The Pharmacratic Inquisition

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According to this presentation (and this documentary by the same guys - with less information, but with more bells and whistles), Christianity, and other deisms, are the products of warping astrolatry (e.g. sun worshipping) with entheogens (i.e. psychoactive substances).

Discuss!

I am currently doing my thesis on hallucinogenic drugs and religion so I know a little bit about this.

If you haven't done already, read the book Shroom by Andy Letcher since it gives a sober and rational take on the link between religion and magic mushrooms.

Many mushroom enthusiasts like to believe in pre-historic mushroom use, however so far there is no evidence to support such a hypothesis. There is well-justified speculation aboutm it however so far we have no evidence to definitively prove that mushroom use occured thousands of years ago. There was a man found trapped in some ice froma round 7,000 years ago apparently clutching mushrooms however there is no evidence to show they were being used in a psychadelic fashion since they could have been being used for medicine, magic, food or even insulation! Many drugs were being employed around this time. Cannabis was used 15,000 years ago, however it was used to make pottery. Opium has been found in Egyptian tombs however opium is used to numb the pain of people suffering from illness. Thus although we have evidence of drugs being used, they were not being nessacarily used for hallucinogenic purposes.

Terrance Mckenna claims that in the area Tassili N'Ajjer( I think that is how it is spelt) there is evidence from pre-historic cave art that mushrooms were being used. There is no evidence that mushrooms grow in such an aread however and the most important evidence he uses is some cave art of a very strange and psychadelic creature that is bee headed and is apparently holding mushrooms. The drawing he used to support this hypothesis was not the actual cave drawing but a second hand drawing produced by his wife. His wife was a mushroom enthusiast, which suggests confirmation bias, and in the drawing she had aggrandized certain parts of the drawing that suggest mushrooms when they otherwise may have looked like spears or arrows. Thus, even if we accept that they are mushrooms, there is no reason to suggest they were put there for mind-altering purposes. They may have been put their because they looked magical or because they looked 'phallic' and there phallic cults back then. Many reasons could exist.

As for the fly-agaric and christmas connection, such a hypothesis states that santa claus was actually a metaphor for the fly-agaric induced ceremonies carried out by shamans in siberia. The mushroom is red and white, like Santa Claus, and reindeer apparently ingest the mushrooms as well as the urine from people who have consumed it since the mushrooms properties can be felt aroubnd six times passed through urine. It also comes from the fact that Siberian shamans used to have reindeer guides to unseen realms of reality and enter through a chimney in a hut to enter such ceremonies. This theory was proposed mainly by Robert Graves the writer, who was also an enthusiast for magic mushrooms. The hypothesis passed through various writers until it became established fact however there is certain evidence disproving it. First of all, the red and white image of santa did not exist that commonly before it became westernized and before it was green. Furthermore not all shamans used mushrooms in Siberia and many of them enter altered states through other means such as drumming. We, in the west, have created a false connection between ALL Siberian Shamans and the fly agaric. Moreover, Reindeer are rarely used as shamanic guides and the myth about them climbing through a chimney is completely false. It is still possible but to me it seems unlikely.

-Well, you would have to find the quote. I do not know what they mean by saying that he does not respect ancient cultures nor the drugs. That sentence to me has no real semantic value.

Yes it could do and I am accepting that possibility but then I am also accepting the possibility that they might not have had to do their hallucinogenic properties. Just because we define something now does not mean that they were considered hallucinogenic back then. Also, when I say magic, I mean they may have been used solely as a ritualistic tool. Plus, not all shamans do. The woman in the picture below is a shaman and states that she does not use mushrooms herself since she enters altered states of consciousness through other ways. Plus, just because they use them not does not mean that they have used them since prehistory. They may have only discovered them recently. Plus, because shamans were kicked out siberia during soviet Russia our attempt to understand shamanism in Siberia has been severely limited. Plus, Shamanism spans many different things. Some are therapists, some are philosophers, some are doctors, They serve many different functions.

Right track in regards to what? Plus, the studies he refers to in which Roland Fisher apparently proved that psylocibin mushrooms enhance visual acuity I would say need to be redone. Plus, as far as I know, there is no evidence that drug use could alter evolution since that is a Lamarck-ian view of evolution and no primates, as far as I am aware, consume mushrooms.

Well, the woman in the picture never took mushrooms herself. She was a Siberian shaman but never took them. Haha, I admit it is a bit weird but then many coincidences seem very strange and there could have been other reasons why they had them. I mean we worship trees during christmas but it does not somehow mean we consumed them thousands of years ago. Plus, if I remember there is some connection between the winter soltice and mushrooms, which could explain why they appear so much.

-I would have to read the book the man is writing, though I do not feel utterly convinved by his first comment and Jan Irvin is considered slightly wacky even by those who are quite 'out there'. Andy Letcher, I would say, does not come out and say that 'no prehistoric cultures used hallucinogenics' but rather states that at the moment there is no current evidence supporting such a theory. Jan Irvin does not provide concrete examples as to why he disagrees it seems to me,.

-Yes, we may well be afraid of stating that but just because we are afraid of such an assumption because of drug-taboos does not nessecarily mean that it is true. At the moment I do not see that that is the case. As for mushrooms creating visual acuity, more tests would need to be done. Although human might have done in the past, there is no evidence for monkeys eating mushrooms and it is not based on darwinian understandings of evolutionary mutations but based on the view that drug-experiences could almost alter dna. It is an interesting theory though and as you say, it is speculation. It is a very SEXY theory though to contemplate upon.

-Maybe, personally I do not see huge amounts of evidence but that does not mean I am right, we have certainly been using cannabis for a very long time and peyote as well as ayahuasca.

I do get why such a theory makes sense and it does make a lot of sense because, as you say, our ansestors were searching for food and would have struck upon it. Saying this however, when debating drugs one always has to keep in mind I guess that a drug is always consumed in the context of a cultural matrix.

Haha, it is one of those theories that does just give me an intellectual hard-on. As do many of Mckennas ideas.