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The present WordPress weblog “Post” has been superseded by the following WordPress web “Page” format, which is wider in a desktop browser:
Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/defining-compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-mushrooms-in-christian-art/
Any changes to the article will be at the above “Page”; I won’t necessarily update the present “Post”.

Michael Hoffman, November 16, 2020

Top-Level Contents:

• Two Questions and Two Positions Each
• A Spectrum of Criteria of Proof, for Identifying Mushrooms in Art or Texts
• There Is No Reasoning with Willful Blindness: Mandrake and Mushroom-tree in the Abbey of Montecassino
• Stylized Cubensis Clusters, Literal Liberty Caps
• History of the Field-Blocking Scholarly Slap-Fight Over the Plaincourault Mushroom Tree: 68 Years of Foolishness
• Defining the Minimal and Maximal Positions
• Mushrooms Hidden and Visible in Fabric Folds: Dionysus’ Triumph
• Minimalists Doing Their Best to Block the Way with Unreason
• Moving from the Old Superficial “Spot the Entheogen” Game Up to the Mytheme-Decoding, Experiential Level
• An Inchoate, Fragmentary Position (“the Old Theory”) vs. a Coherent, Developed Position (“The New Theory”)
• The Fire-Transformed Salamander-Serpent and the Two Legs
• Brinckmann’s Book that Proves with Finality that Mushroom Trees Are Trees, Not Mushrooms
• See Also

Detailed Contents:

• Two Questions and Two Positions Each
  • Are there mushrooms in Christian art?
  • Are there mushrooms in Greek & Christian art?
  • Findings of this Article, for Non-Reasonable People

• A Spectrum of Criteria of Proof, for Identifying Mushrooms in Art or Texts
  • Three Levels of Depiction, Three Families of Forms, Two Mediums
  • Literal Depictions
  • Stylized Depictions
  • Depictions of Effects
  • Three Distinct Families of Mushroom Shapes: Liberty Cap, Amanita, Cubensis

• There Is No Reasoning with Willful Blindness: Mandrake and Mushroom-tree in the Abbey of Montecassino
  • Bolstering Entheogen Identification by Depictions of Branching
  • How Blindness Works: The Blindness of the Entheogen Scholars: Seeing and Identifying Mandake
  • Mushroom-shaped Grape-bunch Baskets as an Example of Stylized Mushroom Representations
  • How Discovery of Identification Works
  • Enter Mythemeland, the Otherworld
  • How Discovery Works
  • A Snake Hidden and Revealed Inside a Mushroom-shaped Grape Cluster Box

• Stylized Cubensis Clusters, Literal Liberty Caps
  • Two Truths: For Minimalists, There Are No Mushrooms in Christian Art

• History of the Field-Blocking Scholarly Slap-Fight Over the Plaincourault Mushroom Tree: 68 Years of Foolishness
  • Instances of Art Fulfilling Attributes of “Compelling Evidence”
  • Mythology Art Avoids Literalistic Representation, to Represent Altered-State Consciousness
  • Need General and Particular Criteria for Identification

• Defining the Minimal and Maximal Positions
  • The Minimal Mushroom Theory of Greek & Christian Art
  • The Maximal Mushroom Theory of Greek & Christian Art

• Mushrooms Hidden and Visible in Fabric Folds: Dionysus’ Triumph
  • Identifying the Leopard-watering Bowl as Amanita
  • The Argument from Congruency

• Minimalists Doing Their Best to Block the Way with Unreason
  • The Blind and Wrong, Minimalist Bullies Blocking Progress in the Field
  • Defining the Scope of Each Term in the Two Questions
  • Strategy and Justification of the 2 Combinations of Positions and Question-Scope
  • Retardation by the Hobgoblin of “Proof”

• Moving from the Old Superficial “Spot the Entheogen” Game Up to the Mytheme-Decoding, Experiential Level
  • Strategy
  • Combinations of Question-Scope and Positions
  • Criteria Must Be Explicit-Paradigm Driven, not Isolated Evidence-Driven within a Silent Received Paradigm

• An Inchoate, Fragmentary Position (“the Old Theory”) vs. a Coherent, Developed Position (“The New Theory”)
  • The 2013 “Tree vs. Snake” Discovery as an Example of Hypothesis, Evidence, Testing, Prediction, and Theory Confirmation
  • Claims of Certainty and Proof that “Explain Away” Mushrooms Are Premature and Empty Bravado
  • Egodeath Theory Writings About “Evidence” and “Proof”

• The Fire-Transformed Salamander-Serpent and the Two Legs
  • How Decoding Mythemes Works: Completing the Decoding of the Salamander in the Bestiary by Adding Branching Analysis
  • How Discovery Works in Loose Cognitive Science, the Paradigmatic Science
  • The Concomitant Topic of No-Free-Will, a Top Cognitive Phenomenon from Mushrooms

• Brinckmann’s Book that Proves with Finality that Mushroom Trees Are Trees, Not Mushrooms
  • Branching in Montecassino
  • Branching Is Key
  • Can’t Take Any More Obtuseness
  • Committed to Not Seeing: the “Anything But Entheogens” Position
  • Different Scopes to Question
  • Conflating the Distinct Questions: Sloppy Scholars’ Game of Slip-and-Slide

• See Also

Two Questions and Two Positions Each

In this article, I define three levels of compelling evidence and criteria of proof, to support that there are mushrooms in Christian art:

• Literal depictions of mushrooms.
• Stylized depictions of mushrooms.
• Depictions of mushroom effects.

I define two positions, Minimal and Maximal:

Are there mushrooms in Christian art?

Positions:
o The Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art; refusal.
o The Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art; affirmation.

For context, I also treat a broader question:

Are there mushrooms in Greek & Christian art?

Positions:
o The Minimal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian art; refusal.
o The Maximal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian art; affirmation.

I show that all three levels of compelling evidence and criteria of proof support that there are mushrooms in Christian art.

Findings of this Article, for Non-Reasonable People

For non-reasonable people, for people who refuse to be reasoned with, people who have a covert conflict of interest, committed skeptics, for non-initiates, for the mytheme-illiterate, for those on the outside, for die-hard adherents of the Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art:

I show that there are no mushrooms in Christian art, and that compelling evidence and criteria of proof is inherently an impossibility; it is IMPERMISSIBLE.

See Conceptual Revolutions (Thagard), Chapter 5: Theory Dynamics, Rationality, and Explanation: Impediments to rationality: Sociological explanations.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/conceptual-revolutions/

For that audience, I retract the Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art; I was wrong. There are no mushrooms in Christian art.

A Spectrum of Criteria of Proof, for Identifying Mushrooms in Art or Texts

This spectrum of three levels of evidence was formulated by Cyberdisciple.

Criteria of proof and evidence for mushrooms in art: The simple question-formulation is, Does the item in art look like a mushroom? Now break out an analysis of that question: What does “look like” mean?

There are three levels of evidence for an item in art “looking like” mushrooms (or for a description in text “sounding like” mushrooms):
literal, stylized, & effects:

• Literal depictions of mushrooms
• Stylized depictions of mushrooms
• Depictions of mushroom effects

Three Levels of Depiction, Three Families of Forms, Two Mediums

Thus there are six types of evidence which the scholar must take into account:
[text|art] x [literal|stylized|effects] =

• Literal depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
• Stylized depictions of mushrooms (in art & in texts)
• 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.

Literal Depictions

Literal depictions of the physical form of the mushroom.

Photographic realism; the mushroom image is literally depicted, such as Cubensis; Liberty Cap; or Amanita in various forms such as red disc with white veil patches, or upturned Holy Grail chalice.

What attributes make up a mushroom, visually? These depend on the type of mushroom and on its life cycle.

In ancient or esoteric texts, the equivalent would be:
Use of the word “mushroom” in a text (equivalent of photographic realism).

Stylized Depictions

Depictions of analogies that describe the physical form of the mushroom.

Stylized semi-literalistic depiction; a stylized, modified mushroom shape, such as a tree, grape bunch, chalice bowl, garment fold, umbrella, or vial designed to look like Amanita.

Cross-representation: Amanita means or represents Psilocybe, more than it represents ingesting Amanita. Amanita is an honorary Psilocybe.

Any mushroom in visual art or in religious or esoteric texts stands-in for entheogens in general.

Anything consumed (such as by eating or drinking) refers to entheogen: {wine, bread, cake, meat, water, medicine, poison}, typically in the establishing-context of a food, drink, banquet meal, or potion provided by a god or angel.

Anything that has a shape like a mushroom and its parts refers to entheogen: {cup, wand, cap, spear, plate}.

When sliding the scale of “analogy distance” or “loosening the analogy”, at the extreme, anything can be forced to refer to mushrooms, in a “far jump” of association and analogy; for example, how is an ear of wheat held by a god, like a mushroom?

As an example of the word ‘stylized‘: In ancient or esoteric texts, the word ‘serpent’ means “a dragon or other mythical snakelike reptile” (Oxford dictionary); the word ‘serpent’ as opposed to ‘snake’ connotes a stylized snake in Mythemeland.

The mytheme {serpent} serves (by analogy with a snake’s non-branching shape) to describe the altered-state experiencing of the worldline of one’s pre-set, unchangeable control-thoughts embedded in the block-universe {rock}, whereas the word ‘snake’ is mundane and literal.

In ancient or esoteric texts, the equivalent would be:
Textual description of a non-mushroom object that descriptively makes the object sound like a mushroom: for example, eating a “scroll” given by an angel, with writing on it, tasting like honey, and making the stomach sour (also: producing visions; but the next section is more specific about distinctive effects).

Depictions of Effects

Depictions of analogies that describe the experiential and transformative effects from mushrooms.

Metaphor or analogy describing the cognitive effects of mushrooms – ultimately, describing transformation of the mental worldmodel from Possibilism to Eternalism, resulting from mushrooms.

Lower-level, banal: depiction of altered-state perceptual effects; visual distortion (or in texts, auditory distortion), trippy patterns.

Higher-level; describing experiential phenomena: mythemes that point towards dynamics of self-control; describing by analogy experiential transformation of the mental worldmodel from Possibilism to the Eternalism model of control and time. That experiential mental transformation is like:

{king steering in a tree, drinks wine, tests his power of rulership, sacrifices, becomes snake embedded in rock}

Mastering the altered-state cognitive phenomenology and religious mytheme stage of learning allows the mildly skeptical, reasonable Minimalist to start perceiving mushrooms without relying on the obvious explicit presence of a literalist botanical-science depiction of the plant, in Greek and Christian art and texts.

The {serpent} (worldline) brings the {fruit} (mushroom along with gnosis) to the initiate.

In ancient or esoteric texts, the equivalent would be:
Textual description of mushroom effects (perceptual effects, or experiential mental-model transformation about time and control) in conjunction with the above indicators.

Three Distinct Families of Mushroom Shapes: Liberty Cap, Amanita, Cubensis

Liberty Cap Morphology

• Vertical ribs/gill-lines.
• Thin straight stem, no branching.
• Tassels where gill-lines remain but cap is gone.
• Nub on top.
• Some specimens have bands of different shades, due to the veil remnant.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%22liberty+cap%22+mushroom

Amanita Morphology

• White veil remnant patches against orange-to-red cap.
• Thick white stem.
• Varied shapes or forms throughout its lifecycle.
  • Bulb; knurled egg form.
  • Dumbbell form; separation of top from bottom.
  • Tearing of veil.
  • Unfolding of cap.
  • Folding up of cap to make a cup shape; Holy Grail, upturned kylix-chalice, typically collects a pool of rain.
  • Dried mushroom cap, separated from bone-like stalk.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=amanita+muscaria

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=amanita

The Amanita lifecycle of forms is covered by Clark Heinrich’s book Strange Fruit.

Cubensis Morphology

• Shrub-like clusters with wandering/veering angles.
• Ball-on rod shape when the veil has not separated from the ring of the cap.
• Attached veil (not-yet-separated & dropped) resembling the underside of a tree canopy, suggesting branches.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=cubensis

Exercise for the Reader: Identify this Object:
Some experts say it’s an Italian Pine.
Other experts have definitively identified it as a Parasol of Victory.
Which of these top experts is correct?

There Is No Reasoning with Willful Blindness: Mandrake and Mushroom-tree in the Abbey of Montecassino

In the course of discussing the question of mushrooms in Christian art, I define what constitutes compelling evidence, and define criteria of proof.

But let us not be daft. No amount of fancy “defining the criteria for compelling evidence and proof” can make people see, if they are invested in not seeing. What more needs to be said?

Italy [Abbey of Montecassino]; circa 1072 – British Library

This image shows a debranched mushroom tree in parallel with a debranched Mandrake tree. Two mushroom-shaped grape-bunch baskets set on the ground between Eve and Adam allude to mixed-wine mushroom wine. The serpent is winding up the trunk of the mushroom tree, to the place where the tree would branch.

Since the Mandrake “tree” is psychoactive, the parallelism means that the mushroom is psychoactive: we can positively identify it as Psilocybe. Here is an example of Mandrake next to a mushroom, the Mandrake thus establishing the psychoactive context — resolving the argument, “Granted, it looks like a mushroom, but we have no proof that the mushroom is of a psychoactive type”.

Although an item in Christian art looks like a mushroom, we cannot know that it represents a specifically psychoactive mushroom.  This image is evidence that this mushroom represents a psychoactive mushroom, because the mushroom and Mandrake are exactly shown in parallel (both with debranched branches). The Mandrake is mis-drawn as a tree, to force the parallelism.

The snake is not on Adam’s Mandrake tree; only on Eve’s mushroom tree, preserving the traditional mytheme grouping of {serpent, tree, fruit, Eve then Adam}.

Other esoteric stylized Mandrake art for comparison:
http://www.egodeath.com/christianmushroomtrees.htm#_Toc134497558
My Plaincourault article gallery, which shows other esoteric stylized Mandrake art for comparison: “Adam and Eve with serpent-entwined Psilocybe mushroom (caduceus). Mandrake is chemically similar to Henbane and Belladonna.  Mandrake drawings traditionally show a human body instead of the tree trunk shown here.”

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mandrake

Bolstering Entheogen Identification by Depictions of Branching

We should expect to see psychoactive mushrooms depicted in conjunction with their effects of changing the mental model from Possibilism to Eternalism, which is expressed by mythemes such as {king, tree, wine, snake, rock, dragon, treasure, sacrifice, branching, non-branching}; in this case, in the Abbey picture, we see {tree, snake, otherworldly eating, non-branching}.

The trees branch at the same elevation as Adam & Eve’s heads and the serpent’s head. The block-universe worldline-snake gives the fruit/ entheogen/ gnosis to Eve, while Eve gives it to Adam.

The snake is wrapped around both of Eve’s feet on which she stands; she now knows both models of time, possibility-branching, and personal control:
o The possibility-branching, ordinary-state, freewill-premised, Possibilism model.
o The non-branching (single-possibility), rock-frozen, altered-state, no-free-will, Eternalism model.

How Blindness Works: The Blindness of the Entheogen Scholars: Seeing and Identifying Mandake

The Montecassino Mandrake picture above is an example of blind entheogen scholars: previous scholars who published this image in print and commented on the mushroom, such as in the book The Pharmacratic Inquisition (Irvin) and in Entheos Journal (maybe Ruck), failed to spot or mention Mandrake, when publishing this.

I am the one who saw Mandrake in the print-published image (my identification of Mandrake has been at the Egodeath.com website since 2006) – the other authors were fixated on the Psilocybe, and failed to say anything about the other tree.

Those trapped in the mundane world can object that a mushroom’s fallen veil ring would not be shaped like the 3 broken branches on the mushroom. This art modifies the mushroom shape, which is normal practice for mythological mushroom representations, to add a message about non-branching. I further discuss branching in another copy of this image, below.

Mushroom-shaped Grape-bunch Baskets as an Example of Stylized Mushroom Representations

The mushroom-like plants on the ground are the same shape as the grape-bunch baskets in the Dionysus triumph procession below, with flaring stem.

Paralleling the vial debate,

1. Irvin would say: It’s a representation of a mushroom.

2. Brown: Actually, it’s a representation of a grape bunch in a basket, not a representation of a mushroom.

3. Hoffman: Actually, it’s a representation of a grape bunch in a basket that is designed to look like a mushroom.
This answer gets {Apollo’s laurel wreath crown of victory over the dragon}. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=laurel+crown

It is consistent to expect or “predict” these prominent objects are some type of entheogen representation or allusion, since the context has already been established, by the stylized Mandrake and Psilocybe, that this art piece is depicting entheogens, not mundane plants.

Which entheogen do these two items represent? I interpret and decode them as representing baskets of grapes that are shaped to look like mushrooms, as shown in the firmly mushroid Dionysus triumph mosaic which is analyzed in the present article.

How Discovery of Identification Works

I had similar rudiments of this idea / hypothesis swirling around in years past, but tonight (November 14, 2020) it came together to See the Logic of it:

Greeks shaped grape-bunch baskets to look like a mushroom; they did interplays of mushroom, grape bunch, ivy, and grape vines (worldline snake, revealed by mushrooms mixed into grape wine, that grows on vine – closure, or swirl of intertwined themes you’d weave together).

So these past years, it was no coincidence when you see a confusing muddle of mushroomy grape-bunchy vague ambiguous images along a spectrum.

It was supposed to slide between grape-bunch shape and mushroom shape. It was supposed to make you say “Huh? (rubbing your eyes) What am I seeing? Is that a mushroom… or what?”
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/60/e9/4a60e9fa26de55316ade214d514ce072.png

Game: Find the most mushroom-shaped grape bunch; the best grape-bunch:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=grape+bunch

The best grape bunch is that which looks most like a mushroom. The game is to deliberately find photos of grape bunches that are the most mushroom-shaped; shape-bias.

By putting out grape bunches that are shaped like mushrooms, the snaky grape vine is sending a message: mushroom reveals worldline snake.

Enter Mythemeland, the Otherworld

{take fruit from snake-shaped vine, mushroom-shaped bunch, mix-in mushrooms, experience worldline snake petrified embedded into block-universe rock of marble, panic, frenzy, un-bind hair, grab thrysus spear that penetrates wound rebirth opening, sacrifice branching possibility-thinking on rock altar, burn away perishable aspects, become imperishable with the gods}

If you feel unsure, it is because you are supposed to feel unsure, slip back and forth between seeing and not seeing. It’s designed to trip-up the outsiders, to HIDE TRANSCENDENT KNOWLEDGE FROM THE UNWORTHY. And boy we have some particularly unworthy.

Exactly like acid-rock lyrics. What did he say? The printed lyrics say “kill”, but I swear that that time, he sang “cure” with the Black Blade. I’m really not sure. We can’t be sure — it’s ambiguous by design.

The idea in this art is play, to mess with the heads of the Minimalists, to retain “plausible deniability” for the unworthy.

Me? Paint a mushroom in the religious scene? No, it’s just a bunch of grapes, you are surely just seeing things. The lyrics are supposed to toy with you, to make you unsure. It’s just an accidental echo effect, when Ozzy sings “Never heard a thing I said [dead, dead, dead].”

How Discovery Works

Discovery of idea 11:45 p.m. November 14, 2020: These baskets are DESIGNED to create a mushroom effect, a conventional stylization decor:

Regarding this breakthrough: what is the magnitude? Not huge, but a definite feeling of breakthrough, i just mean, Discovery Of Significance. It’s always hard to pin-down what the magnitude of a breakthrough is — except 2013 was the most intensely experienced, that whole following week, after November 26.

I feel the connections rattling around, Paul Thagard is in there in my mind re-coding the re-connections and weightings of the connections in the conceptual system.

upper-right corner, rotated to be more right-side-up.

The krater/ grape vine pot, in Dionysus’ triumph scene. The wine-mixing krater to mix the mushroom wine, used as a pot to grow the grape vines.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=krater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater

{grape = mushroom}; in an isomorphism play, otherworld poets held that {grape bunch = mushroom = ivy = grape vine = snake = ribbon tied on the thyrsus spear-tip open-leaved pinecone…}: mythemes are are highly consubstantial (of the same substance).

That poetic multi-representationalism is like I laid out regarding an Amanita-vial (https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/):

1. Irvin says it’s an Amanita mushroom.

2. Brown says it’s a vial, not an Amanita mushroom.

3. Hoffman says it’s a vial that’s designed to look like an Amanita mushroom. An object is set up to look like a target object. One thing can deliberately be made to look like another. A fold in a garment can be made to look like a mushroom. A mushroom can be made to look like a tree.

A Mandrake can be painted to look like a tree. An Amanita can be made to branch like a Psilocybe cluster to look like a fantastical branching tree. “but you are deviating from a scientifically correct illustration!”

Therefore, in this context, {grape bunch} represents and alludes to {mushroom}.

Grape bunches were presented in a mushroom shape. A basket assists in holding the grape cluster in the desirable mushroom-shaped form, as an idealized decor convention.

Around we swirl, mixing the mythemes together in the mytheme krater for mixed-wine mushroom wine.

Mushrooms were mixed into wine, in the krater, in which the non-branching grape vines grow, which reveal when mixed with mushrooms, non-branching of one’s worldline in the block universe rock.

As important as the specific realization is that the grapes in baskets are meant to look like mushrooms, and that in the house, you’d decorate that way; bigger-scoped than that, is important, how to think about the language of mythemes on a higher level, the “language” level. It’s a cluster of realizations, including “how the game works” — in several senses or aspects.

It’s not just a breakthrough specifically about a grape bunch deliberately shaped like a mushroom in the house; it’s about the mode of play, decoding or catching onto the rules of the mytheme-figuration/imagery game.

Carl Ruck may bandy-about saying X is “consubstantial”, he’s always saying that, but why is X consubstantial with Y? It’s mytheme-play, of the standard mythemes – here, including {grape/ wine/ mixed wine / ivy/ grape vine/ snake}.

Schizophrenics have hard-to-follow jumps of association, loose association. The association-jump game is not exactly free-form, though. There is a common cluster of meaning, a domain, constraining the seemingly far-flung mythemes such as:

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

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

It’s not endless, the list of standard key mythemes, although it is possible to map any thing/idea into this system of mythemes that describe by analogy the cognitive phenomena of the ASC. The menagerie of the altered-state of consciousness Otherworld.

Play a game of Minimal theorist in Ambiguityland, where Jesus speaks in parables that hide and reveal, only to those with ears to hear.

An idea of mine from some years ago: yes, Minimalists, committed literalists: for you, it’s not a mushroom. Go ahead, reject all mushrooms in art – that just reveals you as an outsider, and identifies you as among those on the outside.

A Snake Hidden and Revealed Inside a Mushroom-shaped Grape Cluster Box

https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/examples-of-snakes-in-greco-roman-art/
For the first image, Cyberdisciple (2011/11/05) wrote text, modified here.

This piece in a museum portrays and describes the discovery of Eternalism/heimarmene through entheogens.

Shown are the top and bottom of a box shaped as a mushroom-shaped grape cluster.

The grape/mushroom combination represents entheogenic mixed wine.

The message is that when you open up the grape cluster, which is to say, the mushroom, you discover a frozen worldline snake inside the experience.

You discover the fixedness of your worldline, the fixedness of your thoughts and actions: heimarmene; Eternalism.

The snake wavers like your perception in the loose cognitive state with perceptual distortion, undulation.

As with Moses’ healing brass serpent on a pole, a snake bite can be fatal through its venom: egodeath.

When you explore this grape cluster, you find a snake. When you explore entheogens, you find the fixedness of your thoughts and actions.

This mushroom-shaped grape cluster containing a serpent is rigid like block-universe rock.

A grape cluster is the fruit of the snake-shaped vine, which is primarily non-branching.

Stylized Cubensis Clusters, Literal Liberty Caps

My Plaincourault article gallery shows mushroom-cluster photographs and some Christian art mushroom-tree tangle examples; at least one art example showing a twisting Psilocybe cluster is there, copied below.

Christian Mushroom Trees
Section: Canterbury Psaltery Showing Cluster of Mushroom Fruiting-Bodies
http://www.egodeath.com/christianmushroomtrees.htm#_Toc134497563

From the Canterbury Psaltery, early 12th C.  It appears in the book:
Celestial Treasury: From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space
Marc Lachieze-Rey & Jean-Pierre Luminet (2001), p. 178.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521800404

twofold, basic Y branching, from upper left

tree shrub cluster, from upper right

This Isn’t a Cubensis with Liberty Caps; It’s an Impressionistically Rendered Italian Pine with Umbrella Pines

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 not from nature, but off of prototypes, 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.

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!

Branches Under the Cap: Unnatural Branching Is a Specific stylized depiction that Indicates (Rather than Mitigating Against) Psychoactive Mushrooms

Here’s where the poetry-illiterate fools say: “Hah! Proof it’s not Psilocybe: everyone knows that Psilocybe doesn’t have branches under the cap!”

They should also point out that that cannot possibly be a snake poking its head through the branches, because proper snakes don’t have legs branching out from the body.

“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables, so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding.”

The unnatural branching added to the mushroom and serpent (legs) is a form of “Depictions of Analogies that Describe the Experiential and Transformative Effects from Mushrooms”.

I have established that {branching vs. non-branching} is a common description of the mental transformation from Possibilism to the Eternalism model of control, possibility, and time, that is caused by Psilocybe cubensis (or Liberty Caps; Psilocybe semilanceata) — which is the highest, ultimate experiential effect from mushrooms.

The worldline snake brings the initiate Psilocybe mushrooms to Eve, who gives it to Adam.

Why is it that scholars, when they write about this topic of mushrooms in Christian art, can’t write a clear, intelligible position-statement sentence to save their lives?

Hatsis brings his confusion into the matter by getting sidetracked in an ill-explained position statement. He cannot articulate his own position, in his book Psychedelic Mystery Traditions, about the Eden tree. It is unclear what he is trying to say, about his position on the Tree of Knowledge — it is garbled and incoherent; he is literally unreadable and not worth reading on this particular topic.

Kindle page 140, “There isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that medieval artists secretly signified entheogens as the fruit by depicting the Amanita muscaria mushroom into art.” Why does he write the word “secret”? What exact position does he think he’s arguing against?

It’s strawmanning. Instead of naming specific scholars who allegedly hold the position he’s arguing against, he vaguely writes “the discipuli Allegrae”. Here you have someone, an outsider who doesn’t understand the field, the scholars, and their positions, inventing a strawman to heroically defeat.

Why does Hatsis rush to narrowly specify “Amanita muscaria”, instead of writing broadly and neutrally, “psychoactive mushrooms”? That is the issue, not specifically Amanita. He leaps to hamfistedly conflate all mushrooms with, specifically, Amanita.

Who exactly does Hatsis imagine is advocating, narrowly, the “secret” depiction, specifically of “Amanita”? He’s in a shared hallucination with Andy Letcher (author of the book Shroom). Letcher and Hatsis argue victoriously — against a position held by no one, a position that they essentially invented themselves, a cheap target to appear to defeat.

The final section within Hatsis’ section “A GODLESS AND LIBERTINE HERESY” is too garbled to bother point-by-point refuting; the whole section needs a rewrite for clarity — from “In recent decades” (p. 139) to “how it got there in the first place (p. 140). The section needs to:

• Stop fixating on ‘Amanita’. Discuss all mushroom forms, including Liberty Cap, Cubensis, and Amanita — not just Amanita.

• Stop fixating on ‘Secret’. Address non-secret depictions, or just stop using the canard-word “secret” entirely.
  
  Writers just get their argumentation confused, the more they use the word ‘secret’, which needlessly introduces ill-specified presumptions that complicate and confuse what exact point they’re arguing about.
  
  Letcher argues that since the mushrooms on the church door are openly visible, that disproves mushrooms in Christian art, because it disproves the secrecy part of the “secret Amanita cult” theory which he depends on, to push against.

• Bracket-off as a separate, distinct debate, ideas like “a secret Amanita cult that’s transmitted widely”. The only entheogen writers who are intent on keeping this poor hypothesis alive, are Letcher & Hatsis, who build a career and an industry out of mocking this idea, which no one holds.

• Specify who exactly he thinks holds the position he’s intent on arguing against, and what he thinks their position is, regarding “secrecy”, and which mushroom type (Liberty Cap, Cubensis, or Amanita) he thinks they are arguing for.

Two Truths: For Minimalists, There Are No Mushrooms in Christian Art

For committed Minimalists, who adhere to the Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art no matter what the cost, there are no mushrooms in Christian art or texts, and miracles are meant literally. Their religion is Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism.

Maximalists consistently adhere to the Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art. You don’t want a mushroom? Fine. You can’t have a mushroom. For you, it’s just a stupid tree. Have it your way.

Yes, for you: it’s not a mushroom. For you, it’s a tree, a nail, a vial.

Commentators on mushroom trees in Christian art are thus divided into two groups:

• Exoteric, mytheme-illiterate, Minimalist, clueless, blind, non-initiates; outsiders.
• Esoteric, mytheme-literate, Maximalist, clued-in, those who see, initiates; insiders.

For those on the inside, it’s a mushroom. For those on the outside, it’s stupid.

(covering eyes) “I can’t see the mushrooms! Furthermore, I concede that deliberate mushroom shapes are hidden and visible in the folds of the Maenad’s billowing cloth, and another mushroom is hidden and visible in a matching fold on Dionysus’ wind-blown clothing, but still, we don’t have any evidential proof that these deliberate mushrooms are intended as psychoactive. Maybe they are grocery-store mushrooms, who knows? Look at me, how dense I can be! Nya Nya, you can’t make me see!”

[switching to aggressive arm-waving mode:] “Furthermore, you Maximalists who see mushrooms everywhere, are ignorant of my “sound, tried-and-true historical criteria” for dismissing mushrooms, “which those who still support the theory have simply not considered,” criteria which I’m not even going to bother summarizing here in this book, which you specifically bought in order to learn about mushrooms in Christian art — instead, I’m going to insult you as ignorant of my absolute proof.

“If only you weren’t so ignorant, you’d put down this book you bought, and instead go do a Web search for my online attack-and-discredit articles, and then somehow extract my devastating, unimpeachable, rock-solid arguments from there.” Park Street Press, you owe me $15.40 plus labor.

It is a false statement that I “who still support the theory have simply not considered” the alleged and unspecified-in-the-book “sound, tried-and-true historical criteria” — I read all of the attack-and-discredit articles and posted critically about them at the Egodeath Yahoo Group around 2015, five years before reading this 2020 book that has a gigantic gap right where the most important pictures and interpretive commentary should be, regarding mushrooms in Christian art.

Some of the circa 2016 discussion of Letcher or Hatsis, by Cyberdisciple or EgodeathTheory (Cybermonk, Michael Hoffman), at Cyberdisciple’s weblog:
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=letcher
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/?s=hatsis

That completely non-scholarly, vague, arm-waving bravado doesn’t cut it, no matter how much ink is spilled by the author singing praises to his own superiority of scholarship.

Top-dog art historican Panofsky similarly insults Ramsbottom the mycologist cavalierly; Panofsky is as self-confident and wrong as can be (an ever-popular combination):

“… 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 … of a conventionalized tree type, … which art historians actually refer to as a ‘mushroom tree’… there are hundreds of instances … – unknown of course to mycologists. [Brinckmann’s book censored here] … 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 [i.e., censored] in Wasson’s book SOMA, pp. 179-180

Lunacy! Folly! What use are reasoned arguments and evidence, in the Minimalists’ madhouse?

We’re through being cool. The Minimalists can be fools, that’s their free choice, but get out of the way, stop the cover-up attempt, and stop trying to block serious development in the field, regarding mushrooms in Christian art.

Go ahead, double-down on the investment in the Minimalist position, stick to your guns no matter how high the cost; use the “sound, tried-and-true historical criteria” to “easily explain away the supposed mushrooms that appear in Christian art” — instead of Apollo’s victory wreath, publicly wear the fool’s dunce cap. Keep pouring it on, the vigorous public demonstrations of folly.

If not an apology and retraction, the Minimalists need to at least stay the hell out of the way; stop trying to block research and advancement in the field, and stop striving to discredit the Maximalists.

I’m speaking in defense of the Maximalists, who have been slandered and defamed by the aggressors, the Minimalists.

History of the Field-Blocking Scholarly Slap-Fight Over the Plaincourault Mushroom Tree: 68 Years of Foolishness

John Allegro aggressively tried to sensationally discredit and defame Christianity in a four-pronged attack (only one of which used mushrooms in Christian art, and not coherently), in his book The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross.

It is not too surprising that in defense of the Pope’s status quo, Wasson censored Brinckmann’s book Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings and steered people away from seeing its mushroom-tree plates, such as the double-headed Eden-tree which I analyze in terms of branching, at “Brinckmann”, below.

For Heaven’s sake, can we please get away from these politicized, emotionally distorting factors, to make progress in the field with productive, reasonable scholarship?

Wasson and Allegro never even had an actual debate, but only threw darts past each other.

The Wasson vs. Allegro, abortive non-debate over the Plaincourault fresco has been blocking the field since at least 1970 (for 50 years!) – and the 1952 Panofsky letter to Wasson against Ramsbottom was 68 years ago! — LET IT GO!, and move forward.

Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita
Section: Various Authors on the Plaincourault Tree
http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889186

Instances of Art Fulfilling Attributes of “Compelling Evidence”

There are 5 mushrooms in cloth folds, in Dionysus’ victory procession mosaic shown in the present article. And an upturned Amanita that a leopard is drinking out of.

There’s an image with a mandrake “tree” parallel to a mushroom tree, both of them as de-branched trees, shown in the present article.

Christian Mushroom Trees
See these Italian Pine and Psilocybe specimen & cluster photos for reference, and a few Christian art pieces here depicting mushrooms that look like the specimen photos:
http://www.egodeath.com/christianmushroomtrees.htm

I photographed several of these art pieces from books — it is pretty easy finding mushrooms in Christian art when you look for it — including on newsstand magazine covers.

Gallery of Mushrooms in Greek & Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/gallery-of-mushrooms-in-art/

Canterbury Psalter Mushroom Inventory
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/canterbury-psalter-mushroom-inventory/

It is a myth and a preconceived bias, to think that mushrooms are hard to find in Christian art; it’s actually easy to find numerous good examples. The only reason I hesitate to throw together a big gallery of good examples is, there are so many of them, immediately available.

This gallery was not meant to gather an impressive number of Christian art pieces; the motivation was to provide reference photographs, mainly of Italian Pine trees, specifically for my 2006 Plaincourault article — the Psilocybe images in Christian art were merely a bonus.

For example, this fungal reference-comparison gallery shows the Eustace window, with many mushroom shapes like the lower left of this higher-resolution portion:

Psilocybe mushrooms (Liberty Cap & Cubensis) are found in Christian art; see Egodeath.com, first image in main article, lower left of image: http://www.egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm#_Toc177337609
Copied to below:

Image search links, for examples of mushrooms in Christian art:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Christ+mushroom
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Jesus+mushroom
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Christian+mushroom
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Eden+mushroom
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Eve+mushroom

This has nothing to do with the outdated fixation on the color red or Amanita or “Secret Amanita cult”. Lose those blinding assumptions. Stop dismissing examples just because they aren’t Amanita or red.

Mythology Art Avoids Literalistic Representation, to Represent Altered-State Consciousness

Stop assuming that the images must be botanically accurate — the whole goal in mythological art is analogy, magic, double-representation, and a major mytheme is {hidden and revealed}.

It’s not the mythology artist’s goal, to merely literalistically do a photorealistic rendering as if a science journal — that would be an uninspired, this-worldly, anti-religious styling, expecting a non-religious styling within a religious, religious mythology, altered-state genre.

It’s the exact wrong way to look at religious, mystical art, expecting the lens of the dull mundane literal workaday ordinary state, of tight cognitive binding, and then complaining when the mystic artists fail to meet your uninspired, this-worldly demands.

Demanding literalistic evidence from religious mythology art is like going into the recording studio session of a Psychedelic band that’s producing an album, and expecting to see a live performance of the four band members each playing an instrument simultaneously, once-through, to record a song. That’s not what the genre is about.

Wrong expectations produce a wrong assessment. We should expect, typically, to see distorted — not literalistically styled — mushroom shapes; like electric guitar, so much of it is about warping the sound, altering it — not playing clean-clean very often.

The more literalist, photorealistic style of Christian art is uninspiring and mundane. Looking for that, as evidence, is — in spirit — the exactly wrong type of evidence, at one end of the literal-to-figurative, literal-to-analogical spectrum, literal-to-mytheme-laden spectrum.

The more fanciful, otherworldly style, like the heavily stylized mushroom trees and scenes in French Christian Medieval art, is inspiring and interesting, when mythemes are visually interwoven, not keeping mushrooms isolated and restricted to a boring technically botanically accurate photorealistic rendering.

To see and appreciate mushrooms in Christian art, you have to be in the right mindset: the mythological altered state, the otherworldly land of myth, Mythemeland:

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

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

Need General and Particular Criteria for Identification

Attributes of “compelling evidence” can be general principles, and particular criteria for the question of mushrooms in Christian art.

What type of “compelling evidence” would persuade a reasonable mild skeptic? For example: the evidence should be commonplace; so that it’s easy to find examples.

What constitutes “criteria of proof” is both expressed as general principles, and particular for the question: what type of “criteria of proof” would persuade a reasonable mild skeptic that mushrooms are represented in Christian art?

Defining the Minimal and Maximal Positions

‘Minimal’ means strongly dismissive; committed to refusing.
‘Maximal’ means strongly affirmative; committed to affirming.

The Minimal Mushroom Theory of Greek & Christian Art

There are no mushrooms in Greek or Christian art.

We dismiss and refuse, and commit to rejecting, mushrooms in Greek art.

We dismiss and refuse, and commit to rejecting, mushrooms in Christian art.

There cannot ever be compelling evidence for psychoactive mushrooms in Christian art.

There cannot ever be any criteria that would prove psychoactive mushrooms in Christian art; if Jesus returns and draws a mushroom for me and tells me it represents a psychoactive mushroom, even then, there’s no possible justification for us reading it as a psychoactive mushroom.

Any possible criteria of proof that are defined in the present article, cannot possibly succeed; that is not permissible, under any conditions.

The very idea of “compelling evidence for mushrooms in Christian art” is a contradiction in terms. It is inherently impossible for there to exist any “compelling evidence” for mushrooms in Christian art.

The Anything But Mushrooms theory of Greek art.

The Anything But Mushrooms theory of Christian art.

The Anything But Drugs theory of Greek history.

The Anything But Drugs theory of Christian mysticism.

There are no entheogens in Greek alternate states of consciousness.

There are no entheogens in Christian mysticism or other Christian alternate states of consciousness.

We dismiss and refuse, and commit to rejecting, entheogens in Greek history.

We dismiss and refuse, and commit to rejecting, entheogens in Christian history.

Mythology is about anything but drugs.

Greeks were rational philosophers, therefore would never have used drugs.

Any exceptions are heretical abnormal deviations. The main way people have religious experience is exoteric experience in the OSC, or access the ASC by meditation/ sleeping/ alien primitive psychology.

There are no entheogens in Greek & Christian religious mythology.

The “anything but drugs” explanation of Greek alternate states of consciousness (Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania: Alterations of Consciousness in Ancient Greece). https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/book-ustinova-2018-divine-mania-alterations-of-consciousness-in-ancient-greece/

The Maximal Mushroom Theory of Greek & Christian Art

We commit to affirming mushrooms in Greek art.

We commit to affirming mushrooms in Christian art.

There are many mushrooms in Greek or Christian art, and they represent psychoactive mushrooms and the resulting cognitive phenomenology.

It is possible to identify compelling evidence for mushrooms in Christian art.

It is possible to identify criteria of proof for mushrooms in Christian art.

There are many entheogens represented in religious art, and they represent visionary plants and the resulting cognitive phenomenology.

We commit to affirming entheogens in Greek history.

We commit to affirming entheogens in Christian history.

It is possible to identify compelling evidence for mushrooms in Greek history.

It is possible to identify compelling evidence for mushrooms in Christian history.

It is possible to identify criteria of proof for mushrooms in Greek history.

It is possible to identify criteria of proof for mushrooms in Christian history.

We should continue explaining and recognizing mushrooms in Christian history such as mysticism; this is highly profitable and successful.

We should continue explaining and recognizing mushrooms in Greek history; this is highly profitable and successful.

Alternate states of consciousness in Greek Antiquity are normally from entheogens.

Alternate states of consciousness in Christian mysticism are normally from entheogens.

The origin and wellspring of religion is visionary plants such as Psilocybe. Normal, traditional, mainstream.

We should continue explaining and recognizing mushrooms in Christian art; this is highly profitable and successful.

Mushrooms Hidden and Visible in Fabric Folds: Dionysus’ Triumph

An extreme positive commitment does not mean seeing every fold in cloth as mushrooms — there is not a dearth of reasonably clear-cut instances.

In mytheme-art shape-shifting, or form-sliding, there are instances all along the spectrum from definitely not mushroom, to definitely mushroom; from definitely X to definitely Y and all morphing-points in-between.

Recognize the game as an animated morphing; sliding fluidly among mytheme-shapes, in Mythemeland.

http://www.egodeath.com/images/egodeatharticle/HighRes/DionysusVictoryChariot_HiRes.jpg

There is 1 mushroom above each tiger’s head/neck (in the Maenad’s garment), and 1 mushroom above the left tiger’s tail (in Dionysus’ cloak).
5 instances in 1 art work is evidence of deliberate repetition — mushrooms hidden & revealed in garment folds.

The upturned Amanita leopard-watering bowl is mushroom #6, not to mention the mushroom-shaped grape-baskets above and to the right (see the below copy of the image).

Thiasus – Wikipedia-Triumph of Dionysus on a fragmentary Roman mosaic (3rd century, Sousse Archaeological Museum)-SCEPTER

From Wikipedia

From Egodeath main article http://www.egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm#_Toc177337640

Four mushrooms above the four chariot-drawing tigers’ heads/necks, hidden/visible in the folds of the Maenad’s spirit-billowed cloth. {billowing} = altered-state spirit wind; an additional indicator of her altered state is her {unbound, loose hair}, depicting loose cognitive association binding.

Mushroom on the chariot of Dionysus, isomorphic with the mushrooms above each tiger drawing the chariot.

They are probably grocery-store dinner mushrooms, to be sliced and sauteed – look how reasonable I am.

These mushrooms are in the spirit-blown garment of Dionysus (with Ariadne) who is carried by the chariot, and in the spirit-blown garment of the Maenad who is carried by his mushroom tigers, and a leopard is drinking from an upturned Amanita in its Holy Grail form.

If you deny these are mushrooms, specifically psychoactive mushrooms, you have lost your reason, driven mad by the sight of Dionysus’ victory triumph procession.

Identifying the Leopard-watering Bowl as Amanita

On November 14, 2020, I positively identified the leopard’s bowl in the Dionysus triumph fresco as Amanita mushroom — not as a fleeting possible hypothesis to consider, like in 2006 with a sense of high uncertainty and skepticism (that was a preliminary, hypothesis-formation phase of the discovery process) — but this time as a conclusion that I commit to and stand behind.

I defensibly concluded that this image represents an Amanita, based on:

• My own first-hand, close-up inspection and photographing of numerous Amanita specimens. My specimen-photo confirms that a rim can be formed, matching the leopard-fountain image, when the Amanita is upturned but not extremely upturned.
• The wide stem; the proportions of stem and bowl.
• The distinctive gills exposed on the outside.
• The established mushrooms and mythology context of the mosaic.
• In contrast to the striped tigers, this is a spotted feline, a leopard. The veil-remnant spots are not shown on top of the fountain, but the associated leopard has spots, like an Amanita cap, making the leopard a better choice of feline, to visually match the Amanita fountain, than a tiger would be.

The Argument from Congruency

Why would a mundane, ordinary-state, dog-watering bowl be shown in this otherworldly Mythemeland, this mythology-and-mushroom context, when the Amanita in its striking upturned form provides the perfect opportunity to add esoteric power to the scene?

It would be incongruent to choose a mundane object to place in a mytheme-scene in Mythemeland, when otherworldly, magical objects are available.

Choosing a mundane object for this scene, like a purely functional watering bowl, would be like putting a non-candy, non-food object in a candy land where everything is edible — it would be incongruent.

This brings the mushroom count in Dionysus’ Triumph mosaic to six: four mushroom-tigers that draw Dionysus’ and Ariadne’s chariot and that carry the unbound-hair Maenad, one leopard drinking from an Amanita chalice, and the mushroom in Dionysus’ spirit-blown garment.

The garment-fold mushrooms probably represent Psilocybe cubensis, which is an efficient entheogen. Mixed wine was typically Psilocybe wine, and was less likely to be Amanita wine.

The Amanita was included in the scene primarily because of its otherworldly form, highlighted in this scene by depicting it in its Holy Grail upturned form, rather than for its less-ergonomic psychoactivity.

I posted my best photos to the Egodeath Yahoo Group: an adjacent pair of large, striking, attention-demanding, upturned Amanitas in their Holy Grail form, with raindrops making ripples in the collected pools of water, taken October 10, 2010, at 10:10 a.m.

Minimalists Doing Their Best to Block the Way with Unreason

Minimalists need to stay out of the way and let the sane people move the field forward; stop smugly defaming and ridiculing the Maximal theorists; the Minimalists are only revealing themselves as foolish, ignorant, and blind. Dry wells; they block the entrance, neither will they let anyone else pass through the gate.

After awhile, it becomes a tiresome exercise listing out additional redundant evidence. If a handful of art pieces don’t convince the Minimalists, they are a waste of time and just being obstinate and unreasonable — is there a conflict of interest making them shut their eyes?

We Maximalists are done presenting the evidence; we have more productive things to do among reasonable people. Preach the gospel to everyone, let God select his pre-ordained elect.

How many examples do the Minimalists need? 5? 50? 500? Infinite won’t be enough? Then they are being willfully blind, this debate is a farce in bad faith, is only pretending to be a debate (so is only a travesty of persuasion and debate), and there is no discussion to be had.

The Minimalists are just doing an exercise in obstinacy, being irrelevant and an obstructionist. Count us Maximalists out; we are not interested in the Minimalists’ position, their exercise in bullheaded willful blindness; and please stay out of the way of serious scholarship and theory-development and stop trying to discredit those with eyes to see.

The Blind and Wrong, Minimalist Bullies Blocking Progress in the Field

http://magiceye.com – 3D images, if you rightly focus. If you can’t see the images, that’s your own inability; the images are there, as some people can attest.

If you can’t see the 3D images, don’t block the road and condemn other people and impede research and say “I have proof and evidence that there are no 3D images in Magic Eye art, if only you ignorant people would read my watertight arguments.”

Two Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art theorists have written smugly (and falsely) just like that, one being Panofsky quoted by Wasson in SOMA.

Shall I say the following? “We professional computer art historians have already studied those so-called “3D images”; we have an entire 1 books by a team of 1 authors, written recently (1906), who have resoundingly determined that these are random patterns with no 3D image. But of course mycologists are unaware of our rock-solid treatment of this well-studied matter, and are ignorant of our final, proven conclusions.”

It is silly for me to write that, here — but I’m not the one who has been actually pushing just such silliness! Wasson and his ilk have well-earned this mockery. We Maximal theory initiates can only laugh at the blindness and smug self-certitude of the Minimal theory non-initiates.

The Minimalists are the ones who’ve been calling the Maximalists ignorant, for too long; the Minimalists (Brinckmann, Panofsky, Wasson, et al) have been actively blocking progress in the field, even bullying the Maximalists, saying that the Maximalists are seeing things that aren’t there, and taunting and mocking and trying to discredit the Maximalists.

Defining the Scope of Each Term in the Two Questions

“mushroom” – Psilocybe, Amanita.

“entheogen” – Mushrooms (Psilocybin, Amanita), DMT (Acacia/Rue), Scopalamine (Datura/Thornapple, Mandrake, Henbane, Belladonna), Cannabis (eaten).

“Greek” – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Ancient Near East, Antiquity, Late Antiquity, Platonism, Neoplatonism.

“Christian” – Bible, Old Testament, Christian, New Testament, Levant, Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Classical, Western Esotericism, Jewish Mysticism, Gnostic.

“art” – mythemes found in all forms of artifacts: art, statues, coins.

“history” — texts, altered-state practices

Strategy and Justification of the 2 Combinations of Positions and Question-Scope

For an initial strategy of analyzing positions, I ignore the undecided voters, eternal fencesitters, those who have attained oneness with the fence. 

For initial analysis, leverage the committed skeptics and committed advocates – define the simplest positions to characterize & caricature. 

Mushrooms in Greek art & Christian art? Absolutely not! Never!
Mushrooms in Greek art & Christian art? Absolutely! Make it so!

Drugs in Greek & Christian alternate states of consciousness? Absolutely not! Never!
Drugs in Greek & Christian alternate states of consciousness? Absolutely! Make it so!

Subsequent phase after analyzing the extreme question/position combinations:
Address reasonable people, who are persuadable with reasonable evidence, for the specific relatively narrow topic of mushrooms in Christian art.

I address reasonable people, who are persuadable with evidence and argumentation, showing that compelling evidence and criteria of proof support mushrooms in Christian art.

What is the point of establishing this criteria? To change the mind of those who are committed to not changing their mind?

There are potentially good-willed, mild skeptics (as opposed to determined skeptics) who would be convinced by a certain assemblage of criteria with evidence.

Anyone who is not convinced by evidence and argumentation should not be taken seriously. Productive scholarly research and theory-development will continue, regardless of those who adhere to unreasonable positions.

Leverage the idea of “determined skeptics”, negative commitments and positive commitments (when defining the question/position combinations, skip over the Moderate, persuadable position, “the undecided’s”).

Define the ‘Minimal’ or ‘negative’ position in an extremely negative way, as an obstinate, incorrigible, hardheaded commitment to refusal (or to obstinate, incorrigible, hardheaded commitment to affirming, like the Egodeath theory; the “diamond hammer of interpretation”).  

Define question/position combinations with that extreme commitment.

Utilize World Religion, but only implicitly (for simplicity of the following triangulation strategy).

Keep both questions focused on the forte topics: Greek & Christian.  
Especially leverage & cover, as a triangulation and attack-vector, a stronghold, familiar home territory:

the critique of the ‘Anything But Drugs‘ Theory of Alternate States of Consciousness in Greek history 

the critique of the ‘Anything But Drugs‘ Theory of Alternate States of Consciousness in Mysticism

Retardation by the Hobgoblin of “Proof”

The concept of “proof” is usually too brittle and is an obstacle. Focus on productively applying systematic interpretation of religious artifacts by applying the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism lens, instead of shackling the mind with the bunk concept, overly heavyhanded, of “proof”.

The only thing I know for certain is my present awareness of the mental constructs depicting a desk. I don’t have any proof that the desk exists. Much less, proof of mushrooms in Christian art.

If you’ve already cast your ballot, married your commitment to no-mushrooms from the outset, a priori, and you are committed to not seeing, to never allowing a mushroom image to mean psychoactive mushrooms, then there is no hope for you; you are a lost soul whom God has elected for perdition, and there’s nothing I can do after having preached the gospel to you. Our work is done here, the conversation is over.

I still might read your scholarly books which lay out all the case against the mushroom view; simply flip your view over, and truth is then laid out in your book.

unreasonable – not reasonable or rational; acting at variance with or contrary to reason; not guided by reason or sound judgment; irrational: an unreasonable person

Moving from the Old Superficial “Spot the Entheogen” Game Up to the Mytheme-Decoding, Experiential Level

Tree, Snake, Mushroom/psychedelic: abundance of evidence
This weblog page shows how easy it is to find evidence, and how researchers should stop acting like it is hard to find evidence.
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/01/01/tree-snake-mushroom-psychedelic-abundance-of-evidence/

Cyberdisciple photographed a public, prominent stone relief, in the equivalent of a town hall, clearly depicting a classic mushroom tree with snake winding up it, depicting the contrasting Possibilism and Eternalism mental models of time, with the mushroom-shaped tree depicting clear mushroom-like fruit.

In that page, he starts by discussing evidence for commonplace cultural incorporation of psychedelics, but he quickly shifts to focus on {tree vs. snake} mythemes.

That ready shift among these topics, from the plants to their most profound effects, indicates the ease with which the Egodeath theory’s approach (Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism) moves from the narrow, restrictive topic of ‘psychedelics’, to metaphorical depiction of distinctive loose-cognitive experiencing.

This ease of switching from the limiting, no-longer-new topic of entheogen identification, to key-mytheme decoding, is compelling evidence of the superior explanatory power of the Egodeath theory.

This interpretive and theory-informed approach, Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, has contributed significantly to spotting entheogens in art and texts, but is not limited to merely yet another round of the now long-in-the-tooth “spot the entheogen” game, which peaked around 2003, in the era of Entheos journal.

The field of entheogen scholarship needs to make some major progress, in a suitably elevated direction.

To do better than the mere superficial “spot-the-entheogen” game, an adequate theory of distinctive altered-state cognitive phenomenology is needed.

Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism, per the Egodeath theory, provides a developed interpretive theory of the rich, classic descriptions of the peak dramatic experiential insights from mushrooms.

Assessing Robert Graves’ 1950s psychedelic scholarship on Greek myth/religion/art
A summary of methods used by Graves in producing evidence for mushrooms.  https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/assessing-robert-graves-1950s-psychedelic-scholarship-on-greek-mythreligionart/

Bad anthropology; Robert Graves; moderate entheogen theory
Psychedelics in Greco-Roman antiquity; ‘bad anthropology’ and its effect on entheogen researchers.
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/bad-anthropology-robert-graves-moderate-entheogen-theory/ )

Strategy

In this project, I’m omitting the Moderate position, for simplicity, to analyze only 4 combinations of question-scope & position: (the narrow vs. broad questions) x (Minimal vs. Maximal positions).

The original question is relatively narrow (though still massively broad), “Christian art”. Argue only about the Minimal vs. Maximal position on that relatively narrow question, ignoring the complex and inconsistent Moderate position.

Supplement that question with the broader question of mushrooms (and to a lesser extent, other entheogens) in Greek and Christian art (and to a lesser extent, broader culture).

This strategy is to apply pressure where it will most effectively make progress: gathering evidence from Greek and Christian art, not just Christian art.

That “Greek+Christian” strategy is already proven to be successful and profitable, by my 2013 tree vs. snake breakthrough that was based on comparing two art pieces: one Bible, one Greek, which then enabled me to decode either Christian or Greek art, by the same explanatory framework of mytheme-decoding.

Combinations of Question-Scope and Positions

The Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art
The Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art

The Minimal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian art
The Maximal mushroom theory of Greek & Christian art

That’s a good set of well-scoped, well-distanced combinations of question-scope & position.

Define a restricted definition of each term (mushroom; also: entheogen; Greek; Christian; art; also: culture) in each of those question/position combinations, to define the scope of the question.

Criteria Must Be Explicit-Paradigm Driven, not Isolated Evidence-Driven within a Silent Received Paradigm

The scope I propose to address is defined best in terms of Core, Periphery, and Outer Periphery; or generally, the idea of defining concentric theories as above, from narrow to broad, all cohering.

The fact that things cohere, is evidence compelling one to adopt or gamble/invest in a new explanatory paradigm. The Egodeath Core theory from 1997, was able to decode and explain myth.

The Egodeath Myth theory from 2013, was able to map myth to the Core theory, of the two models of time: Possibilism vs. Eternalism.

Those two legs cohere, therefore this theory has superior explanatory power, while the Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art has no such explanatory power.

An Inchoate, Fragmentary Position (“the Old Theory”) vs. a Coherent, Developed Position (“The New Theory”)

It’s more a matter of comparing my position, which is a bona fide theory, (which is consciously considered, developed, researched, checked for coherence, explicitly articulated) to the opposing position, which is not a theory but is a fragmentary default view undergirded by poorly considered, un-articulated, received assumptions.

The 2013 “Tree vs. Snake” Discovery as an Example of Hypothesis, Evidence, Testing, Prediction, and Theory Confirmation

I focus on “Greek/Christian” in a broad sense — it’s the most potent, effective approach to make progress, as demonstrated by my huge breakthrough of reconnections and ability to condense my mytheme-decoding system (that’s compelling evidence in favor of a theory/ explanatory-framework) on Thanksgiving week of November 2013, by comparing a Christian, Eden tree art piece vs. a Greek, Jason art piece.

The success of a theory-adjustment, its ability to suddenly explain that much more, and its ability to direct your attention for where else to look [that’s a form of Confirmation By Ability to “Predict” the “results of an experiement”] (image search of Aeslepius’ debranched tree + snake; Moses’ snake-on-pole which I failed to decode 2006) — is compelling evidence in favor of the theory-adjustment, or New Theory/explanatory framework.

November 26, 2013 breakthrough: “If my insight about tree vs. snake = Possibilism vs Eternalism is true, then I should be able to predict that if I search on myth images, I’ll see important centrally placed instances of {debranched}; for example, look closer to see if Asclepius staff is debranched, and if pictures of Moses’ brass snakebite-healing serpent on a pole show a debranched tree.

The result of that prediction of an experiment outcome, in early December 2013: Success! I’m finding treasures of {tree vs. snake}, and various permutations of {branching vs. non-branching}, all throughout mythological art, centrally placed; for example:

o Aeslepius’ debranched tree-trunk and snake.

o Rock statues’ supporting, debranched tree trunk with snake winding up it, or lizard with snake-shaped tail.

o Moses’ brass snake on a pole to look at to heal and rescue from dying from fatal snake bite.

o Standard sarcophagus scene of a rider on a reined or non-reined donkey or horse, being carried along a path to see a tree or a de-branched tree trunk with a snake winding up it.

o Western Esoteric man-woman andro-gyne holding up a Y.

Suddenly I was able to read many mytheme-scenes, with {branch} decoder lantern in hand, guiding what to look for. Going the opposite direction of those who look for literal depictions of mushrooms, this is an attribute of “compelling evidence” & “criteria of proof”, for mytheme-decoding in terms of non-branching, in conjunction with being able to see and judge mushrooms in Christian art:

If it’s a scientific illustration of a mushroom, we should ignore it, but if it includes a fantastical branching pattern, then we know that it represents a psychoactive mushroom.

Therefore, for the 2013 theory-under-test:

{tree vs. snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism

By the above experiment-outcome prediction, the theory has been confirmed; I now (in December 2013) have a coherent explanation of my unsolved 2006 article passage about Moses’ brass healing snake on a “time-pole”.

The predicted experiment outcome proves, to some degree, that the insight is correct; the explanatory power of the theory continues to increase, and the theory should be pursued further.

If the trajectory of predictions and findings is heading toward greater scope of explanatory power, adopt the theory.

After decoding Greek and Christian art mythemes as referring to mushrooms, with that broader scope of answers in hand, it’s then possible to return to the original narrower question about mushrooms in specifically Christian art.

Claims of Certainty and Proof that “Explain Away” Mushrooms Are Premature and Empty Bravado

“I have proof and sound arguments that I’m right. I have a ton of unimpeachable proof that I’m right. The experts have already settled this matter. I have proof. I have evidence. I know how to look at a piece of evidence and tell whether it is True or False, by using my Criteria.” (No need to discuss Incommensurable Paradigms.)

Paul Thagard argues that we can construct rule-systems with interconnections-revisions, to develop and adjust an explanatory framework, it is not black magic incommensurable like Thomas Kuhn asserts. Thagard fills-in the “here is mystery” area of Kuhn’s explanation of how two competing paradigms battle.

The Egodeath theory has massive successful explanatory power.

The Egodeath theory consistently makes sense of mythemes and readily “reads” images of mythology-art as they are found.

With the Egodeath theory in hand, I know what to expect:

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

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

Identify and commit to a set of guiding assumptions, to apply with full force:
o The ordinary state is the freewill state of consciousness.
o The mystic altered state is the no-free-will state of consciousness.

These principles cohere, providing powerful explanatory power; this is an argument from coherence.

Adopting these principles gives greater explanatory power, if there is a greater scope of explanation covered, with more puzzles solved than previously. This broader scope of explanation means that a theory is more compelling than the competing theory, or the previous version of the theory that lacked the new explanatory feature.

Egodeath Theory Writings About “Evidence” and “Proof”

Check Egodeath.com, Egodeath Yahoo Group postsings, and Cyberdisciple’s weblog for writings on ‘criteria’, ‘proof’, ‘evidence’, and ‘compelling’.

Check Paul Thagard’s book Conceptual Revolutions for how to measure explanatory power.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/conceptual-revolutions/

Religious myth is explained in terms of something that makes sense: myth describes the altered state, not workaday ordinary-state mundane experience (in which case, religion would lose its distinctive character, such as “wrestling with angels”).

The Fire-Transformed Salamander-Serpent and the Two Legs

What is the explanatory power of the “competing theory”? How does the competing, Minimal mushroom theory of religious mythology explain the mytheme {wrestling with angels}?

A mytheme-illiterate Minimalist who attempted to read the following picture had no good reading of the one-foot-dancing guy by the mushroom; but I immediately read it as “the two legs = Possibilism-premised control vs. Eternalism-premised control”, justifying that by reference to the Hephaestos lame god, pulling into play my large-scoped decoding of mythemes.

This is a fantastical mushroom because of its branching, not merely because of its stylization.

{Fire} means using the altered state to burn away the {perishable}, vulnerable, mistaken and temporary aspects of control-thinking, to become {imperishable, immortal}, no longer subject to the threat of catastrophic seizing-up, panic, and failure of control.

Realizing that your previous basis foundation of personal control power was built on air (left foot), on illusory assumptions of Possibilism, and now realizing Eternalism (right foot supported by the ground).

How Decoding Mythemes Works: Completing the Decoding of the Salamander in the Bestiary by Adding Branching Analysis

The previously missing key: Do a branching morphology inventory and analysis, including proximity-to-branching.

The mushroom stem branches into two. The {salamander}, which is something to apply {fire} to, is placed next to the odd branching.

I already decoded {fire} = subject the mind to the altered state (loose cognition) to transform the mind (transform the mental model from Possibilism to Eternalism).

The {salamander} has a {serpentine tail}; the serpent is non-branching, making this a {salamander-serpent}.

We know that the mushroom represents Psyilocybe, because of the added message by distorting the mushroom to add odd {branching}, which describes transformation from:
ordinary-state, tree-universe, branching-tree, branching-path Possibilism-thinking, to
altered-state, block-universe, non-branching, worldline Eternalism-thinking.

I had to figure out that there are not two salamanders; there is one, shown at two points in time: {salamander} here represents the mental model, which is first transformed in the altered-state fire.

The {salamander’s snake-shaped tail} represents the worldline.

The mental model under transformation by altered-state {fire} is represented by the {salamander}.

The {fire-cooked salamander with serpent-tail} represents understanding of monopossibility and the frozen block-universe worldline.

First, the mind is passed through loose cognition {fire}, {burning away perishable} Possibilism-thinking, freeewill-premised thinking.

When the impurities of Possibilism thinking have been purged, the mind gains the transformed mental model of time and control. The upper {salamander-serpent} next to the odd {branching} now understands and perceives the point about branching; the new mental model has gnosis about non-branching Eternalism.

The {cooked salamander} (the new, Eternalism mental model) is placed next to the odd branching of the mushroom stem, representing that the {fire-purified} mental model is now able to understand the profound, panic-inducing, experiential insight about the illusory nature of branching possibilities.

Here, {right hand placed on forehead, left hand floating} means successful apprehension, profound change of mental model, new understanding, with control power testing-and-failure from loose cognition.

The {salamander-serpent} in the {fire} includes a worldline-shaped tail. A man normally doesn’t have a tail.

Sometimes in a statue’s supporting debranched tree trunk, instead of a serpent winding up it, it’s a lizard (= salamander), with snake-like non-branching tail.

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.

There is a mushroom shape in the upper part of the strangely detailed, wind-blown fold of the salamander-man’s clothes, I’m sure it’s nothing —

Oh but I forgot, that’s not a mushroom in Dionysus’ wind-billowed cloth, either – go back to sleep. We know that Greeks achieved their intense “alterations of consciousness™” by doing Zen meditation (non-drug, obviously) in caves, as the brilliant, Minimal, Anything But Drugs scholars have discovered.

Cyberdisciple’s weblog page:
Book: Ustinova. 2018. Divine Mania: Alterations of Consciousness in Ancient Greece
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/book-ustinova-2018-divine-mania-alterations-of-consciousness-in-ancient-greece/

Actually, for those on the outside, the salamander drawing doesn’t represent mushrooms, and it has no religious meaning, as explained here:
https://psychedelichistorian.com/roasting-jan-irvin/

How Discovery Works in Loose Cognitive Science, the Paradigmatic Science

The Egodeath theory (including the Maximal Theory of Mushrooms in Christian Art) is evidently superior, it’s a real theory, for one thing; superior because it is able to productively read the image as not only “a mushroom”, but more like a story narrative involving also mytheme-decoding, non-control, and worldmodel transformation.

It’s difficult to compare the Egodeath theory (Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism) to the Minimal mushroom “theory”, because the Minimal theory is so much less of an actual theory, whereas the Egodeath theory is on the other extreme end of that spectrum: it’s a comprehensive, tested, and developed theory of mushrooms.

The Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art has the advantage of knowing Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism; it is a theory of the distinctive cognitive phenomenology effects induced by mushrooms, and of the analogy-based language of mythology, to judge and recognize not only depictions of mushrooms themselves, but more to the point, their classic experiential effects.

See Cyberdisciple’s inventory of theories of mythology — how do the bad theories of myth explain {wrestling} with angels, in fear, the angel saying “Fear not”?
Evaluating Theories of Mythology
https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/evaluating-theories-of-mythology/

Then do a similar approach for:
o The broader question of mushrooms (or broader, entheogens) in Greek and Christian art (and culture).
o The narrow question of mushrooms in Christian art.

Bring to that analysis, a broader theory (Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism), not just looking for mushrooms themselves (whether depicted literally or stylized), not lacking a way to look for telltale descriptions of the signature classic effects of mushrooms.

Look at the various theories of mythology, to extract examples of criteria that can be used to test competing mushrooms in Christian art theories (the Minimal vs. Maximal theories of mushrooms in Christian art).

The Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art leverages and coheres with the Egodeath theory of mytheme decoding (as Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism), which the bad, competing Minimal theory lacks.

We must leverage an entire paradigm, a whole, coherent explanatory framework, as opposed to the false and simplistic claims of the Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art advocates — typically with vague arm waving and suppression of mushroom Christian art evidence — that they have evidence against mushrooms in Christianity (while they neglect the real problem of interpretive explanatory frameworks and incommensurable paradigms).

‘Incommensurable’ means there’s no common shared way to “measure” or judge or adjudicate between the two competing systems, no neutral ground outside the two systems.

The Minimal mushroom “theorists” are as adamant as they are vague, doing a poor job of stating their arguments and showing their evidence in their books, while smugly claiming that they have settled the matter if only people weren’t so ignorant of their slam-dunk proof.

Their over-strong claims to having settled the matter (if only you people weren’t such ignoramuses) amounts to empty bravado trying to hide the weakness of their arguments, their case, their claims, their positioning, their inchoate interpretive explanatory framework, their less-than-theory, packed with unchallenged assumptions.

The Concomitant Topic of No-Free-Will, a Top Cognitive Phenomenon from Mushrooms

All religions are wound-up in anguish debating no-free-will, angels wringing their hands for eternity.

The universality of the no-free-will dispute suggests that no-free-will is a key concern that surfaces in the religious altered state.

The ability to densely connect no-free-will with entheogens with myth-decoding with non-control with panic… the ability to form my 2006 article, and now reach more “closure” by condensing its connections using “tree vs snake”, “branching vs. non-branching”, is “evidence” that “proves” the Maximal mushroom theory of Christian art, and supports the associated theories of various scopes, such as the Maximal entheogen theory of Greek and Christian culture.

Interpretation of mushrooms in Christian art requires a paradigm-first, not an evidence-instance-first approach; yet, the instances still are important: the more powerful explanatory framework provides the ability to read and incorporate more and more evidence instances coherently.

The Minimal “theory” is a joke; it is a less-than-theory.

The Egodeath theory of interpreting mushrooms (Analogical Entheogenic Eternalism) is incomparable with such positions, not because of incommensurability of paradigms, but rather, because the Minimal position is less than a paradigm or a coherent theory; it’s a heap, an incoherent mess of scattered fragments.

What does the Minimalist Wasson think about an intense no-free-will, block-universe non-control experience that’s induced by mushrooms, to explain mythemes?

He doesn’t even have a speculation in that key area. No contest. The Egodeath theory wins hands-down, immediately. The other debater didn’t show up.

The Egodeath theory goes freely back and forth between zooming on one instance of mushroom in Christian art, way out to the broad scope of explaining the serpent’s fruit as Transcendent Knowledge, gnosis. That’s a kind of Evidential Proof, Compelling.

Brinckmann’s Book that Proves with Finality that Mushroom Trees Are Trees, Not Mushrooms

Brinckmann’s book which Panofsky recommends that mycologists look at, which Pope-buddy Wasson censored:

Baumstilisierungen in der mittelalterlichen Malerei
(Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings)
A. E. Brinckmann
http://amzn.com/3957383749
The entire book at Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_8AgwAAAAYAAJ/mode/2up
The plates are shown at the end.

Where does this tree trunk branch? First, the trunk splits, at their waists, to branch into two, then those two trunks actually separate at the snake’s head, then finally, both tree-tops visibly branch at Adam and Eve’s heads.

Adam and Eve, eating the fruit of entheogenic Transcendent Knowledge, are looking at the branching, seeing their frozen non-branching worldlines, with {hand held palm-forward} here expressing apprehension of the control loss. They are experiencing and mentally perceiving the frozen block universe with non-branching worldlines of pre-set, pre-existing personal control.

{branching-into-two} means:

• A rejection of branching (the possibilism world model) and adoption of non-branching (the eternalism worldmodel).
• During initiation, the single, personal control system, consciously starts to experience, apprehend, and differentiate two distinct functions; two, intertwined locuses of control, or {partners}:
  • The “male”, control-thought inserter.
  • The “female”, control-thought receiver.

Branching in Montecassino

Adam and Eve with serpent-entwined Psilocybe mushroom (caduceus). Italy [Abbey of Montecassino]; circa 1072 – British Library”. Also shown and discussed above in this article.

Image found at http://pharmacratic-inquisition.com/nontesters/pharmacratic/ – That original URL is 404.
My long-time URL since 2006: http://www.egodeath.com/images/MontecassinoPsilocybeMandrake.jpg

My motivation for copying the above picture again into this article is, something I couldn’t explain until now that I have my 2013 discovery in hand: look at the branching; these are two debranched trees (repetition is evidence of deliberate messaging, about non-branching).

The message isn’t only “mushroom”, the more important message is “mushroom reveals that branching possibilities (Possibilism) is an illusion” – Eternalism (non-branching future possibilities, and thus non-control) is the case.

Besides their blindness to Mandrake in their fixation on Psilocybe in the Abbey art piece, the other amazing example of half-blind entheogen scholars, this time fixating on the Amanita mushroom – maybe Ruck – wrote about the red and white colors in Mithras’ cape, and failed to say anything about the blue-stemmed mushroom in Mithras’ straight leg and garment hem.

http://www.egodeath.com/images/egodeatharticle/HighRes/Tauroctony_HiRes.jpg

I am the one who identified the more direct, Psilocybe mushroom depiction — in someone else’s entheogen print-publication discussing the Mithraeum image looking for Amanita mushroom indicators!

The cover of David Ulansey’s book The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World, which is about transcending Heimarmene, shows part of that Mithraeum tauroctony, including upper stem and Psilocybe cap.
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Mithraic-Mysteries-Cosmology-Salvation/dp/0195067886

Manfred Clauss’ book cover “The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries” shows the entire tauractony — but disastrously, backwards, so that Mithras is turning to look to the left, to forget Transcendent Knowledge, instead of remembering it.
https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Cult-Mithras-God-Mysteries/dp/0415929784

That’s two, almost unbelievable to me, cases of entheogen scholars themselves being blind to a Mandrake or Psilocybe in the very art piece that they present and discuss, where I was the one to see it, aided by the adequate lens of the Egodeath theory and its guiding assumptions of what to look for — of how to see.

Branching Is Key

People pay too much attention to the literal mushroom shape of mushroom trees, and fail to see the more important message about branching vs. non-branching. Analyze Brinckmann’s book not for mushrooms, but for branching.

Keep an eye out for top-10 key mythemes that describe, by analogy, loose cognitive phenomenology:

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

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

Do not make the mistakes of the naive illiterate non-theorists, of only looking for entheogens or mushrooms. This broader net acts as a lens to better spot and recognize mushrooms, potions, ingesting, entheogens — for example:
{billowing cape} = altered state = Holy Spirit.
Maenads’ {untied loosened hair} = altered state, loose cognition.

Mushroom trees convey two things:
o The mushroom shape, including mushroom clusters (a single fruiting body, with, like a shrub, multiple stems from it).
o Branching vs. non-branching themes, which describe not the plant, but the experiential effects and highest revelations about personal control stability, that are induced by ingesting the plant.

The other, flimsy, incompetent, less-than “theories”, can barely succeed at spotting entheogens, much less, spotting mythemes that describe high revelation about what they call dumbly, “the shadow” (self-control seizure, and restabilization through revising the mental model to enable consciously trusting the hidden control-source).

Spotting the plants in art, and spotting the high revelatory message in art, go hand-in-hand. If you can’t see descriptions of Eternalism, you can’t see (or accept) mushrooms well, either.

The most important thing in mythology art is branching & non-branching.

Greek trees are also heavily stylized in order to play with ironic branching & non-branching themes — strands of non-branching ivy, the world’s most pathetic trees, more scrawny than Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Charlie%20Brown%20Christmas%20Tree
I used to draw branching trees, in High School.

My mytheme research and theory development of November 2011 & November 2013 led me to see, the hypothesis to test: “it’s about the branching!”

When testing that hypothesis by predicting that I would find it prominently in art, that led to a jackpot of theory-confirmation: indeed, play on ironic branching vs. non-branching is all throughout myth — key myths, major mythological artwork.

I predicted I’d find lots of intelligible art references to the theme of branching/non-branching in conjunction with the standard top-10 mythemes prominently in important art — and I did.

Testing the hypothesis with experiment (that is, looking at mythology images again, for branching) confirmed the theory-addition by getting the predicted result, proving my 2013 theory-addition correct, demonstrating that with the new additional hypothesis (“myth and gnosis concerns branching vs. non-branching“), the already well-developed 2006 Egodeath theory gained greater explanatory power, scope, coherence, and prediction-ability.

The addition of the “branching” hypothesis made for an improved theory, superior to how the Egodeath theory previously was without that key, and making the Egodeath theory still further superior to the other competing theories of myth — or, so often, non-theories, a kind of Whig history:

“Our primitive ancestors must have had an alien psychology that we highly evolved Moderns are too sophisticated to ever understand.

“(But they certainly didn’t use drugs; there’s no point in investigating along those lines, beyond my due-diligence nod to that misguided idea, to show how well-informed I am; waving aside this point, burying it in a footnote, because everyone knows that they were rational Greek philosophers and morally pure Christians.)”

Stop projecting mid-20th Century presumptions onto pre-Modern culture; stop committing the presentism fallacy.

By the time of the “myth highlights branching” breakthrough (2013), I had thought about Thagard’s work for years.

Paul Thagard builds on and goes beyond Thomas Kuhn, on the theory of discovery, with his computer-tested, computer-demonstrated model of theory replacement and modification, and comparative testing to check how much explanatory power.

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

By 2013, I had given meta-theorizing much thought; see Egodeath Yahoo Group posts on theory-development & theory-confirmation; search for my phrase “the diamond hammer of interpretation”.

Can’t Take Any More Obtuseness

When Brown’s article came out, I didn’t do more than skim it. When the Brown’s mushroom debate came out, I didn’t want to watch it. Because I don’t care what the Minimalists have to say on this topic; it’s an embarrassing farce, an unreasonable exercise in sheer obtuse obstinacy.

Even Minimalists make some positive contributions, despite their efforts to retard the field — but you may have to invert their assertions first.

Minimalists are “professionally” committed to doing any and every move possible, to resist and deny and dismiss the mushrooms in Christian art.

There may be a conflict of interest distorting their position, such as promoting a single-plant fallacy; an occultist scholar-sorceror may be devoted to his Mandrake and devoted to seeing mushrooms nowhere in any art that touches Christianity — but see my image above, pairing Mandrake with Psilocybe.

(“My image”, because I spotted Mandrake, while other entheogen scholars who published the image fixated only on the Psilocybe and were not able to see the Mandrake.)

The Minimalists may have a conflict of interest that makes them dedicated to never seeing mushrooms, and when they are made to look at the most literal depictions of mushrooms in Christian art, they fall back on the WEAK argument,

“You have no PROOF that it represents a psychoactive mushroom. Therefore, my superior professional scholarly impressive credentialed position holds (but first let me tell you in a paragraph about my superiority of scholarship): there are no mushrooms in Christian art; and the most literal mushroom images that are shown in Christian art are not psychoactive.

“There is no possible way, no possible criteria by which we could ever be justified in saying these are psychoactive mushrooms in Christian art. There cannot exist any criteria by which it’s permissible these are mushrooms.

“It is never permissible to think that these are psychoactive mushrooms in Christian art.

“We are helpless, weak, and we just can’t know, because we have no reason to assume that these religious mythology art works have anything to do with the altered state induced by mushrooms.”

That is not a stance of neutral judgment; it’s a committed, bullheaded, obstinant refusal to see, at any cost. “You can’t make me look through your telescope! The Bible tradition says the Earth is stationary; I believe it; that settles it.”

The Minimal mushroom theory of Christian art is firmly committed to self-preservation at any cost, through any cheat, using kettle logic (incoherent fragmentary ad-hoc dismissal).

“Even if the artist drew a mushroom shape, they had no inkling” (Wasson in SOMA, with his garbled, ambiguous, writing style).

It’s an incoherent, weak position, that’s not compelling. We need to talk about the full gallery of images, which range from literal mushroom depictions to abstract shapes.

Committed to Not Seeing: the “Anything But Entheogens” Position

Committed to Not Seeing: the “Anything But Mushrooms” View of Christian Art, and the “Anything But Drugs” View of “Alternate States of Consciousness

No one has time to waste reading literalist outsider authors with no good poetic sense on this topic, since they are pre-committed to never seeing mushrooms anywhere.

It’s a waste of time to engage them on this matter, although granted, their writings are worth reading, somewhat, despite their a priori refusal to see.

The Minimalists’ strategy amounts to, “Show me any mushroom, no matter how literally depicted, and I’ll do any and all moves, to uphold any explanation other than mushrooms — or even a non-explanation is to be preferred, “The Ancients must have had an alien psychology that we Moderns can’t ever understand”!

On the broad question of entheogens in religious art and literature, there is no point in deeply point-by-point engaging with scholars who are devoted to the “anything but drugs” view on “alternate states of consciousness”, such as Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania: Alterations of Consciousness in Ancient Greece.

Just as Ustinova is committed to affirming any explanation of the mystic state other than drugs, so are the Minimalist mushroom “theorists” — for whatever reasons, whatever conflicts of interest — pre-committed to affirming any explanation of a mushroom in an art work, other than “it represents psychoactive mushrooms” — or no explanation whatsoever; “We just can’t know what the object represents, but we can know that it cannot be mushrooms — so it must just be fantastical nonsense.”

There is no profit in deeply engaging with people who are devoted to the “anything but mushrooms” reading. They close their eyes, “You can’t make me see it!” You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

You can put 100 of the most literal mushroom depictions in Christian art in front of him, but he’ll say “You can’t make me agree that that’s a psychoactive mushroom!”

http://www.egodeath.com/christianmushroomtrees.htm
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mushroom+tree+christ
— as just a start.

We know Wasson’s conflict of interest: protect the status quo from the Pope’s point of view; that’s why Wasson censored mushrooms, censored Brinckmann’s book, replaced it by ellipses in SOMA while treating Panofsky’s letter like a club — a club with “Brinckmann” deliberately removed; don’t look behind that ellipses curtain.”

The Art Experts have reached such a final verdict, I’m not even going to tell you where to check their verdict of those many art historians which have thoroughly discussed and debated and resolved the matter (a single, short book; by only one author; in German; back in 1906; presenting only 4 or 5 Christian art images; only focused on trees, not other mushroom forms; and we can assume he does not discuss the distinct morphology of Liberty Caps, Amanita, and Cubensis).

Serious, productive scholarly research and theory-development will continue unimpeded, regardless of those who refuse to look through the telescope, who strive to hold back the field and maintain in their own scholarship, “There are no entheogens in Greek & Christian history.”

Different Scopes to Question

The question of mushrooms in Christian art can be broadened by degrees, keeping it centered around that topic:

What would be compelling evidence, or criteria of proof, for:

1. mushrooms in Christian art (narrowest question) – pushing here is too narrow, it’s hard to solve and hard to prove.

2. entheogens in Greek and Christian art <– this is the ideal spot to push, as the center of problem-solving pressure/focus.

3a. entheogens in Western religion [or: Western religious mythology].
3b. mushrooms in World Religion (same size of scope as 3a).

4. psychoactives in World Religion (broadest question, kept centered around narowest, is used to support the interpretation of the narrowest).

There are many possible question-scopes, and several positions on each question. Need only 2 questions (the original narrow question, and one broad question), and only 2 positions (Minimal, Maximal).

People are extreme in their thinking, because the middle position is complicated; nuanced middle positions require more thinking and are harder to articulate.

The Moderate position is the most self-contradictory; for example:

The Moderate mushroom theory of Greek and Christian art is a highly incoherent and self-contradictory position.

The Moderate mushroom theory of Christian art (“Secret Christian Amanita Cult”), is a highly incoherent and self-contradictory position.

Conflating the Distinct Questions: Sloppy Scholars’ Game of Slip-and-Slide

Careless entheogen scholars slip and slide among vague, shifting position on exactly what they are denying and affirming; constantly, silently changing their mind about what subject they are centrally debating about:

• The Secret Amanita Christian Cult theory?
  • How knowledge & tradition spread?
• Which mushrooms?
  • Just Amanita?
  • All mushrooms (including Cubensis, Liberty Caps, & Amanita)?
• Mushrooms in which aspect of Christianity:
  • Mushrooms in Christian art?
  • Mushrooms in Christian practice?
  • Mushrooms in Christian culture?
  • Mushrooms in Western culture, including Ancient Near East & Mediterranean Antiquity; Hellenistic Mystery Religions & Greek mythology?
• Which genre?
  • Strictly explicitly religious art?
  • Broad esotericism art within Christendom?
  • Strictly Biblical, or equivalent Hellenistic content as well?

The Minimalist school (“there’s never mushrooms, there’s never evidence”) is vague about:

• On what basis each of those questions is to be explained away.
• Why their sometimes-chosen scope of question is the key issue to deal with and center all discussion around (silently, as it suits them from moment to moment).
• Why some types of evidence and readings of that evidence count, but others are to be ignored and discounted: texts & art; literal depictions, stylized depictions, and depictions of effects.
• Which form-family of mushrooms to discuss: Amanita? Cubensis? Liberty Caps? This most-basic, elementary level of differentiation and discussion is completely missing from the Minimalist explainers-away; these fervent, shallow, and inarticulate wavers-of-arms.

See Also

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/

Gallery of Mushrooms in Greek & Christian Art
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/gallery-of-mushrooms-in-art/

Canterbury Psalter Mushroom Inventory
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/canterbury-psalter-mushroom-inventory/

Possibilism vs. Eternalism: Two Models of Time and Control
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/possibilism-vs-eternalism-2-models-of-time-and-control/

Scholars’ Failure to Debate Mushrooms in Christian Art
A summary after writing several articles.
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/

Theory of Mythemes
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/theory-of-mythemes/

Plaincourault Partly Contradicts Allegro’s Thesis
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/plaincourault-partly-contradicts-allegros-thesis/

Webpage title:
Competing Views about Entheogens in Religious History
Michael Hoffman, 2007
Subsection title:
Minimal Entheogen Theory per Psychedelics Advocates:
Andy Letcher’s Book, Shroom
http://www.egodeath.com/ViewsOnEntheogensInReligiousHistory.htm#_Toc164518584

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Contents:

• Relation of Course to Egodeath theory
• Link for Course
• Course Modules
• Enrollment Info

Relation of Course to Egodeath theory

I use the Egodeath theory (Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism) to map Greek & Christian mythemes to altered-state Cognitive Phenomenology. That connects to modules in this course such as “Unravelling the Eleusinian Mysteries”, “Psychedelics in World Religions”, and “Future of Psychedelics”.

Link for Course

Florida International University (FIU)
Spring Semester 2021, online course
Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D.
College students worldwide can enroll.
https://fiu.instructure.com/courses/96262/assignments/syllabus

Course Modules

Class Overview, Textbooks, Requirements, and Syllabus Review
Brown — text: psychedelics in shamanism and world religions
Pollan — text: Psychedelic Renaissance and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Pollan — Glossary of Key Terms

Soma in the Hindu Rigveda
Indus River Valley, India – 1400 BCE
Identity of Soma as plant-juice-god
Landmarks in ethnomycology

Reindeer Herders of Siberia
Arctic Circle, Russia – 2000 BCE
Amanita muscaria in shamanism
Nomadic Reindeer Herders as the “fathers of shamanism”

Maria Sabina, Mazatec Shaman
Oaxaca, Mexico – 1955
Initiatory call to shamanism
Psilocybin mushroom ceremonies

Unravelling the Eleusinian Mysteries
Eleusis, Ancient Greece – 1500 BC
LSD-like fungus in sacred potion
Ritual taboo and death of Socrates

Psychedelics in World Religions
Europe and Middle East, 1000 to 1300
Mushroom icons in Christian Art
Psychedelic references in Old Testament and Gnostic Gospels

Psychedelic Renaissance
Johns Hopkins Research from 2006 on
U.S. Supreme Court ayahuasca decision
Psilocybin and Mystical Experience

Natural History of Psychedelic Mushrooms
Neurochemistry of magic mushrooms
Stamet’s Guide to psilocybin species
Fungi as nature’s neurological network

1960s Psychedelic Movement
Leary: High Priest of Acid Generation
CIA MK-Ultra Research Project
Backlash and Federal Ban: 1970 Controlled Substances Act

Psychedelic Underground
LSD: royal road to the unconscious
DMT: the Spirit Molecule
Fadiman’s Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

New Neuroscience of Psychedelics
MRI brain imaging, Imperial College
Impact on serotonin neurotransmitters
Carhart-Harris’ Default Mode Network

Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
Alleviating Addiction and Depression
Anxiety in terminal cancer patients
FDA Breakthrough Therapy Trials

Creativity, Spirituality and Well-Being
Scientific Problem-Solving Research
Top-Five Life Spiritual Experiences
Steve Jobs: LSD and Innovation

Psychedelics and Public Policy
Therapy, Law, and Religious Freedom
Medical Model vs. Decriminalization
City and State Decrim. Initiatives

Future of Psychedelics
Roberts’ Mind Apps & Multistate Theory
Enhanced Cognition and Performance
Potential Neuro-Singularity

Enrollment Info

Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D., will teach “Psychedelics and Culture” (Syllabus) online, Spring Semester 2021, Florida International University (FIU)

College Students Worldwide can enroll for this 3-credit Course by filling out the FIU Non-Degree Seeking Students (NDSS) Application.  Students taking online courses do not need to submit Immunization Records. Spring 2021 course enrollment for NDSS opens January 7; classes start January 11. FIU is an accredited U.S. university based in Miami, Florida. Credits earned are transferable to other college and university degree programs. 

Course Topics – Psychedelics: Past, Present and Future

Section I. Psychedelics in Shamanism
Soma in the Rigveda; Reindeer Herders of Siberia; Maria Sabina, Mazatec Shaman; Eleusinian Mysteries, Ancient Greece; The Bible and Gnostic Gospels

Section II. The Psychedelic Renaissance
Johns Hopkins Clinical Studies; History of Magic Mushrooms; 1960s Psychedelic Movement; Psychedelic Underground; New Neuroscience of Psychedelics

Section III. Future of Psychedelics
Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy; Creativity, Spirituality and Well-Being; Public Policy; Mind Apps and Multistate Theory; Career Opportunities

Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D., founding professor of anthropology at FIU, is coauthor of books and articles on psychedelics and religion, including The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity, 2016; “Mystical Experience and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy,” Psychedelics Today, 2020; “Entheogens in Christian Art,” Special Issue, Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2019; and “Sacred Plants and the Gnostic Church,” Journal of Ancient History, 2014

For questions/information, contact Jerry Brown at: jbbrown at gate dot net

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Contents:

• todo

Psychedelic Spirituality (2nd Ed.)
Tarl Warwick
http://amzn.com/1722910011
July 12, 2018

Review by Michael Hoffman, July 17, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R6F5D8LS1UBF7/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1722910011

Enjoyable modern and archaic critical commentary

This book by Styx (Tarl Warwick) gives balanced coverage of modern anti-Prohibitionist thought and ancient (and pre-20th Century) spiritual usage of psychedelics.

The paper quality and printing is good. There’s no bibliography, citations, or index.

Styx’ modern-era anti-Prohibitionist discussion is not groundbreaking, but is readable.

Styx asserts the equivalence of meditation and psychedelics, but I infamously assert that “Meditation is bunk”; nondrug meditation steals credit from psychedelics, which are by far the actual source of religious enlightenment throughout the history of religions.

Styx tends to agree with my Maximal Entheogen theory of religion: Psychedelics are the best, and completely unproblematic, and thus the only real explanation of religious mythology.

Below, I summarize and condense some assertions in the book.

Through using psychotropics, man’s consciousness developed. Psychedelics are not necessarily degenerate force that debases Western Civilization, but rather, helped build up Western Civilization. Page 123: “… the importance mind-altering substances in general, and psychedelic ones specifically, have played in human development.”

Styx criticizes the theory that religious mythology comes from dreaming (page 54), because that’s explaining the not-understood by the not-understood. I similarly reject the Jung/Campbell theory that religious mythology describes dreaming; I assert that religious mythology actually describes psychedelic experiencing of non-control and timeless no-free-will.

Does the book discuss psychedelics as a means of experiencing frozen-time no-free-will Cybernetic-Eternalism, per Minkowski’s iron block universe and Parmenides’ denial of change or meta-change?

Page 79-80: “In ego death, all sense of volition is removed. The mind then has less than full capability to control itself. Such a state is variously frightening and liberating: a state of psychic dissolution, producing detached volition and then non-volition.”

Page 93: “Amanita and salvia temporarily plunges oneself back into this tribal, primitive state, in which volition partially dissolves.”

Psychedelics don’t make you dumb, having a decline in mental faculties — this couldn’t be further from the truth. Some of the greater minds of history worked with such things, leading from chemistry and biology to interest in spirituality. Page 98.

Science is not opposed to spirituality; they occur together. Page 82: Psychedelics tune into another, truer plane of reality, a different “vibration” mode. Page 84: “The spiritual is science as yet not quite understood.”

“We now know that psilocybin forms complex but short-lasting connections in the brain that are not normally present at all, allowing the synthesis of ideas that would normally be separate — thus temporarily turning the user into a sort of savant.” (page 86)

That’s similar to the underlying cognitive mechanism as described in the Egodeath theory of religion as “Metaphorical Psychedelic Eternalism”, in which psycholytics cause “loose cognitive association binding”, which causes an experiential shift and thus a mental world-model transformation from the default-mode Possibilism to the Eternalism model of time and personal control power, including meaning-shifting to recognize religious mythology as metaphorical description of this experiential world-model shift.

Does Styx advocate the McKenna fallacy that Christianity eliminated, omitted, and suppressed psychedelics? I didn’t find much discussion of the psychedelic Christian Eucharist tradition.

Page 98: “With psychedelics, many of my insights into the spiritual world that I would otherwise possibly have overlooked became possible. The belief that such things are “bad” or “wrong” are based on religious systems which themselves were intertwined with the ancient usage of such substances; from the tree of life depicted as an amanita on through to relative modernity before the era of prohibition.”

Page 142 mentions the Plaincourault amanita-tree fresco, covered in my article “Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita”.

Regarding manna as mushrooms, Styx reads “wandering in the desert” literally, rather than as “wandering 40 years in cow pastures” as described in some recent books.

Styx, like most people, even like John Allegro, fails to consider the key question, “To what extent were psychedelics used throughout Christian history?” We are constitutionally incapable of thinking of that question; as an occult psychedelicist and religion commentator, Styx ought to be better and consider that question, which to me has always been the most glaring, obvious question. Perhaps the two books closest to raising that most-key question:

Strange Fruit: Alchemy, Religion and Magical Foods: A Speculative History
Clark Heinrich
1995
Amanita throughout Western religious history.

The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity
Jerry Brown & Julie Brown
2016
Discusses Wasson, Allegro, and the Plaincourault fresco; and mushrooms in cathedrals’ stained windows and illuminated manuscripts.

Styx reminds me of Christian Ratsch, providing broad coverage of the wide range of psychotropics, including a measured contrast between psychedelic psychotropics vs. deliriants, through an occult or spiritual (though superficial and limited) perspective: a broad plant coverage, but shallow and limited regarding religious altered-state phenomenology. Benny Shanon provides the missing, needed “cognitive phenomenology” perspective on entheogens or psychedelics (I’d say ‘psycholytics’; mind-loosening), where I’d especially look for experiential cognitive phenomenology of frozen-time non-control.

Styx’ book is more concerned to fully critique drug Prohibition, from the perspective of cultural history, than to enumerate the experiential cognitive phenomenology of psychedelics.

An interesting, creative chapter compares various attitudes toward psychotropics. I disagree with Styx’ conventional, false dichotomy between “stoner vs. psychonaut”, page 118. Styx puts forth a too-static model of motivations; he doesn’t correctly describe the sequential relationship between “recreational stoner per Hedonism” and “serious psychonaut per Epicurianism”.

I hold that the clearest late-modern era expression of peak religious experiencing is in Acid-Inspired Rock lyrics; it is precisely the stoner lyricists who most vividly report the psychedelic experiential shift from Possibilism to Eternalism, which is the spiritual regeneration described by traditional religious mythology, including Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian mythemes. For example, Iron Maiden: “I’ll take you to the other side, to see the truth: the path for you is decided.”

Instead, combine Styx’ two categories (recreational stoner vs. spiritual psychonaut) in a crossover: the stoner feels desire — we can label that as “recreational” — to enter the psychedelic state, and then the recreational stoner sees the snake-shaped worldline of pre-set thoughts in the Eternalism experiential mode, discovering and perceiving, experientially, the Minkowski frozen timeless spacetime block, also per Parmenides in Greek antiquity.

Against Styx, I assert that it is a myth that stoners lack spiritual wisdom. The most authentically and traditionally enlightened people in the late-modern era come from stonerism, not from Pop Sike Newage “psychonaut” culture. Stoners write lyrics vividly describing their psychonautic experiencing within the intense psychedelic state, their experiencing of being a helpless doll or puppet controlled by Fatedness, experienced vividly in the Cybernetic-Eternalism state of consciousness. Newage Pop Sike psychonauts report more piecemeal, these fragments of the traditional full experience of frozen time and noncontrol.

Styx overlooks the “surprising discovery” aspect of exploring psychedelics: Styx writes, page 120: “A person can hardly expect to derive substantial wisdom from the usage of psychedelics in a spiritual sense unless the person already possessed, before using anything, the motivation to explore the spiritual effects.” The word ‘recreational’ mis-characterizes the youthful desire for psychedelics. I describe the attraction to psychedelics not as recreational, but as innate in the cognitive design or make-up of the mind: the mind innately desires to explore the psychedelic, loose-cognitive experiential mode, for psychological maturation and transformation.

Styx has a too-static view of distinct motivations (page 151): “Early man saw no spirituality in the substances; this came later as greater mental and organizational capacity developed. Until that point, mushrooms were seen as a way to alleviate boredom.” Change Styx’ wording “early man” to “stoners”, to produce a more accurate, dynamic depiction of the sequential relationship between the supposedly separate people, “stoners vs. psychonauts”; it’s more like “stoners develop into psychonauts”, whether in the archaic or late-modern era.

On Page 121, Styx fails to mention Samorini’s book describing the ancient use of animals to test psychoactives for toxicity: “To determine which species were edible, many toxic species would have been ingested as well, sometimes leading to the death of those testing them.” However, page 151 mentions “animals imbibing such substances”.

Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness
Giorgio Samorini
2000 (Italian), 2002 (English)

Styx advocates recognizing a greater connection between psychonaut and occultist in history (page 143). In this book and in Styx’ “True Enlightenment” video, Styx overemphasizes enlightenment as open-ended free thinking. Page 144: “Practicing the occult requires liberating the mind by dissolving the veil of bias and enculturation which normally suppresses free thought.”

On this topic of what enlightenment consists of, Styx’ video asserts that true enlightenment is the ability to think for oneself and determine your own course of action, without the need for other people to interfere in your thought process.

Styx rejects the idea that enlightenment is some particular special “secret knowledge”. Against Styx, I agree enlightenment is “special knowledge”; I identify and specify enlightenment as the Eternalism model of time and personal control; revelation is of a kind of non-control and no-free-will, inherently revealed as a mode of experiencing in the loose cognitive association state.

I agree with Styx that psychedelics loosen old thought-structures, but I’d put it slightly differently than Styx’s term “free thought”: the mind’s default, tight association binding is loosened, switching from one experiential mode to another which reveals a specific, innate, traditional religious alternative worldmodel of time and control.

I see Styx’ open-ended “free thinking” (loose cognition) as merely an intermediate means, that reveals a specific alternative constrained, innate (thus pre-structured) experience and new specific worldmodel, a temporary experiential state-shift producing a specific traditional (vs. innovative free thinking), permanently transformed, expanded worldmodel; this temporary means and permanent change of worldmodel is described by religious mythology — not arbitrary open-ended free thinking.

— Michael Hoffman, the theorist of religious mythology as Metaphorical Psychedelic Eternalism

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Michael Hoffman, November 12, 2020

Contents:

• Stanford Philosophy Article on Models of Time in Physics
• Possibilism
• Eternalism
• Getting Past Eternalism
• Mythemes About Eternalism
• Greek and Bible Parallel Mythemes
• A Third View: Presentism
• Research Links
• Vocabulary Word Hit-Counts in Stanford Article

Stanford Philosophy Article on Models of Time in Physics

Michael Hoffman, November 12, 2020

Article: Being and Becoming in Modern Physics
Section 2.1: Presentism, Possibilism, Eternalism
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/#PresPossEter —

Possibilism

The mind starts out in the ordinary state of consciousness, and experiences time and control using the Possibilism model of time and control, in which it feels like a {king steering in a tree} of branching possibilities opening up into the future.

The future seems to have multiple possibilities, and the future doesn’t exist.

From the “Being and Becoming” article:

“Possibilism: on this view, the future is still merely possible, rather than actual (hence its name).

“If one thinks of the future as a branching structure of alternative possibilities (as the result of free human choices), then one can think of the past and present as the trunk of that tree, growing as possibilities become actual in the present. This view is also known as the growing block view.

“Possibilism seems to capture much of the way we think about time and being. It seems as if my future actions can actualize some future possibilities as opposed to others.”

Eternalism

In the psychedelic altered state of loose cognitive association binding (loose cognition), time and control are experienced in the Eternalism model: near-future control-thoughts are seen and experienced and conceptualized like a {snake} frozen into a {rock}-like block universe, which has a single, pre-existing, ever-existing path into the future — the worldline of past and future control-thoughts.

There’s no power of control to alter the future, and it feels like not having control. The future path of control-thoughts feels inflicted on the helpless mind, with control-thoughts forcibly injected into the mind by a hidden, uncontrollable source.

The personal control-agent {king, ruler, steersman}, is turned into {rock}, a frozen powerless {statue}, upon seeing the worldline {snake}. Seeing the gorgon-medusa death-head {petrifies} the ruler, who becomes frozen into the unchanging block-universe {rock}.

The diagrams in the Being and Becoming article are presented as if purely intellectual in the ordinary state of consciousness — but the mind can actually experience the change from Possibilism to Eternalism.

From the “Being and Becoming” article:

“In Parmenides’ eternalism picture, future and past events at a time, on this view, are no more or less real than distant events at a place.

“The now, like the here, is a function of one’s perspective, one’s position in spacetime, and these positions are indicated by the line in the spacetime diagram, representing the history of spacetime locations of a particular person or object. Such a line is often called a world line.“

Getting Past Eternalism

In the peak climax of the altered state, upon realizing the mind is profoundly dependent on the creator of the pre-existing control-thoughts lying ahead on the worldline, the mind switches its dependency to now become conscious of dependency on a hidden uncontrollable source of thoughts. The mind is made to sacrifice freewill-premised personal control power.

After the peak-state sacrifice, transformation, and reset, in the remainder of that altered-state session and in subsequent life in both states, the mind now has both models of time and control: Possibilism and Eternalism, but no longer has naive Possibilism, which lacks the Eternalism model.

In a sense, the mind has transcended Eternalism, as well as transcending Possibilism. From naive freewill thinking, to no-free-will, to a kind of transcending no-free-will; now possessing both mental models. Now made durable to endure looking at God, the source of control-thoughts.

Mythemes About Eternalism

Persephone = Possibilism-thinking; Demeter = Eternalism-thinking

Persephone when alive; Persephone after abducted to Hades’; & Demeter:

{Persephone when alive} = Naive-Possibilism-thinking

{Persephone after abduction/death} = Qualified-Possibilism-thinking

{Demeter} = Eternalism-thinking

See the Serpent, Sacrifice, Gain the Prize

The {basket lid} has been removed to reveal the hidden worldline {snake}, and the profound dependency of control-thoughts on an uncontrollable hidden source has been revealed.

To gain the gnosis {treasure}, the hero’s {prize}, the victory {wreath}, the {hero} must get past the threatening serpentine {dragon} and reconcile with it and tranquilize it with the goddess’s {magic potion} to pacify the dragon.

A plate made of rock, with relief depicting a {rock altar} formation, with rock relief of a {snake hidden} in a {covered basket} (cista mystica), with {basket lid lifted} to reveal and make perceptible the normally hidden, block-universe worldline {snake}.

Heracles’ Nemean Lion skin {billowing} like an altered-state spirit cape. {Beardless} implies a youth, now initiated into adulthood.

Heracles {wrestled} with the lion, as the mind wrestles with the threat of non-control in the mature peak mystic altered state leading to climactic repudiation and {sacrifice} of freewill-premised control (Possibilism-thinking).

The lion is associated with Dionysus; for example, Dionysus changed into a lion and chased the ship’s crewmen overboard, turning them into dolphins (rescuers), but the pious {helmsman} who had trust in Dionysus was spared from the god’s {wrath}.

Cista mystica, worldline {snake} revealed from inside a {covered basket}, carved of block-universe {rock}, on a tombstone.

Rock altar of sacrifice with Zeus Meilichios as snake carved of rock. Beardless youth to be sacrificed in initiation, bearded mature man who sacrifices, and veiled woman – aspects of the mind in the climactic mystic altered state.

The rock altar has the worldline {snake} depicted in relief, snake frozen embedded in the block-universe {rock} altar on which to sacrifice {childish} naive Possibilism thinking.

God’s wrath vs. God’s mercy:
o Zeus Maimaktes — “he who rages eager, panting and thirsting for blood”.
o Zeus Meilichios — the “Easy-to-be-entreated”; the gracious, accessible aspect.
— from Harrison, p. 17: https://archive.org/stream/prolegomenatostu00harr#page/17/mode/2up

A god with two aspects, {two faces}:
o Wrath: The threat of non-control during the altered state.
o Mercy: The immediate reconciliation and restabilization of control upon sacrificing, and consciously repudiating, childish freewill-premised control.

A worshipping, {bearded} adult with {child} for initiation, worshipping a snake hidden in a cave, all carved on a sacrificial altar of rock (representing the block universe). The hidden worldline {snake} is now revealed, in the mystic altered state, with entheogen represented by sprinkling {incense}.

“Snake hidden in cave” is isomorphic with “un-covered basket revealing a snake” (cista mystica).

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/312437292879797342/

Egyptian gods Isis, Horus and Serapes in serpent form, as worldline {snakes} carved from and embedded in block-universe {rock}. A common art mytheme is a human head or torso with snake body, or a human head or torso coming forth from a snake.

o Past: The snake body can be thought of as the past stream of one’s life in the frozen worldline.
o Present: The head can be thought of as present experiential awareness in the altered state.
o Future: Implicitly the future stream of control-thoughts is snake-shaped, pre-existing, and frozen embedded in the rock block universe.

A Fundamental Mytheme-Contrast:
Tree vs. Snake = Possibilism vs. Eternalism

The worldline {serpent} is shown winding up the possibility-branching {tree} trunk. The serpent’s head is where the nonbranching {tree trunk} (the past) meets the branching (the future), because the control-agent’s mind, in the head, controls the steering among possibilities.

The tree has ivy branches, which are non-branching, forming a non-branching tree.

Jason pierces the golden fleece of the flying ram with his knife, as if to sacrifice the ram.

The serpent guards the {prize}: gnosis, enlightenment, Transcendent Knowledge; the {sacrificial ram}’s golden fleece. The ram was sacrificed on a block-universe {rock} altar.

The worldline {snake} is fated to lead up to drinking the entheogenic {magic potion}, delivered by the {sorceress} Medea in the mixed-wine kylix (cup/saucer).

The entheogenic potion, in an inversion of “summons” and “awakens”, {averts} and {pacifies} the {guarding serpent-monster}, enabling Jason to {steal} or “snatch” the gnosis, Transcendent Knowledge, the {object of the quest}, the {sacrificed ram}.

The worldline {dragon} is {pacified} and the threat of control-loss is {averted}, upon sacrificing and repudiating Possibilism-premised, freewill-premised personal control power.

Greek and Bible Parallel Mythemes

Compare the above ram to Abraham’s {bush}-caught ram provided as a substitute sacrifice to enable Isaac to live and prosper, producing the promised, God-reverent progeny, the {blessed} people.

{ram caught helplessly in a bush to be sacrificed on Isaac’s altar of rocks} = {king fastened helplessly to a tree as a sacrifice, reborn from rock cave}.

Compare the above tree of Jason to the {tree} of the knowledge of good and evil, with worldline {serpent} winding up its trunk, with entheogen/gnosis {fruit} in its mouth, delivered to Eve.

A Third View: Presentism

For the intense altered-state experience of transformation of the mental model of control and time, the Presentism model is unimportant. We can stick with the usual idea that the past is single and exists in a frozen state, as both Possibilism and Eternalism hold. The important shift in consciousness is regarding the future, as contrasted between the Possibilism vs. Eternalism models.

To relate the Presentism diagram to altered-state cognitive phenomenology: the mind’s experience in the altered state is hyper-solipsism: the only thing currently perceived is the present subjective mental constructs that are presented to awareness; one’s own, present experiencing.

Research Links

https://www.bing.com/search?q=possibilism+eternalism

Wikipedia: Eternalism (philosophy of time)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Heracles+Nemean+Lion+plate
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=zeus+snake+god
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sacrificial+altar+snake
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sacrificial+altar+serpent
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%22cista+mystica%22

Summary of the Egodeath theory
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/first-blog-post/

Conceived in Drunkenness: Heroes’ Magic Plants (Ruck)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/conceived-in-drunkenness-heroes-magic-plants-ruck/

Vocabulary Word Hit-Counts in Stanford Article

Possibilism – Tech Terms

possibili 17
possibilis 11
possibilist 2
possibilism 9
possibilit 6

Eternalism – Tech Terms

eternalis 15
eternalist 4
eternalism 11

Possibilism – Metaphors

branch 1
tree 3

Eternalism – Metaphors

block 2
rock 0

Conclusion:
article loves the tech-terms possibilism & eternalism,
article hates the analogy terms block, branch, tree.

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• I Created the Egodeath Theory Because No Writers Properly Explain Transcendent Knowledge
• Dates of Incorporating the Block Universe into the Egodeath Core Theory
• Dates of Mapping the Block Universe to Mythology
• Searching for Intellectual Autobiography Dates
• 1997 Temporary Fallback Strategy: Publish an Outline Theory-Spec
• Amanita Photos 10:10 a.m. 10/10/2010
• About Mythemes

I Created the Egodeath Theory Because No Writers Properly Explain Transcendent Knowledge

All books that tried to explain mystic knowledge, were and are wholly inadequate, irrelevant, and unhelpful. If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have created the Egodeath theory, starting in 1985.

In 1985, I read the field of spiritual self-help and enlightenment books, and it was all too clear, that none of the explanations came anywhere near to what they should have been.

No writers on enlightenment were holding relevant, correct objectives or approaches. That was true in 1985 and remains true in 2021 (aside from my 1988 Cybernetic theory and my 2003 Mytheme theory).

That is why I rolled up my sleeves and said:

“Step aside; I need this knowledge.

“I’m sure Transcendent Knowledge exists to be found and figured out and explained clearly and properly, per modern, direct scientific and engineering explanation, with clear systematization.

“I’ll have to figure out Transcendent Knowledge myself.

“Afterwards, I’ll have to formulate Transcendent Knowledge myself, for everyone.

“I will figure out Transcendent Knowledge and then explain it properly.”

To figure out Transcendent Knowledge, starting in 1986, I read Ken Wilber and Alan Watts.

The Wilber & Watts books were given to me by my father, around 1985.

I also read a handful of other books that my father gave me, or that I got from the university bookstore.

In late 1987 and early 1988, I corrected the malformed explanations provided by Ken Wilber and Alan Watts.

Dates of Incorporating the Block Universe into the Egodeath Core Theory

See also this succinct short history:
About
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/about/

In October 1985, I started theorizing about the mystic state, and studied how the mind works according to meditation and enlightenment, to try to gain non-self-defeating personal self-control across time. I read Ken Wilber’s early books, at my father’s recommendation, because Wilber covers many subjects.

I learned about the block universe in a Modern Physics university course in Spring 1987, 79 years after Minkowski’s 1908 article Space and Time. (I knew the Physics professor since high school, from a Greek Dance college class.)

In April 1987, I changed my approach to idea development about cross-time self-control: I used bigger ruled sheets of paper, and formed topically optimized terms such as mental construct processing, with acronyms for efficiency.

My father died during that Modern Physics class, and so I signed up to retake the course in Spring 1988.

During the second half of 1987, I read Alan Watts’ book The Way of Zen intensively and repeatedly, demanding to make sense of his loose poetic wording. Around December, I succeeded, as if properly re-wording his book, by using a kind of “determinism” that’s implied by the block universe “ground of being”.

On January 11, 1988, before retaking the Modern Physics course, I had my great breakthrough: that ego transcendence was not as Ken Wilber or the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology conceptualized it, but rather, more specifically and potently and forcefully, ego death and ego transcendence is actually a matter of changing the mental model of self-control and time, in the mystic state, to the no-free-will, block universe model.

As a simplified outline of the diverse conceptual resources and influences I had by January 1988, I combined concepts such as:
o Block universe from the Modern Physics university course.
o Ground of Being from Ken Wilber.
o Sudden mental model transformation from Alan Watts (his term is ‘satori’, in The Way of Zen).
o The cognitive approach from Marvin Minsky (Society of Mind) and self-help & the Human Potential movement.

Ramesh Balsekar in the 1990s, in discussions with Ken Wilber, similarly asserted that ego transcendence = no-free-will.

In my great breakthrough in January 1988, I mapped the block universe to the loose cognitive state experiencing of frozen spacetime and non-control. During my 1988 drafts, I settled on the theory-name The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.

I re-took the Modern Physics course in Spring 1988, now with my newly discovered Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in hand.

My highly engaged retaking of the Modern Physics course, after discovering the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, enabled me to go deep on studying Minkowski spacetime.

Retaking the course, so-equipped, also enabled me to get the highest score on the “Spacetime & Special Relativity” exam that any of the professsor’s students had ever gotten.

Later in the course, I challenged the professor; I rejected the Copenhagenism interpretation of Quantum Physics, and I read supplementary books, leading to David Bohm and nonlocal hidden variables “determinism”, and later to James Cushing’s books.

In Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony, Cushing argues that Physics needlessly and too hastily embraced the Copenhagen interpretation.

I have formal university graduation photos showing me holding an article draft of The Theory of Ego Transcendence.

Dates of Mapping the Block Universe to Mythology

All of my writings from early 2001 to 2020 have dates at the Egodeath Yahoo Group, and later posts have links to the the first posts in which I formulated various of my discoveries and developments. Hundreds of people have emails with these postings and dates.

I don’t have the exact posting dates handy at this time. The usual pattern is that I try to pinpoint a date at which I first posted an idea, but there are always earlier roots when I had the idea but less clearly, with fewer connections.

So it’s somewhat of a judgment call, of the date on which I first posted and announced an idea, such as the Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion. Usually, when researching the date of a discovery, I exclaim “Wow, I discovered and posted about that several years earlier than I’d guess!”

For example, I have a circa 1996 ink-brush drawing of a block universe with a snake protruding, with speech bubble of the snake saying “Liberte!”, but I didn’t have full understanding then, of the complete November 26, 2013 discovery that “tree vs. snake = Possibilism vs. Eternalism“. That idea developed and gestated traceably over some 17 years. This is the topic of how idea development works, in the theory of knowledge.

During 1999-2006, I mapped Minkowski’s block universe idea to experiential religious mythology, such as rock and snake.

In November 2011 and finally during Thanksgiving week of 2013, I contrasted tree vs. snake; I contrasted the mundane-state experiencing of “steering through possibilities branching”, vs. the mystic-state experiencing of “being helplessly frozen into a non-branching block universe”.

I thus discovered the meaning of the most archaic mytheme-contrast, of tree vs. snake. This November 2013 breakthrough was through looking at two paintings side-by-side while studying mushrooms in religious art:

1. A black-and-white copy of half of a painting of Eve and the serpent/snake, and a deer with branching antlers, Eve holding an apple and a branch, at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Joseph Campbell’s book The Power of Myth. I had been fairly dismissive of Campbell, and was not well-read in his work, but this particular page of his book, showing a quarter of the data from the painting, was the greatest jackpot of all time, and so the book more than earned its title.

2. A mythology book cover showing a painting from a kylix saucer-“cup”. The kylix (mixed-wine mushroom-wine drinking cup) shows Jason dead, coming forth from a dragon-serpent guarding the non-branching ivy “tree” with the ram’s Golden Fleece hanging on it (sacrificed on a rock altar), in the garden of the Hesperides with Athena and her owl, spear, gorgon-medusa death-head breastplate and its snake-fringe.

Searching for Intellectual Autobiography Dates

For more info, search for key dates, among my writings, including in this Egodeaththeory WordPress weblog & the Egodeath Yahoo Group posts from around 2010-2018.

Egodeath Yahoo Group posts are currently unavailable since Yahoo is about to discontinue the groups on Dec. 15, 2020. Update: December 26, 2020: I have now uploaded a representative subset of the Digests of the Egodeath Yahoo Group to this WordPress site.

Thread title, to search for the long thread of my Egodeath Yahoo Group posts: “Intellectual autobiography”.

The Egodeath Yahoo Group has a long, major thread centered on the tree vs. snake breakthrough, like “the meaning of snake/serpent”.

January 1988; January 11, 1988 – 1st peak breakthrough: block universe non-control, experienced and conceptualized in the loose cognitive state, = ego transcendence.

November 2013; November 26, 2013 – 2nd peak breakthrough: {tree} vs. {snake} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism. You could minimize this as “merely” collapsing my 2006 main article’s mythology decoding for greater efficiency, but it felt extremely major, a week of shaking; involving massive reconnections of associations in my explanatory framework, as Paul Thagard’s anti-mysterious theoretical model of paradigm transformation would describe it.

Heading

See also
Minkowski’s Block Universe
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/minkowskis-block-universe-computational-framework/

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

1997 Temporary Fallback Strategy: Publish an Outline Theory-Spec

Self-control Cybernetics, Dissociative Cognition, & Mystic Ego Death
Titles:
– Self-control cybernetics, dissociative cognition, & mystic ego death
– The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
1997 Core theory summary/specification posted at the Principia Cybernetica website

I posted the above, partly as proof of Priority of Discovery; and partly because I just needed to get something published, as explained below. I couldn’t manage to compose a viable article; every time I tried, it exploded in length and ambition.

So instead, in 1997, I took an alternative approach: only design/ compose/ publish an outline/ theory-specification, as such!

Ever since my Jan 88 breakthrough discovery of block-universe loose-cognition non-control ego-transcendence, I was attempting to write an article for the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, showing what ego transcendence is really about.

But it was hard to write-up adequately the so innovative, so revolutionary Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence; so this outline posting was a stop-gap to get something published while continuing work on the article.

Then in my distinct, Phase 2 theory-work (1998-2006), I added whole giant other half of the Egodeath theory: the Mytheme theory.

I ended up publishing the result in 2006, as my Main article at Egodeath.com, helped to focus, by the specific scnario of working with the Editor of a Salvia magazine:

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death
Michael Hoffman, 2006
http://www.egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm
2020 copy at WordPress:
The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death/

That 2006 article, at last, took from 1988 to 2006 to write, finally fulfilled my January 1988 intention to publish my great breakthrough of January 11, 1988 — now, with its “other half”, its “started in 1998”, co-corroboration theory, the Mytheme theory.

Amanita Photos 10:10 a.m. 10/10/2010

Photos of Amanita Muscaria Mushrooms
Subsection:
Amanita Photos by Michael Hoffman
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/photos-of-amanita-muscaria-mushrooms-to-identify-mushrooms-in-greek-christian-art/#Amanita-Photos-by-Michael-Hoffman

The first time I came across Amanita, it was a bright bunch, all around, and those are my best photos, and my best photo perfectly matches decoding the leopard drinking fountain as upturned Amanita chalice containing water, including rippling in the rain, a pair of drinking water chalices for Dionysus’ spotted leopard.

I remembered to log a datetimestamp, so I looked at my phone. The display read: 10:10 a.m. October 10, 2010

I got my best patch proliferation view at that point, and my best photos, and my best photo matches perfectly to indisputably be a strong, full, complete match.

[todo: clarify date “yesterday”, ~November 14, 2020 then December 14, 2020:]

This patch at this 10 10 datetime was perfect for yesterday completing beyond expected, my photos showing the rim and fountain water collectiion of a pair of specimens, exactly as I had been wishing for, “the rim problem” b/c Heinrich’s full-upturned photo had a mis-match: the art shows a rim (Heinrich’s photo shows no rim, thus failing to match the mosaic).

My own photo, of a less extreme upturned chalice, plus my watter pools, unlike his dry upturned Amanita.

I outdid his photo, by showing water gathered, with ripples in the rain, my first encounter, perfectly achieves a near 100% anatomical morphological morphology form-match with the specimen I saw firsthand and photographed here showing the complete match to support further corroborating evidence that the Greco-Roman art mosaic of Dionysus’ triumph with 4, then 5 clear mushrooms, and the grape-basket shapes, and now solidly proven the Amanita proof in my own best photo on 10/10.

• best patch seen
• best photos taken
• best photo solves “the rim problem” mismatch with the Heinrich photo, along with also
• proving by water collection
• proving by color-match in the gold/orange not red
• proving by spottedness of leopard & toadstool fountain.
• providing solid corroboration of identifying the 4 mushroom-tigers + 1 left garment hem
• demonstrates concept of “degrees of match”, which is useful for confirming as deliberately mushroom-shaped, the grape-basket arrangements:
  • {mushroom-shaped grape-basket} is an Art Mytheme; an Arttheme

About Mythemes

• A Mytheme is the story of flying ram rescuing bro but not sis (king’s children with cloud goddess of rain, who is jeolous of other affair from sacrifice soap opera of the gods of myth, mythic-scale gods, mythic-scale soap opera.

• {mushroom-shaped grape-basket} – as always, I decoded this mytheme by attack vectors of Greek + Christian myth, specifically those two. Not one of them, not World Mythology is purely a backdrop of expertise, not core-crucial knowledge. Look at specifically Greek myth + Christian myth, and the problems of decoding are solved. The two are necessary, and sufficient.

Then, 2013, a major breakthrough to further Complete & expand the Mytheme theory (not really changing the 1988/1997 Core theory, the Cybernetic theory, though!)

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• todo

An excerpt from a talk around when the book Strange Fire came out. He mentions possible book titles midway.

Since then, MacArthur has become a superstar in 2020 due to keeping his church open – I doubt he could have such a small room now; he’d be using the large megachurch room. This talk was closer to 2013 than 2020.

John MacArthur is an exoteric Christian doubting a late-Modern, Charismatic attempt at esoteric Christianity. There are actually 3 positions in play here:
o exoteric Christianity
o esoteric Christianity as attempted by Charismatic Christianity
o esoteric Christianity per the Egodeath theory

33:40 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA2VFWSr0xE&list=WL&t=2020s —
“secret knowledge”
“esoteric gnosis”
“Transcendent Knowledge”

38:42 –
“mysticism”

40:10 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA2VFWSr0xE&list=WL&t=2410s —
“Holy Spirit revelation” – John 2(?) “mentality that opens people up to some aspect of Holy Spirit revelation that I think you just can’t defend scripturally.”

40:45 –
“ecstasy in preaching”

Book:
Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship
John F. MacArthur
November 19, 2013 (the start of the week of my tree vs. snake breakthrough)
http://amzn.com/1400205174

November 19, 2013 — the start of the week of my tree vs. snake breakthrough, which I immediately published explicitly on the World-Wide Web December 2013; secret = hidden and then revealed.

In the Egodeath theory, text successfully describes the dynamics to everyone regardless of their mystic state firsthand experience. My public text references public bible texts.

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• Intro
• Highlighted Excerpts

Intro

For explanation of the 8th & 9th levels in this system in terms of Egodeath theory, see Ptolemaic Astral Ascent Mysticism, section “The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth“
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/ptolemaic-astral-ascent-mysticism/

The following highlighted phrases are mentions of “the Eighth” and “the Ninth”, and mystic-state religious mythemes relevant to the intense mystic altered state, in the Hermetic document “Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth”.

http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/eighthninth.html — excerpts below.

Highlighted Excerpts

“My father, yesterday you promised me that you would bring my mind into the eighth and afterwards you would bring me into the ninth. You said that this is the order of the tradition.”

“I had received the spirit through the power … the understanding dwells in you; in me (it is) as though the power were pregnant. For when I conceived from the fountain that flowed to me, I gave birth.”

“My son, they are spiritual ones. For they exist as forces that grow other souls. Therefore I say that they are immortal.”

My father, begin the discourse on the eighth and the ninth

“Let us pray, my son, to the father of the universe, with your brothers who are my sons, that he may give the spirit of eloquence.”

… But it is not […]. Nor is it a […]. But he is satisfied with her […] him […]. And it is right for you to remember the progress that came to you as wisdom in the books, my son.

“My father, the progress that has come to me now, and the foreknowledge, according to the books, that has come to me, exceeding the deficiency – these things are foremost in me.”
“My son, when you understand the truth of your statement, you will find your brothers, who are my sons, praying with you.”

“My father, I understand nothing else except the beauty that came to me in the books.”
“This is what you call the beauty of the soul, the edification that came to you in stages. May the understanding come to you, and you will teach.”

“I have understood, my father, each one of the books. And especially the …

“My father, from you I will receive the power of the discourse that you will give. As it was told to both (of us), let us pray, my father.”

“My son, what is fitting is to pray to God with all our mind and all our heart and our soul, and to ask him that the gift of the eighth extend to us, and that each one receive from him what is his. Your part, then, is to understand; my own is to be able to deliver the discourse from the fountain that flows to me.”

I call upon you, who rules over the kingdom of power, whose word comes as (a) birth of light. And his words are immortal. They are eternal and unchanging. He is the one whose will begets life for the forms in every place. His nature gives form to substance. By him, the souls of the eighth and the angels are moved …

… those that exist. His providence extends to everyone […] begets everyone. He is the one who […] the aeon among spirits. He created everything. He who is self-contained cares for everything. He is perfect, the invisible God to whom one speaks in silence – his image is moved when it is directed, and it governs – the one mighty power, who is exalted above majesty, who is better than the honored (ones),

“Lord, grant us a wisdom from your power that reaches us, so that we may describe to ourselves the vision of the eighth and the ninth. We have already advanced to the seventh, since we are pious and walk in your law. And your will we fulfill always. For we have walked in your way, and we have renounced […], so that your vision may come. Lord, grant us the truth in the image. Allow us through the spirit to see the form of the image that has no deficiency, and receive the reflection of the pleroma from us through our praise.

“And acknowledge the spirit that is in us. For from you the universe received soul. For from you, the unbegotten one, the begotten one came into being. The birth of the self-begotten one is through you, the birth of all begotten things that exist. Receive from us these spiritual sacrifices, which we send to you with all our heart and our soul and all our strength. Save that which is in us and grant us the immortal wisdom.”

“Let us embrace each other affectionately, my son. Rejoice over this! For already from them the power, which is light, is coming to us. For I see! I see indescribable depths. How shall I tell you, my son? […] from the […] the places. How shall I describe the universe? I am Mind, and I see another Mind, the one that moves the soul! I see the one that moves me from pure forgetfulness. You give me power! I see myself! I want to speak! Fear restrains me. I have found the beginning of the power that is above all powers, the one that has no beginning. I see a fountain bubbling with life. … Language is not able to reveal this. For the entire eighth, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence. And I, Mind, understand.”

“I understand Mind, Hermes, who cannot be interpreted, because he keeps within himself. And I rejoice, my father, because I see you smiling. And the universe rejoices. Therefore, there is no creature that will lack your life. For you are the lord of the citizens in every place. Your providence protects. I call you ‘father’, ‘aeon of the aeons’, ‘great divine spirit‘. And by a spirit he gives rain upon everyone. What do you say to me, my father, Hermes?”

“Concerning these things, I do not say anything, my son. For it is right before God that we keep silent about what is hidden.”

“Trismegistus, let not my soul be deprived of the great divine vision. For everything is possible for you as master of the universe.”

What he had finished praising, he shouted, “Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light. And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth, and the souls that are in it, and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all, creating those in the spirit.”

“It is advantageous from now on, that we keep silence in a reverent posture. Do not speak about the vision from now on. It is proper to sing a hymn to the father until the day to quit (the) body.”

“I am singing a hymn within myself. While you rest yourself, be active in praise. For you have found what you seek.”

“What is proper is your praise that you will sing to God, so that it might be written in this imperishable book.”

“I will offer up the praise in my heart, as I pray to the end of the universe and the beginning of the beginning, to the object of man’s quest, the immortal discovery, the begetter of light and truth, the sower of reason, the love of immortal life. … I am the instrument of your spirit; Mind is your plectrum. And your counsel plucks me. I see myself! I have received power from you. For your love has reached us.”

“Grace! After these things, I give thanks by singing a hymn to you. For I have received life from you, when you made me wise. I praise you. I call your name that is hidden within me:

You are the one who exists with the spirit. I sing a hymn to you reverently.”

“My son, write this book for the temple at Diospolis in hieroglyphic characters, entitling it ‘The Eighth Reveals the Ninth.'”

“My , write the language of the book on steles of turquoise. My son, it is proper to write this book on steles of turquoise, in hieroglyphic characters. For Mind himself has become overseer of these. Therefore, I command that this teaching be carved on stone, and that you place it in my sanctuary. Eight guardians guard it with […] of the Sun. … And put a square milk-stone at the base of the turquoise tablets, and write the name on the azure stone tablet in hieroglyphic characters.

“And write an oath in the book, lest those who read the book bring the language into abuse, and not (use it) to oppose the acts of fate. Rather, they should submit to the law of God, without having transgressed at all, but in purity asking God for wisdom and knowledge. And he who will not be begotten at the start by God comes to be by the general and guiding discourses. He will not be able to read the things written in this book, although his conscience is pure within him, since he does not do anything shameful, nor does he consent to it. Rather, by stages he advances and enters into the way of immortality. And thus he enters into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth.”

“This is the oath: I make him who will read this holy book swear … that he will guard the things that Hermes has said. And those who keep the oath, God will be reconciled with them and everyone whom we have named. But wrath will come to each one of those who violate the oath. This is the perfect one who is, my son.”

Michael Hoffman, updated 2025/04/07‘

_{Site Map: Astral Ascent Mysticism}

Contents:

• How Many Spheres Is Most Useful Above the Fixed Stars?
• August 1, 2022 Updated Model
• Basic Astral Ascent Mysticism Cosmology
• The Three Experiential Mental Worldmodels
• Mapping the Basic Astral Ascent Model to the Three Experiential Worldmodels
• Commentary/Design Reasons
• The Three Experiential Mental Worldmodels
• Update/Cleaned up: Cleaned Up Scheme After Critiquing Hanegraaff Hermetic Spirituality Book

• November 10, 2020: Original Posting/ Research
• 3-Level Model of Ego Transcendence Mapped to 10-Level Geocentric Cosmological Ascent Mysticism
• 2-Level Model of Ego Transcendence Mapped to 10-Level Geocentric Cosmological Ascent Mysticism
• The Entheogen Engine for Experiencing Ascent
• Labelling the Cosmology as Ptolemic or as Geocentric
• The 2-Level Egodeath Cosmology
• The 3-Level Egodeath Cosmology
• The Ptolemaic Cosmology (Mystical Geocentric)
• The Sphere of the Fixed Stars
• Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho, 1568
• Cosmological Review
• The Eighth Reveals the Ninth (The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth)
• List of Levels in the Geocentric Cosmology per the Discourse on the 8th & 9th
• Metaphor/Analogy for Altered-State Death and Rebirth
• Jesus from Outer Space
• Mithraism – Where Was Astral Ascent Mysticism Incorporated
• Modern Cosmology – A Different Potential for Mystic Altered State Mythemes
• Cygnus X-1 (Rush, 1977)
• Astronomy Domine & Interstellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd, 1967)
• See Also

How Many Spheres Is Most Useful Above the Fixed Stars?

Objections to this picture:

• Puts the Elect (creatures) on same level as God (creator).
• Redundant undifferentiated sphere 9 (crystalline) & 10 (prime mover).

Solution: Move elect below God, merge sphere 9 + 10, The result = Davidson Sep 2024 video “What is Hermeticism?” picture at 12:42. In that diagram, 10 outside spheres = God, sphere 9 = transcend eternalism; spirit; integrated possibilism/eternalism. in this image w/ 10 spheres + outside, you can delete sphere 9 + 10 with no change. outside sphere 8 would be “transcend eternalism”.

Just noticed: God is within a sphere. clouds are higher than God. God is a helpless puppet controlled by the cloud gods, held captive prison slave kidnapped. So this image is actually has spheres 9, 10, & 11. level 12 outside spheres. Needless multiplication. argument from cosmos items: a 9-sphere model is best. even that has play, re: has a level 10 outside of sphere 9. I vote for a 10-level, 9-sphere sysetms, on the argument from physical cosmos: we are given:

7 planets
sphere of the fixed stars
implies outside fixed stars
earth

by committing to a 9 -sphere, 10-level system, easy straigthfwd to write & name levels:

level 10) outside spheres, God, Source
sphere 9) outside eternalism; hyper-eternalism; integrated possibilism/eternalism; transcend eternalism; qualified possibilism-thinking. eternalism model not only retained, but also integrated with Possibilism mental model of time, self, and control.
8) fixed stars = eternalism , eternalism model finally retained – but not integrated.
7) sphere 7 = Saturn
1) moon = 1st Psilocybin session = 1/8 eternalism model retained.
0) earth, elements: possibilism

Images, Diagrams

https://prints.sciencesource.com/featured/3-medieval-zodiac-science-source.html – shows jpg:
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/3-medieval-zodiac-science-source.jpg —

https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/364080/view/illustration-of-the-ptolemaic-world-system has picture:
https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/v7000043/800wm/V7000043-Illustration_of_the_Ptolemaic_world_system.jpg —

7 spheres above the fixed stars. Region outside the spheres has {cut right trunk} & {right foot forward}. Bull faces right; POV outside the cosmos.

I prefer this elegant, least-confusion, 9-sphere, 10-level model: it fits well w/ heremetic texts, and fits pretty well with the renaissance elaborated model. Also the scientists say each sphere has 4 spheres, so, we’re always talking – in such diagrams — in terms of a simplification. So, let us simplify! Not add unhelpful spheres that don’t map to the actual physical cosmos bodies. Put precession of equi precession of the equinoxes in sphere 9, put God outside that sphere. Mithraism system is the result.

Video title: What is Hermeticism?
Channel: ReligionForBreakfast, Sep. 20, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COYJi9CKrGI&t=762s
The writer of this episode is Paul Davidson; his blog “Is that in the Bible?”:
https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_Mobile#Spherical_variations – “Spherical variations – The total number of celestial spheres was not fixed. In this 16th-century illustration, the firmament (sphere of fixed stars) is eighth, a “crystalline” sphere (posited to account for the reference to “waters … above the firmament” in Genesis 1:7) is ninth, and the Primum Mobile is tenth. Outside all is the Empyrean, the “habitation of God and all the elect”.”

Spheres or levels 9-11 are the most indeterminate/ redundant/ undifferentiated/ conjectural/ artificial.

What seems most useful for Egodeath theory is a 10-level model with two sphere or levels that are higher than fixed stars / eternalism: the highest level of consciousness = 9, outside of fixed stars, ie, integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking; and then God, above that. ie, I’d place the Elect in sphere 9, and God in sphere 10.

I really like the elegance of that picture from Paul Davidson video. 10, outside the spheres, can be God, Source. 9, outside fixed stars, can be transcendence of heimarmene/ eternalism. 8, fixed stars, is clear-cut in all systems, = Fate – nevermind Davidson’s confusion, and Hanegraaff’s, and fellow scholars.

The confused scholars fixate on just one vague text, Poimandres, that gives them the impression that the highest level of fate is 7, Saturn – while at the same time, they know, from all other texts and models, fixed stars = Fate = Demiurge, thus the highest level of Fate is sphere 8, fixed stars. Their confused and contradictory, waffling, and THE REASON THEY AVOID SAYING “FIXED STARS” AND “SPHERE 8” AND “FATE” TOGETHER, IS, THEY KNOW THEY CARRY TWO CONTRADICTORY SYSTEMS.

The Unresolved Two Contradictory Cosmos Models from Hanegraaff & Davidson etc

is comparable to the inconsistent number of levels beyond sphere of the fixed stars:

The bane of autists is the AWFUL Poimandres phrase:

“the 7 planetary spheres of Fate”

— AS IF sphere 8 fixed stars is NOT Fate!

That is the source of the confusion that causes Hanegraaff to write:

“Whether the fixed stars should be included [with Saturn, sphere 7] or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad [sphere 8] remains an open question for me.” – p. 294, footnote 114, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, by Wouter Hanegraaff, 2022

DOES POIMANDRES, OR DOES IT NOT, PUT FATE AT OGDOAD?
https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/11/11/mythemes-in-the-hermetic-discourse-on-the-eighth-and-ninth/

The Key Lack & Problem: Hermetic Texts Don’t Explicitly Say “Fixed Stars = Fate”

Model 1 (Poimandres): Highest Fate Level is Saturn

Sphere 7 (Saturn) – permitted or possibly implied by vague Poimandres, but generally rejected by ancients & scholars.

Solving this problem is important enough to mention in footnote 114, but is more important than that.

Resolving this disparity is so important, there should have been a chapter in Hanegraaff w/ ramifications of holding fixed stars as being Above Fate vs. = Fate.

Hanegraaff throughout book outright asserts “the Ogdoad above the heimarmene” – p. 258, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, by Wouter Hanegraaff, 2022
oah

Is is possible to quote hermetic texts to prove Hanegraaff is wrong? also quote Hanegraaff in same book, asserting that fixed stars are heimarmene! as if Ogdoad != sphere of the fixed stars! the infamous Y split of his arg’n:

Hanegraaff et al‘s Fatal Contradiction:
Fate = fixed stars = sphere 8 = Ogdoad = above Fate [great summary of analysis!]

Summarizing the contradiction warranting a clear definite pick of model:

Hanegraaff makes these 3 assertions (page numbers available):

• fixed stars = Fate
• Ogdoad = above Fate
• Ogdoad = sphere of fixed stars

Thus footnote 114: “Whether the fixed stars should be included [with Saturn, sphere 7] or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad [sphere 8] remains an open question for me.”

• Fate = fixed stars
• fixed stars = sphere 8
• sphere 8 = Ogdoad
• Ogdoad = above Fate

DOES NOT ADD UP – DOES NOT COMPUTE – CONTRADICTION

IF the writer of Poimanders or “8 reveals 9” thinks fixed stars = above fate, that author CANNOT hold that fixed stars = Fate or that rising higher than Saturn puts you above Fate.

9) Ennead above Fate
8) Ogdoad above Fate (!)
7) Saturn – Fate
6) Jup – Fate
5) Mars – Fate
4) Sun – Fate
3) Venus – Fate
2) Mer – Fate
1) Moon – Fate
0) Earth – Fate

Model 2 (everyone else): Highest Fate Level is Fixed Stars

Though Scholars Know and Say That’s Standard – The Result in Practice Is Two Contradictory Models: Fixed Stars = Above Fate, vs. Fixed Stars = Fate

Given that I cannot quote hermetic texts to prove that fixed stars = Fate, I have to fall back to quoting the inconsistent scholars when, during discussing heremtic texts, teh scholars randomly & inconsistently (but correctly) mention and asssert that “fixed stars = Fate”.

Hanegraaff & Davidson say: following Poimandres,

“Fate = the 7 planets, then you rise above planets THEREFORE ABOVE FATE to read magically labelled vague hazy “the Ogdoad” (they ALWAYS go silent here and avoid saying “fixed stars”, b/c that would reveal their inconsistency & confusion – confusion from ancient writers & confusion from these scholars).

Like the ancient tradition of over-hyping Amanita causes 1st-generation entheogen scholarship to overhype magic-realm mythic Amanita as the uber super-psychedelic, WAY better than Psilocybin.

BUT, Also Hanegraaff & Davidson:

“Everyone knows Fate = fixed stars = sphere 8”.

— contradicting the BAD WRITING OF THE ANCIENTS in Poimandres that caused Justin Sledge to remark, what a bad unphilosophical MESS the Hermetica are, compared to proper Philosophy.

11) Empyrean – God & Elect
10) Primum Mobile
9) crystalline – waters above the firmament –
8) fixed stars – firmament

Simple 10-level model per Egodeath theory:

10) God; Source; the hidden, uncontrollable source of control-thoughts. above your spirit. either a sphere or, region outside sphere.
9) outside fixed stars – integrated possibilism/eternalism – prime mover, Pleroma. your spirit rises to here.
8) fixed stars – firmament

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Primum+Mobile – “Outermost moving sphere: Primum Mobile is the outermost moving sphere in classical, medieval, and Renaissance astronomy. Causes rotation of all inner spheres in the geocentric model. The ninth heaven in the Ptolemaic universe. Beyond the sphere of fixed stars. Moves the underlying spheres in a rapid rotation. In Dante, the physical origin of life, motion, and time. Enclosed by the Empyrean, the mind of God.”

August 1, 2022 Updated Model

April 7, 2025 revision

Basic Astral Ascent Mysticism Cosmology

The Standard Reference Model per the Egodeath Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism

The goal is to simply and usefully relate, by defining a standard reference model:

• mental model transformation re: eternalism
• cosmos model of Hermetism, Gnosticism, Christian, renaissance, Mithraic, neoplatonic.
• the art genre of mushroom-trees (Left/ possibilism/ branching/ unstable vs. Right/ eternalism/ non-branching/ stable)

Mapping Cosmic Spheres, Mental Models, Mushroom-Tree Motifs, & Level Names

April 7, 2025

Mapping Cosmic Spheres, Mental Models, Mushroom-Tree Motifs, & Level Names

sphere # – cosmos body – mental model – mushroom-tree – name
————————————
10 – outside all spheres – source of control-thoughts – God, Source.
9 – outside fixed stars – possibilism/eternalism – {floating feet}, {balance} – spirit; Elect, pleroma, Empyrean, prime mover, Primum Mobile, crystalline waters
8 – fixed stars – eternalism – {Right}, {non-branching} – soul – firmament
7 – Saturn – 7/8 eternalism – body
6 – Jupiter – 6/8 eternalism
5 – Mars – 5/8 eternalism
4 – Sun – 4/8 eternalism
3 – Venus – 3/8 eternalism
2 – Mercury – 2/8 eternalism
1 – Moon – 1/8 eternalism
0 – Earth – possibilism – body – {Left}, {branching} – sublunary, elements

The Three Experiential Mental Worldmodels

3 – qualified possibilism-thinking; integrated possibilism/eternalism
2 – basic eternalism-thinking
1 – naive possibilism-thinking; basic possibilism-thinking

Mapping the Basic Astral Ascent Model to the Three Experiential Worldmodels

3 – qualified possibilism-thinking = {outside fixed stars}
2 – basic eternalism-thinking = {fixed stars}
1 – naive possibilism-thinking = {Earth}

3 – possibilism/eternalism = {outside fixed stars}
2 – eternalism = {fixed stars}
1 – possibilism = {Earth}

3 – qualified possibilism-thinking = {the Empyrean}
2 – basic eternalism-thinking = {the sphere of the fixed stars}*
1 – naive possibilism-thinking = {the sublunary realm (Earth)}

* and {the sphere of Saturn}, which highlights the moment/function of sacrifice when switching to eternalism-thinking. That’s a dynamic, but the above is meant to depict a static view.

For some more detail, picture development of “basic eternalism-thinking” (and in the late phase of that, {sacrifice child}), as spread across the series of peak windows (or a series of celestial spheres/gates).

Eternalism-thinking is developed in the tightcog state in between peak windows too.

Commentary/Design Reasons

Baseline General Purpose Simplified Ptolemaic astral ascent mysticism model.

Designed to be in between complicated models and the Egodeath theory; it can readily converse with diverse complex models and with a suitable expression of the Egodeath theory.

Needs to have a slot for God (source of control thoughts)

Needs to have a region above fixed stars, for ppl who transcended no-free-will / eternalism; ie: Returned to possibilism-thinking consciousness experiential SoC after returning to baseline, remembering/ comprehending the eternalism experiential realization. All specific instances of this model are too complex; to speak coherently to them without taking on unneeded arb complexity, here is my abstracted model that can readily map to any particular such cosmology while also readily usefully mapping to the Egodeath theory (the 3 actual mental worldmodels sequence that’s the real cognitive phen’y referent):

The Three Experiential Mental Worldmodels

3 – qualified possibilism-thinking
2 – basic eternalism-thinking
1 – naive possibilism-thinking

The goal in this scheme is to emphasize the different “lived” experiential modes instead of only focusing on underlying metaphysical epistemological model. “foo-thinking” here doesn’t mean theoretical metaphysical model (“I believe in eternalism block universe with no-free-will”);

rather, it means practical utilizing and (cog phen’y) experiencing of of egoic mental structures at arm’s length while dis-identified from those intact, preserved structures, a la Ken Wilber, even while theoretically/ metaphysically/ philosophically believing in no-free-will / eternalism / block universe/ uncontrollable source of personal control-thoughts.

Even if metaphysically there are only two worldmodels (possibilism vs eternalism), re: experiential cog pheny, there are three mental worldmodels, when you consider the relevant thing, the combination of stage+state:

3) transcendent stage, tightcog state
2) transcendent stage, loosecog state
1) egoic stage, tightcog state

sum that up by “three experiential worldmodels”. naive inexperienced egoic mental worldmodel; that sequence proceeds:

4) transcendent worldmodel, tightcog state (long-term)
3) transcendent worldmodel, loosecog state (restored to stable)
2) egoic worldmodel, loosecog state (unstable/transient/mortal/perishable)
1) egoic worldmodel, tightcog state

Sometimes use the simplest, 2-level model (1st-order model):

2) eternalism
1) possibilism

It’s just less detail. More clarity, less precision. Interesting to start there then double each to form 4-level sequential scheme: (2nd-order model):

2b) eternalism tightcog (qualified possibilism-thinking)
2a) eternalism loosecog (basic eternalism-thinking)
1b) possibilism loosecog (unstable possibilism-thinking)
1a) possibilism tightcog (naive possibilism-thinking)

qualified possibilism-thinking = my Feb 1988 after finding limits of control and why; now that enlightenment = block universe preexisting control thoughts, “How then are we to live??”

How do I act as a controller king now that I’ve seen the true king?

How do I practically (on the surface) act as a control agent, now that I know about the (underlying) uncontrollable source of control thoughts?

Arriving at that problem = entering the era of “qualified possibilism-thinking”.

In contrast, arriving at era/short phase of discovering eternalism-thinking = learning to restore stable control in the loose cognition state/ peak window (across a series of sessions).

“basic eternalism-thinking” is not for ever-after mundane practical life as an exposed controller; it’s for during the peak window.

Ever-after life is conducting mundane daily life after transforming to restore stable control during the peak window of experiencing eternalism.

After returning to baseline (tight cog) SoC, you no longer experience eternalism; you merely remember experiencing eternalism but you experience possibilism (now knowing it’s illusory or just a perspectival overlay).

You experience possibilism while remembering experiencing eternalism. That’s the mental model “qualified possibilism-thinking”.

Update/Cleaned up: Cleaned Up Scheme After Critiquing Hanegraaff Hermetic Spirituality Book

Luther Martin’s book is on its way, to confirm this updated model. He writes about cosmology and Heimarmene/Fate in late antiquity.

November 10, 2020: Original Posting/ Research

10 – the Empyrean – God and the Elect
9 – the Prime Moving sphere (if omitted, Empyrean = 9)
8 – the sphere of the Fixed Stars – Heimarmene; fate
7 – the sphere of Saturn – sacrifice
6 – the sphere of Jupiter
5 – the sphere of Mars
4 – the sphere of the Sun
3 – the sphere of Venus
2 – the sphere of Mercury
1 – the sphere of the Moon
the sublunary sphere; the Earth (Earth, Water, Air, then Fire)

The 2-level and 3-level schemes of Transcendent Knowledge are equivalent and interchangeable. First you have Possibilism, then you have both Possibilism and Eternalism as two distinct tools at your disposal.

The firmament is the sky as a dome.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=firmament

3-Level Model of Ego Transcendence Mapped to 10-Level Geocentric Cosmological Ascent Mysticism

Summary of the mapping of the Egodeath theory’s Possibilism/Eternalism scheme mapped to geocentric ascent mysticism, expressed as a 3-level scheme/model:

3 – Transcending no-free-will Eternalism after repudiating dependence on Possibilism-premised control – the Prime Mover sphere (First Mover, Primum Mobile), and then the Empyrium of supreme power where God and the Elect dwell.
That’s during the 2nd half of the peak initiation session after repudiating Possibilism-premised control, and during the ordinary state and altered state after that.
Combines both of the distinct mental worldmodels and cognitive mental psychological structures: Egoic thinking and Transcendent Thinking; freewill and no-free-will; Possibilism and Eternalism.
This is transcending the block-universe worldline snake.

2 – Experience of no-free-will Eternalism – sphere of Saturn (when/where Possibilism is sacrificed), sphere of the Fixed Stars.
This is the block-universe worldline snake.

1 – Naive freewill Possibilism thinking – Earth, sphere of the moon, sphere of Mercury, sphere of Venus, sphere of the Sun, sphere of Mars, sphere of Jupiter.

2-Level Model of Ego Transcendence Mapped to 10-Level Geocentric Cosmological Ascent Mysticism

Summary of the mapping of the Egodeath theory’s Possibilism/Eternalism scheme mapped to geocentric ascent mysticism, expressed as a 2-level scheme/model:

2 – No-free-will Eternalism after repudiating dependence on Possibilism-premised control – sphere of Saturn (when/where Possibilism is sacrificed), sphere of the Fixed Stars, the Prime Mover sphere (First Mover, Primum Mobile), and then the Empyrium of supreme power where God and the Elect dwell.
That’s during the 2nd half of the peak initiation session after repudiating Possibilism-premised control, and during the ordinary state and altered state after that.
Combines both of the distinct mental worldmodels and cognitive mental psychological structures: Egoic thinking and Transcendent Thinking; freewill and no-free-will; Possibilism and Eternalism.
This is the block-universe worldline snake and transcending the worldline snake.

1 – Naive freewill Possibilism thinking – Earth, sphere of the moon, sphere of Mercury, sphere of Venus, sphere of the Sun, sphere of Mars, sphere of Jupiter.

The Entheogen Engine for Experiencing Ascent

From my main article (https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death/)

Transcending astral fatedness involved ingesting holy food, ambrosial water, and astrological medicine (Fowden 1986).

Fowden, G. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton: Princeton University, 1986.

Labelling the Cosmology as Ptolemic or as Geocentric

Geocentric-Cosmology Ascent Mysticism (150 B.C. – 1543 A.D.)

The label “Ptolemaic Astral Ascent Mysticism” focuses on ‘Astral’, indicating the sphere of the Fixed Stars (travelling up through Heimarmene; Eternalism).

Ptolemy was a bit late (150 A.D.); the system goes back to Hipparchus (150 B.C.), so it could be more broadly useful to label it, when not focusing on mathematical computations, as “the geocentric system” — a more direct label for this cosmology, that sidesteps or downplays the issue of mathematical computation.

I’m mapping the 2-level or 3-level scheme to the 10-level scheme of Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology, which was used for various mystic initiation progress systems, including:
o Mithraism. https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Mithraic-Mysteries-Cosmology-Salvation/dp/0195067886
o Hermes Trismegistus (the very name, thrice-greatest Hermes, suggests a 3-level scheme). Hermetic Corpus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetica
o Christian cosmology.
o Magic mysticism.

Ptolemaic system (mathematical formulation: 150 A.D.; concepts: 150 B.C.)
https://www.britannica.com/science/Ptolemaic-system —
“Geocentric system/model – A mathematical model of the universe formulated by the Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy about 150 A.D., published in his Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses.

“A geocentric cosmology; assumes Earth is stationary and at the centre of the universe.

“The principles of this model were known to earlier Greek scientists, including the mathematician Hipparchus (c. 150 B.C.). The principles culminated in an accurate predictive model with Ptolemy.

“The resulting Ptolemaic system persisted until Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Copernican system  (1543 A.D.).

https://www.britannica.com/science/Copernican-system —
“Copernican system – model of the solar system centred on the Sun, with Earth and other planets moving around it, formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus, published in 1543 A.D. as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”).“

The 2-Level Egodeath Cosmology

2 – Eternalism experiencing & the Eternalism mental model, while retaining, distinctly, the Possibilism mental model.

1 – Possibilism experiencing & the Possibilism mental model

The 3-Level Egodeath Cosmology

3 – The hidden uncontrollable controller & creator of all thoughts; Controller X; the Puppetmaster, and puppets who have both the Possibilism & Eternalism mental models.

2 – Eternalism experiencing & the Eternalism mental model

1 – Possibilism experiencing & the Possibilism mental model

The Ptolemaic Cosmology (Mystical Geocentric)

• 10 – the Empyrean
  the Empyrian
  the Empirium
  the Empirian
  Outside of the moving spheres.
  The highest part of heaven.
  HEAVEN EMPIRIUM – DWELLING PLACE OF GOD AND OF ALL THE ELECT
  Empyrium = supreme power
  CELUM EMPIRIVM HABITACVLVM DEI ET OMNIVM ELECTORVM
  CELUM EMPYRIUM HABITACULUM DEI ET OMNIUM ELECTORUM
  In the Hermetic doctrine of “the Eighth and Ninth”, ‘Ninth’ includes the Prime Mover sphere and the Empyrean, like treating Earth along with Moon as “step 1”.
• 9 – the Primum Mobile sphere
  the Prime Mover sphere
  the Prime Moving sphere
  the First Moved sphere
  the First Mover sphere
  the Ninth sphere
  Transcending no-free-will.
  Not Ancient, but Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance.
  The outermost moving sphere that moves around the earth in 24 hours, carrying the inner moving spheres with it.
  REVOLVCAO DO PRIMO MOBILE EM 24 ORAS
  REVOLUCAO DO PRIMO MOBILE EM 24 ORAS
  https://www.bing.com/search?q=Primum+Mobile

• 8 – the sphere of the Fixed Stars
  the moving sphere (orb) of the Fixed Stars
  the Eighth sphere
  Eternalism-thinking; no-free-will; Heimarmene-ruled.

• 7 – Saturn
  the sphere of Saturn; the moving sphere (orb) of Saturn
  Seems functionally equivalent to penetrating the Fixed Stars.
  Father Time. Sacrifices the child-self; repudiation of Possibilism-premised thinking.
• 6 – Jupiter
  the sphere of Jupiter; the moving sphere (orb) of Jupiter
• 5 – Mars
• 4 – Sun
• 3 – Venus
• 2 – Mercury
• 1 – Moon
  the sphere of the Moon
  The Lunar sphere; the moving sphere (orb) of the Moon; the sphere of Luna

• Earth (Earth, Water, Air, then Fire)
  The sublunar sphere; the sublunary sphere
  https://www.bing.com/search?q=sublunary+sphere

The Sphere of the Fixed Stars

Gnosticism
https://www.thelemistas.org/en/MSS/Wetzel/Gnosticism

“Gnostics hold that esoteric knowledge and self-control enable transcending the flawed creation of the demiourgos. The first, pre-cosmic creations of the demiourgos are the archons (rulers), which rule the seven Ptolemaic planets [Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn] and the sphere of fixed stars. The rule of the demiourgos and the archons is heimarmene (fate), which is cruel, tyrannical and oppressive.”

Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho, 1568

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg
“Figure of the heavenly bodies — An illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho, 1568 (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)”

Cosmological Review

Cosmological Review
by K∴∆∴ & Rufus Opus
https://headforred.blogspot.com/2010/06/cosmological-review.html

“The cosmology I use is based on the system used by the Hermetic magicians of the first through third centuries AD as recorded in the Corpus Hermeticum, specifically the Divine Pymander.

“In this system, the Earth is the manifest physical realm and is at the center of a series of concentric spheres. Within the physical sphere are the four spheres of the elements. Closest to the Earth is the sphere of Earth, followed by Water, Air, and then Fire. These four elemental spheres combine to form the Sphere of Sensation, the physical realm.”

“The Celestial Spheres consist of:
1-7 The Seven Planetary Spheres, the Heavens.
8 The Sphere of the Fixed Stars.
9 The Sphere of the Prime Mover.
[10 The Empyreum, outside the spheres. Not listed here – mh]

“Agrippa and the Hermetic authors of the Corpus Hermeticum began numbering the spheres at 1: the sphere of the Moon.”

The Eighth Reveals the Ninth (The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth)

Update April 7, 2025: yesterday I read David Litwa’s new book, Hermetica I (Litwa, 2025).

See Mythemes in the Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/mythemes-in-the-hermetic-discourse-on-the-eighth-and-ninth/

The geocentric model here has ultimate levels of “the Eighth” and “the Ninth”. A key phrase in this document: “The Eighth reveals the Ninth.”

the Ninth = the hidden uncontrollable controller, invisible God the Creator and cloud-hidden Puppetmaster, the controller operating the hand which visibly protrudes from the cloud. That hand indirectly “reveals” the ever-hidden controller of the hand, hidden by the cloud. The Empyrean, dwelling place of God outside the spheres of the cosmos.

There is no intervening distinct “Primum Mobile” moving planetary sphere/orb in this system.

the Eighth = Heimarmene, the sphere of the Fixed Stars; fatedness; no-free-will

List of Levels in the Geocentric Cosmology per the Discourse on the 8th & 9th

the Ninth – the Empyrean – God. Indirectly visible from the Eighth.
the Eighth – the sphere of the Fixed Stars – Heimarmene; fate
the Seventh – the sphere of Saturn – sacrifice. Discourse starts here.
the Sixth – the sphere of Jupiter
the Fifth – the sphere of Mars
the Fourth – the sphere of the Sun
the Third – the sphere of Venus
the Second – the sphere of Mercury
the First – the sphere of the Moon
the sublunary sphere; the Earth (Earth, Water, Air, then Fire)

__________________

The Election of Hermes Trismegistus, from The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth
https://www.renaissanceastrology.com/hermeticelection.html —

“The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth is an account of a Hermetic initiation.

“The initiate first attains to the wisdom of the first seven spheres [Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn], that of the planets.

“The initiate is then instructed and then initiated by Hermes Trismegistus into the mysteries of the 8th sphere, that of the fixed stars or the Empyrean [sic? ‘Empyrean’ should be moved to the next step. -mh].

“The initiate is then instructed and then initiated by Hermes Trismegistus into the 9th sphere, the sphere of God[sic; the name of the sphere of God is the Empyrean, which the author wrongly placed above. -mh].”

Metaphor/Analogy for Altered-State Death and Rebirth

Ptolemaic Astral Ascent Mysticism is an ancient Western metaphor-system for altered-state death & rebirth.

In Ptolemaic Astral Ascent Mysticism, penetrating past the sphere of Saturn & fixed stars is the most important transformation.

I don’t much care for Modern astrology; it’s less mystical.

Traditional cosmos diagrams are in Latin.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ptolemaic+cosmology

missing from Ptolemaic cosmology:
o Asteroid belt
Neptune – Invisible to the eye. The only planet found by math prediction. First viewed in 1846.
o Uranus
o Pluto

Antiquity knew of only 5 planets (in the modern sense of ‘planet’):
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn

Antiquity had 7 planets; 7 planetary moving spheres/orbs:
Moon
Mercury
Venus
Sun
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn

Jesus from Outer Space

Book:
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ
Richard Carrier
http://amzn.com/1634311949
October 20, 2020

“The earliest Christians believed Jesus was an ancient celestial being who put on a bodysuit of flesh, died at the hands of dark forces, and then rose from the dead and ascended back into the heavens.

“But the writing we have today from that first generation of Christians never says where they thought he landed, where he lived, or where he died.

“The idea that Jesus toured Galilee and visited Jerusalem arose only a lifetime later, in unsourced legends written in a foreign land and language.

“Many sources repeat those legends, but none corroborate them. Why?

“What exactly was the original belief about Jesus, and how did this belief change over time?

“Richard Carrier is a philosopher and historian.

“Summarizes for a popular audience the scholarly research on these and related questions.

“Modern attempts to conceal, misrepresent, or avoid the actual evidence calls into question the entire field of Jesus studies–and present-day beliefs about how Christianity began.”

Mithraism – Where Was Astral Ascent Mysticism Incorporated

Mithraism was cosmological. Transcending Heimarmene (Saturn/fixed stars) led to moving the pole of the fixed stars.

From my 2006 main article:
http://www.egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm#_Toc177337630 —

“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.”

Modern Cosmology – A Different Potential for Mystic Altered State Mythemes

Traditional geocentric cosmology is much more interesting than the trendy meme, flat Earth.

Cygnus X-1 (Rush, 1977)

The modern cosmology has some cool potential, such as the excellent altered-state song, about the black hole journey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlYgt-QdMI —

Song: Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage
Album: A Farewell to Kings
Artist: Rush
Lyrics: Neil Peart – he is a leading altered-state esotericist.
Year: 1977
https://www.google.com/search?q=rush+lyrics+Cygnus+X-1

Lyrics analysis at Egodeath.com:
http://egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22949

Lyrics – for Scholarly Analysis

“In the constellation of Cygnus
There lurks a mysterious, invisible force [hidden source of control-thoughts]
The black hole of Cygnus X-1
Six stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister’s loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night“

Invisible to telescopic eye
Infinity, the star that would not die
All who dare to cross her course [can’t look at the source of control thoughts and live, as monolithic, autonomous control agent]
Are swallowed by a fearsome force
Through the void to be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized at the core [loose cognitive association binding dis-integrates the egoic personal control system]
Or through the astral door [{transformation gate}]
To soar

I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the Rocinante
Wheeling through the galaxies
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery

The X-ray is her siren song, my ship cannot resist her long
Nearer to my deadly goal, until the black hole
Gains control [control is experientially removed from egoic personal control system upon perceiving the uncontrollable hidden source of control-thoughts]

Spinning, whirling, still descending
Like a spiral sea, unending!

Sound and fury drowns my heart
Every nerve is torn apart!

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Geddy Lee / Alex Lifeson / Neil Peart

Cygnus X-1, Book I: The Voyage lyrics © Core Music Publishing, Ole Core Music Publishing, Anthem Core Music Publishing

Astronomy Domine & Interstellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd, 1967)

Interstellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdn7LA56uE

Astronomy Domine (Pink Floyd, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UbNbor3OqQ

Favored Image

{cut right trunk}

See Also

Site Map > Astral Ascent Mysticism
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Astral-Ascent-Mysticism

_{Site Map}

Contents:

• About this Page
• Incoming Quick Notes of Updates

• Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
• Podcast Episode 16 & 26
• Theory Concepts
• Scholarly Fail-Quotes Hall of Shame
• Core Concepts
• Site Map
• Defining “Compelling Evidence” & “Criteria of Proof” for Mushrooms in Christian Art
• Transcendent Knowledge Podcast episodes
• Crafting “Optimized Concept-Labels” for Reuse, with [acro]/ Keyboard Shortcuts
• Key Mythemes
• Egodeath Yahoo Group
• About
• Theory of Mythemes: Decodings, Mappings, Referents, & Breakthroughs
• Regulated Therapy as a False Religion, Unqualified & Dangerous Without Egodeath Theory
• Why Transcendent Knowledge Is of Highest Value
• Catching up with Hanegraaff’s Western Esotericism
• Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis)
• Summary of the Egodeath theory
• Minkowski’s Block Universe
• Valentinian Freewill Compatibilism

About this Page

This page is only for announcing revisions of older WordPress articles, which appear further down the list of articles.

Incoming Quick Notes of Updates

• Proof article: added subsection [2:30 a.m. January 20, 2021]
  Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe
  New subsection:
  High While Passing the Exam, or After Banquet Afterwards?
  https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/proof-canterbury-psalters-mushroom-trees-are-psilocybe/#High-While-Exam
  I considered this problem over the past two days or so. Or, a better date to retrieve: When did I notice and screencap the lifted garment and add it to the Lifted Garment gallery page? A week ago or so.

• Copied all Anti-Amanita Sections from “Idea Development page 9” to new page:
  • Move from “Amanita, Christianity, Surface Form, Low Esotericism” to “Psilocybe, Greek + Christian, Cognitive Effects, High Esotericism”

• Moved Ideas for Podcast Topics from Podcasts Page to New Page:
  • Ideas for Podcast Topics

• In page Esoteric Christianity Books: Pagels; Freke & Gandy, I added nice contrast-lists:
  • 1-for-1 Contrast of Higher vs. Lower Christians’ Consistent Sets of Positions (= Eso vs. Exo) from Pagels’ Book Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis
  • 1-for-1 Contrast of ‘Gnostic’ vs. ‘Orthodox’ Consistent Sets of Positions (= Eso vs. Exo) from Pagels’ Book The Gnostic Paul
  • Motivation: To support doing a podcast episode about Exoteric/Esoteric.

• Podcast page: Possible Topics
  https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/07/transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episodes/
  Added possible topics for podcast, some of them mentioned by Max:
  • Three Phases of Gnosis: Unstable Nondual Awareness; Transformation Focused on Non-Control; Stable Nondual Awareness
  • Questioning Assumptions About Atemporal Mystics Using High Dose
  • A Special Class of Mystics, Who Blend the Two States into One? Or Just, Anyone who so Tries?
  • Philosophy of Time, Causality, & Determinism, Including Half-Baked Hybrids
  • Why Transcendent Knowledge Is of Highest Value
  • Exotericism vs. Esotericism; Exoteric Esotericism (Low, Quasi-Esotericism); Low Entheogen Theory = Amanita

• [9:41 p.m. January 11, 2021] I’m satisfied with my latest analysis of the two contradictory Kafei’s: He’s alternating between a normal, good methodology, and a bad methodology that has faulty assumptions and position-conflations around high dose. This latest analysis is spread between two cross-linked sections, including my commentary on Strange Loop’s podcast episode 25.
  Page: Commentary on “Transcendent Knowledge Podcast” Episode 25 (2020-07-05) Strange Loop
  Subsection: 1:04:30, Is ‘Determinism’ the Reason for Misunderstanding the Egodeath Theory?
  https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/commentary-on-transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episode-25/#1-04-30
• Added linked TOC to that page.

• Mystics’ Writings Unhelpful
  https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/01/07/mystics-writings-unhelpful/
  Added YT timestamp-URL (at end of page) where Max saying “really, really high”

• Created a new WordPress website to contain all the 183 digests of the Egodeath Yahoo Group postings.
  https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com
  The sampling of digests at the present site will be deleted or suppressed. I need to be able to Search in recent WordPress pages without returning the Egodeath Yahoo Group postings.

Proof that the Canterbury Psalter’s Leg-Hanging Mushroom Tree Is Psilocybe

New URL:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/proof-canterbury-psalters-mushroom-trees-are-psilocybe/

January 13, 2021
Added the following sections, a relatively neat writeup of the Jan 3 2021 solution of palm-up and pink’s facial expression:

• The Concerned Father Bringing His Maiden for Psilocybe Initiation; the Father Depicts an Initiate’s Serious Concern and Reverence
• Strict Prerequisites for Ingesting the Banquet: The Lesser-Mysteries Textbook Learning is the Prerequisite, to Successfully Accomplish Full Initiation and Transformation
• Inventory of Bowls and Assigning Ownership and Timeline
• Simple States: Completely Done Ingesting, or Just About to Begin Ingesting
• The Meaning of the Pink Initiate’s Facial Expression

December 25, 2020
Retired this “Post” page, created new web “Page”:
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/proof-that-the-canterbury-psalters-leg-hanging-mushroom-tree-is-psilocybe/

November 25, 2020
o Added section: Gentle {lamb}, {dove} and {Holy Spirit}, Contrasted with {ram}, {eagle}, and {frenzy} or {mania}

November 23, 2020
o Added important 2-page section, balancing out the Teacher/Guide Requirements section:
Students Are Required to Fully Understand Eternalism First, Before Permitted to Become Initiates in Practice

Podcast Episode 16 & 26

• 26 (2020-12-06) Kafei (appearance 4), Cyberdisciple
• 16 (2019-11-17) Kafei (appearance 3)

[January 3, 2021]

At top, added caveats & disclaimers section:

Good Values, and Lessons Learned

Egodeath Yahoo Group Digest 183

[December 31, 2020]

Manually added 2019-2020 postings, especially:
Summary statements of Egodeath theory

Podcast Episode 14

Added original posting from the Egodeath Yahoo Group, to podcast episode 14 summary.

14 (2019-06-18) Cyberdisciple re: Kafei

Theory Concepts

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/key-theorizing/

December 24, 2020
o Added section:
Definitions of Common Terms that I Mean in a Specific Way, Throughout My Writings
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/key-theorizing/#Nav-Definitions-of-Terms-I-Mean

Sections/Coverage

• The Egodeath theory — Meta-Theory
• The Cybernetic theory — How Loosecog Works
• The Mytheme theory — How Mythemes Work
• The Mytheme theory — History of Esotericism

Scholarly Fail-Quotes Hall of Shame

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/scholarly-fail-quotes-hall-of-shame/

December 23, 2020
o Added two quotes from John Lash:
“Variations of the Wasson theory, including considerable departures from it”
“associations between psychoactive mushrooms and the historical Jesus, famously argued by John Allegro”

Core Concepts

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

December 21, 2020
o Added a “key phrases” (“optimized concept labels”) section, roughly outlined all Phrases.
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/glossary-for-the-egodeath-theory/#Key-Phrases
v1, 1987: acronyms
v2, 2010: mobile soft keyboard
v3, 2016: desktop keyboard
v4, 2020: managed keyboard shortcuts system

December 5, 2020
o Changed title from “Dictionary of Egodeath & the Altered State” to “Egodeath Concepts“.
o Added linked TOC.
o Moved-out Concept-sections that are not Core Concepts, to a new page:
Theorizing-Concepts
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/key-theorizing/

Previous titles of page

Egodeath Concepts
Dictionary of Egodeath & the Altered State

Site Map

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#Repealing-Prohibition-of-Psychedelics

December 18, 2020
o Finished re-outlining the Site Map. It is working well.

December 6, 2020
o Added section: “Repealing Prohibition of Psychedelics“
To reduce spaghetti-linking, leverage such sections in Site Map.
Utilize dup entries across sections within the Site Map page.

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/

December 10, 2020
o Added section:
Three Distinct Families of Mushroom Shapes: Liberty Cap, Amanita, Cubensis
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/13/compelling-evidence-criteria-of-proof-for-greek-bible-mushrooms/#Three-Distinct-Families-of-Mushroom-Shapes
o Hyperlinked all subsections from TOC. Removed “Section #:” prefixes.
o Condensed the set of critical section headings about the 3 levels of evidence, to pop the key words:
Literal Depictions
Stylized Depictions
Depictions of Effects

November 27, 2020
o Added “six types of evidence”, short summary in the TOC at top, and near top of article, and I expanded the top of the section.
o The section’s been cleaned up recently.
TOC summary:
Section 3: 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)

November 18, 2020
o Added more content (images and analysis) to this flagship article, including high-resolution Canterbury Psalter images (hanging man, God, & banquet), legged snake poking head through branches on underside of Psilocybe cap. It is ready to read.

Transcendent Knowledge Podcast episodes

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/07/transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episodes/

December 6, 2020
o Added Episode 26, December 26, 2020 – Max Freakout, Cyberdisciple, & Jimmy

Crafting “Optimized Concept-Labels” for Reuse, with [acro]/ Keyboard Shortcuts

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/keyboard-shortcuts-key-phrases-embodying-the-egodeath-theory/

December 6, 2020
o Repurposed this entire page, to rightly emphasize firstly, creating great phrases; and only following after that, defining [acro]/keyboard shortcuts to make the great phrase rapidly usable.

Previous title of page

Keyboard Shortcuts – Key Phrases Embodying the Egodeath Theory

Key Mythemes

November 28, 2020
o Filled in some actual, good content.

December 5, 2020
o Added linked TOC.
o Larger heading for each entry.

November 28, 2020
o Filled in some actual, good content.

Previous titles

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

Yet another previous title: Glossary for the Egodeath Theory. (true??)

Egodeath Yahoo Group

Egodeath Yahoo Group (2001-2020)

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/egodeath-yahoo-group-ending/
December 2, 2020
o Added info about backups, uploadable HTML files obtained.

About

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/about/

November 26, 2020 – Thanksgiving Day
o Added real content.
o Added two hyperlinks for TOC, but, About page is very unstable! Need to move to separate page, maybe bottom of Summary page?
Todo: Make About page short. Move out the content.

Theory of Mythemes: Decodings, Mappings, Referents, & Breakthroughs

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/theory-of-mythemes/

November 28, 2020
o Filled in some actual, good content.

November 27, 2020
o Retitled from Theory of Mythemes.
o Added: What constitutes a good, complete, satisfying decoding?

Previous Titles

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

Regulated Therapy as a False Religion, Unqualified & Dangerous Without Egodeath Theory

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/24/regulated-therapy-as-a-competing-false-religion/

November 19, 2020
o Added at top:
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/
This top-tier illuminated manuscript depicts a trip guide at a sacred-food Psilocybe banquet, and a teacher who knows the highest wisdom teaching students about how to endure Psilocybe and become spiritually enlightened, with the controlled threat of loss-of-control that causes correctly re-aligning self-control to trust in the higher controller as the actual source of thoughts.

A trip guide is a dangerous, unqualified fool or fraud unless he knows this religious wisdom.

Why Transcendent Knowledge Is of Highest Value

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/why-transcendent-knowledge-is-of-highest-value/

November 18, 2020
Finally got some real traction. Translate/invert question to “Why is being a lie (a false, contradictory ctrl agent, an imposter claimant to the throne/crown) the worst thing in the world?”
o At bottom, worked up incoming idea, then copied to top.

Catching up with Hanegraaff’s Western Esotericism

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/catching-up-with-hanegraaff/
o Added link to interesting page https://www.wouterjhanegraaff.net/about

Psychedelic Mystery Traditions (Hatsis)

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/

November 13, 2020
o Improved flow around the ellipses that replaced mention of Brinckmann’s book.
o Increased attention to the “two specimens” Panofsky included with his letter to Wasson.
o Wrote up a Verdict section against Wasson.
o Differentiated the 4 contentious assertions from Allegro.

November 12, 2020
o Added Brinckmann’s book.

November 11, 2020
o Added Bibliography at bottom.

November 10, 2020
o Moved sections around.
o Added photos of Amanita-styled containers with a flat (straight edge) base.
o Added photos of Amanita specimens with a distinctive serrated base.
o At bottom, added links to Cyb’s weblog articles about Hatsis or Brown, & links to Egodeath webpages about Letcher’s Hatsis-like book Shroom.
o Some cleanup (there’s still 2 outdated 1st-pass sections, marked as such).

November 8, 2020
o Expanded.

Summary of the Egodeath theory

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/first-blog-post/

November 11, 2020
o Expanded.

Minkowski’s Block Universe

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/minkowskis-block-universe-computational-framework/

November 11, 2020
o Added intro summary of Egodeath theory, optimized around block universe worldlines.
o Moved history of Egodeath theory development to a dedicated article.

Valentinian Freewill Compatibilism

https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/valentinian-freewill-compatibilism/

November 9, 2020
Added descriptions of 2-level and 3-level systems near top.