the bull, cancelling out its most-powerful, shoulder muscle; cancelling the egoic personal control-system’s power. -mh]

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