by Jan Irvin
THE HOLY MUSHROOM
Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity
A critical re-evaluation of the schism between John M. Allegro and R. Gordon Wasson over the theory on the entheogenic origins of Christianity presented in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
By Jan Irvin
with Jack Herer
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreward
Preface
Introduction
The Wasson and Allegro missives
1) Wasson to TLS, pub. 21 August 1970
2) Allegro to TLS, written 31 August, pub. 11 September 1970
3) Wasson’s private letter to Allegro, 14 September 1970
4) Wasson to Arthur Crook, Ed., TLS, 16 September 1970
5) Wasson to TLS, written 16 September, pub. 25 September 1970
Allegro’s References and Citations
Citations to Professor John Ramsbottom
Citations to R. Gordon Wasson
Citations to Robert Graves
Citations to Dr. S. Henry Wassen
Citations to Dr. Andrija Puharich
Citations to Dr. Richard Evans Schultes
Other Unsupported Claims
A Conversation with R. Gordon Wasson by Robert Forte
Additional evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity
The Epistle to the Renegade Bishops
Judaism and Islam
Conclusion
Appendix—The Allegro-Wasson Controversy
References
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Judith Anne Brown and Anna Partington, without whose help this project would have been impossible. Also thanks to Jack Herer, Professor Carl A. P. Ruck at Boston University, Professor John Rush at Sierra College, Professor Neil Whitehead at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Benny Shanon at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), Dr. Brian Akers, Greg Hardesty, Richard Andrew Grove and Lisa Arbercheski, Edward Milhuisen, Peter Webster, Edzard Klapp, Michael Hoffman, Jonathan Ott, Bartlomiej Walczak, Kris Millegan and Martin Lee for their invaluable contributions and/or feedback. Thanks to John W. Allen for his Psilocybe images; and also thanks to Mark Hoffman for some of the Christian iconography images, and for kindly providing a much-needed research copy of Entheos Vol. 1 No. 2.
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance.
~ Albert Einstein
Foreword
Why should we be surprised or shocked by the idea that people of all eras and cultures have used hallucinatory drugs to attain exalted states of consciousness, which they take to mean divine understanding? In The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross John Allegro tried to show that this idea was built into the language and thought of religion from the very earliest times, and was still evident in the language and thought of the first Christians.
When survival depended on the fertility of the earth, and fertility was a gift of the gods, people sought to promote fertility by appealing to divine power. The swiftest and surest way to know the mind of god was through the use of herbal drugs. Throughout all ages and across all continents, priests and shamans have used entheogenic drugs in religious rituals. One of the chief sources of these drugs was fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, the sacred mushroom.
John Allegro believed that Judaism and Christianity were no exception. He held that many biblical stories and sayings derived from earlier fertility cults based on the use of the sacred mushroom. He discerned mushroom epithets behind many stories, names and phrases in the Old and New Testaments, either elaborated into folk tales or deliberately hidden in names and incantations. Embedded in different contexts, and often misunderstood in translation, they still carried messages for those who would look for them.
His evidence was linguistic. Starting with Greek and Semitic names, phrases, themes and stories from the Old and New Testaments, he followed them back through Phoenician and Akkadian to the earliest known writings – those of Sumer in the third millennium BCE. Although the precise form and interpretation of words changed with inflection and context in different languages, he found that the basic phonemes, the building blocks of words, carried their root meaning from one context to another. So by tracing the development of words we can trace the intertwining evolution of language, culture and religion.
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross met outrage and derision. Part of the problem lay in common revulsion at the idea of linking Christianity to primitive fertility cults. The idea that the New Testament was a cover story, deliberately designed to transmit occult knowledge to a particular sect without the authorities realising it, seemed improbably complicated. Also, Allegro based his evidence almost entirely on language study, and not enough was known about Sumerian to make a solid case. Had he given more attention to investigating the surviving cultural and artistic expressions of ‘Christian’ fertility cults, he might have convinced more people of the strength of his argument.
But now other types of evidence are coming forward to show that elements of the ancient religion survived at least into medieval times, where they were widely accepted in pagan and Christian folklore and religious practice, if not openly condoned by the established Church. For example, a fresco in a thirteenth-century church at Plaincourault, France, shows Amanita muscaria as the Tree of Life. Allegro used it as an illustration to The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, but in the outcry against the book even this obvious reference to mushroom veneration met denial.
Starting with the Plaincourault fresco, Jan Irvin sets out to justify John Allegro’s stance and to explore the objections to it. As I explained in the biography John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the main doubts about Allegro’s theory are whether the New Testament could deliberately conceal a secret code about mushroom usage, and the need to further substantiate Sumerian word connections. In the light of Irvin’s findings, there can now be little doubt that entheogenic drugs were used to attain divine understanding in Christianity as in other religions. I also think it is worth questioning whether mushroom lore was as secret as Allegro assumed it to be: lost in translation, perhaps, but not lost on the early followers of the cult, for whom the symbolism of the holy mushroom was a guide to revelation. In this book Jan Irvin subjects both sides to courtroom-like scrutiny, and adds powerful new evidence to help fill the gaps in our understanding of the origins of religion.
~ Judith Anne Brown
Author of John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Preface
Beginning in the 1950s a serious theoretical disagreement regarding art interpretations emerged within the fields of theology and entheobotany. Entheobotany is the study of how certain cultures use plants and fungi for religious purposes. The question at the heart of this disagreement concerns the study of the origins of religion, and more specifically Judeo-Christianity. Gaining an insight into the core issues of this disagreement is of utmost importance to anyone with an interest in understanding the origins of religion.
The question: Were psychoactive drugs involved in the foundation of Christianity?
This question has caused a schism within theological studies, and especially within the field of entheobotany itself.
One side argues that the use of psychoactive substances can be traced only up until, and their impact is limited to, the earliest writings of Genesis, about 1000BCE—which excludes Christianity.
The other side argues that the use of psychoactive substances was more widespread and persistent. It has been central to the foundation of nearly all religion, including Christianity, and evidence of this usage can be found into more modern times.
It is important for biblical theologians and entheobotany scholars alike to understand the cause and effect of this
schism if open dialogue is to continue. Until this issue is resolved and faced head on, scholarship, in regard to Judeo-Christianity, is at a standstill.
Introduction
In 1952 a leading art historian, Dr. Erwin Panofsky, wrote to a famed amateur mycologist, R. Gordon Wasson, that the Plaincourault fresco depicting a mushroom tree with Adam and Eve (see Plate 1) was not of a mushroom, but a stylized Italian pine tree. Wasson adopted Panofsky’s interpretation and thenceforth began to force it upon other scholars. Uncritical acceptance of the Wasson-Panofsky view lasted, unchecked, for nearly fifty years. However, a more questioning approach reveals that their interpretation of the Plaincourault fresco mushroom has caused a major and unnecessary schism in biblical theology and entheobotany. Recently Michael Hoffman and I reevaluated the critical points of the ‘Plaincourault as Pine’ argument in Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita (Hoffman et al, 2006). Other scholars, including Professor Carl Ruck and Giorgio Samorini, have also recently attacked the Wasson-Panofsky interpretation (Ruck et al, 2007/2005/2001/unpublished; Samorini, 1998).
The purpose of the following study is to show the source of the schism between two primary opposing theories within the field of entheobotany, as well as these theories’ lasting effects on biblical scholarship. The theories are as follows:
Psychoactive substances, and especially mushrooms, were used only at the earliest stages of the formation of Judeo-Christianity. Their usage does not go beyond circa 1000BCE. It was possibly reflected in the writing of the Book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and may extend into other minor heretical Christian sects. There is no evidence that psychoactive substances were used in the foundation or body of Christianity itself. Depictions of these substances in art work, such as the Plaincourault fresco, are purely fortuitous misinterpretations.
This theory was first advanced by R. Gordon Wasson, the famous amateur mycologist who in Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality, 1968, proposed that the Rig Vedic Soma was the Amanita muscaria mushroom – a theory widely accepted today.
Psychoactive substances, and especially mushrooms, were not only a factor in the earliest stages of the formation of Judaism, but a core part of Christianity’s foundations. Their usage may be seen to extend into more modern times. This fact is evidenced by, but not limited to, artwork such as the Plaincourault fresco.
This theory was first advanced by John M. Allegro, the famous Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and University of Manchester philologist, who proposed in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 1970, that Christianity was based on a fertility drug cult. This proposal destroyed his career.
Supporters of either of these theories have briefly and sporadically argued their points of view in various writings on entheogens for nearly four decades—more often than not, rather uncritically.
The theories do not affect only the field of entheobotany, but have had strong and lasting implications for theology as a whole, especially with regard to biblical scholarship and the study of the origins of Judeo-Christianity.
Scholars who have been swept up into this schism include, but are certainly not limited to:
Dr. John Pilch, Dr. Dan Merkur and Jonathan Ott, who have clearly stated their positions against Allegro; Dr. Andy Letcher, who has written an entire book maintaining that the religious use of mushrooms is strictly a modern phenomena (herein disproved)—attacking both Wasson and Allegro (Letcher, 2007);
Professor Carl Ruck and Professor John Rush who have written in support of many of Allegro’s ideas;
D.M. Murdock (Acharya S.), who supports some of Allegro’s ideas (Acharya S., 1999); and
Dr. Robert Price, who at one point sided with Wasson, but has since accepted some of Allegro’s ideas.
In Price’s original review of Acharya’s book The Christ Conspiracy, he wrote:
Having mentioned the Dionysian associations of the hallucinogenic mushroom, it behooves me to mention [Acharya’s] rehash of John Allegro’s claim (in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross) that an ancient Christian catacomb fresco depicts Adam and Eve flanking, not a tree, but a red-capped Amanita muscaria mushroom, implying perhaps that the early Christians cherished the forbidden knowledge of the mushroom, as the ancient Soma priests of India did.
[Acharya] likes this, as a bit of New Age pot-smoking apologetics. But, unfortunately for this theory, art historian Erwin Panofsky declares that “the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms… and the similarity with Amanita muscaria is purely fortuitous. The Plaincourault fresco is only one example – and, since the style is provincial, a particularly deceptive one – of a conventionalized tree type, prevalent in Romanesque and early Gothic art, which art historians actually refer to as a ‘mushroom tree’… It comes about by the gradual schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree in Roman and early Christian painting, and there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this development… the medieval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable” (quoted in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, “The Post-Vedic History of the Soma Plant,” in R. Gordon Wasson (ed.) Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. pp. 179–180).
~ Robert Price, review of The Christ Conspiracy
Price has since removed his entire review of Acharya’s book from his website and replaced it with a promise for a revision.
(http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_murdock.htm)
Understanding this schism is important because each time the topic of psychoactive substances (entheogens) in Christianity is discussed, Allegro’s name is brought up in opposing arguments as if he is some sort of joke, a show-stopper, the end-all to a logical discussion. As Pilch wrote me personally:
[W]e discussed Allegro when I was in graduate school in the late 1960’s. His scholarship is not respected and his conclusions are fanciful. He should really write science fiction.
~ Dr. John Pilch, biblical scholar, Georgetown University
Wasson is perceived as credible in comparison with Allegro. But Wasson doesn’t cover entheogens in Christianity: Allegro does. Thus, this anti-Allegro and pro-Wasson impression gives the appearance that the theory of entheogens in Christianity is baseless.
The extent that Wasson covers Amanita in Judeo-Christianity is to affirm its use in Genesis but reject it in Ezekiel, Revelation and later Christian practice. But Allegro finds entheogens in the entire Bible era, and to some extent after, as in the Plaincourault fresco.
To overly credit Wasson and under-credit Allegro is to underestimate the extent of entheogen use throughout the Bible era and later. It is to give all credit to Wasson in an unbalanced way.
Wasson’s theory is preventing Allegro’s paradigm-changing research from being applied to the field of Christian origins—thus preventing the evolution of this field of study and causing its stagnation.
Not recognizing Wasson’s flaws is preventing Allegro’s voice from being heard and his valid contributions from being recognized and integrated into these fields. As long as Wasson is seen as irreproachable he is preventing scholars from recognizing the value of Allegro’s insights.
When it comes to many of the arguments against Allegro, misconstruing and manufacturing evidence where often none exists seems to be standard protocol. Allegro’s ideas, and the ideas of those that have continued this area of research, are often swept aside without justification. They are too often dismissed and ignored in an uncritical and largely unfounded diatribe which refuses to review the specific points of the arguments:
Does the Plaincourault fresco really represent mushrooms?
Were Christian origins based in fertility cults and drug use?
Were entheogens used in Christianity, even to modern times?
This study helps to reveal the errors in claims such as these:
The Plaincourault fresco does not represent a mushroom—art historians say so having studied the matter.
Entheogen use is limit
ed to pre-Christian times and fringe heretical sects.
Allegro was on the lunatic fringe, a crazy man, out for scholarly revenge. His research is utterly unfounded.
Allegro took most of his ideas from Wasson.
Wasson later changed his position to support for Allegro’s work and the idea of mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity.
Included herein is a complete list and analysis of Allegro’s entheobotanical citations used in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (SMC). These citations are intentionally limited to those with specific regard to entheogens. The analysis includes important textual references which set out the arguments used for and against both Wasson and Allegro.
These references also reveal errors Allegro copied from other scholars, as well as several of his own errors. All of these errors are extremely important to the discussion herein. When we review the citations in a structured format, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Allegro took the blame for many errors that were not his own but those he simply copied from other scholars. This happens especially with regard to the chemical constituents, taste and effects of the fly-agaric, Amanita muscaria. The original errors, and the scholars who made them, were largely, if not completely, ignored.
In order to give the reader the best possible understanding of this schism, both the personal letters and the letters published in The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) between Wasson and Allegro are included in full. Also included and analyzed is a significant letter from Wasson to the editor of the TLS, Arthur Crook. These letters are provided in full because they form the foundation of this study and reveal the origins of the schism between Wasson and Allegro. In doing so, they also reveal the beginnings of the schism in the field of entheobotany, and beyond into Judeo-Christian theology, which has continued to the present day.
