Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Contents
Heinrich book: Magic Mushrooms in
Religion and Alchemy
Heinrich on Jesus'
Historicity. Apocrypha, 2-state interpretation
New in Heinrich's "Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy"
Heinrich remains agnostic on
historicity of Jesus
Here is a
quick review of Strange Fruit I wrote for Amazon.com. More information about this and related books:
http://www.egodeath.com/amanita.htm
5/5 stars.
Innovative
evidence for Christian entheogen tradition
When I
read about eating bittersweet scrolls followed by seeing visions, in Ezekiel
and Revelation, it was clear that Christianity included an essential entheogen
tradition. However, it was unclear
which entheogens might be allegorized in those scriptures. Heinrich presents a fine and sufficient
candidate.
He also
presents a brilliant hypothesis that the story of the Exodus is based around
ergot poisoning of the yeast supply.
Chris Bennett in Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible makes a case for
cannabis especially in the Old Testament, and Dan Merkur in Mystery of Manna,
and in Psychedelic Sacrament, makes a case for ergot in the Old Testament.
This is a
model of a fine book. The prose is
clear, artistic, and masterful. The
photos are stunning and perfectly support his case, showing the shape-shifting
Amanita in its various lifecycle stages, explaining how each stage is
allegorized in Hindu, Christian, and alchemical traditions. Definitely worth the price. A must-have for entheogen scholars. Worth searching for.
See my
Amazon area for more information about entheogen books and religious
experiential allegory."
http://innertraditions.com/titles/mamure.html
Forthcoming
9/02
Magic Mushrooms
in Religion and Alchemy
by Clark
Heinrich
First
North American Edition of
Strange
Fruit
ISBN
0-89281-997-9
Park
Street Press
256 pages,
8 x 10
Three
8-page color inserts
40
black-and-white illustrations
Paper,
$19.95 (CAN $31.95)
About the
Book
About the
Author
Table of
Contents
Reviews
Excerpt
Ordering
About the
Book
An
illustrated foray into the hidden truth about the use of psychoactive mushrooms
to connect with the divine.
* Draws
parallels between Vedic beliefs and Judeo-Christian sects, showing the
existence of a mushroom cult that crossed cultural boundaries.
* Contends
that the famed philosophers' stone of the alchemist was a metaphor for the
mushroom.
* Confirms
and extends Robert Gordon Wasson's hypothesis of the role of the fly agaric
mushroom in generating religious visions.
Rejecting
arguments that the elusive philosophers' stone of alchemy and the Hindu elixir
of life were mere legend, Clark Heinrich provides a strong case that Amanita
muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom, played this role in world religious history.
Working under the assumption that this "magic mushroom" was the
mysterious food and drink of the gods, Heinrich traces its use in Vedic and
Puranic religion, illustrating how ancient cultures used the powerful
psychedelic in esoteric rituals meant to bring them into direct contact with
the divine. He then shows how the same mushroom symbols found in Hindu
scriptures correspond perfectly to the symbols of ancient Judaism,
Christianity, the Grail myths, and alchemy, arguing that miraculous stories as
disparate as the burning bush of Moses and the raising of Lazarus from the dead
can be easily explained by the use of this strange and powerful mushroom. While
acknowledging the speculative nature of his work, Heinrich concludes that in
many religious cultures and traditions the fly agaric mushroom--and in some
cases ergot or psilocybin mushrooms--had a fundamental influence in teaching
humans about the nature of God. His insightful book truly brings new light to
the religious history of humanity.
About the
Author
Clark
Heinrich has been an ethnobotanist since 1974 and has completed years of study
with masters of yoga philosophy and Western mysticism. The author of The Apples
of Apollo, Heinrich lives in the coastal mountains of central California.
Reviews
". .
. fascinating, scholarly and original . . . I love it."
Terence McKenna, author of Foods of the Gods
and True Hallucinations
"No
researcher to date has tackled the subject with Heinrich's painstaking
ingenuity. His conclusions
are as
fascinating as they are certain to be controversial."
Huston
Smith, author of The World's Religions
"[An]
extraordinary and beautiful book. . . . I read it with the highest interest and
enjoyed enormously
following
its excursions into the realm of myths and the origins of religions, into
fascinating possible
connections.
I have learned a good deal."
Albert
Hofmann, discoverer of LSD and coauthor of Plants of the Gods"
The
hardcover is available from Mind Books and is definitely worth the price; it's
a fine book all around.
http://www.egodeath.com/amanita.htm
http://www.promind.com/bk_stf.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747515484
>http://innertraditions.com/titles/mamure.html
>
>Forthcoming
9/02
>Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
>
>by
Clark Heinrich
>
>First
North American Edition of
>Strange
Fruit
>
>ISBN
0-89281-997-9
Hermann
Detering (http://www.radikalkritik.de) wrote of Heinrich's book Strange Fruit:
"exaggerations ... but ... underestimated by most scholars."
>-----Original
Message-----
>From:
clark heinrich
>Sent:
Tuesday, August 27, 2002 3:05 PM
>To:
mhoffman
>Subject:
Re: Amazon book lists about mythic Christianity
>
>
Author
Clark Heinrich wrote:
>I got
word today that the new paperback of Strange Fruit--retitled by the publisher
as Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy--is scheduled to ship from the
printers on 9/3. I'm getting my armor ready. There is a new photo (of a temple
carving in India) that will blow your mind.
>
>Are
you writing your book yet?
>Clark
Yes,
insofar as I'm posting informal articles and am pleased with how the ideas and
confirmation are coming along. Today I
confirmed it's a standard Jewish mystic idea, that idol worship of foreign gods
is a metaphor for Literalist thinking in religion as opposed to mystic insight.
I've been
posting some substantial ideas but they're hidden in a discussion group; when I
convert the postings to the Web, with Index and Search, this should be
perceived as a tremendous leap forward for pulling together a full-fledged
anti-official paradigm of the nature of religion and the origin and true
history of Christianity.
>-----Original
Message-----
>From:
Michael Hoffman
>Sent:
Friday, April 12, 2002 6:27 PM
>To:
egodeath~at~yahoogroups.com
>Subject:
RE: [egodeath] Heinrich book: Magic Mushrooms in Religion and
>Alchemy
>
>
>The
hardcover is available from Mind Books and is definitely worth
>the
price; it's a fine book all around.
>
>http://www.egodeath.com/amanita.htm
>http://www.promind.com/bk_stf.htm
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747515484
>
>>http://innertraditions.com/titles/mamure.html
>>
>>Forthcoming
9/02
>>Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
>>
>>by
Clark Heinrich
>>First
North American Edition of Strange Fruit
>>
>>ISBN
0-89281-997-9
>-----Original
Message-----
>From:
Michael Hoffman
>Sent:
Sunday, March 31, 2002 8:07 PM
>To:
Egodeath Group
>Subject:
Book: Strange Fruit
>
>
>
>Here
is a quick review of Strange Fruit I wrote for Amazon.com.
>More
information about this and related books:
>http://www.egodeath.com/amanita.htm
>
>
>5/5
stars.
>Innovative
evidence for Christian entheogen tradition
>
>When I
read about eating bittersweet scrolls followed by seeing visions, in Ezekiel
and Revelation, it was clear that Christianity included an essential entheogen
tradition. However, it was unclear
which entheogens might be allegorized in those scriptures. Heinrich presents a fine and sufficient
candidate.
>He
also presents a brilliant hypothesis that the story of the Exodus is based
around ergot poisoning of the yeast supply.
Chris Bennett in Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible makes a case for
cannabis especially in the Old Testament, and Dan Merkur in Mystery of Manna,
and in Psychedelic Sacrament, makes a case for ergot in the Old Testament.
>This
is a model of a fine book. The prose is
clear, artistic, and masterful. The
photos are stunning and perfectly support his case, showing the shape-shifting
Amanita in its various lifecycle stages, explaining how each stage is
allegorized in Hindu, Christian, and alchemical traditions. Definitely worth the price. A must-have for entheogen scholars. Worth searching for.
>See my
Amazon area for more information about entheogen books and religious
experiential allegory.
I wrote:
>>In
contrast, I present this truly sane, wise, and sober interpretation: Jesus is
an entirely mythic representation of the specific metaphysical experience and
conceptual realization which Hellenistic mystery-religion initiates and Jewish
mystics underwent subsequent to ingesting the sacred food and mixed wine of the
ritual meals that were standard and ubiquitous in the Hellenistic world.
Clark
Heinrich conceded that and seems to have forgotten the presumably main subject
of our discussion, the changes in the new edition of Strange Fruit. His book takes for granted the literal
existence of a historical Jesus, which I maintain hopelessly complicates any
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark
Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979
When
ordinary Christians hear the no-historical Jesus proposal, they think that the
main problem with it is that it would be much harder to explain Christian
origins.
Scholars
can more quickly recognize that the problem they are inadvertantly coming
across is that the more you study Christian origins, the more superfluous and
redundant is the need for any individual man, Jesus, to *also* physically enact
what the Jewish and Hellenistic thinking of the day had *already* constructed
with or without an actual man to uniquely literally carry out the mythic ideas
that were on everyone's mind already.
For
scholars, the problem is coming to be how to explain the rise of Christianity
as being a natural development in the political and mythical climate at the
same time as Christianity also "came from" the acts of a presumed
historical individual, Jesus; historical Jesus becomes more of a complicating,
problem-introducing extra hypothesis than a solution.
The
historical Jesus assumption is like saying that when you push a door, the door
opens because of cause-and-effect *and* because the door spirit causes the door
to open.
As a
theorist, it is a huge relief to abandon the historical Jesus assumption -- a
far more compact and elegant mode of explanation results, instead of trying to
explain that Christianity was formed *both* by the political and historical
backdrop *and* by the uniquely actualized actions of the individual man, Jesus,
that just happen to exactly enact the mythic allegorical drama that was present
anyway in Jewish and Hellenistic thinking.
Today's
scholarly consensus amounts to a combination of "Jesus is archetypal
allegorical mystic metaphor" *and* "Jesus literally carried out the
allegory". For scholars, the
question now is how is it that Christianity started both without needing Jesus,
*and* involving Jesus? We have a
double-explanation, and then the question is what would have motivated a
rational, clear-thinking Jesus to have bothered *voluntarily* literally acting
out the myths of the day? To pull off
some stunt of faking a resurrection?
Why would
he do it? He wouldn't be considered a
victorious king in that scenario which ends up with a regular literal Jesus
walking around after literally escaping the cross. That's the problem I came across and grappled with.
Then the
spirit showed me that what mattered to *me* if I ever experienced a crisis
needing a vicarious self-will demolisher to finally and violently cross out his
self-will and self-control, was the *idea* of a divine savior and rescuer; the
savior figure was effective for me in my time of tribulation and judgment by
his actions in the mental realm, not by his literal existence, his literal
motives, and his literal actions.
I also
assumed at the time the "savior" and "divine rescuer" idea
functioned the same in the other Hellenistic mystery religions with their
dying-and-rising god-man divine redeemer-figures, which scholars hold to be
purely mythical redeemers.
How could
it be that the mystery religions experienced divine rescue and redemption from
their purely mythical saviors, while Christian mystic-state explorers had to
have a savior that was also literal in addition to functioning allegorically in
the mind? From this analysis, the
literal historical Jesus became totally superfluous with respect to the
mystic's experience of being rescued by a divine savior.
In
practice, the literalist assumption (the assumption that the origin of
Christianity was strongly focused on and dependent on a single historical
actual individual man) prevents understanding the high allegorical meaning.
I proposed
asking Dale Allison why one should accept his historical-Jesus interpretation
of the apocalyptic Jesus instead of my entheogen-allegory interpretation.
Clark
wrote that I have more patience for theology than he does, and characterizes
literalist Christianity scholars as "can't get the joke". Chris Bennett's book is responsible for some
of my patience for theology, such as taking on the entire Bible as entheogenic
scriptures and then later (unlike Bennett) as mythic-only entheogenic
allegory. If Bennett takes on the whole
Bible, working through each book, then I had better reach that bar as
well.
I think
Bennett omitted the Apocrypha between the testaments, which is a mistake. The most literalist version of Christianity
is Protestantism, and that literalist, non-spiritual, non-allegorical mindset
is supported by removing the Apocrypha.
In Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, there's a much stronger flavor of
allegory.
That's one
reason why I'm thinking of retracting or qualifying my idea of
"middle-level religion" or "middle-level Christianity": in
some ways, low religion is closer to the truth than presumably higher,
demythicized religion which removes all the supernatural and ends up with
mundane history and mundane ethics and oridinary-state archetypal Psychology
symbolism.
It may be
easier to grasp the entheogenic purely allegorical meaning of the Jesus crew in
Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity than Protestant Christianity, because the
icons and mood are already more archetypal and symbolic than in
hyper-literalist Protestantism. My
brand of Christianity was exclusively Protestant, albeit a mix of conservative
and New Age Protestantism.
The
Protestant mythic-system is a more brittle puzzle, serving as more of a
challenge but more definitely and catastrophically breakable.
Catholicism
can too easily absorb an allegorical theory, whereas Protestantism tends to be
entire demolished or completely transformed upon finding a sound allegorical
interpretation; Protestantism cannot remain literalist and absorb and co-opt
mystic allegory; it necessarily gives up the literalist ghost and transforms to
the distinct 2-level dynamic system it was originally designed to be.
In the
earliest Christianity, you could say that the collective community understood
the 2-level meaning-flipping character of the religion; this is reflected in
the Paul character's distinction between milk Christianity and meat
Christianity, thinking as a child does and then putting away childish things
for the adult way of thinking. Catholic
orthodoxy tends to bend and absorb and co-opt mystic allegory rather than
successfully transforming into the exclusively higher mode of interpretation.
Compared
to the first edition, "Strange Fruit", the new edition of the book
has the following.
Large-format
paperback, which makes it much more user friendly--larger type, bigger
pictures, new layout throughout.
The whole
thing re-edited, syntax improved, typos and British spellings corrected, five
important illustrations that my first publisher lost and therefore left out,
two new color plates, two substitutions with better plates, new layout of
plates with different sizing in some cases.
The new
photo of Rama and Hanuman holding opened mushrooms while touching a Shiva linga
with their free hands that is actually a large button-stage muscaria; with
pertinent new text explaining it.
New
speculation about the pope's beanie.
Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark
Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979
Michael
wrote:
>>Jesus
is an entirely mythic representation of the specific metaphysical experience
and conceptual realization which Hellenistic mystery-religion initiates and
Jewish mystics underwent subsequent to ingesting the sacred food and mixed wine
of the ritual meals that were standard and ubiquitous in the Hellenistic world.
>>Clark
Heinrich conceded that, in contrast to the new edition of Strange Fruit (Magic
Mushrooms), which takes for granted the literal existence of a historical
Jesus.
Correction:
Heinrich's 2nd edition, and his current view, is agnostic about the historicity
of Jesus.
Page 107:
"That Jesus even existed is a matter of some debate, but whether or not he
ever lived is unimportant for the purpose of our hypothesis, because even if he
did, many events of his life could have been invented and ordered in such a way
that the unwritten secrets of his cult were hidden within the story... There may well have been a real Jesus... who
performed the duties of hierophant ... It is also possible that Jesus... was a
cultic title designating the position of Initiator within the cult... We also know that the name
"Jesus," the Greek version of Yeshua, was considered to have magical
properties of its own... My intention
was not to prove whether or not Jesus existed but rather to look for
correspondences between the Jesus *story* and the life cycle of the fly agaric
mushroom."
Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark
Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979
Heinrich
published the same view back in the 1995 edition of the book, Strange Fruit.
This means
Heinrich is an author I read (cover to cover) shortly before I started reading
the mythic-only Jesus books. I was
trying to remember the details of when my view changed and why. That is, I credit Heinrich as one person who
sparked my serious consideration of the question.
The first
time I heard of no-Jesus was when searching on "jesus and mushroom"
in the univ. library, and found the Christian rebuttal of Allegro. Then I read Allegro, then Strange Fruit, and
then, probably after, read Doherty's Jesus Puzzle, then the other no-Jesus
books.
Michael
wrote:
>All
esotericism and religion and high philosophy and gnosis is based on
entheogens. The current dominant
version of the entheogen theory of religion is a much narrower conception: it
puts all emphasis on entheogens in "religion" rather than in high
philosophy/wisdom traditions altogether, and only emphasizes entheogens at the
historical beginning of religion, and puts all emphasis on entheogens
themselves as the secret knowledge that is hidden and revealed, rather than a
correct 2- or 3-part emphasis ...
Strange
Fruit: Alchemy and Religion: The Hidden Truth: Alchemy, Religion and Magical
Foods: A Speculative History
Clark
Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747515484
1995
edition
Magic
Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy
Clark
Heinrich
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979
2002
edition
I updated
my review of Magic Mushrooms today as follows.
_______________________
Toward
entheogen theory of all perennial philosophy forms
When I
read about eating bittersweet scrolls followed by seeing visions, in Ezekiel
and Revelation, it was clear that Christianity included an essential entheogen
tradition. However, it was unclear which entheogens might be allegorized in
those scriptures. Heinrich presents a fine and sufficient candidate.
He also
presents a brilliant hypothesis that the story of the Exodus is based around
ergot poisoning of the yeast supply.
To better
reveal what an innovative coverage and approach the book provides, it would've
benefitted from a detailed table of contents, more section subheads, and
clearer chapter titles.
Chapters
and their coverage of Amanita encoding:
A Brief
Explanation of an Unusual Book -- defining speculative history approach and
encoding of visionary plants in myth-religion
Beating
around the Burning Bush -- drug use in religions ("& myth")
(short)
The Soma
Drinkers -- Vedic Aryans
The Fly
Agaric -- effects of Amanita
Curious
Evidence -- Soma, Allegro
The Dwarf
Sun-God -- Vishnu, Krishna
The
Red-Eyed Howler -- Rudra/Himalayas, Shiva, Hanuman, Tantra
The
Secrets of Eden -- Story of Garden of Eden
The
Prophets of Ancient Israel -- Abraham, Moses, ergot exodus, Elijah, Elisha,
Song of Songs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jonah
Living
Water and the Bread of Life: The Story of Jesus -- Jesus, Paul, Revelation
The
Knowers of God -- Gnostics
The
Mysterious Grail -- Holy Grail
Elixir:
The Secret Stone of Alchemy -- Alchemy
An
Artistic Conspiracy? -- Renaissance art (short)
Heaven and
Hell -- author trip reports
Last Word
-- summary of reasonableness of entheogen encoding in religions/groups
discussed
Legend of Miskwedo
-- American Indian
I commend
how Clark Heinrich's book is structured to trace the presence of entheogens,
particularly Amanita, through history, with Alchemy serving to represent the
Renaissance period and Western Esotericism.
This is an
improved second edition of the excellent book "Strange Fruit". The original title was Strange Fruit:
Alchemy and Religion: The Hidden Truth: Alchemy, Religion and Magical Foods: A
Speculative History.
"A
speculative history" is important: Heinrich is tracing the Amanita through
Western history of myth-religion, and approach that is needed more, as we fill
in the presence of visionary plants in all eras/areas/groups/religions/systems
of gnosis & forms of the perennial philosophy.
The pair
of separate terms "religion and alchemy" obscures what his
"speculative history" approach implies: there isn't in fact
"religions" over here and "alchemy" over there as something
set apart; neither is the "myth vs. religion" distinction
helpful. The book actually contains a
more full-fledged history, rather than just "religion" and
"alchemy" -- Western Esotericism is covered not only by Alchemy, but
also by the Holy Grail.
Some say
Heinrich makes the error of seeing Amanita everywhere. On the contrary, entheogen scholarship only errs
in failing to see visionary plants everywhere, wherever the perennial
philosophy is present, whether called "philosophy",
"gnosis", "religion", "myth", "magic",
or "Western Esotericism".
Further
research is needed, such as in Entheos journal, to fill in the remaining areas
left after Heinrich's book, so that we at last recognize and come to see
visionary plants everywhere -- in all these traditions or currents.
The book's
"speculative history" approach implies coverage of finding visionary
plants everywhere and finding that this "everywhere" is really just
one single "place": manifestations of the perennial philosophy, or
gnosis, which is universal.
The book
tends to write in a voice which assumes the existence of a single individual
who was the kernal for the Jesus figure, but Heinrich also points out that we
have no evidence justifying a conclusion that such an individual existed. He
portrays Jesus both as hierophant administering Amanita and Jesus as Amanita.
He provides a fair commentary on John Allegro's contributions to recognizing
Amanita in Christianity.
The book
tends, like most entheogen scholarship, to treat the visionary plants
themselves as the entirety of what is revealed, when in fact the gnosis itself,
the principles of the perennial philosophy, are certainly the other half and
perhaps ultimately the main half of what is revealed -- though in practice,
revealing the visionary plants is tantamount to revealing the perennial
philosophy.
Heinrich
is innovative but not alone; this kind of entheogen scholarship has become a
burgeoning approach and school of thought -- an increasingly standardized and
established, productive research paradigm. Chris Bennett's book Sex, Drugs,
Violence and the Bible makes a case for cannabis and other visionary plants in
the Bible. Dan Merkur's book Mystery of Manna contributes additional arguments
to the case for ergot in the Old Testament.
This is a
model of a fine book. The prose is clear, artistic, and masterful. The photos
are stunning and perfectly support his case, showing the shape-shifting Amanita
in its various lifecycle stages, explaining how each stage is allegorized in
Hindu, Christian, and alchemical traditions. A must-have for entheogen
scholars.
_______________________
Heinrich
notices the visionary plants themselves in the story of Jonah, while I notice
the intense mystic-state cognitive dynamics: "stormy sea, salvation from
shipwreck" is a classic metaphor for how praying to an acknowledged
uncontrollable transcendent controller (God) pacifies the turbulent,
threatening cognitive control chaos of the mystic-state peak.
Clark
writes that he strove to make it clear that the experience of gnosis itself was
the goal of using visionary plants; the book provides emphasis on cognitive
dynamics triggered and revealed by entheogens, not only revealing the plants
themselves:
>>One
can reach the roof by a rope, stairs, a ladder or an elevator; the important
thing is to reach the roof. But without those aids (entheogens) getting to the
roof is difficult to impossible. Simply learning that entheogens exist, while
extremely important, is secondary to using them and attaining what they make
available.
>>As
the ancient yogis put it, 'When hunting, look at the bird, not the pointing
finger.' A good example of 'looking at the finger' is the deification of the
Jesus figure, a classic
case of
misdirection and a colossal waste of time and energy.
>>Without
having had the experience entheogens provide it's still presumption for a
researcher to say that this or that entheogen caused this or that historical
writing or event (e.g., Allegro); but without entheogens in the mix most
religion scholarship is futile, apart from a mere listing of names, dates and
events.
Michael
wrote:
>>>Heinrich
notices the visionary plants themselves in the story of Jonah, while I notice
the intense mystic-state cognitive dynamics ...
I need to
read the chapter containing the Jonah section with an eye to mystic-state
experiential phenomena, to confirm that Heinrich does provide fair emphasis on
the cognitive dynamics triggered by entheogens, as well as revealing the
visionary plants themselves.
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