With regard once more to mushroom-tree representations, we cannot be sure that the artists wished to represent psychoactive mushrooms; indeed, it is unlikely that this was the case.
Samorini the leading entheogen scholar & asserter, 1998
Hall of Shame page quote incoming: entheogen scholarship consistently pretends to moderately assert, while in practice, they DELETE DELETE DELETE mushrooms from art.
Entheogen scholarship is hopelessly compromised.
To show how reasonable, trustworthy, and compromised they are, Brown & Brown make a show of throwing the Saint Walburga tapestry into the river, on the basis of the Mushroom Exception to art interpretation: in the case of mushrooms only, an item in art can only represent one thing.
The tapestry represents a vial, “therefore”, it cannot represent amanita (though we’re going to inconsistently nevertheless prominently display the tapestry in our 2016 book gallery & 2019 article collection of amanita images in Christian art).
VIAL AND “THEREFORE” TOTALLY NOT AMANITA
Carl Ruck asserts that there were one or two people in the Church who used mushrooms (by which he exclusively means secret Amanita alchemy).
Brown multiple times writes that mushrooms were secret back then in the church (despite claiming his subtitle means it’s just a secret to us now).
I agree with Muraresku against Brown’s article book review of Muraresku: the only means of enlightenment, Transcendent Knowledge, is psilocybin (and exact equivalent plants).
I am as far ahead of the Ardent Advocates as they are ahead of Brown and all the other cheerleaders for “non-drug traditional methods of the mystics” and the phony entheogen scholars whose brand posture is to remove mushrooms from the Peak Mushroom middle ages while pretending to assert their presence.
{feather} decoded 5 a.m. September 15, 2022 by Cybermonk. eg in Browns’ Church of Saint Martin mural.
crop by Cybermonk sep 15 2022removed branching feathers and branchesPhoto Credit: Julie M. Brown, crop by Cybermonk , feathers explanandum problem became clearer with 1960s(?) recently added photo
question answered 5:00 am Sep 15 2022 Cybermonk
question raised when examining Brown Church of Saint Martin image eg when Brown emailed bold ital cut treetops branches quote from 2019 article with Browns’ emphasis added ~March 2022.
– removed branching, underneath higher controller, cloak of appearances mental model underneath rider carried on path founded/based on right leg non-branching model not left leg branching model. rider image provided by Cyberdisciple.
like I asserted around 2002 for why snake: not venom, not shedding skin but BECAUSE MORPHOLOGY
crop by Cybermonk sep 15 2022extracted from slide in Hatsis’ video which proves no msh in Christian artone of Brinckmann’s 1906 morphology plates twice recommended to Wasson by art historian Panofsky in May 1952left fingers branching, right fingers non-branching. 8:17 a.m. Sep 15 2022: ring & pinkie held so as to represent/ allude to cut branchesleft fingers branchingright fingers non-branching, & ring & pinkie are isomorphic with cut branches.pink key tree. Eadwine knows we’re idiotsart credit Cybermonk ~1992left hand = branching, right nontoo dumb to draw a tree at Snodfart’s Junior University. left = branching premise, right = non-branching reality psilocybin experiential revelation illus: Cybermonk 2006Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. crop by Cybermonk. Left hand = branching, right nonright hand’s fingers: index middle = branching, ring pinkie = non-branching. left hand = no basis foundation for control.serrated base morphology. photo credit: not Julie M Brownserrated base morphology. A Golden Guide: Hallucinogenic Plants. Richard Evans Schultes branching branch, legs, & antlers, holding onto branch nov 29 2013 Cybermonk (with left hand April 2022 Cybermonk see posts for exact date)John Rush’ Mystic Y Branching imagepublished by Browns 2019. big brain most-influential art historian says branching should be omitted from branching-message treescrop by Cybermonk left tree branching, serpent and right tree non-branching of possibilities and personal control steering failed to recognize handedness theme in 2013 😞, figured based on turn to look to right at Lethe then Hatsis’ 4th entheogen scholarship treatment presentation of Dancing Man xmas 2015 right leg = eternalism model then nov 2020 full breakthrough on handedness then March 2022 full full breakthrough during art series breakthroughnon-branching rock altar block universe John Rush raised/lifted garment = knows difference between his branching left-hand mental model vs. his non-branching right-hand mental model of time, possibility, and controlpassing student knows right leg stable control basis foundation grounding; raised lifted garment cloakbranching vine-leaf tree and with cut branched. A branching-message tree per Cybermonk March 2022.my crop makes the msgs too obvious to state 😑 🌳🐍
People Don’t Want Transcendent Knowledge as Revelation of Eternalism Which Neutralizes Egoic Power
Shocking Breakthrough Realization Why People Don’t Have or Want Transcendent Knowledge as Revelation of Eternalism Which Absolutely Disempowers and Neutralizes Egoic Control Power
NOT brought to you by Wasson, who censored Panofsky’s PAIR of letters to withhold this book from you. Holding a removed (negated) branch in right hand, as opposed to holding onto a branch (affirming it) with left hand, while perceiving the higher controller that’s above the cloak of appearances (the branching-premised worldmodel of personal control)holding the egoic possibilism possibilism-thinking mental worldmodel garment on left arm, and holding branch in left hand
It’s funny how John Lash blanket-accuses the entire Newage of being a giant ego inflation project.
Ken Wilber seems to accuse the entire Boomer generation of that too, and my kind of breakthrough today is realizing that most all intellectual striving is the egoic substitute Atman project as described by Ken Wilber.
This explains the motivation for so many efforts against eternalism.
This is why we don’t have simple Transcendent Knowledge – because people don’t want eternalism.
When Jesus told the truth to his followers, of the narrow non-branching way, they no longer followed him.
Freewill power is the Atman project.
I want enlightenment and freewill egoic empowerment.
King Ego
Shocking Breakthrough Realization Why People Don’t Have or Want Transcendent Knowledge as Eternalism Revelation
It is helpful that people emphasize that it’s shocking, if my latest speculations are sound.
I didn’t want to speak too lightly when describing my latest idea as a “breakthrough” – from tail end of Parts A-N of Episode 219 and especially from yesterday’s Episode 220 such as near 20:00, but this idea, of why people construct other versions of religion, really could be kind of a game-changer that answers my long-standing question of:
“Why did it wait until 1988 / 2006 to plainly explain Transcendent Knowledge?”
Answer: Because people don’t like Transcendent Knowledge, given that it does what it claims: Transcendent Knowledge totally disempowers & cancels egoic thinking, as I claimed in January 1988 about block-universe determinism in the loose cognitive state from entheogens.
Ken Wilber’s idea of the Atman project, as I was reading around 1986, seems more relevant than ever: pursuing enlightenment by means that prevent it; a million substitute “projects” holding Transcendent Knowledge at bay.
All the various quirks and errors of Wouter Hanegraaff’s book Hermetic Spirituality come together and fit in a single pattern: he makes the set of mistakes he does, because he is trying to avoid eternalism and replace that disliked revelation by a false, inverted story of “rescue from eternalism into possibilism”; from the revelation of disempowered ego, to a pseudo-revelation, a substitute to block Transcendent Knowledge, as if a revelation of empowered ego.
imagine ego death and rebirth being from eternalism-thinking to possibilism-thinking
Imagine ego death and rebirth being from eternalism-thinking to possibilism-thinking – which would amount to changing from naive possibilism-thinking to naive possibilism-thinking.
Egoic freewill power SAVED! Saving egoic “freedom” only required removing all the stars from the sky to move them to below/before the rebirth gate at level 7 Saturn, and moving cosmic slot 8 up to fasten it to the actually hypercosmic sphere/slot 9.
That was a close call! Our freewill-premised egoic freedom power of autonomous control almost got undermined by Transcendent Knowledge of “transformative rebirth from possibilism into eternalism”.
image credit for being too dumb to draw a tree: Snodfart’s Junior Academy, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article: Metaphysics of Time
I usually avoid the word ‘ego’ and disparaging “ego”, but, it’s useful and maybe I should “demonize” ‘ego’ this way; ego = egoic thinking = naive possibilism-thinking.
The unregenerate mental worldmodel is, specifically & technically, literalist ordinary-state possibilism, falsely & unstably premised on autonomous control.
As opposed to analogical psychedelic eternalism recognized as dependent control.
Thank you, Egodeath community, for suggesting, like Max Freakout & Erik Davis’ book Led Zeppelin IV p. 118 & 122, emphasizing the two-level model: the mind switches from possibilism to eternalism, as an experiential mode and mental worldmodel in the loose cognitive association state that comes only from psilocybin and exactly equivalent plants.
That seems to work well as per my latest, Episode 220, explaining the reason why people run to a 3-level system: same reason that Quantum Newage is popular:
to construct an ego-empowering (ie naive possibilism-thinking premised) substitute, neutralized version of Transcendent Knowledge that just serves to avoid and substitute for actual Transcendent Knowledge, which is “bad” because that’s what actually undermines & cancels ego.
Ego also favors approaches that do not threaten its reign: favor cave meditation imagination exercises because they don’t work and do not threaten naive possibilism-thinking.
I worry about making cheap claims about making “breakthroughs” all the time, but given my context/situation, it makes sense to kind of “expect” frequent major breakthroughs.
The world is that far from our culture’s possessing Transcendent Knowledge. That’s how big the gap is, between Transcendent Knowledge vs. current culture’s way of thinking: 10 major breakthroughs away, they’ve left it for me to close that gap.
If I had received Muraresku’s September 2020 invitation to review his galleys, at the time, I fear I wouldn’t have discovered in Nov 2020 Eadwine’s image of nonbranching initiation.
I still haven’t read his book The Immortality Key, though people are asking me to review it.
The image from Brinckmann’s book is important because the tree that the guy is in, is purely composed of branches and he clearly holds a branch, as such – no leaves or caps.
Tree Stylizations in Medieval Art – 1906, Brinckmann.
The tree on the right is stylized as {branches}, only.
“… the Church of Saint Martin (Figure 8). According to Kupfer (1993):
as Christ rides the ass followed by his disciples “several youths excitedly clamor up trees to break off branches, while others unfurl their mantels at his feet. The second phase of the episode on the west wall isolates the walled city of Jerusalem…Youths, their mouths open in song, crowd the gates; others within the city drape the walls or cut away at the treetops” [emphasis added] (p. 122).
Emphasis added by Brown in 2019 article but not as much in 2016 book.
Prof. Brown happened to copy from the article into email to us, with little context, thus extra-highlighting “cut … branches” to make me see and realize and perceive what I missed in the softer presentation in the 2016 book, and failed to perceive despite the book shipping a full 3 years after my “{tree vs snake} = possibilism vs eternalism”, top-2 breakthrough in November 2013.
Brown & Cyberdisciple provided materials for my Brinckmann page/posting including a guy holding a branch, as if the art historian writing:
“A youth excitedly clamors up a tree to break off a branch, while others unfurl their mantels at Jesus’ feet.”
Levels of Donkey Consciousness, 2-level control system
See the levels: Jesus the higher-awareness perception of the higher control level, carried by the donkey without steering. The donkey follows the narrow non-branching path [… alongside the vinyard, with no room to turn to the left or to the right, when the donkey sat down and halted at the angel blocking the path… the donkey could see the angel of death, but Balaam couldn’t], right hoof down, left hoof lifted without weight on it.
Need images of rider horse donkey path to tree snake trunk debranched.
Need images of visual mythemes: rider horse donkey on path to see tree snake cut trunk debranched.
{snake w/ branching legs} = salamander or lizard.
There are funerary bas reliefs.
Is the “Achaean Rider/horseman” a standard image?
Rider on horse or donkey on a path walking on cloaks, with right foot & hoof down & shown, represents perceiving the 2-level model of control in the psilocybin-induced loose cognitive association state: local personal control agency vs. higher transpersonal controller.
Why always travelling left to right? To show right hoof/foot (down), representing the eternalism basis/foundation of control, not possibilism as the basis as experienced in the ordinary, tight-binding state of consciousness.
Underneath the donkey layer in fact is positioned the mental worldmodel, the false naive possibilism-thinking worldmodel, the mind’s cloak cloaking the veiled reality of non-branching eternalism.
Ariadne is shown holding the egoic possibilism possibilism-thinking mental worldmodel garment on left arm, and holding a branch in left hand.
Wouter Hanegraaff wants to take off Dionysus’ sacred divine garment and put on Ariadne’s cloak instead and call that “rebirth into the Ogdoad above the heimarmene”.
That image is used on the cover according to the copy of the book that Cyberdisciple found at Archive.org. Probably not on the cover of the 1906 printing. Plate 7 at end of short 80 page book, recommended emphatically by Panofsky to Wasson in May 1952.
No whisper of the book from Wasson, who would rather harangue and belittle mycologists (John Ramsbottom) for not asking art historians their “conclusions” from their “great familiarity” with such msh tree images in Christian art.
Brown blew up this cover-up operation, without even realizing that particular expose by publishing the pair of letters in their 2019 article.
Browns’ 2019 article also adds more highlighting at Saint Martin Church’s frescoes where art historian wrote “youths … cut branches from trees” (bold italic in article, merely italic in Browns’ 2016 book).
My Reply to Brown Sep 13 2022
I confirmed that I read your review of Muraresku’s book, based on your coverage of academic suppression of Ruck.
No wonder academics are such total chickens and they put the task onto me to speak truth.
They don’t allow themselves to speak truth, and I am scathingly condemning them for that – they are failures!
They hobble and mentally handicap themselves by their superstitious backwards anti-intellectual taboos.
I have 3 huge objections to just this one paragraph from Muraresku that instantly leap to mind:
Per Brown’s review article:
Muraresku purports to explain: “How psychedelics were the shortcut to enlightenment that founded Western civilization: first in the Eleusinian Mysteries, then in the Dionysian Mysteries. How paleo-Christianity inherited this tradition from the Ancient Greeks, later passing it to the witches of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. And how the Vatican would repeatedly suppress the original, psychedelic Eucharist to rob Christians of the beatific vision–first in Europe, and then around the world after the Catholic colonization of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A truly global conspiracy.”
Objection 1:
Against a crude “propagation” model; for a “cognitive nature of how the mind works” explanation instead: Transcendent Knowledge is discovered and rooted anew, born anew, in every generation because that’s how the mind works.
Then after that new fresh discovery, the person checks against tradition and other contemporaries:
“Did you experience the same revelation (ie of nonbranching, eternalism-thinking instead of branching, possibilism-thinking)?”
Objection 2:
This unthinking meme is infuriating, it needs to die: “psychedelics were the shortcut to enlightenment” – no! Entheogens are the *only* way to enlightenment.
The alleged “other, traditional methods” are nothing but a lie; a substitution & avoidance project. They DO NOT work at all.
The entire reason the fake non-drug methods are popular is precisely BECAUSE they don’t work, because they support egoic delusion and avoid threatening it.
The “other, non-drug methods” serve the purpose of avoiding Transcendent Knowledge, which kills egoic thinking and the egoic self-identity as autonomous control-agent.
Objection 3:
Per one point in your 2019 article Conclusions section, we need a non-crude model of “secret” use of psilocybin mushrooms within the normal mainstream Church.
But entheogen scholars are guilty of the massive error: entheogen scholars would rather tell their immature sob-story & fake/forced framing about the “big bad church” that was so evil, they entirely eliminated all entheogens (and here are thousands of images of mushrooms inside the mainstream church, to prove it).
Entheogen scholars don’t care that they are directly self-contradictory; the only thing they care about is telling their false, immature sob-story narrative framing of “look how awful the church is”.
Entheogen scholars are willing to delete all mushroom imagery from Christian art, in order to prop up their false anti-Church narrative.
Ruck limits entheogens in the church to 1-2 people, elite ecclesiastics only, at any point in time. The “moderate” entheogen theory of Christianity is actually extremely minimal & stingy, robbing Christianity of 99% of its entheogens.
In theory, no one needs to listen to my voice recordings (except me for my benefit) because any important points are sure to come out in my text postings.
A lot has to do with time of day and speaking volume.
But even in the worst-case scenario now – speaking quietly at end of day – my voice is indeed in better shape in many ways, and my skills better than the recording series that started Jan 20 2021 and became the Egodeath Mystery Show.
For example, I know not to be too close to a cardioid-pattern mic when quiet, to avoid murky mud.
Feb. 2021, my voice had unknowingly (low self-awareness) become degraded for multiple reasons, including overconfidence and therefore lack of effortful practice, and also due to limited experience with various mics and speakers.
Doing the show has certainly given me a stronger voice, broadly/ in many ways. I didn’t know how much I needed to learn and work on.
My 1988 party speech intro might sound like good vocalizing, but it’s is a bit unfair comparison because that 1988 speech was speaking loudly (and standing) which gives different results than under the constraint of speaking quietly at night.
I now know that speaking quietly at night at end of day is bound to give worst results, so I can “play” that knowledge and deliver better results. I know how to pull it off now, but that’s a worst-case situation, an uphill battle – it’s better to do production work of previous recordings instead, late at night.
My 1988 party announcement speech has major problems – I wasn’t prepared nearly enough, and the audience/friends’ questions were way too personal; out of control presentation.
Speaking quietly in the morning is different still; that’s a strong/power scenario (strength) for me.
By April 2021 when I paused the initial batch of show episodes, I had fixed most of the problems (technology, voice, and content) but still needed practice and refinement, and needed keeping up making an effort.
I “died” when I heard how extremely bad my voice was around Feb. 2021, I thought my equipment was broken! Including unsteady shakiness of voice.
I couldn’t believe how extremely awful some results were with certain gear, time of day, and speaking volume.
Daily practice has helped in too many ways to list. One goal is consistency; never having awful voicing for a given 1.5-hour episode, like happened often in March 2021 when I was hit or miss – hadn’t really mastered it to the needed threshold of reliable adeptness.
Daily practice and intensive troubleshooting and developement of the show, first set of episodes, was February-March 2021.
Skipped April 2021-February 2022.
Daily practice for set 2 of the show: From March 7, 2022 to present (September 11, 2022).
Now I have to finish producing last week’s intensive scholarship reading of Hanegraaff’s book (keywords search). I spent entire Monday holiday producing about 2/3 of recordings range Ep219 = VOX_TK_3949.wav-VOX_TK_4033.wav.
I’m wanting to separate the creation of the raw tracking recordings, from packaging them as episodes, on a sort of rolling basis with each episode 1.5 hours worth of content, not as parts a-k. Lots of decisions to make, and experimentation as always.
I definitely have crossed a critical, required threshold, where vocal skill is no longer a major concern, and am enjoying my skills that feel easy/natural now – but I won’t ever rest on my laurels and stop trying, due to overconfidence, again.
Much of my voice recordings content will be tedious scholarship, and repetitive.
People are asking me to do introductory-level summary shows; true, but also, these are idea development leading-edge shows – that can include experimenting with summarizing the basics, as I’ve done a lot of, even as the essence of my thought-style.
Idea development is developing simpler clearer more efficient summarizing.
Egodeath Mystery Show – re: the show format or rather content, the problem of having content for the show, I really struck gold with the formula of reading aloud both others’ writings and my own postings and writings – as I initially surmised, there’s an endless source of content for the show, a cornucopia/ plethora, including voice dictation then reading aloud, a loop that’s proven to work.
Ideas of Spiritual Ascent and Theurgy (Kirsty Pattison 2020)
I might read aloud from a woman’s thesis Oct 2020 about Theurgy.
Pattison says Christianity – pseudo-Dionysius – in fact uses the word ‘theurgy’ in the original Greek, and that fact was, even into 1987, covered-up by mistranslating from Greek ‘theurgy’ into Latin as some misleading Christian posturing substitute label for the mystical ascent practice as in the Poimandres text; she covers several “brands” of same thing, theurgic ascent to nondual unity with God and then return to baseline ordinary state.
What a bunch of phony cover-up operations! A bunch of deceptive posturing and distancing to “protect the brand”, as if Christian “mysticism” is hermetically isolated from “demonic pagan practices”.
Demons all around… have to wonder if the demons are actually on the Christian side, since early Christians are constantly accusing pagans of demons.
Wouter Hanegraaff reveals this too, that Catholic brand religion artificially pretends that “mysticism” is their unique brand name that is totally unique and isolated from “pagan” altered state practices, when it’s really the same thing.
The new 2016 Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism (an organized set of articles by Western Esotericism scholars) innovatively tells Catholic to take a hike and they tell the truth, that “Mysticism” is nothing but the Catholic-styled brand for standard esoteric (psilocybin-produced) altered-state mystic experiencing.
Download for 1 week starting Sep 8 2022: https://we.tl/t-leZv91v9Ry I’m not seeing the preview to play mp3 in browser on desktop
6:51
A new September 8 upload as a guitar-centric recording, derived from the previously uploaded episode 219 voice Part A.
Description:
Guitar, stereo room miked. Has a little voice in middle.
0:00 guitar turned up a little during live broadcast performance at end of show.
2:40 hissy guitar from show lead-in.
3:13 Egodeath Mystery Show intro.
3:30 Diamond Hammer of Interpretation of Myth.
4:04 repeat of the 2:40 from start, end tapered differently else identical.
6:51 End.
Good amp-in-the-room stereo miking. 2 cabs, 2 mics.
I didn’t want the 2.5-minute guitar perf to be only hidden at end of Part A voice recording.
There was a good show finale assertion of the Diamond Hammer of Interpretation of Myth, then Intro voice at end of show just before I did the outro performance, so I kept those short voice segments, and then repeated the 2.5-min guitar recording so I can listen to it.
Original sequence during live-format show:
hissy guitar from start of show, then 3 parts i did at end of show:
Diamond Hammer of Interpretation of Myth, then
Egodeath Mystery Show intro (at end of show) Aug 30, then
outro show performance 2.5 minutes 2-cab stereo-miked guitar.
The “sacrifice of Isaac” scene with ram caught helplessly in mushroom thicket – the mind is made to demonstrate control vulnerability in God-mode override-of-control-limits state, threatening one’s child-thinking to death, cross the boundary that transforms the control model into recognizing the two distinct levels of control, reaching the control stability boundary violation, perceive underlying dependent control not autonomous control.
The Egodeath Community is helpful in asking to focus the Egodeath theory on a 2-level model as the foundation & center, not 3.
The actual nature of ego transcendence is that the mind changes from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking.
Greedy 3-level model results in losing all understanding, rather than “twice the transcendence”.
Erik Davis proves that simplicity is the foundation of an effective, powerful explanatory model of the altered state, in Led Zeppelin IV p. 118 & 122.
In my university course design, the 2-level model is the emphasis, not 3, just as math courses avoid complex intractable math problems that force an empirical solution.
My emphasis regarding 3-level models is their tendency to spawn and foster incomprehension and fog and misleading ironic clever inversions that mislead people to sell a corrupted spirituality product to people who want to avoid Transcendent Knowledge – exhibit A: Hanegraaff falling into the I Hate Fate trap that his hermetic text heroes dug for him, to sell their hazy, crude, confusing, roundabout, inefficient priestcraft product.
If I thought poetry haze were desirable, I would not have had to create the Egodeath theory to speak clearly for once and construct a useful, usable technology for understanding Transcendent Knowledge and how mythic hazy garbled poetry is mainly reflecting Transcendent Knowledge – reflecting but not explaining, and often, avoiding Transcendent Knowledge.
Look at Hanegraaff’s confusion as if enlightenment is switching from initial eternalism-thinking to final possibilism-thinking – 3-level overreach backfires into incomprehension.
The {Sacrifice of Isaac} is firmly 2-level in focus & emphasis.
Understanding the mytheme-set {Isaac and disempowered bush-caught ram} is basic/essential.
Even if the Egodeath theory is a clear simple explanatory model, still it is challenging to describe/ map to non-poetic direct explanation of control-transcendence the myth theme {threatening the child} – new mytheme to add to the Key Mythemes catalog.
The Egodeath theory is, since its start in 1985, emphatically disdainful of poetic analogy as a foundation; such an approach is the problem and is the reason why we effectively didn’t have Transcendent Knowledge in the way we have increasing science and technology.
There are two legs of the Egodeath theory, but really it stands on its right leg only (STEM, Loose Cog Science) and never stood on the leg of mythemes/ poetic analogy as a basis.
Hanegraaff is an outright Newage spiritualist/ religionist compared to me.
He talks about a scientific foundation for study of history of religion then he fabricates and imagines (a theme of his book) a fantasy backwards version of spirituality and a mystic cosmos that contradicts all science and mystic sensible coherent tradition too.
I’m the actual science-grounded theory, which enables me to do a better, correct job of resolving myth, accurately identifying its referent in the loose cognitive intense mystic altered state of consciousness. Per the non-myth-grounded, entheogen mytheme theory.
My 1997 attempt to condense the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence failed, kept ballooning not converging, until I distinctly incorporated mythic metaphorical description 2003-2006.
Douglas Hofstadter has two books advocating in the title that analogies are the essence of thinking.
STEM aims for the most direct and clear expression,using analogies to clarify the actual referent clearly identified, not to cloud and fog it all up in an Atman Substitution project (Wilber) to protect the mind from revealed knowledge that the mind desires to reject and avoid and deny.
God is defined as the higher control level, in the Egodeath theory; the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.
I find it constitutionally easy because my thinking is based in STEM and practical figuring stuff out, easy and natural for me to distinguish between my STEM-type core theory vs. its decoding/mapping/ recognizing of mythic metaphor analogy poetic descriptive mythemes.
Two legs; stand on the right leg, to gain Transcendent Knowledge straightforwardly.
I am glad the Egodeath Community supports a streamlined powerful clear 2-level model.
The Egodeath theory is the definitive seminal 2-level and 3-level explanation of mind and myth – and explaining avoidance strategies to preserve lower thinking in a foggy haze.
Any multi-state scientific theory of religious myth must be excellent at explaining both 2-level & 3-level models, to be relevant; that is the explanandum that is given to us.
Resolve mythic analogy, as description, to its non-hazy, non-avoidant, non-poetic, non-substitutive referent – identify how a set of mythemes is analogous to things of the transformation trajectory in the loose cognitive state.
Cybermonk September 7, 2022. Note February 20, 2023: I just found this page, a dup with recent Saint Martin’s page, so am cross-linking via See Also section.
Let’s check in on the wisdom from the academics regarding branching-message mushroom trees:
The leading anthropologist teaching about psychoactive mushrooms in a religious context since 1975 – Brown & Brown, 2016, p. 120:
“But when it comes to interpreting the frescoes at Saint Martin and elsewhere, the art historians are the ones who “remain blind” — who, due to their lack of knowledge of ethnomycology, mistake psychoactive mushrooms for trees and branches — and sometimes err in the interpretation of Romanesque religious paintings.” – Brown & Brown
Panofsky’s 2nd letter, photograph of it published in Brown 2019 p. 146:
“Some especially ignorant craftsman may have misunderstood the finished product, the “Pilzbaum”, as a real mushroom. But even that is not very probably because even the most mushroom-like specimens show at least some trace of ramification; if the artists had labored under the delusion that the model before him was meant to be a mushroom rather than a schematized tree he would have omitted the branches altogether.” – The most influential art historian, Erwin Panofsky
My Post to Brown at Academia.edu
Your March 21, 2022 email gave a quoted passage with 2 phrases with better, more vivid use of italic and bold than in your 2016 book, about: “Youths … clamor up trees to break off branches … or cut away at the treetops“.
That’s one reason why the book didn’t awaken my mytheme-detection (2.5 years after my Nov. 2013 “tree vs snake” non-branching breakthrough) but your email’s copy/paste from the article did.
9:27 pm September 6, 2022: After around April 2022, I’m looking again for your possible garbled/puzzling claim that there are multiple knives at trees – where?
Now I think I know what you’re referring to.
Hypothesis for me to examine by Finding your word “knife”, “sword”, “knives”: You’re mis-seeing a diamond-leaved, removed branch (removed possibility branching) as if the branch is a sword. [It’s a spear pointing at Jesus’ side. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=spearhead ]
[This mistake prevents Brown from seeing the contrast that’s being presented: left hand holds multi-branch tree while in contrast, right hand holds a different, single-branch, non-branching tree.]
Or the branch could be intended as both removed branch and a sword [spear] to specifically to remove branching, like God’s sword at the major cut branch of the psilocybin branching-message mushroom tree in in Eadwine’s nonbranching-initiation image, in which the youth after ingesting psilocybin at the banquet (brought to by the higher controller) looks at God (higher control level) just like in Brinckmann’s plate & in your St. Martin fresco.
I’m also decoding at the moment – again, but better – your article’s interpretation:
“We can only speculate why a mushroom tree is growing on top (or out of) the roof of a stone tower. Perhaps, the artist is using this device to show the significance of these psychoactive mushrooms in the drama of the Christology unfolding before our eyes.”
I wrote before: “because the analogy-based descriptive mytheme {rock} = the Eternalism block universe per modern physics (Minkowski) in the eternalism-experiencing/ revealing/ perceiving psilocybin altered state.
Now I also add this decoding (identifying the ASC referent of myth-analogies/ descriptions): the {gated city wall} mytheme refers to the altered-state cognitive phenomenon: BOUNDARY OF GNOSIS; you can’t cross into the altered state without control-seizure until you repudiate the possibility-branching worldmodel of control-in-world.
The {wall} mytheme describes those minds that perceive and understand non-branching due to psilocybin loosened perception; wall / gate = crossing the boundary from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking, requires a state-transition sacrificing youthful thinking to gain mature control-stability in the psilocybin altered state of loose cognitive association binding of mental constructs & mental construct processing.
3. holding single, non-branching diamond frond in right hand
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop by Cybermonk.
3:14 a.m. September 7, 2022 Cybermonk – the well-formed diamond-shaped spearhead points directly at Jesus’s right side; the other 3 point nowhere.
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop by Cybermonk.
Non-branching spearhead held in right hand points to Jesus’ right side. Jesus dies but doesn’t die. Through this sacrifice as of Isaac come life and fecundity together with wisdom.
3:14 a.m. September 7, 2022 Cybermonk – the well-formed diamond-shaped spearhead points directly at Jesus’s right side; the other 3 point nowhere.
Brown’s “sword” — “a long slightly curved sword in his right hand … the sword shown under the diamond shaped frond in the prior fresco” (Brown 20109) – never mind the curved pruning knife in upper right above it, no mention of that.
4. out-of-view figure holding curved pruning knife in right hand
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop by Cybermonk.
5. towers: holding knife in right hand
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown veil / cloak the walls – hammer right hand, nails left hand
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. The provided crop cuts off the mushroom on right edge, hem.
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Knives and mushrooms.
Image Match: Mushroom Tree with Sword, Affirming Cutting/Removing Branching and Affirming Right Limb
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Used with permission. Crop & image enhancement of youth in tree with knife by Cybermonk.
Brown’s Superior Bold Italic in Article vs. Inferior Italic in Book at “Break Off/Cut Branches”
Dr. Brown emailed me a copy from the article, not the book, and this shows I need to read the article (and earlier book) more. Brown wrote:
“The reluctance of classicists to admit mushrooms into their idealized version of the birth of civilizations is similar to the ignorance of art historians. As Julie and I point out in “Entheogens in Christian Art”:
In her discussion of Christ’s Entry to Jerusalem, art historian Marcia Kupfer is ostensibly unaware of the prominent mushrooms painted in the upper right-hand corner of this fresco in the Church of Saint Martin (Figure 8). According to Kupfer (1993), [inserted break -cm]
as Christ rides the ass followed by his disciples “several youths excitedly clamor up trees to break off branches, while others unfurl their mantels at his feet. The second phase of the episode on the west wall isolates the walled city of Jerusalem…Youths, their mouths open in song, crowd the gates; others within the city drape the walls or cut away at the treetops” [emphasis added] (p. 122).
2016 book page 119 with weaker italic & no bold:
as Christ rides the ass followed by his disciples “several youths excitedly clamor up trees to break off branches, while others unfurl their mantels at his feet. The second phase of the episode on the west wall isolates the walled city of Jerusalem…Youths, their mouths open in song, crowd the gates; others within the city drape the walls or cut away at the treetops” [emphasis added].
Martin and Eadwine Both Have Set of Images Placing Banquet Next to Removing Mushroom Tree Branching
Brown cuts off the right-side mushroom in the book and article, and then says it’s indistinguishable what Jesus feeds him. Just like we have no idea what could possibly be in Eadwine’s bowls – I can’t think of anything suitable.
Eadwine’s Mushroom Banquet Scene
Martin’s Mushroom Tree Cut Branch Scenes
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown left guy trimming Bonzai branching tree (held in left hand) with clippers to remove the branching (held in right hand)
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop & image enhancement by Cybermonk September 7, 2022.
Upper left: curved pruning knife in right hand.
Middle: non-branching single-branch plant in right hand.
“a long slightly curved sword in his right hand … the sword shown under the diamond shaped frond in the prior fresco” (Brown 20109)
Brown’s “slightly curved sword” is no such thing (it’s a non-branching tree/branch), but there’s a very curved pruning knife, not mentioned by Brown.
Eadwine’s Mushroom Tree Cut Branch Scene
Jesus Left Fingers Splayed Branching, Right Fingers Together Nonbranching Like Group of Branches Held
11:13 pm Sep (check recording 4038 for what time, if i mentioned aloud the time, when I mentioned splaying fingers vs holding them together) 6 2022:
Plural “knives used to cut through the mushroom stemson the Towers of Jerusalem”? Only one knife can be made out cutting one stem
Update Feb 20 2023: panorama shows knife to the right of the missing paint. See newer Martin page in See Also.
From 2019 article:
“On the table, there are four knives (three to the left of Jesus and one to the far right) similar in length, shape, and handle design to the knives used to cut through the mushroom stems on the Towers of Jerusalem.”
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Used with permission. Crop and image processing by Cybermonk September 6, 2022.
One knife is cutting diamond-leaf
Additional, Curved Perseus Medusa Pruning Knife Spotted in Tree in (Fuller) Jerusalem Epiphany Scene
Brown Hallucinates Sword Held by Mid-Blade(!!) Instead of Removed Branch
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop & image enhancement by Cybermonk September 7, 2022.
12:33 am Sep 7 2022 Cybermonk – left hand holds branching tree (false tree with pruning knife in action to correct it); right hand hold single, non-branching tree’s branch (which leans/points toward higher control level, Jesus).
Upper right figure off right margin: holds curved Perseus pruning knife in right hand, holding a branch in left hand.
pink key tree confirms “left = branching, right = non-branching”
Sep 6 2022 Cybermonk: left fingers splayed branching, right fingers together nonbranching, removed branches held in a nonbranching way (non-splayed, like right fingers held together)
right foot down, raised garment on right = altered state
“Christ is riding on an ass with his arms outstretched [left fingers splayed branching, right fingers held together nonbranching -cm Sep. 6, 2022] to receive a plant-like gift [removed possibility branching -cm] (of which only the stems are visible), offered [RIGHT HAND!!] by one of the youth who with his other [LEFT HAND!!] hand is holding the stem of one of the mushrooms. [BRANCHES]
On the far right of the fresco stands another youth holding the stem of a diamond-shaped frond (possibly a palm frond) in his left [good mention] hand and a long slightly curved sword in his right hand [good mention].
Given that the caps are convex-shaped and without dots and that the main stem spreads out to form several branches,[like Jesus’ left fingers] this is what Samorini labels a Saint Savin-type mushroom tree, which contains psilocybin.”
…
” the Towers of Jerusalem. Standing on the roof of the tower [on right legs -cm] are two men, both dressed in mantels similar to those worn by the youth in Christ’s Entry.
“One of them is cutting through the stem of a mushroom tree (Figure 10 ), using a knife that is distinctly shorter than the sword shown under the diamond shaped frond in the prior fresco.”
holding a sword by the blade ??!! like an angel?
new improved colorsPhoto credit: Julie M. Brown. Full image as shown in 2019 article.
Most of Egodeath Mystery Show episode 219, intensive critical study of Hanegraaff, & Brown art images breakthrough announcement, is available for listening.
Some Brown discussion remains to produce, but see companion postings textual as always.
I have Egodeath Mystery Show in music player on mobile device, supports Settings > Music > Eq: Small Spks or Treble Cut.
The first 2/3 is done, producing my past week of voice recordings & stars-restoration guitar pieces. 🌌🎸 See Idea Development page 15 but I need to switch to indiv posts for each episode of Egodeath Mystery Show, but this ep is as epically huge as the 8-level cosmos and I couldn’t produce my very latest voice tracks of ~4019-4035.
To get Egodeath Mystery Show episode 219 & its elekton kithara star music. Latest music further develops techniques so I want to produce those tracks as well as voice recordings about Brown’s mushroom trees in Christian art & critical book review of
Panofsky both letters to Wasson recomm this Brinckmann book and Wasson researched & handwrote full title of book & author name on letter 1 of the pair as I discovered in Browns’ pub’ing of the PAIR of censored lettersPhoto credit: Julie M. Brown. Used with permission. Crop & decoding to identify the referent Eternalism psilocybin cyb cog phen’a by Cybermonk March-August 2022.
9:25 a.m. September 6, 2022: youth in branching-message psilocybin tree perceives/ sees/ looks at God, the higher control-level. Cybermonk.
YOU DON’T CONTROL THE SOURCE OF CONTROL THOUGHTS, psilocybin reveals. Cybermonk.
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Used with permission.
Crop & parallels w Brinckmann image & decoding to identify the referent Eternalism psilocybin control-cyb cog phen’a by Cybermonk March-August 2022.
9:25 am sep 6 2022: youth sees looks at perceieves God the higher control level. YOU DON’T CONTROL THE SOURCE OF CONTROL THOUGHTS, psil reveals. Cybermonk.
Expect schizophrenic disintegration fragmentation at this website due to WordPress overdosing on incoherent breakage and suppression and dissociation of old structures without embracing them and integrating them into later developmental structures.
🤯
WordPress UI is changing, unable to do usual structural updates, impeded from updating articles & nav mechanisms.
Expect more use of individual independent daily BLOG 🤢 posts by me than updates of existing posts/pages & site nav mechanisms.
This was an issue back with the Egodeath Yahoo Group format/flow too: should I append my 2001 topical threads, or have a generic topic-independent date-ordered threading?
I’m concerned by the chaos of many isolated posts per day, but as always, there are pros & cons.
Abandoning all previous topic threading commitments and built-up structures is wonderfully powerful in the same way as schizophrenic fragmentation: Pro: innovation. Con: disintegration of structures.
Switching to structurally isolated posts that don’t follow an explicit structure is like my breakthrough switch in April 1987 to expansive boundless binder filler pages 8 1/2 x 11″ (& ) instead of the relatively rigid formal 6×8″ blank-book format,
April 1987 binder sheets also began my innovative use of concept-label acronym shorthand, with the same character as mental constructs, like “ideas as objects”.
The concept-label acronym ‘MCP’ now expands automatically to ‘mental construct processing’ in my composition devices, so the reader cannot see and think in that modularized-concepts way by reading the expanded result. What I type on devices is ‘et’, what I handwrite on paper is ‘ET’, what I then read on devices is ‘eternalism-thinking’.
When WordPress UI stabilizes, I need to update my Key Mythemes catalog (KMC) to added latest my cognizance/ decoding-breakthroughs of {handedness, garment, rider}, {youth in mushroom tree} {seeing /perceiving the higher controller} with {REMOVAL OF BRANCHES} in conjunction with psilocybin mushrooms.
I should write in the form of acronyms too: 1) direct language, 2) {mytheme analogies}, 3) acro’s.
I will add all-cap acronyms when I employ auto text expansion.
Loosening of mental constructs [MCs], mental construct processing [MCP].
Decoding a mytheme network means identifying how it describes, is analogous to, the refenent which is in the domain of things in the loosecog psilocybin state.
By Definition, ‘Loose Cognition’ Means Psilocybin-Loosened Cognition
OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION: In the Egodeath Theory, Loose Cognition Means Specifically Psilocybin Cognition – NO MORE BULLSHIITE 🐮💩->🍄 SHALL BE PERMITTED! 🚫✋🛑😤
strategic bullsht-blocking specificity of defining loosecog means specifically psilocybin, almost as if exclusively against Hanegraaff’s anti-gnosis “broadening” bs redefinition/ neutering and disarming the term ‘entheogen’.
Redefining aggressively defensively, officially in the Egodeath theory the word “loose cog assn binding” SPECIFICALLY MEANS PSILOCYBIN 😤😠😡
bc I am PISSED OFF at BULLSHIITE that DECEIVES people of trying to SUBSTITUTE BY PLACEBOS like cave meditation at-will imagination exercises. Forget You!
LOOSE COG MEANS PSILOCYBIN COG.
In 1985-1997, I never thought I would be FORCED to spotlight this specific trigger for loosecog, but MY HAND WAS FORCED eg by Ruck pull-quoting me to twist and derail my meaning from what I meant, “mixed wine is psilocybin wine”, to make it seem like I asserted “mixed wine is amanita wine”, in the 2006 book titled:
Announcing Art Breakthrough of Brown’s Two Images: Youths Hold Removed Possibility Branching, Put Right Leg Forward, Remove Their Worldmodel Garment Placed Under Epiphany Perception of Higher Controller
(Admin: List nesting/indenting remains broken at WordPress.)
imagine if I said the takeaway from the Eadwine image is that gnosis is conversion from right leg to left leg because the sage lifts right foot.
This is the extent of Hanegraaff falling for the hermetic poetic ironic inversion use of the theme “I Hate Fate”.
He paints an inverted model of psychospiritual development from eternalism to possibilism, that’s so extremely untenable, he has to avoid the topic of fixed stars, which destroys his that-delicate, perishable, flimsy model.
Sacrifice to the Astral Daimons to End Their Tormenting
Cognitive Dissonance Solved, My Assertion Confirmed! You Sacrifice TO the Fate-Daimons to Appease Them and Ward-off Their Torments (Not Their Reality/Power)
I reread the page before “to drive away the fate-controller daimons, she offers sacrifice.”
In yesterday’s voice recordings for Egodeath Mystery Show, I yelled: “to who? To who?! This is incoherent incomprehension — or a whitewash cover-up by Hanegraaff; you don’t just “offer sacrifice“, to nothing and to no divinity!! That’s not how sacrifice worked, that’s vague, superficial, magical thinking!”
I stumbled very happily upon and reread: The previous page”s quoted ancient text confirms my answer that I asserted: she sacrificed TO the fate-controllers: to the astral / planetary daimons.
Of whom the emperor is Helios demiurge in the fixed stars level – he says “Helios divine demiurge” in another article/context I found yesterday, check Gnosis entry 2016 Cam. Hbk W Mys/Esotericism.
To end torments when ascending through the 7 planetary spheres, you must HONOR, by sacificing to, the fate controllers.
You sacrifice your claim to be not controlled by fate/eternalism, to gain control stability.
Announcing Art Breakthrough of Brown’s Two Images
Youths Hold Removed Possibility Branching, Put Right Leg Forward, Remove Their Worldmodel Garment (Cloak) Placed Under Epiphany Perception of Higher Controller
This is separate from Hanegraaff progress, but in Sep 3 Sat voice recordings, I (too briefly so far) discussed the problem of announcing this major art breakthrough of interpretation: that youth are in a branching tree holding removed possibility branching and Jesus approaches.
I identified this by using, among other images, most prominently, two isomorphic images from Brown. Jesus on right-foot donkey approaches youth and tree, youth holding out removed possibility-branching in right arm.
This is the Jesus revelation of the higher controller, in images that show mushroom trees, that include youths in trees holding onto branching with left hand, and holding out removed branching with the right hand, as Jesus the higher controller approaches and makes his epiphany entrance, and is seen; as the youths in the trees see Jesus the higher controller, in these mushroom images of {branching-message trees}, asserting non-branching, and handedness.
I also made progress decoding/mapping/interpreting/ resolving the “garment” (cloak) mytheme by considering (mainly by talking on the Egodeath Mystery Show a couple days ago as a sudden aside) that Ariadne in Dionysus victory procession mosaic holds garment like she holds branch in left arm so THEREFORE GARMENT/CLOAK = ILLUSORY BRANCHING = egoic possibilism mental worldmodel, now removed & revealing – like Brown’s interpretation of Eve’s ribs made visible under flesh:
The underlying eternalism reality: Dionysus wears the glorious garment of the eternalism mental worldmodel, holds nonbranching spear in right arm: Sep 4 11:14am note: BOTH ARIADNE AND DIONYSUS CONTRAST TWO ELEMENTS: GARMENT/CLOAK 1 VS 2 (her removed garment, his glorious garment), HELD ITEM 1 VS 2 (branch vs nonbranching spear).
JESUS IS THE PSILOCYBIN REVELATION OF NON-BRANCHING including Douglas Hofstadter awareness of levels of control.
Jesus is the higher controller and the awareness that you are subject to and controlled by a higher controller, or something that is higher than or outside or beyond your domain of personal control power.
The Psilocybin eucharist
You see that don’t control the source of control thoughts, and you see monopossibility.
Control agency seems to be steering in a tree, but with the psilocybin eucharist, the tree is revealed to be non-branching (like a snake-shaped path in the tree).
Eustace window, Chartres cathedral
Eustace window, Chartres cathedral: left leg (heel raised, no weight on it) = possibilism thinking/ initial branching-premise; right leg / foot/ limb/hand/arm = eternalism-thinking/ non-branching reality.
mushroom Christian art image in Brinckmann 1906 book twice recomm to Wasson by Panofsky, Brown translated 1/4 to English at my Brinckmann page here.
{fire/light arch} decoded
1:05 p.m. September 4, 2022: The fire arch in this medieval painting means the perception, able to see eternalism, from outside the block universe; the hypercosmic perspective.
I’m lifted up outside of eternalism / heimarmene so that I am able to see it – NOT so that I become magically freed and empowered over it (except insofar as “I” am God the creator/ higher controller – which ain’t much in any actionable sense).
The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul click here.
Cosmic symbolism in the Gospels (from the Journal of Biblical Literature) click here.
The Mithraic Mysteries, published in Scientific American (December, 1989), click here.
{youth in tree}
Artist could have made left foot floating, right foot on cut branch.
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown, used with permission, crop by Cybermonk. Take off possibilism garment/cloak, remove it and uncover truth underlying visible, put your garment/cloak underneath the revealed higher control level.
Take off your possibilism garment/cloak, remove it and uncover truth underlying visible, put your garment/cloak underneath the revealed higher control level.
Take off your possibilism appearance covering garment/cloak, remove it and uncover truth underlying, made visible/perceptible: the youth perceives Jesus as king/higher controller and asserts non-branching.
The arrival of perceiving the higher controller when psilocybin, removes branching possibilities. King Inevitability & personal non-control of control-thoughts/ possibility steering.
Right leg forward, asserting eternalism not possibilism, not branching possibilities steered among by the purported power of personal control agency.
I should try image processing/ enhancing the ~4 images of held branches.
put weight on right leg, affirm right arm.
I fit perennialial essentialist gnosis – Transcendent Knowledge – on a post-it note, in STEM fashion per my approach which is the multistate cognitive science of religion approach which hanegraaff invites to contribute to academic study of history of religion/ esotericism.
youths in tree asserting non-branching, cut branchingMithras above your possibility branching steering control power treePhoto credit: Julie M. Brown, used with permission. Left vs right hand. Crop & image processing by Cybermonk.Photo credit: Julie M. Brown, used with permission. Crop & image processing by Cybermonk. Right leg touches non-branching part of tree (11:22 a.m. Sep 4, 2022).
psilocybin removes branching of the control-agent’s possibility-steering tree, makes perceptible the epiphany of higher control level arriving with weight on right leg.
local control agent in heimarmene rock is overpowered then blessed by the revealed higher controller after psilocybin sacred meal serieslater, further confirmation of my hypothesis that {king steering in tree} would be a meaningful mytheme-configuration that we should expect to find in religious myth / esotericism art.{king steering in a tree}
~2011 – I was sure glad to get this confirmation of my hypothesis of extending/ expecting to find instances of equivalent to {King Pentheus in a tree}! Around 2011, I asked “Isn’t {king steering in a tree} a great efficient condensed mytheme combination configuration we need and should expect to find? Answer: YES.
Campbell: Power of Myth, Illustrated Edition – week/day of breakthrough discovery full grasp of equation/decoding “{tree} vs. {snake} = possibilism vs. eternalism”.eating the amanita scroll causes lifted garment/cloak. Probably from John Rush gallery.
Eating the amanita scroll (indicates psilocybin) causes lifted garment/cloak, revealing the reality under the garment/cloak/appearance that covers and hides the underlying reality about personal control agency and its power of possibility branching steering.
Announcement: I have positively identified, in the past week, what the youths in mushroom-related trees are holding in right arm: removed branches, meaning removed possibility branching; asserting eternalism rather than possibilism.
Depiction of anti-naturalistic diamond leaves means the morphology is the message; the art message is about branching, not a species of tree.
Mushroom trees are in this image from Albert Brinckmann’s book that Erwin Panofsky twice recommended in the pair of letters to Wasson that you published, so this is to be considered as a mushroom tree; a branching-message mushroom tree.
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown, used with permission, crop by Cybermonk.
I did this (made this realization, made this connection) by late at night idly gathering my gallery of images of guys in trees, and holding branches, including especially two images that are associated with you: Julie’s photos and Brinckmann’s 1906 book Tree Stylizations in Medieval Art, plate 7. https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/brinckmann-mushroom-trees-asymmetrical-branching/
The next day, I confirmed the merit/defensibility of this conjectured reading, which I have been working on ever since you emailed us around Spring 2022 ~April that the fresco scholar wrote about youths “cutting branches” (your bolding); I asked what the heck is he holding out to Jesus on donkey in right hand?
Answer this week: removed possibility branches/branching a la asserting the Eternalism rather than Possibilism metaphysical model of time & control per Stanford online ency. Philosophy: Philosophy of Time article.
I may have conjectured that as soon as receiving your “cutting branches” email, but now it’s a positive, articulated, defensible, well-specified & well-evidenced identification.
Especially it became clear last weekend when I put the two pictures together to see the isomorphisms centered at donkey & youth in mushroom-related tree holding removed branching while seeing Jesus’ arrival.
2. After that, I made a dedicated posting on the same art interpretation subject:
3. Today I wrote up from yesterday’s Egodeath Mystery Show discussion recordings segment on same subject-cluster: {garment, handednesss [donkey right foot down, left not; right foot forward], nonbranching, epiphany, branching-message mushroom trees}: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/09/04/progress-on-the-hanegraaff-front/
— Michael
Gnosis Is of Heimarmene/ Fatedness/ Eternalism
I strikingly noticed something about his list of gnosis vs: “Demiurge, archons, heimarmene, astral fate, etc”: when Hanegraaff’s Gnosis handbook-entry was claiming that the latter are not the proper center of focus but instead we should make gnosis the proper center of focus.
Every single one of his gnostic mythology terms that he claims is inappropriately emphasized as the center of focus, every one of the gnostic mythemes that he lists describes heimarmene/ fatedness/ eternalism!
See Egodeath Mystery Show pending, recorded ~Sep. 1-4 2022, for Episode 219.
Big finding: in his “Gnosis” 12-page entry in The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism (Magee 2016), Hanegraaff replaces heimarmene-related list of gnostic myth themes by gnosis as the center of focus. But they are same!!
He asserts the false dichotomy of “we should centrally focus on gnosis, instead of on heimarmene myth themes”.
His unthinking presupposition is that gnosis is not about heimarmene/ eternalism/ no-free-will.
He assumes unthinkingly that gnosis reveals some knowledge other than, and essentially unrelated to, heimarmene/ fatedness/ eternalism.
Gnosis is of heimarmene/ eternalism/ you don’t control the source of control thoughts, they are separate control levels a la D Hofstadter GEB.
The mind experiences this revelation as being a helpless 1) puppet 2) frozen in rock 3) coerced by the experience of sacred transcendent deja vu, the experience of remembering “oh no oh yes, I remember, here is the episode where my control is threatened to death”;
Every direction the mind turns spells same conclusion: no effective control is based on possibilism thinking when this aspect of the mind is vividly perceived and tested in the altered state, loose cog assn state, divine madness.
Sacrifice/ jettison that possibilism / branching thinking to retain stable, effective control.
Sun Scarab Is Psychoactive Because Eats Psilocybin Mushrooms
Holy Cow 💩🍄
Hanegraaff has been a mycologist since youth.
The Sun Scarab dung beetle may be psychoactive, since likes to eat dung mushrooms, he surmises.
Today Sep 3 2022 I read all pages in his book, on keywords index entries related to psychoactives.
Essentialism in Gnosis Is as Sound & Routine as with any Natural Law
Hanegraaff writes twice in his Versluis rebuttal “You can’t write history of gnosis, when you hold that gnosis exists distinctly from history.”
You can’t write history of astronomy, when you hold that astronomy exists distinctly from history.”
ALL THE TIME we write about natural law (considered distinct from history) AND about the history of ideas about natural law.
Per the Egodeath theory; the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence, confirmed by the complete, full explanatory success of the entheogen mytheme theory:
Transcendent Knowledge is natural law like Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism.
Hanegraaff asserts that historians can’t ever know if Transcendent Knowledge actually exists.
That’s like saying the same for electromagnetism.
By every sensible measure, he asserts uncomprehending nonsense, a malformed, misconceived assertion.
This is defeatism and intellectual feeble cowardice, putting gnosis way too high and out of reach, beyond comprehension.
His error is due to his not knowing what gnosis actually refers to.
He calls for multistate cognitive science of religion (my Loose Cog Sci per the Egodeath theory; he applauds Shanon) to contribute to the study of history of religion/esotericism.
Luther H. Martin, a colleague of David Ulansey of CIIS ( California Institute of Integral Studies; https://www.ciis.edu), advocates the approach of Cognitive Science of Religion, but alas is merely single-state; Martin fails to incorporate the psilocybin altered state; loose cognitive association binding.
The “Consciousness Studies” bookcase exists in the New Age bookshop section, in 1994 yet he naively (his word) wrote that New Age religion is not inspired by psychedelics.
Hanegraaff Cites Ken Wilber’s Eye to Eye
FINDING: Hanegraaff’s 1996 New Age Religion book cites Ken Wilber’s book and chapter 1 essay Eye to Eye, using the abbreviation ‘EtE’.
The book heavily covers Ken Wilber.
Ken Wilber’s books are placed in the “Consciousness Studies” section (Psychedelics Spirituality) in New Age bookstores.
Hanegraaff walked past that “Consciousness Studies” section (containing Wilber’s books & Psychedelic Spirituality), while naively writing that New Age isn’t inspired by psychedelics.
Eye to Eye (the essay) is better than Hanegraaff’s defeatism, his anti-essentialism, his anti-perennialism.
That invitation contradicts his claim that perennialism is false, that essentialism is false.
Tons of scholars object to Hanegraaff here, and say he should take gnosis more seriously as something we can say exists to discuss in itself distinctly from history.
But they are all in a dustup based in their shared confusion and incomprehension.
The mind transforms from possibilism to eternalism mental worldmodel when exposed to Eadwine’s two bowls of cubensis one and a half hours apart times 10 weeks.
This is about how the mind works.
This is how the mind works – without reference to history.
All the time, we write history of models of how the mind works; see Paul Thagard’s book Conceptual Revolutions.
So much for the specious, confused, malformed, self-contradictory claim that you can’t study the history of something that you say exists distinctly from history particulars.
– while he calls for multi-state cognitive science to contribute to history of esotericism, contradicting himself.
This is perennial essentialist gnosis, which is 100% perfectly offensive to & poison to egoic presuppositions, because this experiential revelation utterly collapses possibilism’s premise of autonomous control-power.
Perennial gnosis is: psilocybin reveals you don’t control the source of control thoughts.
“You cannot write the history of gnosis if you hold that gnosis transcends history”
Tonight (Sep 3 2022) I read a couple statements from Hanegraaff that were so easy to completely demolish, about the limits of scholarship, and it made me wonder just how massive are my disagreements with Hanegraaff just how full of baloney is he, and how off-base his disputes with Arthur Versluis and name-calling of each other and misunderstanding each each other and arguing about irrelevant muddleheaded things: oriental Platonism or Platonic orientalism (who knows, who cares) —
if I thought that stuff were worth arguing about, I would have studied that and made it my foundation like Hanegraaff does, worshiping Plato even though Plato is such a failure, such a complete failure of communication that it took modern scholars 500 years merely to just figure out that he’s talking about the mystic altered state.
This is a total failure of communication.
This poetry analogy metaphor roundabout approach to explaining Transcendent Knowledge does not work at all, and the extent to which it does not work is the fact that scholars have been studying Plato forever and only now have a dim slight realization that he’s talking about the mystic altered state.
This is practically a total failure of pre-modern approaches to Communication and theory/ model contruction and communication and expression.
This is precisely why I set about taking two weeks which became two years in 1985 saying I am taking the wheel here, let me show you how it’s done: use the can-do clear thinking clear expression of engineering and science, and I do not mean conducting experiments and such, I mean the character, the can-do spirit of “figure stuff out clearly and clearly teach and explain it”.
This is exactly what mystics revel in not doing, so it raises your question of, Is Hanegraaff more of an ally or more of the bad, old, failed approach that deserves really no particular respect.
That was one thing I especially remember my father teaching me beware of respecting people, beware of holding someone in reverence, because you’ll be limited to their limitation.
I saw some things written by Hanegraaff so malformed, such worthless argumentation, such a failure of critical thinking.
False dichotomies galore, particular statements by him that are clearly dead wrong — how much respect does he deserve?
As much disdain– he deserves a lot of disdain; he puts forth a lot of incredibly malformed, unthinking assertions, these false dichotomies that “an academic scholar cannot have mystic experiencing”, (error: emphasizing only differentiation, not integration of techniques and of experiences)
things like that, that are trivially easy to completely shatter — they don’t hold up to scrutiny for two seconds, and he has a lot of statements like these on the subject of “you smell funny and you are a religionist”. “No, YOU are a religionist.” 🙄
I am talking about the article which I had read a couple weeks before:
“The simple truth is that I do not hate religionism at all.
“On the contrary, I see it as an inherently problematic but very important intellectual tradition.
“Religionist scholarship has always been an endlessly fascinating phenomenon for me, and I have the greatest respect for its famous representatives (plus some of its less famous ones).
“So what do I find so “problematic”?
“Simply the fact that you cannot write the history of something that transcends history.
“Still, the very impossibility of resolving this paradox [no more “paradoxical” than academic history of astronomy -cm], which I believe lies at the heart of religionism, has led to brilliantly creative and profound attempts at resolving it nevertheless.
“That is where the fascination lies, at least for me.
“In this regard – and here Arthur and I find ourselves in agreement – the religionism of Eranos is somewhat similar to the great tradition of Platonism, which I admire even more, and which lives from the deep contradiction between Being (the eternal forms or ideas) [eternalism -cm] and Becoming (our world of impermanence and change) [possibilism -cm].
[the initiated mind possesses both the earlier developmental structure, per Ken Wilber, and the later mental worldmodel – both are intact and are employed by the fully developed mind -cm]
“Being able to hold two contradictory notions in one’s mind at the same time is not a sign of intellectual weakness: on the contrary, all the great metaphysical thinkers in the Platonic tradition (think for instance of Cusanus or Bruno) have known that, once you go beyond first appearances in exploring reality, you encounter logical paradoxes all the way down – or rather, into infinity.”
funnel hat sage worrying about Becoming vs. Being
2:00 pm Sep 4 2022: sage’s bag of knowledge includes non-branching walking stick staff: he touches eternalism knowledge and carries possibilism thinking.
Bearded guy pours gnosis into clueless youth’s sack, who is happy to receive it (he doesn’t carry it on his own/ legs yet).
Sage’s sack neither rests on ground nor carried on his back, but floats like him, emanating from the stable column base.
emanating from block universe nonduality Thee Hypnotics: Come Down Heavy
Funnel hat sage worrying about Becoming vs. Being; possibilism vs. eternalism – with mushroom hem stable column base; able to function both in the mundane daily marketplace & in the psilocybin loose cognitive mystic altered state without control instability/seizure.
He carries the limbless, qualified possibilism-thinking (which includes eternalism-thinking), which is youthful thinking available to him, not destroyed or rejected or discarded, and his thinking is compatible with the psilocybin mushroom state while retaining control stability.
Possessing and having available two distinct mental worldmodels is hardly a “paradox”, but you can call it that, if you want to frame this maturation as incomprehensible.
There is no “paradox” between doing both:
Understanding astronomy or laws of electromagnetism or gnosis (Transcendent Knowledge; that which is efficiently explained by the Egodeath theory) in itself, and
Studying & documenting the history of ideas about astronomy, electricity & magnetism, & gnosis (Transcendent Knowledge).
His Unscientific, Stars-Incompatible Cosmos Revision to Invert Cognitive Development as if from Eternalism Delusion Through the Saturn Gate into the Revelation of Egoic Possibilism
Hanegraaff is under enormous pressure and scrutiny.
He is the academic field of Western Esotericism.
And in writing a review that describes the book for potential readers, and points out its cosmos-sized errors (failure to recognize that psilocybin reveals heimarmene/ eternalism; aiming “instead” for gnosis — as if gnosis is not centrally a revelation of Fatedness), I feel this weight of responsibility, completely unlike what I felt with posting a five star quickly written critical review of Carl Ruck & M. Hoffman’s book “Entheogens, myth and human consciousness”.
it is very hard to justify penalizing this book omitting a star (like the author deletes all of the stars except for five white dots in his night sky).
This field and book is too important to just pat him on the head with five stars.
I would be telling a lie in a very important field.
Out of respect for the field, not the author, I need to delete a star (like he does on the scale of thousands) and level with people and let them know just how disastrous & confusing this extremely anti-scientific, purely fantasy-based imaginational construct of his mystic cosmos that has absolutely no connection with science or with mystic sensible conventions.
He hasn’t even read Ulansey, or if he has, I do not understand why he doesn’t mention that his mystic cosmos model (asserted heavily, citation-supported never) completely flies in the face of every treatment of the subject and provides zero citations for his false claim that the highest level of the cosmos is number seven, implicitly claiming that the hermetic texts assert this nonsensical impossibility.
Then he tells lies, completely unscientific, based purely on hearsay, redefining the word entheogen to mean the exact opposite of what it means, elevating fraudulent lies and falsehoods up into the sacred level of now-respectable Psilocybin, introducing falsehood, inviting every deceiver up to the hallowed levels, now respectable, of psilocybin — I think not!
Keep your deceitful not-even hypothesis pollution away from our sacred Theory: “Other, unknown methods can produce entheogenic effects”: not even a specified hypothesis; zero scientific disconfirmability or specificity, based purely on hearsay and conjecture.
Scientific foundation of history? Hanegraaff proffers the exact opposite. his book indiscriminately jumbles together his own fantasy cosmos pulled straight from his imagination with zero citations to back it up, that level eight is above heimarmene – no text ever says that, and no text ever can say it; it’s an incoherent notion that’s impossible, as impossible as saying that the stars don’t exist, or that they exist in planet / moving motion level seven.
This is just sheer nonsense concocted from his imagination, jumbled together with what he claims to be “scientific history”, without him saying a single word to warn the reader, but this cosmos model is something that he is putting forth as an imaginary hypothesis.
But what is so revealing is that he doesn’t dare say a single word about the fixed stars, because it would utterly destroy his cosmic model; he cannot talk about it except to stammer in footnote 114, hidden, buried, incomplete sentence saying I don’t know where the fixed stars go: in level eight or in level seven, the planet Saturn.
Should I give him a medal, a star, for quietly admitting that he doesn’t know the first thing about fixed stars, and that he cannot say anything about them because they do not fit — his model is completely incompatible with the fixed stars, so he has to remain silent and sweep them under the Saturn rug and conflate slot 8 with the actual above-Fate level 9, so that he can tell his inverted narrative of entheogenic transformation from eternalism to possibilism: “Transcendent Knowledge” according to the egoic freewill premised worldmodel.
“Ego death and rebirth is from eternalism to possibilism: just silently move the stars [the heimarmene destination that is gnosis; Transcendent Knowledge] from above the Saturn gate to below it.”
Hanegraaff’s 2016 12-page entry “Gnosis” in Cam. Handbook of W Mystm & Esotericism calls for moving the center of focus of Esotericism/ Gnosticism scholarship from heimarmene to gnosis – a total false dichotomy; he ought to call for recognition of how gnosis AS heimarmene-comprehension is the actual center, and that *combination*, that recognition, needs to be the center of scholarly focus.
Erik Davis gets it right in the book Led Zeppelin IV, but academics can’t keep up, because Transcendent Knowledge is too simple (and offensive to freewill egoic possibilism premises), for academics to engage with.
The Ultimate Religionism: Claiming Everything Is Predetermined
In a comment, Hanegraaff finally troubles himself to define his damn terms: “Religionism I define technically as:
“The project of exploring historical sources in search of what is eternal and universal”.
The Egodeath theory since the core theory was defined and announced in 1997-1998, ever since 1998 has created the entheogen mytheme theory of religion for the purpose of obtaining confirmation of the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence (the Core Egodeath theory as of 1998). I couldn’t obtain confirmation from Mr. Historical Jesus – nor Mr. Saint Paul – so I successfully obtained that confirmation by looking in fields including religious myth (as I had done in Rock lyrics first, and in Gnosis journal since the mid-1990s): looking for corroboration, which required interpretation and constructing an explanatory framework to elegantly explain the referent of myth analogies. By providing a superior interpretation of myth, I got confirmation of the merit and soundness and relevance of the Egodeath theory.
The Egodeath theory: in the loose cognitive state from psilocybin, the mental worldmodel changes from literalist ordinary-state possibilism with autonomy-premised control, to analogical psychedelic eternalism with dependent control. ‘Analogical’ refers to the Mytheme theory.
I don’t know why the discussion ends up switching to the subject of “religionism is assertions about the future”, where the hell did that focus/topic come from? The whole conversation is random and arbitrary agenda proxies. I read a lot of Hanegraaff re: religionism, he never said it was about the future.
Commenter Kurt Leland wrote:
“Lest my definition of the extreme religionist perspective be perceived as biased because it seems rosier than its opposite, keep in mind that I hinted that my naming the poles of the continuum of objectivist/pessimist and subjectivist/optimist was ironic. The ultimate extreme of religionism would be an entirely predetermined order in which the transcendental plan[what the f, what is this conversation about? why are you suddenly talking about “plan”, out of the blue? -cm] controls every aspect of history, repeating itself in endless cycles until we find some way to free ourselves from it. This is the only “worthy” opposite to the complete chaos at the other extreme.”
[I’m here to model the scientific theory of gnosis, not argue about the future plan. I sense this whole conversation is a proxy. -cm]
There is a funny comment at the bottom of Hanegraaff’s weblog posting against or the rebuttal of Arthur Versluis that sets out a spectrum ranging from 1) chaos which is the opposite of 2) the perennialist essentialist approach to explaining Gnosis,
which says that there is a perennial tradition of a gnosis that exists outside of the history of chaotic particulars happenstance.
This commentor defines a spectrum and he claims that on the extreme end of what would be a pure extreme Religionism, the ultimate version would be, the ultimate perfect pure essentialism would be an assertion that everything is pre-determined.
iow the Egodeath theory! per Erik Davis p 118 122 book Led Zep IV.
except the commenter also wove in a history assertion, that pure religionism/ perennialism/ essentialism would assert that history would be leading to some predetermined inevitable culmination point.
this falls outside my thought-style/ concerns.
My prediction for the future is that inevitably we are guaranteed that everybody will adopt the Egodeath theory as the model of how the mind works, for stable control in the psilocybin state.
Define Your Damn Terms: Religionism
first my main quip against the idea of religionism is that these academic clowns don’t even know what their stupid word ‘religionism’ means, and it is used in 10 different ways and everyone just name-calls each other and nobody’s on the same page.
Hanegraaff fails to even define what he means by ‘religionism’, for all his heavy bandying-about of the term to employ it, never with coherent, intelligible definition of it.
Define your damn terms!!
His one definition that was clear that he finally wrote was about irrelevant use of the accusation “you are one of those evil people, religionists”, for the purpose of political smearing, attaching abstract labels to your enemy, having nothing to do with the theory of transcendent knowledge in itself, giving me the impression that none of this debate/fight over “religionism” has anything to do with Transcendent Knowledge.
I define ‘religionism’ as, the most useful definition of it is:
the mistake of making religious mythology analogy poetry the foundation for your thinking,
Instead, use multi-state cognitive science of religion, clearly articulated unambiguous models of how the mind transforms in the altered state from psilocybin.
This should be the foundation of our scholarship and thinking, not mystic poetry, confusing far analogies.
The latter thought-style is religionism – if that confusion-spawning, strife-generating word means anything and is of any use.
One of Hanegraaff’s definitions — in so far as he even bothers to articulate a definition, instead of merely throwing around the undefined term — is that religionism is against modern science progress, and wants to elevate tradition; backwards-looking instead, and saying that mystic poetry/ analogy is the way to truth, and that science and rationality progress is not the way to transcendent knowledge.
Egodeath Theory is the extreme example of do not give credence to the pre-modern theories and explanations, but do commandeer and take up their data of their mythology themes, and put the catalog of mytheme-analogies/ descriptor metaphors in a new, modern, scientific, clearly articulated model of how the mind works when exposed to a Psilocybin, emphasizing practical, clear communication and articulation, efficient-model construction, as best seen in Engineering: figure stuff out, clearly explain it, and then improve it and improve the explanation to be clearer and clearer and more and more useful, instead of reveling in incomprehension and vague ambiguous poetry like mystics do (to occlude the anti-ego truth).
This is really the essence of the STEM approach, is this thinking style, or explanatory style, more than conducting experiments, though yes of course experience and exploring cognitive phenomenology is the foundation, but especially:
The hallmark of engineering and science thinking is clear practical communication and useful arrangement of knowledge instead of stupid ambiguous vague poetry and confusion — and egoic evasion/ substitution/ avoidance of Transcendent Knowledge because of not wanting to admit the truth that kills ego fully dead: that you don’t control the source of your control thoughts.
The Egodeath theory 