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http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html

http://jamesarthur.yage.net/mushroom.html -- find "artwork as revelator", for coverage of Christmas Amanita symbology

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/clas/gkinte99.htm -- "Ken Krause spoke on Paul's ministry in Athens at the Areopagus. http://www.calvin.edu/academic/clas/kenklect.jpg After Ken's talk, we all climbed up to admire the view. ... Anita Veltman speak at the prison where Socrates probably died. The agora is especially impressive when viewed from the Areopagus. http://www.calvin.edu/academic/clas/areop991.jpg "

http://www.determinism.com/

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/determinism

http://www.mashriq.org/ring4.html

knowledge, power, and will are reducible to existence and are hence universally present in everything, but in a systematically ambiguous way. Thus, man is not really free in his will, rather he has the appearance of freedom not the actuality. (cf. Rahman, MS, pg. 168)

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9308/articles/young.html

[a profoundly suggestive esssay -- mh]

In regarding the literary work of art as a subsistent structure of meaning-that is, in granting it, in some sense, an independent ontological status-the New Criticism establishes the study of literature as a principal means of handing on the culture of Western civilization. This is an educational undertaking of crucial importance.

Now all of this is anathema to the dominant ideologies of the contemporary university. If the language and tone of the current academic setting are broadly Marxist, it is helpful to think about the radical predilection of the modern world in general in terms of the Gnostic paradigm formulated by Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics. Gnostic dualism both despises the material creation and sees it as decisive in forming the character and conduct of human beings: the evil that men do is not attributable to the sinful will of the individual; it is rather an intrinsic and hence inevitable result of physical existence. At the same time, the Gnostics also believe that those who attain to a special knowledge, or gnosis, become part of an elite group who rise above the condition and destiny of ordinary mortals. [that's the fallacy of "gaining metaphysical freedom through gnosis" - mh]Combine this with empirical science and technology, and the result looks very much like modern Marxism: the entirety of human reality, including the "superstructure" of culture and society, derives from the material forces and conditions of the economic "infrastructure." Yet again, there is the elite, now comprising radical intellectuals and politicians, able somehow to escape the fateful determinism of material life and, in the wake of the industrial revolution, forge a utopia in which all aspirations are realized, all desires gratified.

Obviously only a small minority of contemporary academics would expressly subscribe to an overt Marxism, and few (at least of my acquaintance) could even identify Gnosticism with any confidence; nevertheless, a set of analogous attitudes permeates a broad range of the academic community, and the influence of Marxism and associated ideologies has become especially notable on literature faculties in recent years. It is evident in a pervasive malaise in the academic world-a discontent with the limits embedded in the actual nature of human reality-and in the concomitant, if contradictory, preoccupation with the autonomy of the individual and the exaltation of his subjective longings. The literary critic in this frame of mind will be inclined to approach a story or a poem or a play less as an imaginative rendering or revelation of the structure of reality than as an open-ended vehicle for the free play of individual fantasies.

Now it is not hard to see why the New Criticism, with its insistence on the objective integrity of the literary work, would hold little appeal for the contemporary academic ideologue. At its inception the New Criticism was, among other things, a reaction against the impressionistic "appreciations" of literature by genteel dabblers, against the late Romantic worship of the author as prophet or genius, and against a school of literary history that buried individual works under a mass of trivial details about influences and fashions while altogether eschewing the serious task of critical judgment. The New Criticism was, above all, an assertion that a piece of fiction or poetry or drama could matter, could have significance in and of itself.

Such a view of the literary work entails certain metaphysical and moral premises that are incompatible with the radicalism that now dominates academic and intellectual life. First, the New Critics almost all insist that the proper end of literary study is the work itself conceived as an independent object, and that investigations of the author's biography, of the historical situation in which he wrote, of the work's "reception history" and relations to other works of literature-all of this is ancillary to the interpretation and evaluation of the work itself. These premises assume that a literary work exists independently of the interests and purposes (conscious or unconscious) of the author, or of the responses to or experience of the work on the part of any particular reader or collection of readers in any given time or place. A work of literature, then, stands as a testimony to the independence of the human spirit from material necessity: a man who can in words create a structure of significance that transcends the constraints of physical causation, or who can respond to it with sympathy and understanding, is himself in that measure a transcendent being; that is, he is a free, rational agent. By the same token, the work of literature in some ways rehabilitates that very material universe: it is seen neither as the realm of sheer darkness and despair of the ancient Gnostics nor as the meaningless grinding process of their Marxist heirs, but rather as a purposive design in which mankind is, or ought to be, temporarily at home. Literature is precisely humanity's imaginative ordering of the experience of the world.

The moral implications of the New Criticism are equally repugnant to radical ideology: if a literary work is a sign of human freedom, it is also a reminder of the limits of that freedom. As a representation of reality, a literary work is a manifestation of the structure of reality that exists independently of, and sometimes in conflict with, individual expectation and desire. As an embodiment of meaning apart from author and interpreter alike, the literary work is a reminder that human beings can discover significance, but not manufacture it. The New Criticism thus responds affirmatively to what we might call the moral realism of great literature. Consider, for example, how many tragedies manifest the dignity and grandeur of human beings as morally free agents who yet can degrade and destroy themselves through the proud abuse of freedom and the refusal to respect the limitations inherent in the nature of reality. Similarly, the interpreter of the drama is free to explore the richness of the play and draw out as much as he can of its inexhaustible significance, but he must respect the integrity of the text and acknowledge its meaning as its own and not his.

Now virtually every effort to discredit the New Criticism also involves an attack upon the objective integrity of the literary work of art, along with a concomitant exaltation of the reader or interpreter. As Elaine Pagels says of the Gnostics' relation to Christ's message (in her work The Gnostic Gospels), what they sought-and seek-is not a true interpretation of the message, but a unique, wholly subjective self-realization. The authority of canonical scripture and apostolic tradition are set aside in favor of the individual's interior divinity. Gnosticism provides so useful a model because the ancient Gnostic, like the modern Marxist, is preoccupied with escaping or transforming an unsatisfactory reality in the interests of personal domination or self- satisfaction. Because of its fictionality, literature can be regarded as a useful vehicle for this, but only if it is severed from reality by the denial of its status as a representation and rendered entirely responsive to the will of the interpreter.

...

Given the radical perspective of the ideologues who currently dominate the literature departments of universities, literature is a conservative force because it implies a standard of discrimination and judgment. [and acceptance of limits or boundaries on our freedom - mh]

The old New Critics regarded the study of genuine works of imaginative literature as a powerful civilizing force because it is educative in the strict sense: it is a means of leading the student out of the narrow, self-interested realm of individual and peer group; it is a confrontation with landmarks of cultural tradition whose significance and authority persist from generation to generation and provide norms of thought, feeling, and behavior. In the New Critical scheme the work of critics and scholars is ancillary to the masterpieces that constitute this literary culture. Its task is to define and identify literary excellence and through interpretation to point out how literature represents and reveals the nature of reality. [as opposed to wide-open freedom - mh]

Naturally, then, it is precisely for its insistence upon literary quality that the New Criticism is currently hated and feared.

..

"Scholarship" dealing with "popular" literature is an academic growth industry. For an academic, perhaps the best evidence of the power of this new industry is the number of his colleagues who seem to spend more time listening to hard rock and watching music videos than reading poetry.

[actually they might learn a Dionysian principle or two reading the poetry in acid-rock lyrics such as the album Ride the Lightning - mh]

There are two main consequences of all this: the reduction of literature to so much grist for the ideological mill and the concomitant total empowerment of the interpreter.

http://208.154.71.60/bcom/eb/article/7/0,5716,108157+8+105859,00.html

It is not impossible, however, to discover through these texts their vision of the world and compare it with the views of the Jewish thinkers who attempted to harmonize the biblical-rabbinical tradition with Greco-Arab philosophy, whether of Neoplatonic or Aristotelian inspiration.

At the base of the Kabbalistic view of the world there is an option of faith: it is by a voluntary decision that the unknowable deity--who is "nothing" or "nothingness" (nonfinite) because he is a fullness of being totally inaccessible to any human cogitation--set into motion the process that leads to the visible world. This concept radically separates Kabbala from the determinism from which the philosophy of the period could not, without internal contradictions, free the principle of being.

http://gnostic.org/underhill/mysticism1_0-preface.html

a critical realism, which found room for the duality of our full human experience--the Eternal and the Successive, supernatural and natural reality--would provide a better philosophic background to the experience of the mystics than the vitalism which appeared, twenty years ago, to offer so promising a way of escape from scientific determinism. Determinism--more and more abandoned by its old friends the physicists--is no longer the chief enemy to such a spiritual interpretation of life as is required by the experience of the mystics. It is rather a naturalistic monism, a shallow doctrine of immanence unbalanced by any adequate sense of transcendence, which now threatens to re-model theology in a sense which leaves no room for the noblest and purest reaches of the spiritual life.

[This passage has an interesting gathering of the players: it starts to tell a story of how the determinism of science is against the freedom of mysticism -- though historically, gnosticism was deterministic.]

- Winrich A[lfried] Löhr, Gnostic Determinism Reconsidered: VigChr 46 (1992)

http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/0210=192.htm

[scanned/garbled]

Previous to Augustine there was no serious development in Christianity of a theory of predestination. Until then the rich materials of the New Testament, especially of the writings of Paul, remained unutilized i. The East- or were subject to exegetical discurern Church. siveness. That the Greek Fathers stopped short with merely superficial historical revelation and free personality is due to the necessity of asserting over against pagan and Gnostic naturalistic determinism the autonomy of man; and over against the evolutionary primal power, the transcendent personality of God. To them this autonomy was the distinguishing characteristic of human personality, the basis of moral responsibility, a divine gift whereby man might choose that which was well-pleasing to God (Justin, 1 Apol., x. 63, xliii. 10, II., vii. 3; Eng. transl., ANF, i. 165-66, 216 177). Sin could not destroy this autonomy, could at most only weaken it and lead it intellectually astray (Origen, Contra Celsum, iii. 86-69· Eng. transl., ANF iv. 490-492); and Ireneeus (Hcer., IV., xxxvii. 3; Eng. transl., ANF, i.

http://csunx2.bsc.edu/~bmyers/WJ1.htm - A common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which everyone has heard. This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground--not, perhaps, of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent, but of deepening our sense of what the issue between the two parties really is, of what the ideas of fate and of free will imply.

http://www.bookreviews.org/Reviews/0691005427.html - Here, Williams argues that the concern over proper ethics and the repeated notions in "Gnostic" texts to "awaken those that sleep" (Gos. Truth 33,8) speak to the conclusion that the potential for salvation is open to all humans.[195] Williams suggests that once the scholar puts aside the traditional notion of "Gnostic" cosmic determinism, that the texts speak out about the individual's role in his own salvation--through free-will and proper ethics--rather than being saved by nature alone as Clement would have us believe.

http://www.bookreviews.org/Reviews/6apr7.html - To remedy the seriously deficient scholarship on this difficult complex of religious ideas, Rösher surveys selected texts (Exodus, Isaiah, Jubilees, Enoch, 1QH, Romans, and John) that exhibit an apparent incompatibility between God's will and human free-will. In view of Rösher's comment that the idea of predeterminism transcends the limits of Judaism or Christianity, the reader might expect him to handle the topic as a problem in the history of religions. This expectation, however, is never realized. To be sure, Rösher does make a crucial distinction between the predetermination of the whole (e.g., the whole of Israel) and the freedom and personal responsibility of the individual, largely on the grounds that western "Antiquity" held a determinative concept of the corporate whole, while essentially lacking any workable concept of the individual. But he never seriously ventures beyond the borders of Jewish and Christian texts.

Rösher's thesis is that, despite first appearances, there is no fundamental contradiction between divine predetermination (expressed, e.g., in God's hardening the heart) and the possibility of free, responsible human action.

The determinism that Rösher finds in John is not Gnostic, "origins-determinism," but predetermination based on works (cf. the recent work of J. Trumbower). Rösher argues that John expresses a synonymity between coming to the light/Jesus, true belief, and true works. The individual's reaction to Jesus is determined by past works (3:19-21), not by one's origin. In John 5:46 Jesus draws a direct correlation between one's correct obedience to Moses and one's acceptance of him. This description emphasizes Rösher's intriguing arguments for the Jewish-Christian character of John. While Rösher admits that Paul's and John's concepts of determinism are radically different, he is nevertheless able, through his concept of "In-Wirken," to integrate the two. Each represents one of the two lines of emphasis that Rösher argues belong together on the basis of his preceding analysis. Paul and John belong together in the same way that predeterminism subsumes, while not eliminating, human responsibility.

In the end, Rösher has produced a provocative biblical theology of determinism. But herein lies the most important problem. Should we not question, methodologically, any attempt to unite two independent and admittedly disparate views on a common theme on the basis of evidence from other, unrelated texts? In other words, John's concept of determinism seems to be so different from Paul's that the two cannot be brought together without some type of biblical-theological presupposition. Despite this general concern, this subtle and captivating book will certainly provoke a lively and productive response from its readers.

http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/doinel.htm - The [a later] Gnostic Church accepted the Valentinian doctrine that Humanity is divided into three fundamental classes, the spiritual Pneumatics, to whom the Gnosis is natural; the materialistic Hylics, for whom the Gnosis was unreachable; and the intermediate Psychics, for whom the Gnosis was attainable only through effort. However, it did not accept the rigid determinism of the Valentinian doctrine.

http://www.essene.com/Church/Conspiracy/OrigenOfAlexandria.html - So also with the earth— one earth will pass away and another will take its place, more refined and more perfect. Origen envisioned an endless succession of worlds and ages all following one another and coming into existence according to merits and demerits. In Origen's universe, nothing happens by chance or is predestined. All is the result of freedom of choice and movement.

Origen's understanding of man is just as lofty as the Christian-Gnostics envisioned. Man is created by God as a spiritual being, but one who must prove his goodness so that such goodness becomes natural, not accidental, thus enabling man to share and partake in the Divine Nature. Man, therefore, is capable of becoming as God.

The Golden Age of Christian Theology

The theology of Origen is all- encompassing and universal in scope. It can be considered the representative of the highest Christian Gnosis and the greatest systematized exposition of Christian theology yet advanced. It is ironic that although Origen opposed certain ideas of the Gnostic sectarian Christians such as the concept of a demiurge (Creator- God) considered as inferior to the Supreme God, pairs of Aeons or emanations and the allegorical works such as we find in Valentinus' cosmic myth, he actually popularized key Gnostic doctrines on the soul's preexistence, the fall and descent of the soul into matter, the resurrection of the soul in a celestial or heavenly body, Gnosis as the way of the soul's salvation, and the ultimate restoration into divine unity. The Christology of Origen is significant for its complexity and because it endeavors to give an adequate conception of Christ's humanity, that is, "the moral freedom pertaining to him as a creature."< 49> Origen clearly taught that Christ earned his place as the incarnation of the Logos through choice and self- effort, not because he was God from all eternity. For the Christian-Gnostics, Christ is an emanation of the Pleroma; for Origen, he is one of the created spirits. The doctrines are similar, though not exact.

Harnack also asserts that Origen's eschatology or doctrine of the Last Things is more akin to the Valentinian Gnostics. Origen's doctrine, however, is permeated by his concept of free will, and he rejected what he felt to be deterministic tendencies in certain schools of Gnosis.

Prior to Origen, as we have seen, there were diverse views regarding the nature of Christ among the earliest sects of Christians. Some, such as the Ebionites, are said to have denied Jesus' preexistence while others asserted his preexistence. Harnack, we noted, distinguishes between the Adoption Christology and the Pneumatic Christology in the early church. Orthodox

Christians and Gnostic- Christians each had differing views of the nature of Christianity. I have endeavored to prove that the earliest Christianity was, indeed, gnostic, however diverse. The great work of Origen was to unify the ancient doctrines of Christianity, as Harnack points out: "Origen... contrived to reconcile contradictions and thus acknowledged, outdid, reconciled and united both the theses of the Gnostics and those of orthodox Christians."< 50> Origen, therefore, was the great synthesizer who, as we have said, inadvertently popularized the doctrines of the Christian-Gnostics, based as they were on the secret teaching of Jesus, and evolved them into the soundest, most rational theological system yet attempted. In the works of Origen the Christian world finally had a unified theology and doctrine it could call its own.

From the death of Origen to the close of the third century, the theology of Origen gradually replaced that of the Gnostic-Christian sects and schools. Up until the fourth century, Origen had numerous followers and disciples and, as a result, his theology and doctrines were considered to be the standard on which all other expositions were to be based. Christian theology had truly entered its Golden Age as the works of Origen penetrated the minds and hearts of learned Christians everywhere. Yet this "Golden Age" was soon to enter a period of decline. The same reactionary forces which had attempted to destroy the Christian-Gnostics were at work to destroy Origen.

[We can say gnostic = determinist and orthodox = freewillist. Origen sought to merge ideas from these two camps into a single, simply unified system. The Valentinians read Paul as having a different, better way of merging the two schemes: as layers: lower, uninitiated, freewillists, moral-agency, orthodox; and higher, initiated, fatalists, puppet/conduits, gnostics. - mh]

http://208.154.71.60/bcom/eb/article/8/0,5716,117388+14,00.html - Impressed by the absolute unity of all things, the adherents of another philosophic position, that of Eleaticism (see Eleaticism), so-named from its centre in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy, found it impossible to believe in multiplicity and change. The first step in this direction was taken by Xenophanes, a religious thinker and rhapsodist, who, on rational grounds, moved from the gods and goddesses of Homer and Hesiod to a unitary principle of the divine. He believed that God is the supreme power of the universe, ruling all things by the power of his mind. Unmoved, unmoving, and unitary, God perceives, governs, and apparently contains, or at least he "embraces," all things. So interpreted, Xenophanes provides an instance of monistic pantheism, inasmuch as, in this view, the Absolute God is united with a changing world, while the reality of neither is attenuated. This paradox may have encouraged Parmenides, possibly one of Xenophanes' disciples (according to Aristotle), to accept the changeless Absolute, eliminating change and motion from the world. Reality thus became for him a unitary, indivisible, everlasting, motionless whole. This position is basically that of absolutistic monistic pantheism in that it views the world as real but changeless. Insofar as the change and variety of the world are only apparent, Parmenides also approaches acosmic pantheism.

http://mikhael.home.sprynet.com/hbjbc for web.html - What were the religious beliefs of the average Goy? There was nearly universal belief in the influence of the sun, moon and the other planets and stars upon people and events. They believed that astrologers, through the study of the stars, were able to predict the future and they paid a great deal of attention to their horoscopes. The Stoic philosophers used astrology to confirm their doctrine of predetermined fate. This cosmic determinism demonstrates itself in many 'Christian' theological systems. Belief in magic was just as widespread. Few doubted the ability of a magician to to good or evil to others through the use of nonsense syllables and other incantations found in ancient chaldean writings. The average Goy also believed in the public display of religious devotion at the many temples found in every city. He believed the sacrifices offered there appeased the gods or would influence them to act favorably on his behalf. In addition to this was the immorality associated with pagan temple worship, particularly temple prostitution, both heterosexual and homosexual, and human sacrifice. In addition to the state recognized and supported religions, there were many 'mystery religions' with their own peculiar beliefs.

Thus, even if a pagan found monotheism attractive, he would have already had the idea that the Judaism of the Torah was a corrupting influence on 'true religion'. These were the attitudes and practices that Rabbi Sha'ul had to deal with when he started to interact with the Goyim on a larger scale. If you look at his letters you can see that it is the basic problems of morality and theology he had to deal with again and again. These things did not have to be explained to Jews and Geyrim. However, the pagans, coming out of a completely godless, immoral society, had a lot of trouble adapting to even the basics of morality, to say nothing of the rest of Torah. After all, we don’t have letters to the Bereans, for instance; they knew the Torah and only sought to understand Sha’ul’s message in that context. That the average Goy who knew anything about Judaism had such negative presuppositions and deeply ingrained immorality makes the events of the second half of the first century more understandable.

In the year 49 C.E. the Natzrim met in Yerushalyim to deliberate on the basic questions concerning the admission of the Geyrim into the community of the remnant of Israel. The original problem was caused by some men who went from Judea to Antioch and told the Geyrim there that they could not be saved unless they were 'circumcised according to the custom of Moshe.' There were also those from among the P'rushim who believed in Yahushua as Mashiyakh and added that they needed to be directed to observe the Torah of Moshe for salvation. The matter being considered is of the utmost importance and we need to understand the question in order to understand the answer. This was not a question of what the rules of the community should be. It was not about whether the Goyim could remain in paganism and still be 'saved'. It was not about whether there would be a 'Jewish community' and a 'Gentile community' among the Natzrim. The question was about what is necessary to ensure that one did not fall under the wrath of God on the coming Day of the Lord. (Acts 15:1). Did one need to do anything to receive the mercy of God or does one simply trust in God's mercy with the whole heart. 'Trust', not being simple intellectual assent to the facts but a wholehearted 'trusting faithfulness' that demonstrates itself in obedience and devotion. This is the dilemma, trust or legalism (which is the attempt to obtain the blessing or mercy of God by putting Him under the obligation to bless by one's actions). There are no commandments of Torah which comprise rungs on the ladder to salvation; for Jew or Goy. Yahushua's sacrifice was sufficient and all who rely on God's mercy thus demonstrated, obtain that mercy. The equation is not 'Yahushua plus Torah equals salvation', but 'Yahushua equals salvation...then one learns Torah (if it was not known already as it was to the early talmidim). Obedience to the mitzvot is the fruit of salvation, not the method of salvation. Legalism is the antithesis of God's way and of the way of Torah itself.

One must remember why this issue was so divisive. It wasn't that the Talmidim, or even the P’rushim, were ignoring the eternal destiny of the rest of the world. It wasn’t that they believed that only Jews could possibly have a place in the world to come, that only Jews could be ‘saved’. That wasn’t it at all. What was divisive was the idea that a Goy could become part of the righteous remnant of Israel. After all, a Goy, by definition, was subject to the wrath of God, and a lot of Jews, even among the Natzrim, were looking forward to that day when they would see that wrath poured out and they would be vindicated. However, now God seemed to be indicating that He was going to spare some of these Goyim as well as some of the Jewish people. That was incredible to them, there had to be a catch. There had to be something they had to do to prove they were ‘saved’, that they were part of the remnant. They thought the Goyim had to be circumcised, which would have been a formal ‘conversion’ and they had to obey the Law in order to show they were indeed ‘worthy’. The thing they needed to learn was that no one was ‘worthy’ nor could anyone be made worthy on the basis of their actions. Deliverance for anyone was solely God’s prerogative. They needed to emphasize this act of grace for Jew and Gentile alike.

There was much debate about the subject, as well as others I'm sure. Shimon stands up to speak and refers to his experience in the house of Cornelius, a Geyr on whom the Ruach had first fallen as it had on them. He then tells them not to place 'a yoke on their neck that neither we nor or fathers have been able to bear'. Was this 'yoke' the yoke of the Torah? It cannot be. The Torah and obedience to it were commanded by God Himself. If the 'yoke' is the yoke of Torah, it puts God in the position of commanding people to do something that He knew they were incapable of. This idea, however, is a popular one in 'Christian' circles. It says that the 'Law' was imposed on the Jewish people by a God who wanted to demonstrate the fact that no one could keep it, necessitating the sending of 'Jesus' to get rid of the 'Law' and show us God's 'Grace'. The Jewish people then have been the unwitting objects of God's 'demonstration' of man's failure and when the object lesson was over, they were discarded for another people, the 'Church'. I hope you can see the absurdity of this theology and the anti-Semitic conclusions it leads to as well as the cruel jester or 'mad scientist' it portrays God to be. No, this yoke is not the yoke of obedience to Torah but the yoke of legalism, the yoke of trying to earn God's favor and one's place among the covenant people or even one’s place in the world to come. That is the yoke neither they nor their fathers were able to bear, because it is impossible to accomplish.

http://gfisher.org/chapter_6.htm - the belief in the determination of destiny by the position of the planets illustrates, in the last analysis, another defeat of Christianity. Indeed, the Christian Fathers fiercely attacked the astrological fatalism dominant during the last centuries of the Roman Empire. 'We are above Fate,' wrote Tatian; 'the Sun and the Moon are made for us!' In spite of this theology of human freedom, astrology has never been extirpated in the Christian world. But never in the past did it reach the proportions and prestige it enjoys in our times." (Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions, 1976, p. 59.) It is doubtful that astrology, and astral religion, is as great a force right nowadays as it was in the Hellenistic era, but when Eliade was writing (early 1970's) it was enjoying one of its recurrent upsurges.

24. Eliade speculates on reasons for the popularity of astrology: "... the discovery that your life is related to astral phenomena does confer a new meanng on your existence. You are no longer merely the anonymous individual described by Heidegger and Sartre, a stranger thrown into an absurd and meaningless world, condemned to be free, as Sartre used to say, with a freedom confined to your situation and conditioned by your historical moment. Rather, the horoscope reveals to you a new dignity: it shows how intimately you are related to the entire universe. It is true that your life is determined by the movements of the stars, but at least this determinant has an incomparable grandeur. Although, in the last analysis, a puppet pulled by invisible ropes and strings, you are nevertheless a part of the heavenly world. Besides, this cosmic predetermination of your existence constitutes a mystery: it means that the universe moves on according to a preestablished plan; that human life and history itself follow a pattern and advance progressively toward a goal. This ultimate goal is secret or beyond human understanding; but at least it gives meaning to a cosmos regarded by most scientists as the result of blind hazard, and it gives sense to the human existence declared by Sartre to be de trop. This parareligious dimension of astrology is even considered superior to the existing religions, because it does not imply any of the difficult theological problems: the existence of a personal or transpersonal God, the enigma of Creation, the origin of evil, and so on. Following the instructions of your horoscope, you feel in harmony with the universe and do not have to bother with hard, tragic, or insoluble problems, At the same time, you admit, consciously or unconsciously, that a grand, through incomprehensible, cosmic drama displays itself and that you are a part of it; accordingly, you are not de trop." (Eliade, ibid., p. 61.) One may wonder to what extent resistance to notions or the existence of free will and indeterminism, especially in human affairs, is motivated by yearnings for security, or for being a part of an astral divine plan.

25. The Church continued to vigorously oppose astrology throughout the Middle Ages, and since astrology and astronomy were intertwined, the opposition sometimes spilled over to astronomy. Pierre Duhem says, speaking of medieval Italian astrologers: "To deny human freedom, to deny the miraculous action of Providence in the world, to use superstitious divinations and magical operations, was to contradict all Christian teaching and to contravene the most strict prescriptions of the Church. Among the adepts of astrology, then, and the ministers of Catholicism, a struggle was inevitable. Sometimes it was violent. The unbelieving astrologers who enlivened the spirit of the Court of Naples harshly attacked orthodox doctrine; and the mendicant monks, Dominicans and Franciscans, zealously defended dogma. The Church raged against impenitent error with the toughness which was the rule of the time, and over the history of Italian astronomy in the Middle Ages the flame of the stake sometimes threw its bloody gleam." (Pierre Duhem, Le Système du Monde, 1913, v. 4, p. 187-188.)

the Christian scholars of Europe associated the natural science of Aristotle with astrology. This sheds light on the nature of the condemnations of Aristotle by Church authorities early in the 13th century, which emphasized pernicious doctrines of astrological fatalism and pantheistic cosmology, and on the later integration of Aristotle into Christian doctrine made by such scholars as Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Lemay goes so far as to say that "during the thirteenth century, the authority of Abu Ma'shar on astronomy-astrology, and on cosmology, disputed the first place with Aristotle himself", and quotes a marginal note in a medieval manuscript to the effect that Ptolemy in the Almagest is the authority for the courses of the planets, and Alfraganus for their geometry, but on the nature of the planets and their influence on the lower world, Abu Ma'shar is set above Aristotle. (Lemay, ibid., p. xxxv.)

39. John of Salisbury (1120?-1180) was thoroughly opposed to astrology, but got into some difficulty trying to reconcile God's omniscience and foreknowledge with fatal necessity. (Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 164-167.) Of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204), Thorndike says: "That Maimonides was well acquainted with the art of astrology may be inferred from his assertion that he has read every book in Arabic on the subject. Maimonides not only believed the stars were living, animated beings and that there were as many pure intelligences as there were spheres, but he states twice in the Guide for the Perplexed that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of generation and corruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the celestial spheres. While their influence is diffused through all things, each star or planet also has particular species especially under its influence." (ibid., p 211.) For some reason, Maimonides identified the control of human destinies by the constellations with the rule of blind chance. Maimonides also believed that God has planned all things in advance, and that this is incompatible with things occurring fortuitously. John of Salisbury, on the other hand, attacked both Epicureans and Stoics on the ground that the former believe in blind chance and the latter in strict necessity, and both are wrong. It's not clear from Thorndike's description whether he was talking about everything happening by chance for Epicureans, and by necessity for Stoics, or just about some things for each.

42. In another treatise, De impressionibus aeris seu de prognosticatione, on weather prediction, Grosseteste discusses such things as the power of the zodiacal signs and planets, including such technical matters as house, exaltation and aspect. On the question of free will, he holds that the human body is subject to two forces: "as part of the world of cause it is changed in many ways by the movements of the stars, but it is also subject to the control of the mind especially in voluntary actions." (idem, p. 446.) He follows Augustine in The City of God in denying that all our actions which seem freely willed are predictable from the stars. J. D. North says: "In his Hexameron [commentary on the first 6 books of the Bible], Grosseteste's final position on astrological belief is stated at some length. Superficially it is hostile -- astrology books are written at the dictation of the devil, and should be burned -- but his hostility has to do with the issue of determinism, free will, and theological values. His belief in celestial influence was as strong as ever. He thought that the science of the astrologers must fail because the influences they sought are so precisely focussed in accordance with the momentary stellar configuration, that even the most accurate astronomer would not find them. They were real enough, in Grosseteste's view." (J. D. North, "Medieval Concepts of Celestial Influence: A Survey", in Astrology, Science and Society, Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 11.)

(2) He affirms with just as much certainty that the influence of the celestial bodies on human acts is indirect and never necessitating. He very often adds that the contrary opinion is heretical, since it excludes human free will.

74. Of course there remained the question of free will. Among Protestant theologians, John Calvin, when speaking of predestination, recommends that we not press matters too far: "When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present .... We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he determined with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others." But Calvin says of "certain men not otherwise bad": "... let them remember that when they inquire into predestination they are penetrating the sacred precincts of divine wisdom. If anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place, he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from which he can find no exit. For it is not right for man unrestrainedly to search out things that the Lord has willed to be hid in himself, and to unfold from eternity itself the sublimest wisdom, where he would have us revere but not understand that through this also he should fill us with wonder. He has set forth by his Word the secrets of his will that he has decided to reveal to us. These he decided to reveal in so far as he foresaw that they would concern us and benefit us." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, translated by Ford Lewis Battles, 1960, xxi.3, v. 2, p. 926, 922-923.)

Calvin was concerned with the distinction between true and false astrology. The Arminians of this era rejected astrology on the grounds that men have free will, but the Calvinists, on account of their determinism, centered more on the impiety of prying into God's plans. (Jacques Halbronn, "The Revealing Process of Translation and Criticism", in Astrology, Science and Society (1987), edited by Patrick Curry, p. 205-207; also Hugh G. Dick, introduction to Albumazar: A Comedy (1615)_ y Thomas Tomkis, edited by Dick, 1944, p. 22-23); the quotations from Calvin are from Halbronn's article; the original sermon of Calvin is Admonitio adversus astrologiam, 1549.)

77. Keith Thomas observes that all post-Reformation theologians taught that nothing could happen in this world without God's permission. They denied the very possibility of chance or accident. "That which we call fortune," wrote the Elizabethan bishop, Thomas Cooper, "is nothing but the hand of God, working by causes and for causes that we know not. Chance or fortune are gods devised by man and made by our ignorance of the true, almighty and everlasting God." "Fortune and adventure,' declared John Knox, 'are the words of Paynims [pagans], the signification whereof ought in no wise to enter into the heart of the faithful .... That which ye scoffingly call Destiny and Stoical necessity ... we call God's eternal election and purpose immutable." (quoted by Thomas).

78. Thomas notes that Knox was echoing the words of St. Basil, for the denial of the heathen concept of Fortune or Destiny had always been a popular Christian theme. "Yet," says Thomas, "there is some reason for thinking that the Reformation period saw a new insistence on God's sovereignty. Whereas Aquinas had stressed that the notion of Divine Providence did not exclude the operation of chance or luck, a sixteenth-century writer like Bishop Pilkington could declare categorically that there was no such thing as chance. Medieval Christians from Boethius to Dante had maintained the pagan tradition of the goddess Fortuna side by side with a belief in God's omnipotence, but for Tudor theologians the very idea of Fortune was an insult to God's sovereignty .... Every Christian thus had the consolation of knowing that life was not a lottery, but reflected the working-out of God's purposes. If things went wrong he did not have to blame his luck but could be assured that God's hand was at work: the events of this world were not random but ordered." (Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971, p. 79.)

79. Thomas explains the post-Reformation emphasis on God's omnipotence as founded on the universal reluctance to recognize that the rewards and punishments of this world don't always go to those that (we think) deserve them. The doctrine of Providence was an attempt to impose order on the apparent randomness of human fortunes. Thus Thomas' explanation of the turn toward determinism after the Reformation is the same as the explanation given from antiquity on of the rise of determinism among the Stoics. And in both cases, there was a turn toward astrology. The strictures of St. Augustine against astrology lost force among many. In his 20's, Augustine says, he consulted "those imposters, the astrologers, because I argued that they offered no sacrifices and said no prayers to any spirit to aid their divination."

80. Augustine goes on: "Nevertheless, true Christian piety rightly rejects and condemns what they do ..... we must remember Our Lord's words to the cripple: You have recovered your strength. Do not sin any more, for fear that worse should befall you. This is our whole salvation, but the astrologers try to do away with it. They tell us that the cause of sin is determined in the heavens and we cannot escape it, and that this or that is the work of Venus or Saturn or Mars. They want us to believe that man is guiltless, flesh and blood though he is and doomed to die despite his pride. Instead they have it that the blame is to be laid on the Creator and Ruler of the heavens and the stars, none other than our God, himself the very source of justice, from whom its sweetness is derived -- on you, O God, who will award to every man what his acts have deserved, you who will never disdain a heart that is humble and contrite." (Augustine, Confessions, Book IV, Ch 3, translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin, 1961, p. 73.) But one can maintain that if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then choices to sin or not are equally predestined, and those who will turn away from sin are elected in advance of their reform. And Christianity has devices of its own for the abatement of guilt.

81. In place of unacceptable moral chaos, Protestant theologians of the 17th century erected the edifice of God's omnipotent sovereignty. It was impossible for even the most optimistic exponent of the doctrine of Providence to maintain that virtue was always rewarded. Thus it was necessary to concede that only the justice of the next world would fully compensate for the apparent capriciousness of this one. All one could do was argue that there are many instances in which the link between morality and material success is too close to be ignored. By the later 17th century even this proposition seemed unconvincing to some. It had never been clear by what mechanism God's rewards and punishments in this world had been distributed. Miracles as such had been relegated by most Protestants to the days of the early Church. Under the influence of the mechanical philosophy even the Biblical miracles began to lose their credibility. However, belief in God's immediate providences did not wither away altogether. Many intelligent people of the time found it impossible to believe that catastrophic events like the Great Plague of 1665 had only natural causes. 18th century epidemics, fires and earthquakes continued to be hailed as acts of God. Victorian clergymen sometimes regarded venereal disease as a punishment for fornication, and recognized in a cattle plague a retribution for the ill-treatment of farm labourers. (Thomas, ibid., p. 107, 109-110.)

82. The theologians of the post-Reformation period were imposing a doctrine of God's omnipotence on a populace long

. In John Gower's Confessio Amantis (1390-1393), the wise man becomes not so much a man of character as a man of prayer, who only can come to rule the stars by the grace of God. (Wedel, ibid., p. 135-142.)

Interesting - not profound:

http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/Essays/Nextrel/Nextlong.htm - the shape of the next religion

http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/XXI/21-3.htm

this is one reason why the church has unconsciously pushed the Reformation doctrine into the background. If it is allowed to stand in the forefront, it is too revolutionary and might upset the status quo. Following a seminar on justification conducted by the Australian Forum, one of the leaders of a certain religious institution was heard saying, "What we have heard is very good: but how are we going to fit it in with our system?"

Ecciesia reformata semper reformanda is a confession that the Reformation was not completed with Luther and Calvin. The sanctuary of truth must yet be cleansed from all the errors that were smuggled in under the cover of the Dark Ages. We have no reason to suppose the restoration was completed by the Reformers.

Error is like an octopus. It has many tentacles, but one heart. Most of the books written to expose the errors of certain cults or false systems tediously fight with all the tentacles of the doctrinal octopus. Few there are which effectively slay it at the heart with the sharp sword of justification by faith. [associated with determinism - mh]

Look how Luther dealt with the papacy. Others before and after him spent their energies crying out against the abuses of Rome. Said Luther:

Doubtless this one article [justification], by little and little, as it began, had overthrown the whole papacy, with all her brotherhoods, pardons, religious orders, relics, ceremonies, invocation of saints, purgatory, masses, watchings, vows, and infinite other like abominations. . . . We moreover did teach and urge nothing but this article of justification, which alone at that time did threaten the authority of the Pope and lay waste his kingdom. . . . Images and other abuses in the church would have fallen down of themselves, if they [the sects] had but diligently taught the article of justification. . . . For I have taken away the kernal and leave him the husks. They contrariwise do take away the husks and leave him the kernal. - Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, Middleton ed., pp. 218,219.

Luther has been called the greatest reductionist in the history of the church. He cut through the complicated maze of medieval theology and reduced all theology to the principle of sola fide. The Christian church today is inundated with isms of every stripe and hue. We could spend forever and aye fighting the tentacles of error, but we need to get to the heart. All error is united in its common opposition to the principle of justification by faith. All error obscures the bright light of the gospel. What the church and the world desperately need is the truth of justification by faith without the encumbrance of the popular errors which have obscured it. We must be courageous enough to let the truth of justification by Christ alone call them all into radical question.

http://www-instruct.nmu.edu/psychology/hwhitake/content/Green/Green7.html

During the two centuries before the birth of Christ, as we have seen, Skepticism's influence began to grow in philosophical circles. It dominated the Athenian Academy, particularly under the leadership of Carneades of Cyrene (213-129 BC), and it seemed able to significantly undermine the arguments of the leading Stoics of the time, such as Chrysippus. As a result, the other philosophical and religious schools of the time began to merge with one another, closing ranks in the face of what was perceived to be a common enemy (see Wallis, 1995, p. 27). The first of these alliances can be seen in the rise of Antiochus of Ascalon (ca. 130-ca. 68 BC) to the head of the Academy in ca. 79 BC (Kidd, 1967, p. 384). Although he is known for bringing Platonic thought back to Plato's old school (which had been dominated by Skeptics for over a century), it was his expressed intention to unify Platonic and Stoic thought (Rees, 1967 p. 337). With the publication of Aristotle's school texts by Andronicus in the 1st century BC (Wallis, 1995, p. 27), Antiochus argued that the Aristotle's work, too, could be brought under the Platonic umbrella. As this new form of Platonism developed in the early part of the Christian era, it was often infused with elements of a variety of mystical texts bearing Egyptian and Platonic flavorings: the Chaldaean Oracles, Sibylline Oracles, Asclepius, Corpus Hermeticum, and the like. Such books offered the promise of salvation (and other more mundane events) through the use of special magic and ritual (see Copenhaver, 1992, for an excellent account of their origin and use).

Contrary to most of the philosophies of his time, however, Philo stressed the absolute freedom of the human will, even in the face of the causal forces of nature (Wolfson, 1967, p. 152). In coming centuries, many significant Christian theologians would begin to echo many of Philo's sentiments in their own attempts to reconcile Christianity and Platonism.

One of the most significant Christian contributions to theory of soul and mind, and the one that is highlighted here, was their bringing of the question of the freedom of the will to the forefront of psychological debate. As we have seen, other philosophers, dating back even to Plato, had raised the question of the freedom of the will,[4] but it usually played a relatively peripheral role in their theories of the psyche, the nous, etc. After Philo, however, the early Christians were among the first to regard it as a crucial element in the proper discourse about the soul and mind.[5]

Very early Christianity was, of course, mainly confined to the Jewish people of the Levant. Jews were well-known, if not very numerous, in the Roman Empire. Their reputation seems to have been, on the whole, somewhat negative, however. As Chadwick (1993) puts it:

In the ancient world everyone one knew at least three things about the Jews: they would not be associated either directly or indirectly with any pagan cult (which seemed antisocial), they refused to eat not only meat that had been offered in sacrifice to the gods but also all pork (which seemed ridiculous), and they circumcised their male infants (which seemed repulsive). (pp. 18-19)

On the other hand, Jewish communities that had formed outside of the Levant, due to various economic and political factors, often gathered around them circles of interested Gentiles; people drawn by the elegance of monotheism, by Jewish morality, and by the venerability of Jewish texts.

The Valentinians proposed that in addition to the body and soul (psyche), some people--viz. the Gnostic elect--have pneuma (often translated as "spirit") as well. This pneuma was thought to give them their special gnosis, and guarantee them entry into heaven. Regular Christian faithful, they thought, have only psyche, but no pneuma. This might allow them some sort of afterlife, but there was no hope of their developing gnosis through study or practice or somesuch. All such matters were said to have been predetermined by God. Finally, those who were not among even the Christian faithful were thought not even to have psyche--i.e., to be nothing but animated bodies The deterministic belief of the Gnostics that the individual has no control over his or her ultimate fate--that one is predestined for salvation or damnation--was a second main point of contention between Gnostics and orthodox Christians. It was a debate that would lead the Christians to stress the importance of the freedom of the will to such a degree that it would become a core tenet of their religious beliefs and, simultaneously, of their psychological theory.

He even viewed Socrates as a martyr of a sort, having been executed by pagan authorities for spreading the truth as it had been revealed to him. Justin was a strong advocate of freedom of the will. One of his main criticisms of Gnosticism was that their system contained a strict determinism with respect to salvation. Those who have pneuma are saved; those without are not. Justin recognized, however, that without freedom there can be no moral responsibility, and without freedom the message of Jesus has no point for it can change nothing.

This was the beginning of a crucial turning point in the history of psychological thought. Although Christians were by no means the first to say that humans have free will, in their battle against Gnosticism, Christians came to make freedom of the will a central aspect of their psychological doctrine. It remains a major problem in the philosophy of mind to the present day.

Justin also rejected the Gnostics' claim that Christ was never truly incarnate.

Only after discussing all this did Tertullian touch on that aspect of Christian psychology that was rapidly becoming the most important: freedom of the will. Like his predecessors, he argued the case for freedom against Gnostic determinism, specifically against the Valentinians. By way of freedom, he argued, humans are able to turn away from evil and be, as he put it, "born again and re-made" (ch. XXI, p. 202). Here again, we see why the changeability of the soul was so important to early Christians and, why, as a result, they were led to reject Gnostic claims of its immutability.

Like Justin and Tertullian, Origin also fought Gnosticism on the basis of freedom of the human will. In Origen one can see the concept of free will continue to grow in importance. He was the first to write an entire treatise specifically on the subject (Prat, 19??), but it is now lost. Fortunately, he also devoted large portions of his most important work, De principiis,[13] to a discussion of the soul and its freedom. Although Origen concedes that the abilities of animals such as hunting dogs and war horses make it sometimes seem as though they possess reason,[16] only humans have the faculty of reason (logismos?) fully (Bk III, ch. 1, sec 3). This allows humans not only to have images of things they desire, but also to judge the goodness and wickedness of their desire, and to reject those that are wicked. This ability to make moral judgments, and act upon them, is just what it means to say that humans have free will, according to Origen. Those that remained good became angels and stars and heavenly bodies. Those that cooled a little became humans. Those that cooled even more became demons (inferna), completely alienated from the good. Because they all have free will, however, Origen allowed that even the demons could return to the good and achieve salvation. He stressed (contra the Gnostics) that all humans--even those who claim not to be able to control their desires--have free will and can control themselves through education and the exercise of reason.

Plotinus can be seen as trying to carve out a middle path between the ruthless determinism of the Gnostics, on the one hand, and the radical voluntarism of the orthodox Christians, on the other. Far more important to Plotinus than these two groups, however, were the positions on freedom laid out by Plato and by Aristotle.

the [most orthodox Catholic - mh] Christians were the first to make freedom a central aspect of their psychological theory

http://humanists.net/pdhutcheon/Papers and Presentations/Changing Perspectives on Free Will.htm

[good article on history of free will ideas]

This movement sought to repudiate causality in the realm of the human altogether and thus to resurrect -- largely in a non-religious context -- earlier beliefs concerning the sovereignty of the human ego. The new anti-determinism owed its vitality to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as to the work of the pioneering existentialist Soren Kierkegaard,

1. Elimination or Absorption of Competing Cults

The conversion of Constantine was the decisive event in the estab-lishment of Christianity as the sole official religion of the Roman Empire and its successor states. Christians made up only a small percentage of the population of the Empire at the time of his conversion (312). Within a century, though, it went from being one of the tolerated religions of the state to being the only legal religion. The rivals of Christianity did not disappear overnight, but were replaced by Christianity in a slow, complex process, during which Christian doctrines and ritual practices were modified as other cults were being eliminated or absorbed. Not all vestiges of pagan religions died out or were adopted by the Christians. Some beliefs and rites merely disappeared from official view and continued an underground existence, surfacing from time to time in later centuries. Although the leaders of orthodox Christianity did the best they could to stamp out all unacceptable religious expressions, they were unable to eradicate them completely.

Scholars have debated the reasons for Constantine's conversion and the depth of his sincerity, but there is little disagreement about its results. In the latter part of the third century Christians had been persecuted with more severity than ever before by the Roman emperors, yet, with the conversion of one man, the fortunes of the religion were completely reversed. After Constantine there was only one non-Christian emperor, his nephew Julian, whose epithet, the Apostate, explains how he was able to come to power. Only by appearing to belong to his uncle's religion could he escape official disapproval (and probable execution) and be allowed to ascend the throne.

Julian's failure to reverse the policy of favoring Christianity begun by Constantine was also indicative of how quickly that religion had become dominant. Since it is clear that Julian was a very able and intelligent ruler, his attempt to set up an official rival to Christianity would seem to have had an excellent chance of success. When he became emperor in 361, he had already shown himself to be an outstanding soldier and administrator in Gaul. As he had also been an avid student of Hellenistic philosophy, especially in its astrological or magical aspect, he immediately began a program of reinstituting the solar religion and disestablishing Christianity. He decreed that all religions in the Empire were to be treated equally, ended subsidies to Christian churches, and removed many Christians from imperial offices. Christians were not persecuted by the state, but many churches were destroyed by the people whom the Christians had officially suppressed since Constantine's time. Julian tried to add Neoplatonic theology and restyled rituals to the solar religion, and he also attempted to organize a hierarchy of priests and a thoroughly pagan educational system. In the midst of these reforms he felt it to be his duty to lead the Roman armies to victory over the Sasanian Shah of Iran. He was killed during the campaign in Mesopotamia in 363, after ruling only nineteen months.

Since Julian was the last male descendent in Constantine's family, the army chose one of its commanders, Jovian, to succeed him. Jovian, a Christian, immediately revoked the religious laws Julian had promulgated, and his successors Valens (364-78) and Theodosius (379-95) continued the anti-pagan policies of Constantine and his sons. In 391 Theodosius ordered the end of all public sacrifices and closed all of the pagan temples, and in the next year outlawed even private pagan rituals. The Christian population of the Empire now felt bold enough to attack their enemies openly. Sometime around 390 a Christian mob in Alexandria destroyed the temple of Serapis, built by the first Ptolemies, and burned the great Royal Library. A few years later, in 415, another mob murdered Hypatia, the greatest mathematician of her time and head of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria. Despite Julian's attempt to restore it, paganism was clearly unable to hold its own against the rapidly increasing numbers of Christians.

The increasing popularity of Christianity was due largely to its having become the official religion of the Empire. Other religions were tolerant of rivals, but Christian advisors to Constantine and his successors argued that it was sinful to allow anyone in the Empire to belong to any other religion, except Judaism. Once the emperor became a Christian, the machinery of the state necessarily had to be used to force everyone to become a Christian.

It was not merely fear of punishment that caused people to convert to Christianity, nor, for that matter, the opportunity for preferment in the now Christian imperial administration. Another process was occurring that led to the ease of conversion to Christianity, a process of assimilation. Christian missionaries modified their religion to be less of a barrier to converts, and the masses of converts brought many of their beliefs and rituals into their new religion. The worshippers of Sol Invictus, for example, celebrated the annual rebirth of their deity shortly after the Winter solstice, on December 25. This date was taken over by the followers of Mithras when that god was assimilated to Sol Invictus, and later adopted by the Christians as the date of the nativity of their founder. The Christians also took over the astrological names for the days of the week, and in 321 Constantine declared that the Sun's day would be the official day of rest and religious observance for all Christians. Other pagan festivals and rituals were similar to those of Christianity, such as the festivals celebrating the rebirth of the vegetation deities each Spring, which resembled the Christian ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter. In fact, the date of Easter in western Christianity is determined astrologically: it is the Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring equinox. The astrological religion of the late Hellenistic world was very pervasive.

Most pagan beliefs and rituals were rejected outright by the leaders of Christianity and therefore had to be abandoned or followed in secret. Animal sacrifices and orgiastic rituals were forbidden, for example, as was the belief in the transmigration of souls or any other doctrine about a future life contradictory to that of Christianity. The pagan gods were, of course, banished, but some of them reappeared in Christians' beliefs after they had been transformed into demons or saints. In general, powerful pre-Christian deities became demons, while unimportant local deities became saints. This was not a conscious process, but one which took place gradually over several centuries, as the former territories of the Roman Empire slowly adopted Christianity. For many centuries after Christianity became the sole legal religion of the Empire, inhabitants of rural villages—pagani in Latin, hence our word pagan—continued to practice their ancient fertility religion. As Christian orthodoxy became more insistent that they give up many of their beliefs and practices, the pagan religion was followed in secret, in some cases down to the present day.

Christian leaders and their imperial forces suppressed more easily those religions that had a visible structure or official status. The opponent that the orthodox leadership had the most difficult time disposing of, though, was Manicheism, a religion that resembled Christianity in many respects. It came into existence in the same atmosphere as Christianity, was subjected to the same official pressure and competition from other religions, and had the same need to synthesize the former beliefs of its converts. Manicheism therefore developed a number of structures and doctrines similar to those of Christianity. It was a close enough resemblance that orthodox Christian writers considered it a Christian heresy, rather than a separate religion, and many people passed from one of these religions to the other without much revision of their beliefs. Because of some very attractive features in its doctrines, Manicheism could not be completely suppressed. It has reappeared in slightly different forms several times during the course of Western religious history.

Manicheism was founded in Mesopotamia by Mani (or Manes), who was born in 216 ce, probably in Babylon. He was raised by his father, a convert to the Mandaean religion. This group was a baptizing sect, still in existence today, which claimed John the Baptist as one of its founders. Most of its followers migrated from Palestine to Mesopotamia in the first century ce, and at some point were strongly influenced by Gnosticism. At the age of twelve, Mani received his first revelation: he was to leave the Mandean sect and prepare himself to be the leader of his own religion. The celestial messenger who revealed this to Mani also revealed all the truths of religion, including the information that Mani was the Living Paraclete, or Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus in John's Gospel (16.7-11). At the age of twenty-five he was called to his apostleship and traveled to India with his message, after first converting his father and his father's family. He stayed briefly in India, where he was deeply impressed by Buddhism, then returned to Mesopotamia. Back in his homeland, he became an influential counselor in the court of Shapur I (241-73), the second ruler of the Sasanian dynasty of Iran. Mani offended both the Zoroastrian priesthood and the Magi, who joined forces against this religious heretic. Their efforts showed some success when Shapur chose Zoroastrianism as the official state religion.

Mani, however, retained the confidence of Shapur and was allowed to travel through the expanding Sasanian Empire, preaching his new religion. He also sent groups of missionaries into the Roman Empire, the most important of which went to Alexandria. With the death of Shapur and Shapur's son Hormizd less than a year later, Mani's fortunes changed. The new ruler, Bahram I (273-77), charged him with disobeying the religious (Zoroastrian) law and imprisoned him. After he spent twenty-six days in prison, fasting, talking to his disciples, and giving them directions on how the religion should continue after him, he died (in 276 or 277). The shah, cheated of his opportunity to execute Mani, had his body dismembered and his severed head placed over the city gate. His followers later called this dismemberment his "crucifixion." Mani's religion was persecuted by later Sasanian shahs, at the insistence of the Zoroastrian priesthood, but it had spread so widely within and outside the empire that it could not be eradicated. It was outlawed in the Roman Empire as well, even before Christianity became the official state religion. In 297 the Emperor Diocletian issued an edict banning this dangerous Iranian religion, probably for both foreign and domestic political reasons. The earliest Christian attacks on Manicheism date from the middle of the third century, and by the fourth century virtually every Christian writer included refutations of Manicheism in his works. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who was a Manichean for nine years, found ways to attack them in almost all of his writings, whatever the subject.

The violent reactions to Mani's religion stemmed from its activity as well as its doctrines. It was an energetic, proselytizing faith, as can be seen from the dynamism of Mani's life. He not only traveled throughout the Persian-speaking world and India, but also sent missionaries to preach the truths of his faith in all parts of the world. The missionaries sent to Syria, Egypt, and North Africa during his lifetime were followed by many others in succeeding centuries. At the same time missionaries were sent to Tibet, India, and Central Asia, and as early as 719 a Manichean missionary was received by the emperor of China. The Manicheans were particularly concerned to convert the rulers of any society to their faith, as Mani had converted two of Shapur's brothers. In later centuries various Arab and Turkish princes became important followers of this new religion. It is quite likely that this political focus of Manicheism lay behind Diocletian's outlawing the religion.

It was not Manichean politics but Manichean doctrines that concerned its Christian, and later Muslim, Buddhist, and Confucian opponents. The basic principle of Manicheism was its radical dualism, the belief that the universe is made up of two elements, God and Matter, both of which are eternal. Light and Truth were seen as aspects of God, while Darkness and Falsehood were aspects of Matter. Other attributes of God were Power and Wisdom. According to the Manichean creation story, the forces of Darkness attacked the realm of Light, and the Prince of Darkness defeated and imprisoned the Primeval Human, who had been created by God to defend the Light. This basic myth of Manicheism showed the way to salvation for all humans, in aiding the attempt to free the Primeval Human. As the creation myth continued, some particles of light became mixed with darkness and formed the cosmos as we know it. The Living Spirit attempted to liberate the light from darkness, but was hindered in this effort by Matter, who created human beings. Women and men contain both light and darkness and have the desire to procreate, thus producing many more human beings containing particles of light imprisoned in darkness. As can be seen from this brief description, there were close affinities between Manicheism and Gnosticism. Other elements in Manichean mythology were related to Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Pythagoreanism.

Manicheans adopted elements of Christianity and other religions as well. They described the souls of all humans as the "suffering Jesus," but saw the historical Jesus as only one case of the passion and redemption that everyone must suffer. The Redeemer of all human souls was even called the "brilliant Jesus." The Manichean account of the end of the world also resembled Christian, as well as Zoroastrian beliefs. Astrological doctrines appeared in Manichean cosmology, which described the sun and the moon as the pathway by which the particles of light were returned to their proper realm. All of the planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac were seen as hostile powers, though, whose evil intentions could be discovered by noting their configurations. Manichean doctrines, then, were a blend of late Zoroastrian, Gnostic, Christian, and Buddhist beliefs, with additions from the mystery religions and astrology.

Mani's revelations were contained in the Manichean scriptures, including a Great Gospel , in imitation of the Christian Gospels; the Treasure of Life , on cosmology and anthropology; the Book of Giants , a blend of Iranian mythology with parts of the Jewish apocryphal First Book of Enoch; Letters , of Mani; and Prayers and Psalms . There were other canonical and non-canonical books as well, but all of these works have survived only in fragments, some of them quite long, though. The extent of the geographical spread of Manicheism can be shown in noting the languages in which these fragments were written: Greek, Coptic (in Egypt), Syriac (the language in which they were originally written, in Mesopotamia,), Middle Persian, Latin, Soghdian (a Central Asian language), and Chinese.

Mani's followers were divided into two groups, the Elect and the Hearers, based on their knowledge of the scriptures and their ascetic practices. The Elect abstained from all evil thoughts and deeds, and so tried to avoid blasphemy, were vegetarians, did not kill plants or animals, and practiced total sexual abstinence. They were supported by the Hearers, because the only work they did was aimed at the redemption of the particles of light that formed their souls. The Hearers followed the example of the Elect only one day each week, Sunday. There was a system of confession and penitence for those who sinned, with the Hearers confessing to the Elect and members of the Elect confessing to those Elect who were of higher rank. Although the Manichean religion had an ecclesiastical hierarchy, it was not as rigidly organized as that of the Christians, which proved to be a weakness in its competition with Christianity.

There were sacraments as well in Manicheism that were similar to those of Christianity. Baptism, for example, could not be with water, an element of Darkness, and could not grant salvation, which was through gnosis, not faith. It was performed with oil and probably signified only that a person had become a member of the Elect. A month of fasting each year was concluded with a cult meal, the Bema feast, held on the anniversary of Mani's death. The bread eaten at this meal was symbolic, not of the flesh of God—no part of God could be matter and vice versa—but rather of the fruit of the Tree of Paradise. The Manichean community joined in this ceremony as an expression of its cohesion and its belief in the revelations granted to Mani as the last of God's prophets.

These resemblances to orthodox Christian rituals and beliefs caused the leaders of Christianity to be especially severe in their condemnation and suppression of Manicheism. However, Manichean ideas and practices were not eradicated but driven underground, as was to happen again later in the Islamic world and in China. The official Confucian hierarchy in China believed that it had stamped out Manicheism, but it survived as an underground religion there into the twentieth century. In the Western world Manicheism was to reappear in several different forms. The most important of these reappearances was in the medieval Christian heresy of the Cathari, or Albigensians, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

2. Rejection and Acceptance of Hellenistic Philosophy

The opponents of Christianity among the educated class of the Hellenistic/Roman world posed a different set of problems from those raised by adherents to other religious cults. The Hellenistic philosophers had a centuries-old tradition of speculation about such matters as the nature of God (or the gods), the creation of the universe, the relationship between body and soul, the possibility of survival after death, ethical behavior, and virtually every other topic raised by Christianity. They would therefore not give up this body of thought very easily in the face of the claims of one or another mystery cult. The responses of Christians to this alternative world view ranged from outright rejection to almost total acceptance. Tertullian, for example, declared that a Christian did not need to know any of the false doctrines of the Greeks in order to obtain salvation. Origen, at the other end of the scale, accepted so many of the ideas of the philosophers that he was tried as a heretic. An intermediate view was the one that prevailed, accepting the necessity of studying Hellenistic philosophy, extracting from it those ideas that were compatible with Christianity, and rejecting those which contradicted the Scriptures. This position was easier to state than to carry out, but later Christians agreed that it had been accomplished by the two men who stand at the pivotal point between the Hellenistic world and the Middle Ages: Augustine and Boethius.

The earliest Christian missionaries in the Roman Empire spoke primarily to the poor and middle-class city dwellers, but very few of the well educated were drawn to Christianity at first. As some of this group converted to Christianity, they attempted to harmonize their new beliefs with their older system of thought. At about the same time (in the middle of the second century) some Hellenistic philosophers began to notice this new religion and launched attacks on its superstitions and anti-intellectualism. Lucian of Samosata, for example, parodied Christianity in the same way as he had attacked the foolishness of Apollonius of Tyana and his followers. While Lucian's work could be dismissed as a minor irritation, another writer of the same period, Celsus, published the True Discourse (c. 170), a treatise in which he attempted to destroy the philosophical foundations of Christianity. He tried to show that the doctrines of Jesus and Moses were merely misinterpretations of the Greek traditions of mythology and philosophy. The terrible crime, in his eyes, was the deliberate misunderstanding, corruption, or falsification of the correct traditions. In responding to the philosophical arguments of Celsus and other philosophers of like mind, Christians had to learn the vocabulary and techniques of philosophy. In these disputes Christian theology was brought into existence.

Philo Judaeus, as he is also known, a member of the Hellenized Jewish community of Alexandria, was educated in the Hellenistic philosophical tradition, as well as in Jewish religious studies. His life's work was to produce a synthesis of these two bodies of thought. In doing so he invented theology for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, by showing how rational philosophy can demonstrate the truths of revealed religion.

Philo's method of demonstrating the essential unity of the two systems was that of allegorical interpretation of God's revelation.

His commentary on Genesis, his most important work, showed how Moses used myths and historical narratives to reveal the same truths of religion, natural science, and ethics that had been discovered by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics by the use of their reason. He blamed the apparent differences between the two views on human fallibility, our misunderstanding of what was actually meant by a particular revelation or our faulty use of reason. The best way for theologians to correct the errors of interpretation or reasoning was to write scriptural commentaries. They could explain the real meaning of God's revealed truth, using the terminology and methods of rational philosophy, and could correct the errors in rational philosophy by the light of revealed religion.

Later theologians followed not only the methods of Philo, but also many of his doctrines, particularly the Logos doctrine. Combining parts of the philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, he declared that God's Logos was the principle of rationality and order in the world, God's immanence in the world. Although the unenlightened saw the Logos as God, it was really only the image of the true, supreme God, whose nature could not be expressed in human terms. Philo at times called the Logos the Son of the uncreated Father, and a second God. Human beings had been created partly by God and partly by inferior beings, thus accounting for evil in the world in the same dualistic way that Pythagoras and Plato had done: the good of the soul versus the evil of the body. The goal of the religious seeker was to see and contemplate God, rising beyond contemplation of this world to the invisible, immaterial order of God. Only God's existence could be known by human effort; God's nature could be learned only through revelation, and only partially, due to human limitations. Philo can be seen, then, not only as the first theologian in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, but also as the first mystic.

Celsus attacked the Christians for refusing to accept the truths of astrology; Origen responded that, although the stars were rational beings, Christians refused to worship them or believe in astrological predictions because that would deny free will. God created the stars to be signs of the future, but intended for only the angels to understand them. Demons taught some humans how to read these signs, but fortunately they were so difficult to interpret that astrologers were more often wrong than right. God's foreknowledge did not limit human freedom, so Christians refused to accept the deterministic basis of astrology.

In the third and fourth centuries other Christians took up the subjects of astrology and magic, trying to clarify the differences between Christian and pagan beliefs. Tertullian (c. 160-220), for example, said that magic was false and that astrology had ceased to be effective with the birth of Jesus. Lactantius (c. 240-320) argued that Jesus's miracles had not been a form of magic, because they had been foretold by the Jewish prophets. All magic, on the other hand, was the work of demons, who could be combatted by the sign of the cross and the name of Jesus. Hippolytus (c. 137-236), in his Refutation of All Heresies , took a different approach, attempting to show that astrology was irrational and that magic was based on trickery. Most of the Christian writers of the first four centuries, though, accepted the reality of demons and were ambivalent about astrology, generally arguing that human free will could overcome the destiny foretold by the stars. Some Christian leaders went too far in their acceptance of astrology and magic. Priscillian of Avila (d. 385), the first Christian executed for heresy, for example, was charged with practicing sorcery and teaching the doctrines of Manicheism. His followers were later accused of belief in astral Fate, assigning the twelve parts of the soul to the Hebrew Patriarchs and the twelve parts of the body to the signs of the zodiac. The Priscillian heresy was specifically condemned by Augustine in a letter written in 429, the year before his death.

Augustine's influence as the greatest of the western Church Fathers established the orthodox view on these subjects through the Middle Ages. In Book V of his City of God , the first eleven chapters summarize his attack on astrology. He had accepted its doctrines for a time, but then rejected them because of their obvious inaccuracy, as he tells us in his Confessions (Book VII, Chapter 6). He states at the beginning of Book V of the City of God that neither Chance nor astral Fate rules the universe, but rather it is governed by God's will. To those who say that the stars do not actually cause earthly events but merely predict what will happen, Augustine asks why are the predictions so faulty? He uses the example of twins, born with identical horoscopes, who have radically different histories—he cites especially Jacob and Esau. He also relates a story told him by a rich friend, whose father and one of the family's slaves were born at the same instant on the same estate, yet one lived and died a wealthy man and the other died a slave as he was born. If twins can have such different destinies, is it not likely that factors other than celestial influences affect our lives? And if one's fate is determined at the moment of one's birth, why do people need to consult astrologers about the proper time to go on a journey, conceive a child, sow crops, and so forth?

Augustine accepted the authenticity of magic and drew the same distinctions between Christian miracles and pagan magic as Origen had done. It was the power of faith, said Augustine, that performed the miracles, rather than the technical expertise which magicians had to learn. All magic was ultimately the work of demons. It was fortunate for Christians that they could not equal the kind of miraculous feats that magicians, with the aid of evil demons, could perform. God was teaching Christians to have humility and keeping them from trying to perform miracles, which could lead them into heresy or unbelief. Those who practiced acts of magic deceived themselves into believing that it was their power or knowledge that was responsible, when in fact they were being ensnared by Satan. Augustine even stated that natural human curiosity, disguised by the terms "knowledge" and "learning," ought to be avoided, since it tempted us to want to know everything and so to resort to magic. Here, in his Confessions (X, 35), he anticipated the Faust legend by about 1000 years.

Augustine's legacy in this area was therefore an ambiguous one. He derided the accuracy of astrology but did not deny the overall basis of astral fatalism, nor did he deny the efficacy of magic. A Christian astrologer needed only to say that the patterns of the stars and planets as directed by God's will could accurately predict the future. A Christian Magus could well argue that, with the proper safeguards, the powers of demons could be controlled. Since Augustine had not closed the doors completely, treatises on magic and astrology (and alchemy as well) could be copied and studied by later Christians. This was especially true if these works were written by authors who were themselves Christians.

Two such works, one theoretical and one practical, provided later astrologers with precisely the justification they needed to study this art. The practical work, Matheseos Libri VIII (Eight Books of Mathesis , or Astrology), was written by Julius Firmicus Maternus (d. c. 360), a convert to Christianity. He also wrote a treatise urging the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans to destroy the mystery cults by force, which solidified his orthodox credentials. His Mathesis was the most complete work on astrology to survive into the Middle Ages. In its introduction he counters the opponents of astrology by demonstrating the divine nature of the heavens (I.4) and gives numerous historical examples of the inflexibility of fatal determinism (I.7). He refutes the charge that astrology draws people away from religion and promotes treason by arguing that astrology emphasizes the divine nature of the universe and the necessity of obeying the laws of the state, which "help the force of the divine Mind cleanse the destructive vices of the body" (I.6). In the next seven books he summarizes late Hellenistic astrological practice, adding advice to potential astrologers on how to conduct their lives virtuously and piously.

The theoretical work that influenced medieval Christians toward the acceptance of astrology was The Consolation of Philosophy , by Boethius (c. 480-524), the last Roman courtier as well as Christian saint and martyr. In Books IV and V of this work, one of the most influential books in the Middle Ages, Boethius states that God's will determines the action of fate, which is immutable and can be discovered in the motions of the stars. After showing that divine Providence is at all times just, he maintains that human free will can rise above fate, but not above Providence. The physical part of human beings, then, is subject to the same determinism as the rest of nature, but the soul is free to choose salvation—even though this choice is known in advance by God. Human beings can discover and predict the workings of fate, but cannot have foreknowledge concerning salvation because of the inferiority of human intelligence to God's intelligence. Boethius also says in his much read treatise on music that Pythagoras and Plato were correct in believing that the harmony of the universe is musical. The movement of the planets creates the music of the spheres, which is inaudible to us, as Pythagoras had argued. And so astrologers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were able to refer to the authority of this great Christian scholar in their defense of the study and practice of their art.

http://www.geneseo.edu/~trh1/4th Chap

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http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:a53b2f05ddf046ed:www.geneseo.edu/~trh1/4th%2520Chap+%22mystery+religions%22+determinism&hl=en

Since his society had been a secret one, with no public written works, it is very unlikely that any of Pythagoras's treatises survived the five centuries or so between his death and their sudden appearance in the first century BCE. These works were written in that century and attributed to him and his disciples. Their appearance at this time testifies to the interest in Pythagoras as a shaman or Magus figure. It was into this world of the Neopythagoreans that the Magus/shaman Apollonius of Tyana was born, at approximately the same time as Jesus.

Apollonius was not the only Magus of his time. The Acts of the Apostles (8.9-24) records the career of Simon Magus, and writers from the first century bce onward noted large numbers of these miracle workers. Cicero, for example, attacked the pseudo-science of divination from natural phenomena—the entrails of animals, the behavior of birds, or the configurations of the stars and planets—or divination based on revelations from the gods, as in the books of oracles by the Sibyls and others. In the second century ce, Lucian of Samosata wrote a debunking biography of the false prophet Alexander of Abonoteichus, who was said to have learned some of his professional tricks from Apollonius of Tyana. Lucian showed how Alexander was able to dupe the credulous, who paid him to answer their questions, which he did in a miraculous manner. These "miracles" were accomplished by various methods of trickery not so different from those of present-day conjurors. Despite the writings of the debunkers, the vast majority accepted the claims of the Magi, wizards, diviners, and prophets. The best example of this can be seen in the writings of Apuleius of Madaura (second century ce), especially in his Metamorphoses (known also as The Golden Ass ). In this novel he describes various kinds of magic performed by female and male magicians and describes a number of charlatans as well. The universe presented in The Golden Ass is one in which human beings are at the mercy of capricious fate, which can be changed—for better or worse—by many different kinds of spells and incantations.

In such an environment, the miraculous feats of Apollonius of Tyana could easily be attacked as resulting from his consorting with evil demons, or, on the other hand, be seen as the tricks of a clever fraud able to delude the common people. In fact he was accused of each of these practices. The Emperor Domitian (81-96) had him tried for treason and for being a wizard, while the Christian bishop and historian Eusebius (c. 260-340) says that his miracles were performed with the aid of a demon. Lucian says that the teacher of Alexander, the false prophet, was "one of those who had been followers of the notorious Apollonius, and knew his whole bag of tricks." The defense of Apollonius against these various attacks was made by his biographer, Philostratus, in a work written shortly after 217 ce. The biography was commissioned by Julia Domna, the wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211) and great aunt of the young Alexander Severus, the emperor who placed the statue of Apollonius in his personal shrine. The Augusta Julia was the patroness of a literary circle in Antioch that was led by Philostratus. When she received the memoirs of Damis of Nineveh, a disciple of Apollonius, she asked Philostratus to compose a biography from the material. He had not finished it at the time of her death in 217, but it was published not long afterward.

Philostratus's biography has been attacked as being spurious, and the existence of Damis of Nineveh has been questioned. Some have seen this biography as a thinly disguised attack on Christianity, sponsored by pagan emperors trying to show that Apollonius was a greater miracle worker than Jesus. In fact, in the latter part of the third century a provincial governor under the Emperor Diocletian, a writer named Hierocles, did use the biography for just such a purpose. Although that work is lost (presumably destroyed by the Christians when they became dominant), Bishop Eusebius's answer to it still exists. He tries to show that both Damis and Philostratus were gullible in accepting Apollonius's claims about his own powers, that he often contradicted himself, and that whatever feats he did perform were done with the aid of demons. But Philostratus's biography was intended, not as an attack on Christianity, but rather as an attempt to describe the life and works of an extraordinary man, whom Damis at one point calls "divine and superhuman." Another reason for writing this work could well have been to try to reform and restore traditional Roman religion, as later emperors like Decius, Aurelian, and Julian were to attempt. Of course, they all failed, as Rome fell into the hands of the Christians in the fourth century. When the Christians became dominant they tried to obliterate the traces of people like Apollonius of Tyana, but Philostratus's biography survived, preserving the memory of this Magus whose life so much resembled that of Jesus.

According to Philostratus, Apollonius's birth was accompanied by signs of the gods' favor. He was a precocious and extremely handsome young man, who quickly outdistanced his teachers in his understanding of their subjects. He studied with followers of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, but he was immediately captivated by the philosophy of Pythagoras. At age 16 he became a vegetarian, gave up wine, wore only linen clothing and no shoes (to avoid all animal products), no longer cut his hair or beard, and took up residence in the temple of Ascleipius, the god of healing, at Aegae. As his reputation for holiness spread, the temple became a place of pilgrimage, and he began to cure many suppliants, usually by persuading them to adopt a diet similar to his. He spoke out against the common practice of animal sacrifice, saying that if people were good the gods would favor them, but if they were not no amount of bribery in the form of animal sacrifices, gifts of jewels and the like would change the minds of the gods. Throughout his career he continued to preach these two messages: live a simple and just life, and do not indulge in the barbaric rituals of which the gods disapprove.

At age 23 he left the temple of Ascleipius and began to follow his profession more seriously. He renounced marriage and all sexual relations, observed total silence for five years, and began his lifelong travels for the purpose of studying and teaching. He is thought to have lived a long life, dying during the reign of the Emperor Nerva (96-98). After teaching in Antioch for a time he decided to journey to the East to learn the wisdom of the Magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of India. On the way to Babylon he passed through the lands of the Arabs in upper Mesopotamia and learned from them the language of animals and birds. There he also met Damis of Nineveh, who became his disciple and chronicler. The two of them traveled on to Babylon, where they learned from—and Apollonius taught—the Magi of that city. In India as well, his relationship with the Brahmans was that of both a student and a teacher: he was amazed at their ability to levitate and at their foreknowledge, but he taught them some of his secrets, too.

Because of his association with the Magi and with the Brahmans, he was later accused of being a wizard. However, both he and Philostratus drew a sharp distinction between those who carried out their miraculous work in temples and were aided by their knowledge of natural laws, and those who appealed to the gods of the underworld, who profited from their abilities, and who relied on the ignorance and gullibility of their audience. Apollonius also claimed that he did not have the gift of divination, but that his style of life made it easier for him to understand the meanings of dreams and omens. Others could have had many of these abilities if they had followed his pattern of asceticism and piety.

Apollonius of Tyana, then, blended the careers of philosopher and Magus. His major goal seems to have been the reconstitution of Pythagorean religion--both its personal morality and ritual forms—but he was not concerned with the scientific aspects of Pythagoreanism. The purpose of Philostratus's biography was a moral one, even though he mentioned a number of miraculous events in Apollonius's life, and even reported the tradition that Apollonius did not die but was assumed directly to heaven. He wanted to present to the elite of the Roman Empire an account of a model life that they could use as a standard in judging their own behavior. It was for this reason that Hierocles compared Apollonius favorably to Jesus and that Eusebius and later Christian authors so vigorously attacked Hierocles's and Philostratus's works.

2. The Origins of Alchemy: Hermes Trismegistus

Alchemy had its origins in the same Hellenistic environment in which Gnosticism, Christianity, high magic, and, as we shall see, astrology flourished. Like these other movements or philosophies, it was a synthesis of the ideas and practices of the Greeks with those of the Middle Eastern peoples conquered by Alexander. Its major figures were Hellenized easterners, although there are arguments about whether it was first practiced in Egypt or in Syria. Given the cosmopolitan nature of Hellenistic philosophy and science, it makes little difference where the first treatises were written, since they were written in Greek by Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians, and Babylonians and became part of a tradition reputedly started by Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and the god Hermes. The Hellenistic alchemists worked in an area of Greek science—the properties of minerals, particularly metals—that had been studied very little by the traditional scientists. In doing so they laid the groundwork for a new science, chemistry, but made no distinction between the religious basis of their work and the physical theories that grew out of their experiments. Since the alchemists were closely linked to the Gnostics and the Magi, they were suspected of heresy or unbelief by the leaders of Christian orthodoxy and most of their writings were suppressed after the triumph of Christianity.

The problems that face the student of the origins of alchemy stem partly from the lack of sources from this period and partly from the nature of the writings themselves. The same Christian decrees that led to the destruction of most Gnostic literature had a similar effect on the works of the alchemists. We know the titles of many treatises that have not survived or have survived only in the quotations of the Christian refutations of them. In addition, two other difficulties are presented by the surviving writings: the deliberately ambiguous language in which they are written and the problem of determining their authorship. The alchemists themselves believed that their work should not be attempted by everyone and therefore should be kept hidden from the general public. The only correct way to learn the techniques and ideas of alchemy was to apprentice oneself to an adept, a master of the art. What was written by alchemists was incomplete without the commentary and explanations of a master, as can be seen in the commonly used phrase, "this will be understood by those who know the work." As well as being incomplete, alchemical texts were written in a highly symbolic style. The process of transmutation is described in biological terms, or in terms of the relations of the planets to one another. When particular minerals are mentioned by name, they are said to be different from the minerals known to most people. From the time of the western European rediscovery of the alchemical tradition in the late Middle Ages down to the present, numerous controversies have sprung up concerning the precise meaning of these symbols.

The question of the authorship of most early alchemical works is impossible to answer. The alchemists of the Hellenistic world, like their contemporaries who were writing religious works, attributed their own writings to great figures of the past. The most important of these reputed founders of alchemy was Hermes Trismegistus, who was, as his name indicates, identified with the Greek god. The attributes for which Hermes was best known in the Greek world were his transmitting knowledge to humans through revelations in dreams and visions, giving humans the gift of writing, and guiding souls to the underworld after death. In the Hellenistic world he became identified with the Egyptian deity Thoth, the scribe of the Egyptian gods, inventor of hieroglyphic writing, founder of all arts, sciences, and magic, and the guide of the souls of the dead. The adjective Trismegistus means "thrice greatest," which is a Greek translation of the Egyptian title meaning "the very greatest."

Hermes Trismegistus was supposed to have written his alchemical works at the time of Moses, and to have written on all of the arts and sciences, but particularly alchemy and astrology. The Christian Bishop Clement of Alexandria (150-215) says that he wrote forty-two books, and later writers state that he wrote 20,000 or even 36,525 books. This last figure has two correlations: it is one hundred times the number of days in the Egyptian calendar year, and it is twenty-five times 1461, the number of years in the Sothic period of that calendar. Concerning the number of books written by Hermes, both Galen (129-199 ce) and Iamblichus (c. 280-336 ce) state that it was the common practice of Egyptian authors to attribute their writings to the authorship of Hermes. Due to the widespread use of his name in pseudepigraphical texts in alchemy and astrology, these two fields, but especially alchemy, became known as the Hermetic sciences.

Alchemists who were not as legendary as Hermes had treatises attributed to them. Ostanes, an Iranian pioneer in alchemy, and Bolos of Mendes, an Egyptian author of one of the most important works in alchemy, had their names attached to many writings. Maria the Jewess, an Egyptian or Syrian alchemist, invented some of the key instruments used in the work. Even Apollonius of Tyana, who showed no interest in alchemy, was later thought to be an important alchemist. The first alchemist whose authentic works we possess was an Egyptian who lived in the late third century ce, Zosimos. Other texts that have survived were written anonymously and are dated between the second and seventh centuries ce. They probably served as omen texts, since they are often found in graves. The establishment of the authenticity and dates of the Hellenistic alchemical works is difficult, but it is possible to survey what has survived and reconstruct the major lines of thought of the earliest alchemists.

The origin of the term alchemy is the first problem that arises. Its first two letters are of course the Arabic article "the," but what does "chemy" mean? Several possible origins of this word have been proposed, but it is most likely that one of two explanations is correct. One of them relates alchemy to the Greek word chyma , meaning "a fluid which is poured out," which is extended to mean an ingot of metal that has been poured into a mold. The craft of casting or alloying metal was called chymia, which then became the Arabic al-kimiya. The other theory of the origin of the name is based on the Egyptian word khime (or chem ), which meant "black," and was used to describe the land or people of Egypt, land of the black soil. Whatever the source, the terms chymia and chemia were used by the time of Zosimos, and probably earlier.

A second problem is that there are two aspects of alchemy, theoretical and practical. Sometimes these two have been joined, but more often they have been separate. The practical side is far better known; one usually thinks of an alchemist as a man in a long robe, wearing a conical hat with all sorts of symbols on it, fussing in a laboratory that looks like a glass jungle, preparing variously colored liquids in odd-shaped vessels. His goal of course is to discover the Philosophers' Stone, which will allow him to produce gold, or perhaps the famous elixir that will guarantee him immortality. This popular figure has been satirized from the seventeenth century onward, from Ben Jonson's Alchemist to Walt Disney's version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The proponents of theoretical, or "true," alchemy have also felt nothing but scorn for this foolish amateur, usually called a "puffer." Puffers have been in existence as long as alchemists, if not longer. They have tried to achieve wealth by using the techniques of alchemy (as well as they know them) without any of the theories that are indispensible for carrying out the work. Their number has included many imposters and charlatans, whose greatest skill has consisted in separating fools from their money. But there have been many well intentioned puffers who were impatient with the long process involved in the work and who attempted shortcuts whose major result was to shorten their lives. The labors of the true alchemist are long and difficult, including apprenticeship to and study with a master, followed by a lifetime devoted to the perfection of the work.

The combination of theoretical and practical alchemy is seen in the first treatise on the subject that we know of, the Physica et Mystica of Bolos of Mendes. This treatise by Bolos, a Hellenized Egyptian of the second century bce, was attributed to Democritus (c. 460-370 bce), Socrates's contemporary and proponent of the atomic theory of matter. We possess only fragments of Bolos-Democritus's treatise, which seems to be on the art of the goldsmith, but one fragment that has survived contains a statement central to all future alche-mists: "One nature rejoices in another nature, one nature conquers another nature, one nature dominates another nature." These words are found at the end of each recipe for alloying gold and silver and are very likely derived from other areas of the occult, probably astrology or magic. In another fragment he states that he studied with Ostanes, whom classical writers considered to be an Iranian Magus, probably from the fifth century bce. Ostanes was mentioned along with Zoroaster in a number of texts from the Hellenistic world, and whether or not such a person really existed, the texts show the influence of Zoroastrian ideas. A major point made in these writings and in later sayings attributed to Ostanes is that secrecy must be maintained and that all alchemical writing must use symbols that only the initiated will be able to understand.

The concept of initiation is one that often appears in the early writings of the alchemists, and was probably drawn from the practices of the mystery religions. But it is not only the initiation of the alchemist that was described in these early works, it is the initiation of matter itself. In opposition to the world view of the orthodox scientists, the alchemists based their ideas on the mythopoeic belief that nothing in the universe is lifeless. Plants, animals, and humans go through stages in their growth process, including death and rebirth, as could be seen in the degrees of initiation in the mystery religions. Alchemists believed that minerals as well take part in this process. Metals and stones are born in the earth, have gender and are able to unite in a sexual fashion; they go through periods of growth, maturity, and decay, followed by death and rebirth. If this process takes place in just the right fashion, the material going through it can break out of the cycle of death and rebirth and achieve immortality—it can become gold. Because it does not corrode or decay, gold was thought to demonstrate immortality, as is seen in the legend that Pythagoras had a golden thigh, which was evidence of his immortality.

The number of stages in this initiation process of minerals is usually given as seven, showing the relationship to astrology with its seven planets. In fact, each of the planets was associated with a metal, usually the following: Sun-gold; Moon-silver; Mercury-mercury; Venus-copper; Mars-iron; Jupiter-tin; and Saturn-lead. The stages through which matter passes, though, were thought to be only four in number, generally identified by the colors representing the four basic metals: black-lead; white-silver; yellow-gold; and red or violet-"philosophers' gold," the highest state of transmutation. The metal had to be "tortured," or acted upon in such a way as to produce its "death," before it could be "reborn" and go through the process of transmutation again, until it reached perfection. This torture was usually accomplished in the distilling apparatus invented by Maria the Jewess, who probably lived in the second century bce and is known only from the references of later writers. She was primarily interested in the practical side of alchemy, but she is quoted as saying that the process of distillation demonstrated the unity of what is above and what is below, probably the first time that this principle of alchemy was stated.

The last great alchemist of the Hellenistic world was Zosimos of Panopolis, an Egyptian who lived in the latter part of the third century ce. He was probably the greatest theoretician of the art, although he wrote about practical alchemy as well. His major work, parts of which have survived to the present time, was an encyclopedia of alchemy, the Cheirokmeta (which means "the metals produced by alchemy"). He reconciled the practices of Bolos-Democritus with those of Maria and presented some of the main features that all future alchemists followed. He used symbols to explain the theory and practice of "the Art" (his usual term for alchemy) and related the alchemical production of metals to sexual generation. He described the use of sulfur, mercury, and arsenic in accomplishing the transmutations, noting also the catalytic action of the liquid xerion (which became al-iksir in Arabic and elixir in Latin). He also warned that the daimons , or spirits, which impede the process of transmutation must be driven away or neutralized.

In his reference to the powers of the daimons , we can see the theoretical side of Zosimos's alchemy. His universe was similar to that of the Gnostics, or of Apollonius of Tyana, and his goal was the same as theirs: to break free from the (evil) powers of this world and attain contact with the One, or God. This could be done only by preparing oneself for God's appearance, not through compulsion. Those who attempted to take shortcuts and compel the appearance of God were in fact the puppets of fate and would fail, unlike the true alchemists, whom Zosimos called "philosophers." Regarding these philosophers, he says:

Hermes and Zoroaster have declared the breed of philosophers to be above Fate, as they do not rejoice in the good fortune she gives. Rather, they are masters of pleasures and are not stricken by the evils she sends if they truly look beyond all their ills. And they do not accept the fine gifts that come from her, since they pass their life in immateriality.

The uniting of theory and practice in Zosimos is so complete that we can read his technical works symbolically to apply to the perfection of the human who is practicing the art, or we can read his philosophical writings as disguised technical manuals. This unity was to be a rare phenomenon in the alchemists following Zosimos.

The treatises ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus show this disjunction, both in their composition and their use in later cultures. Writings attributed to Hermes were mentioned as early as the first century ce, while Clement of Alexandria referred to the "forty-two Books of Hermes" in a work written in the first decade of the third century. Two types of writings were ascribed to Hermes: (1) technical works on astrology, alchemy, magic, medicine, and botany (leading the Christian writer Tertullian to call him the master of all of the natural scientists); and (2) philosophical and religious works, resembling some of the writings of the Neoplatonists and Neopythagoreans. The first group contains treatises written between the first century bce and the third century ce, while the second group comes from the second and third centuries ce. Although they were written by many different authors over at least four centuries, they were all attributed to Hermes, giving them great importance in later cultures and giving the name Hermetic to the science of alchemy. The two groups of treatises seem never to have been brought together, and they followed different paths of transmission. The practical works on alchemy, astrology, and magic are known today entirely through their Arabic translations, while the philosophical treatises were gathered together, perhaps in the Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century, and transmitted to Italy, where, in 1471 in Florence, they were translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino and called the Corpus Hermeticum.

The most important of the Hermetic works for future practical alchemists in western Europe were the ones that were translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The one treatise considered the greatest of these is known as the Emerald Tablet . First mentioned in the early eighth century, it was most likely a part of the earlier Hellenistic writings. It presents the basic principles and practices of alchemy so concisely that it seems best to conclude this section with a translation from the Latin and Arabic versions of it:

The Precepts of Hermes, engraved upon the Emerald Tablet

1. Speak not fictitious things, but that which is certain and true.

2. What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing.

3. And as all things were produced by the one word of one Being, so all things were produced from this one thing by adaptation.

4. Its father is the sun, its mother the moon; the wind carried it in its belly, its nurse is the earth.

5. It is the father of perfection throughout the world.

6. The power is vigorous if it be changed into earth.

7. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, acting prudently and with judgment.

8. Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then again, descend to the earth, and unite together the power of things superior and things inferior. Thus you will obtain the glory of the whole world, and obscurity will fly far away from you.

9. This has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because it conquers every subtle thing and can penetrate every solid.

10. Thus the world was formed.

11. Hence proceed wonders, which are here established.

12. Therefore, I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.

13. That which I had to say concerning the operation of the sun is completed.

3. The Hermetic Science of Astrology

The most important of the occult, or Hermetic, sciences that appeared in the Hellenistic world was astrology. Not only was it a more widespread belief than alchemy or magic, it was thought to be the source of the effectiveness of these other sciences. With slight variations, its origin is like that of the other occult sciences: a body of Middle Eastern scientific/religious data was appropriated by Greek philosopher/scientists, stripped of its religious content, and used as evidence in developing theories about nature. These theories were then recombined with religious beliefs during the Hellenistic period, leading to an even more sophisticated and integrated body of thought. The purpose of these new doctrines was to answer questions about the present and the future, this life and the life to come. Whereas alchemy had a small number of adepts and not much of a popular following, some of the principles of astrology were known to almost everyone, even if the vast majority did not have the knowledge or training to be professional astrologers. Astrology had such support from all classes of the population that the leaders of orthodox science and religion were unable to stamp it out entirely. Repeated attacks on the weakness of its theories and the inaccuracy of its predictions have not dissuaded those who have believed in its principles, down to the present day.

Astrology as we know it today was born in the Hellenistic world, as a scientific expression of some aspects of the mythopoeic world view. In this case, it was the world view of Mesopotamia, the observations and beliefs of the so-called Chaldeans, which the Greek philosopher/scientists adopted. Although the Greeks, and many later partisans of astrology, thought that the observations were of great antiquity, they began only in the eighth century bce, in the Assyrian Empire. It was at that time that the solar cycle was fixed accurately enough to discover and predict the periodicity of astral phenomena. By the seventh century the Assyrian royal astronomers had also determined the lunar cycle with great accuracy and were able to predict some, but not all, lunar and solar eclipses. In the next several centuries Mesopotamian astronomers working in the Chaldean, Persian, and Hellenistic Empires established the lunisolar cycle of nineteen years, divided the constellations into the zodiac of twelve equal divisions, and constructed planetary ephemerides.

The most important point to remember about this development of astronomical knowledge is that its purpose and function were religious. The holders of the mythopoeic world view believed that all phenomena were interrelated and that there was no distinction between what we would call inanimate and animate. They viewed the universe as a field of forces interacting with one another in a manner dependent upon the will and strength of each force. It was of course vitally important for them to learn, through some sort of divination, what the intentions of the most powerful forces were. Though they practiced various kinds of divination, the Mesopotamians believed that the most accurate and meaningful knowledge was that which they could learn from the stars. They were able to see patterns in the stars that resembled the figures in their mythology, which could profoundly affect the human world from their heavenly locations.

The planets were the most important of these celestial signs. Their wills were more capricious than those of the fixed stars and constellations, because the planets' paths through the skies were irregular. These paths were related to earthly phenomena, which tended to reflect the same kind of capricious and irregular nature. Early in Mesopotamian history, the planets were identified with the chief deities of the religion, each planet being given the name of the deity most related to it. Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, was identified with the steadiest planet; Nergal, the war god, with the blood-red planet; Ishtar, goddess of love, with the star of the evening, the time of lovers; Nebo, the messenger god, with the fastest-moving planet; and Ninib, chief god of the generation before Marduk, with the slowest-moving planet. Later on, the Greeks, Romans, and other European peoples merely took over these Chaldean designations and inserted the names of their own deities who had similar functions. Thus Marduk became Zeus became Jupiter became Thor, and so on. The Chaldean assumption that each of the planet-gods controlled its own particular day led to the establishment of the seven-day week, with each day named for its special god.

The Assyrian and Chaldean astronomers converted this mythopoeic cosmology into the theology of a religious system, with themselves as the priests. Their knowledge of the exact regularity of stellar phenomena led them to believe in a strict determinism of the natural and human worlds. Not even the gods could break free from their fated paths, which the astronomer/priests knew and could calculate in advance. Since this was true for the gods, how much more so was it true for human beings? Everyone was seen as subject to the inflexible laws of Fate, which became a higher divinity than the traditional gods. The universe was seen as eternal and was therefore a divinity whose will could be seen in the movements of the stars and planets and could be expressed in mathematical symbols. Human beings were thought to be animated by the same spirit that was seen in the fires of heaven. This spirit returned to take its place among the stars at the death of an individual.

The impact of Greek philosophy and science on this religion of cosmic pantheism was conditioned by the fact that Mesopotamian astronomy had already influenced the Greeks, from as early as the sixth century bce. The records of the Mesopotamian observations and the religion which grew out of them were known by Thales (mid-sixth century), Plato, and Aristotle. Whether one accepts the legend of Pythagoras having studied with the Chaldeans or not, it is clear that his school, as well as Plato and Aristotle, believed in the divinity of the stars. The earlier Greeks had not named the planets for their gods, but merely described them—"Twinkling Star" (Mercury), and "Fiery Star" (Mars), for example. By the end of the fourth century bce, however, they had come to be called Hermes, Ares, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Kronos. In the dialogue Epinomis , attributed to Plato but perhaps written by one of his students, astronomy was called a theology. Its object of study was the divine stars, it produced virtue and happiness in its students, and it provided for them a life of bliss after death. So even before the Hellenistic period, there were some Greeks who knew of the stellar religion of the Chaldeans.

Although they accepted Chaldean stellar theology, there is no evidence that these Greeks accepted Chaldean astrology. That acceptance was made possible by two other factors. The first was the contact between cultures brought about by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Local cults gave way to religious systems which were valid everywhere and did not distinguish between Greek and barbarian. In addition, travel between the Greek and Middle Eastern worlds was made easier, and Greek became the language of all educated people. Greeks could now study in Babylon and Chaldeans could set up schools in Greece. Berosus, a Babylonian priest, opened a school on the island of Cos, in the Aegean, and philosophy was taught in Babylon. The great Hellenistic astronomers like Hipparchus and Eratosthenes were able to use the observational tables of the Chaldeans, while the latter could refine their theories by applying such discoveries as that of the precession of the equinoxes, made by Hipparchus (c. 161-126 bce).

The second factor that helped prepare the way for the acceptance of fatalistic astrology in the Hellenistic world was Stoic philosophy, especially as it was taught by Poseidonius of Apamea (c. 135-51 bce). Although none of his written works has survived in its entirety, his ideas can be reconstructed from fragments which have survived and from the writings of his pupils and others influenced by him. For Poseidonius, God was present in the whole cosmos, as its active principle, guiding and directing it from the heavens. The presence of God in every part of the universe meant that there was a natural affinity of all of its parts, a principle he called Cosmic Sympathy. It was this Cosmic Sympathy that made astrology and divination valid sciences. Poseidonius saw a direct relationship between the positions of the planets and stars, or the shape of the liver of a sacrificed animal, and events that occur in the human realm. Since the Chaldean observations showed the regularity and predictability of the heavens, he argued that all human actions were equally determined by Fate. Dreams and visions, as well as astrology and divination, can show us what is fated for us. Poseidonius's beliefs were carried throughout the Hellenistic/Roman world by such students of his as the Romans Cicero and Pompey, and later philosophers and scientists such as Galen, Philo, Ptolemy, and Plotinus, as well as writers on astrology.

In addition to affecting the philosophers and scientists in the Hellenistic world, astrological theories were integrated into the doctrines of the alchemists of Egypt. As has been mentioned, planets and metals were thought to correspond closely, so alchemists came to believe that transmutation of metals could be successfully carried out only under the proper planetary influences. The Egyptian astrologers claimed that the principles of this science were revealed by Thoth/Hermes: both the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet deal as much with astrology as with alchemy. As further proof of the Egyptian origins of astrology, Egyptian astrologers discovered, in the late second century bce, astrological writings attributed to the Pharaoh Nechepso and his priest Petosiris, who were supposed to have received their knowledge through revelations from Hermes. Because of works like those of Petosiris-Nechepso, and other astrological pseudepigrapha, Egypt has been considered to be almost as important as Chaldea in the origins of astrology.

It was not only the educated elite in the Hellenistic/Roman world who accepted the doctrines of astrology. One of the most important phenomena of the last century bce and the first three centuries ce was the spread of these beliefs through the whole of Western society, largely by means of the mystery religions. Cults that had begun as fertility religions, emphasizing the deities of the earth and vegetation, adopted stellar symbols and the principles of fatal astrology. Isis, for example, was seen as the Queen of the Heavens by her Roman followers, while Attis, Serapis, Baal, and Mithras became solar deities. The vast majority of the population obtained their knowledge of astrology, not from the science of Hipparchus or the philosophy of Poseidonius, but from the priests of their religions, when they received the knowledge necessary for salvation during their initiations. In a society where Chance was deified and took the place of the ordered sequence of events that people had relied upon, the belief in an inflexible Fate, which could be known through study or divine revelation, attracted the majority of all classes and types of individuals.

The total determinism found in astrological doctrines was tempered in different ways, depending on the state of the person's knowledge. Most people were assured by the priests of their mystery religions that initiation into the religion provided an escape from the domination of Fate. The deity of each religion had revealed the secret knowledge and rituals needed to attain eternal bliss in the life to come. For the astrologers, however, a very different set of ideas qualified or softened the belief in an inexorable destiny. They believed that the soul is a particle of the same matter that makes up the heavens, and that the ideal activity of astrologers ought to be contemplation of that entity of which they are a part. By leading a virtuous life—which they defined in almost Pythagorean terms: ascetic, temperate, contemplative—they would obtain the reward of communion with the heavens. Emancipation of the soul from the body, separating the material and spiritual parts of the self, would result in the astrologer rising beyond the world determined by Fate. Like the Stoics, whose views on Providence were so similar, astrologers cheerfully submitted to the Fate that controlled their material selves, in order that their spiritual selves might more easily surmount it. As their souls became more purified, they came closer to returning to their place of origin and living forever among the stars, eternally contemplating the Heavens, or God.

This astrological religion reached the peak of its importance in the third and fourth centuries ce, when it became the basis for the Roman imperial cult of the Sun. In 274 the emperor Aurelian founded a temple in honor of Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, and elevated its priests to have precedence over all other priests in Rome. This cult had become important only recently in the Roman world, as neither Helios nor Sol had been major deities in earlier Greece or Rome. But as the astronomers gradually discovered the importance of the sun in the heavens, they began to subordinate other phenomena to it. They assigned the moon and the planets the function of escorts of the sun, and stated that all the motions of the heavens were caused by the energy given off by the sun, for example. The astrologers endowed it with intelligence and saw it as the creator of reason in human beings. They even believed it to be the source of life, which sent the heat of its rays into lifeless matter, thus animating it, and then reabsorbed this life principle into itself after the death of the organism. The importance of this cult of the Sun can be seen in the fact that it was a strong competitor with Christianity during the fourth century. The leaders of orthodox Christianity were able to stamp out the cult of the Sun, but in the process they adopted elements from that cult as a part of Christian beliefs and practices.

http://www.vor.org/truth/rbst/hist-theology-002.html

b. Teleogical Determinism

Determinism is the teaching that all things are determined in advance of their occurrence. Now there are two kinds of determinism. Blind determinism says that the determining agent is impersonal—without foresight or providence. Modern behavioralists illustrates this sort of determinism with their chemical determinism. Teleological determinism implies a purpose behind the determinate events. It implies a personal intelligence foreknowing, guiding, and determining the events of history to a foreknown and determined end. The Stoics held as central to their philosophy the doctrine of providence ( ) and, thus, were teleological determinists. The poetry of Cleanthes enunciates their determinism.

Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, my destiny,

Whate’er the path that ye ordain for me;

Fearless I’ll follow, but if I refuse,

Still must I follow, howsoe’er I choose.

This poem might seem to suggest that human choices are meaningless. In fact many charge all determinism with such an implication of godlessness because, they say, it makes ethics meaningless. Several replies can be made by the Stoic. First, God ordains the means as well as the ends. Thus, our choices (as means) do make a difference. Second, each man contains a seminal logos. Thus, his choices are meaningful. While his choices cannot frustrate the divine purpose, they can help to achieve it and embody it. Third, history and experience teach that determinists appear to take ethics far more seriously than those who emphasize free will. This is illustrated by the contrast between the Stoics and the Epicureans. Gordon H. Clark asserts, "It is also a curious and to the free-will Epicurean an inexplicable fact of history that determinism, at least teleological determinism, is regularly associated with a strict and vigorous morality, while the exponents of freedom have tended to a free and easy mode of life. Certain it is that this is the contrast in antiquity."

... The Graeco-Roman world was a moral dungheap. ... Many illustrations of the grossly immoral climate of society might be given. ...The writer of the Epistle to Diognetus mentions as something noteworthy about Christians the fact that they do not expose their children.

http://www.cornerstone-pca.org/ephesian_11523.htm

Hope was as rare a commodity in the first century world Paul addressed as it is today. Fate, determinism, and despair dominated the ancient world. People had little hope of being able to better their situation. A common epitaph read: "I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care." Life - for all its joy - has always been difficult and oppressive. People felt manipulated by unseen forces, and religion was only way to find protection from bad luck, sickness and evil powers.

http://www.its.uidaho.edu/ivan/phil-309/02.htm

At first there is no criticism of the gods. They are so far above mortals that they cannot be judged. Neither Greek or Roman religion comes with ethics-- a code of behavior or system of conduct. The gods demand worship and sacrificed; they care only about ritual purity.

Determinism (Fatalism) The individual is of no importance, just a speck of dust unable to escape from fate, so he might as well accept it

Astrology: The study of the stars offers explanations of why thins happen. (still fatalistic)

Cult of Luck: (Tyche in Greek or Fortuna in Latin) Life is one big crap shoot, one chance is as good as any other.

Philosophy: A way of life and a consolation to many. Philosophy tends to be the answer to many of lifes problems for the educated upper classes.

Mystery Cults: By taking part in prescribed rites, the worshiper unites himself with the god or goddess, becomes part of a community, and receives the reward of salvation. Part of the ritual usually consists of the acting out of the myth...

http://www.nmh.northfield.ma.us/tthornton/new_testament_background.htm

Cached:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:c48e66cc16d5bc7d:www.nmh.northfield.ma.us/tthornton/new_testament_background.htm+%22mystery+religions%22+determinism&hl=en

Besides fellowship, these cults offered their clientele a more personal relationship with the deity, individual salvation after earthly life, and release from the bonds of "iron-fisted Fate," the legacy of centuries of Stoicism, the dominant philosophy of the time. The mystery religions offered a way out of Stoic determinism and its mechanistic belief in irreversible predestination within a cause-and-effect universe. Defying this Stoicism, Lucius, an adherent of one of these sects, proclaims in Apuleis' novel Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass), "I conquer Fate and Fate obeys me! " {12} Perhaps these cults provided welcome relief from the tedious, mechanical sound of Roman soldiers marching through the streets.

{12} Michael Grant, The World of Rome (New York: Mentor Books, 1960), p. 198.

> It's interesting to note that 'all herbs bearing seeds' specifically excludes mushrooms. Psychedelic mushrooms were not for general consumption, being reserved for initiates, or prophets or what have you, in many ancient societies.

I've been doing a lot of research in the entheogenic origins of Christianity, including the Gnostics, mystery religions, and Amanita.  We can take it for granted that Christianity has entheogenic roots, and that Jesus was a mushroom and the Christ is the experiential knowledge brought by such entheogens.  Various researchers are concentrating on making the first case (the entheogenic origin of Christianity) and other researchers are focusing on establishing Jesus as a mythic construct (the Christ-myth theory). 

My emphasis is on explaining exactly how the Jesus story (like related myths) encodes entheogenic phenomena such as ego death and the destabilization of self-control.  I'm explaining the *meaning* of the Jesus story in terms of the insights and cognitive phenomena provided by entheogens.

http://home.rochester.rr.com/matthewl/predestination/ -- Reform Predestination site. Does it cover the idea that the future is closed and already exists? Does it explain what is the point of hanging onto the belief in heaven and hell if moral agency is a delusion? Does it point out that moral agency is a delusion? Or, does it assert that we are morally free yet spiritually unfree regarding the act of having faith in Jesus as savior? The site rejects metaphysical free will. "According to the Calvinist, God controls the decisions of men." -- not just in regards to choosing Jesus -- rather, choosing anything. Email sent:

Su: Does your site cover these predestination issues?

Do you have web pages addressing these questions? I wonder which question you *least* address at the site.

Is the future closed, in actuality, in itself (regardless of our knowledge about it)?

Does the future already exist?

What is the point of hanging onto the belief in heaven and hell if moral agency is a delusion? If we're helpless puppets, what is the purpose of heaven and hell, if not moral reward and moral punishment?

Is moral agency essentially a delusion?

Do you assert that we are morally free (that we are genuine, true moral agents) yet spiritually unfree regarding the act of having faith in Jesus as savior?

http://www.magi.com/~oblio/jesus/rfset17.htm - "Symbols found on Roman sites, such as the Chi-Rho crosses, are likely to be Mithraic, an abbreviation for Chronos, the god of time, which was a popular embodiment of Mithras. This symbol was later appropriated by Christians and claimed to stand for Christ."

My theory of determinism is unique and very distinct from conventional determinism. It is based not on a succession of atomic states, or predictability-in-principle, but rather, on the idea that the time axis kills ego. There's no time for metaphysical freedom. So I need to research Chronos in connection with Mithras.

http://www.bluehoney.org/Manna.htm - Manna from Heaven, by Steve Kubby. About psilocybin in the Holy of Holies (inner temple), in the ark of the covenant -- the center of the center of the temple.

http://diseyes.lycaeum.org/fresh/mushmann.htm -- same article, easier reading font, no pictures

http://www.worldofkenwilber.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=advaita+determinism

http://www.google.com/search?q=christ+amanita

http://www.google.com/search?q=christ+amanita

http://www.google.com/search?q=amanita+determinism

Score! http://www.gnosticgarden.com/articles/mushroommyth/contents.htm - A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth. by John C. King

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/Kolbel/PPF.pdf -- good 16 page explanation of tenseless time, pretty valuable/rare info on the Web

Feb 23, 2001

http://www.geocities.com/advaitins/ - Advaitin Homepage

Discussion of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta Philosophy of nonseparablity of Atman and Brahman.

Advaitin List Archives available at: http://www.eScribe.com/culture/advaitin/

http://www.escribe.com/culture/advaitin/m8190.html

Anand Natarajan wrote:

for a concise literature on this subject, the experience of Paul Brunton on his second visit to Sri Ramana Maharshi is quite lucid. In that experience, the Kathopanishad saying, that the Atman is realized by him whom It chooses is clearly brought out. This is because all this while Paul Brunton had been waging an inner battle, suddenly (what you have called as heart becoming pure), one by one he loses sense of his body, mind and the intellect. When the intellect drops out, he recognises that it had been the reason for all his torture.

Whatever be the method adopted for purification, we become purified (so to say) only when the agency of action drops, when we feel deeply that everything (indeed everything) is done by a higher power. Then the Atman chooses. Then the doubts cease. The rest is easy.

http://www.escribe.com/culture/advaitin/m7458.html - Dennis Waite wrote:

Sadananda,

There has never been any question but that we agree about the reality of the situation. The point of contention in all of these interchanges was that I maintained (and still maintain) is that even in vyaavahhaara, free will is not only untenable but not even (from the posts to date) arguable. You say: -

****************************************************************

That is exactly what Krishna teaches - prakR^ityaivacha kriyamaanaani sarvashhaH (all actions are being performed by prak^Riti alone).. True from that state. But my understanding is when there is ego - 'I am the doer notion' - what gets done is claimed as my doing and that is what, although agreed that it is a fictitious fact, nevertheless is real in Ego's understanding at his level. When the truth as you stated dawns, the ego is also dissolved and, yes indeed the prakR^iti responds to the situation in demand as long as the play of prakR^iti is there.

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Yes, I posted my favourite verse from the giitaa mid December (naiva ki~ncitkaromIti yukto manyeta tattvavit.h . - Settled in the Self, the knower of truth should think, in truth I do nothing at all.) But I disagree with one of your statements above in that I know that, despite the fact that 'the truth has dawned', the ego has not dissolved. I am still here and well! :>)

http://www.worldofkenwilber.com/

Feb 9, 2001

Add to lyrics page, this tragic/comic lament.

From http://www.thepeaches.com/music/

Track Title: Jump Into The Fire

Album Title: Greatest Hits

Prime Artist: Harry Nilsson

Producer: Richard Perry

Written by: Harry Nilsson

From the Album: Nilsson Schmilsson 1971 (A)

Lyrics:

You can climb a mountain

You can swim the sea

You can jump into the fire

But you'll never be free, no no

You can shake me up

Or I can bring you down

Whoa-o-o-o-

Whoa-o-o-o-

We can make each other happy

We can make each other happy

We can make each other happy

We can make each other happy

{repeat entire twice more}

Main loop at loop site: http://www.thespacemanchannel.com/HarrysFire.html - main lyrics, make each other happy, guitar [repeat, longest]

also:

http://www.thespacemanchannel.com/MakeHappy.html -- we can make each other happy, guitar, oh oh [repeat]

http://www.thespacemanchannel.com/4Harry.html -- oh oh, short loop [repeat, short]

Feb. 8, 2001

Good query - as always, my own material comes up on top.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ego+death%22+christ+myth+control

http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy/birth_and.html - good Rebirth summary

http://www.acs.appstate.edu/~davisct/nt/library/hermeneutics/Unit_Five_RtQuestions.htm - great page. Excerpts:

The Revolution needed an "historical Jesus" who could serve to legitimate the overthrow of the "Christ of faith" along with the Church and Palace. The new, critical spirit needed roots lest it plunge society into insanity.

The "death of God" could be legitimized if only Jesus could be shown to be a human like ourselves.  This is the driving force behind all attempts to write a biography of Jesus.  Jesus may take any form, pious or impious, just so long as he is merely human, merely a product of his culture.

This was the first attempt to formulate an historical conception of the life of Jesus and was only the first of hundreds of such attempts to separate the historical Jesus who lay behind the gospels from the Son of God presented in Scripture.  The new movement in scholarship sought to use science as a tool which would allow one to burrow behind the Church and encounter the natural man Jesus.  Schweitzer gives a blunt statement of the motives of this scholarship.  He observed that the greatest of all these lives of Jesus--that of Reimarus and David Friedrich Strauss--"are written with hate...It was not so much hate of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround Him...They were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the robes of splendor...and clothe Him once more with the course garments in which He had walked in Galilee" (4). The attack was unrelenting.  Reimarus drove a wedge between the apostles and Jesus.  The latter was a man of integrity.  The disciples--motivated by greed and the frustration of their hopes for power by his untimely death--stole his body and perpetrated the hoax of the resurrection.

Strauss in his Life of Jesus sought to demonstrate that the whole of the gospel is mythological and that mythological interpretation is the only valid approach to the gospels. Others like Smith, Couchard, and Bruno Baur concluded that Jesus never existed at all.  By the end of the nineteenth century, Schweitzer writes, "modern historical theology...with its three-quarters skepticism, is left at last [with] only a torn and tattered Gospel of Mark in its hands"--

There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb (398)

This is the image of the Historical Jesus which is the idol of many Christians today. His function is to justify the role of science in the death of God. Schweitzer, a New Testament scholar, refused to be taken in by false questions. He was fascinated by the presence of Mystery, the supernatural nimbus. Schweitzer answered the call to adventure. He writes:

But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen in men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world. It is not given to history to disengage that which is abiding and eternal in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself out, and to introduce it into our world as a living influence. It has toiled in vain at this undertaking....The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical knowledge and can only be understood by contact with His spirit which is still at work in the world. In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus we have the true knowledge of Jesus (401).

Schweitzer resigned his teaching post and became a medical missionary to Africa where he hoped to heal and promote his new vision of a reverence for life which called upon men to live like Jesus rather than to talk about Jesus.

http://www.global-vision.org/dream/dreamch2.html -

O'C: What about the death / rebirth aspect?

PERRY: Well you see, the state of being in a realm of death in the beginning is pretty soon accompanied by the idea of either being born, or giving birth. This is really the fundamental ground of the whole experience.

So there are two or three transformative elements that run through the phenomenon in a sort of overall direction. First, the feeling of death and rebirth, which is really symbolic of the process of disorganisation and reorganisation; second, the fact that this happens both on the world level as well as on the personal level - the world is also going through a disruption and a regeneration; and finally, the initial inflated notion that one is a supreme power (a great spiritual force, a supreme being, a supreme intelligence from outer space or whatever), gradually yields to a deeper overall preoccupation with the issues of relationship.

When I started looking into these cultural parallels of the "schizophrenic" process, I also began to find very clear similarities in the rituals of almost every society. There are striking parallels in the visionary states of reformers and prophets and Messiahs. Messiahs are found all over the world, you know! Almost any culture that's going through a profound upheaval of rapid turbulent change, produces seers and visionaries who glimpse the new myth-form and express its guidelines - the basic ideas and paradigms that give the people a new sense of direction. This is particularly true, of course, at the tribal level - in almost every part of the world. The shamanic visions are particularly close to what we see in "psychosis," with all the ideation of death and rebirth, and symbols of world destruction and regeneration.

Amazon.com -

The Myth of the Goddess : Evolution of an Image (1993) - "The two authors have really done their homework and have tied many important ideas together. This book is what every Christian should read in order to understand the mythic basis for Jesus and Mary. The information doesn't weaken one's christian faith, but rather takes it to a broader perspective of what ego-death and resurrection really mean. The book creates the standpoint of Metamorphosis rather than Apocolypse. Another good book in this realm is "The Great Mother", Eric Neumann, however, "The Myth of the Goddess" is more readable and fills in more of the story-details. "

http://www.wie.org/j17/selfacc.html - magazine issue on Ego

Enlightenment equals ego death. For millennia this equation has held true. While the term "ego," meaning "I" in Latin, is obviously a relatively recent addition to the English lexicon, just about every major enlightenment teaching in the world has long held that the highest goal of spiritual and indeed human life lies in the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence. ... this "ego-negative" interpretation of the spiritual path has remained enshrined in enlightenment teachings for ages, for the most part unquestioned and unchallenged.

Yet in the course of our research for this issue, it became increasingly apparent that the meaning and significance of ego death are undergoing radical revision in our Western spiritual culture, a culture steeped in the values of autonomy and self-reliance and informed by a psychological understanding of human nature.

http://www.bianca.com/interests/religion/bbs/posts/1999_Apr_24/1575/1578.html - Rev. Howard Furst, April 1999 -

About a century ago, Rama Tirtha articulated the distinction between "cash
religions" and "credit religions", and this is a useful concept
to introduce into consideration of your question. "Cash religion"
is self-authenticating in present time, not dependent on beliefs in what will
happen when or if Jesus returns, when the rapture comes, or when you die and
go to hell or paradise.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Entheogens -

"For all who are on the Psychedelic path to the Divine, or have an interest in it. Please feel free to participate and to communicate with us about anything even remotely related to Psychedelics, and to the states of Consciousness facilitated by Entheogens. All Spiritual paths are welcome, not only those embracing the Sacramental use of Entheogens, but also those working with methods and techniques beyond Psychedelia, and beyond faith, itself. Part of our intention is to re-create the group "entheogen@egroups", which has without warning abruptly ceased to exist, and to provide continuity both for old members, and for brand new ones. This group is not aimed at being competitive with any other grouping, in fact we encourage cross-fertilisation and multiple memberships and postings on many groups simultaneously, as a way to promote and to expand the alternative media and all alternative / radical community-building efforts, throughout the internet. Please share your views, interests, knowledge, questions and experiences with us." -- Petros

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/2ct7 - discussion group (must "join" to read archives)

http://www.beloveddisciple.org/ - Mary Magdalene was the most beloved disciple

Missing center from Christ-myth & enth scholarship

I'm going to post my daily communications and writing at egodeath.com.  I've never been able to justify spending my little time going back and polishing and organizing my old writings.  Earl Doherty's responses at his Jesus Puzzle site work well to convey his latest thinking on aspects people are interested in.

The Jesus Mysteries and their authors are a wonderful contrast to Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle, which removes the historical Jesus but doesn't explain ego death as accessible today in today's terms.  In this way, Jesus Mysteries is more expansive and relevant -- the authors are philosophers; Doherty is a scholar.  People need philosophy and theory more directly than they need scholarship.  Sure there is an implicit philosophy that results from debunking the historical Jesus, but we need to craft a philosophy more directly.  I don't recall Doherty supporting the possibility of rational entheogenic mystic phenomena in today's world -- a startling omission in a study of the origin of Christianity (I should check his book for this).  Perhaps that's the real reason why at Amazon I recommended The Jesus Mysteries over the other seemingly similar books.

I have an email response from one of the authors of The Jesus Mysteries -- he is quite open to the Wasson theory.  Today I ordered The Christ Myth (written 100 years ago), which supposedly *explains* the Christ myth and what it meant to the mystery religions.  The typical Christ-myth books don't really explain in detail how the Christ myth relates to the mental phenomena encountered today in the mystic altered state.

It seems like all the latest researchers are telling a largely convergent story:  John and Mary are associated with entheogenic knowledge and mythic, not magical, thinking.  Peter is associated with ignorance of entheogens combined with literalism.  The church of Peter is the dominant institutionalized church.  Mary might be the beloved disciple -- what's in that alabaster jar?

Pure "passive" scholarship isn't worth a whole lot. Theory is more valuable -- applicable theory, most of all.  No one seems to have a theory to explain the experience of ego death and what we now are to do with this nexus of present phenomena.  Will Penna's guiding question is, "Revealing the truth about the entheogenic origins of Christianity is fine, but what value does that have for our experience today?"  Even more than theory, is the bringing of the molecule and the clear non-supernatural explanation of the specific phenomena of ego death and the surrounding mystic-altered state phenomena.  Techniques and models for explaining today's experiences in today's terms, and making the experiences practically available... that's more valuable than a scholarly report of a bunch of myths.  The most comical is to pose "the mushroom" as the meaning or mystery itself.  The mushroom means nothing, the mushroom is no mystery; it's the mental *phenomena* that are revealed by the mushroom that are the mystery to be grappled with, encountered, and explained.

I always approached the entheogenic molecule as a mere tool for grappling with specific experiences and problems of mental modelling.  The molecule is not such a mystery or revelation in itself.  Too much entheogenic scholarship is mere shallow reports of what other cultures have thought, but we need a theoretical explanation of what insights and experiences the molecules open up for us today -- a truly native, contemporary, home-grown fountain of authoritative experience and reflection, as demanded in the book On Drugs -- stop running away to "the other", to the foreign cultures and doing an American-contemporary distortion on them while ignoring the authority of today's experience.  Want a contemporary higher authority than the Catholic mystics of days past, from other centuries?  We have our own direct source of authority now, and some acid-rock lyrics speak the mystic revelations with more clarity and authority than most of the reports that the establishment scholars have designated as primary sources.  I am redefining what the primary sources are.

Wilber is wrong right where it matters most centrally, in that he treats meditation as more authoritative than entheogens, but he's put the cart before the horse; true religion is driven by entheogen use, followed weakly, later, by meditation as an adjunct.  I've stated this as emphatically as possible at VPL.  I am a dogmatic entheogenist and I reject the apologists for meditation who put down entheogens.  For all practical purposes, religious experience is embodied in the entheogenic molecule and it's more practical by far to take in the molecule as food rather than to attempt to release it in the brain without ingesting it.  Wilber has a brilliant framework but he's left the core understanding of the highest insights to others.  He's never considered self-control, never taken on the free will question.  Like most spiritual theorists, he doesn't have the guts or honesty to deal with the free will question and admit that most mystics, with the Greeks, honor Fate and reject free will.  Lacking emphatic coverage of free will and entheogens, Wilber leaves the world in delusion, for all his popular and profitable framework.  A dozen books a year we read from him, and yet no one undergoes ego death and discovers egoic impotence, though it is really simple when you use the molecule and pose the question head-on.

I wonder if Wassonian scholarship could continue for eternity without really contributing anything relevant.  We must doubt the value and relevance of the Wassonian approach as we have known it so far.  We must doubt the value of studying other cultures' use of entheogens.  We must treasure creating our own path -- oops, cliche -- creating our own approach that is most relevant and truest for our own native way of thinking.  To me this means a West coast, campus computer-center approach, what I've thought of as The Stanford Approach to Entheogens.  The ultimate approach would be a broad meta-approach -- we would know what Christ and entheogens meant to all other (Other) cultures, but we would especially know the relevance of entheogens and salvation through an encounter with Christ, for and in ourselves here and now in this culture.  It's interesting to find what the Greeks thought about altered-state phenomena but the most relevant thing is what do we now think about these phenomena for ourselves?  There is somewhat of a pendulum swing here in some ways.  First we said in the 60s "we have this new technology of consciousness", but then we focussed on how old such technologies were, and now we are back to today: however old these may be, what matters for me is what to do with these phenomena today, and how to bring them fully to others today.

-- Michael Hoffman

Egodeath.com

Jan. 31, 2001

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries - A discussion of the ideas in such recently published books as, "The Jesus Mysteries: Was the 'Original Jesus' a Pagan God?" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy; "THE JESUS PUZZLE" by Earl Doherty; "The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus" by Robert W. Funk; "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography" by John Dominic Crossan.   Earl Doherty guests with us in our discussion. Also raised are relevant ideas in works such as Karen Armstrong, G. A. Wells, Robert M. Price, Elaine Pagels, Burton Mack, Alvar Ellegard, Acharya S, Marcus Borg, John P. Meier, Luke Timothy Johnson, et al. The age-old question, "Was Jesus an historical or mythical figure?" is discussed in a learning environment through an examination of the historical record.   Exploration of both sides of the issue is encouraged in your search for truth.   Articles, interviews, book reviews and other resources are provided in the extensive Bookmarks section to this community.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/messages

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Allegro is mentioned in these pages (use Find in your web browser):

http://www.egodeath.com/links.htm
http://www.egodeath.com/amanita.htm
http://www.egodeath.com/entheogenbooks.htm
http://www.egodeath.com/amerenthsoc.htm
http://www.egodeath.com/christmyth.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=allegro+%22ego+death%22

You might find something here.

I'm glad you found that good sentence, "No historical Jesus is required..."

I really like the book The Unfinished Gospel, which argues that John was the first gospel written (and entirely favored the apostle John as the legitimate leader).  Later, the original ending was removed from Mark (which was and remains a promotion of Peter as the legitimate leader), modified to suddenly make the book of John support Peter, and tacked onto the end of the gospel of John (though John up to that ending is entirely in favor of John as leader).  Given that we have two sets of Pauline writings - the first, authentic, mystic ones and the later, fake, literalist-Jesus ones (see The Jesus Mysteries) -- I might agree with this sequence of writing:

Paul's actual writings

John

Mark, & Paul's fake writings

It is interesting to consider the Beast as the entire church structure built on the lie of Jesus' literal existence and literal magical resurrection.  There was no bodily or actual earthly Jesus, there was no resurrected Jesus, there was no death of Jesus on the cross and no miraculous resurrection.  There is a story but the story contains hints -- as was a common genre -- that the death was a swoon.  Many scholars have made the half-baked mistake I did for awhile, espousing the swoon theory in conjunction with accepting the literal existence of Jesus.  I have to rewrite my site to retain the swoon story while switching from assumption of his literal existence to the Christ-myth.

The politics of it is explained best in Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels: if we accept that Jesus is mythical, then each of us can, on our own, experience Jesus and his resurrection such as it is, and have a personal relationship with this mythic-realm figure.  That democratic hanging-out with Jesus is not good for the Catholic power-mongers.  If Jesus actually existed in the non-mythical realm, we have the opportunity to cash in on the shortage of seeing Jesus -- we say that only one man fully "saw" the resurrected Jesus in the one-time historical event: Peter.  The half-assed bizarre justification for the power of the Church is that Peter was the first male to see the resurrected Jesus, and that conferred all supernatural afterlife-related authority to Peter, who then passed it through the Church leaders.  Seeing Jesus was originally democratic and free for everyone, but the Church worked to turn that into an artificial scarcity by killing anyone who held that gnostic (and originally dominant) view.  Literalizing Jesus enabled the Church to create artificial scarcity of salvation, with the Church now interjected between the person and the (formerly free-of-charge, directly available) savior.  That's Pagels' explanation, clarified by The Jesus Mysteries and then by me.

My specialty is to explain in terms of contemporary rational cybernetic self-control how trembling prayer and acceptance of some sort of Christ is a sacrificial stand-in as an observation or indication of one's awareness of one's radical dependence and instability as a self-controller during the control singularity at the peak of the mystic experience.  In the peak, you undergo control instability and face the profound falsity and impossibility of being a self-originating controller and origin of your control-thoughts.  The thoughts are injected into your will from outside, from the ground of being that is the father of our every thought.  We want and need a way to acknowledge this. 

Crude, magical thinking says we must die bodily upon realizing this ultimate moral-agency insight (a correction and refutation of our very existence as seemingly egoic agents), but can accept literal Jesus as one who died bodily to fulfill what justice and reason/rationality demand.  That magic-type thinking was encouraged by the institutionalized, power-driven church.  Mature mystic/mythic thinking, however -- using vision-logic and mature reason -- realizes that the best and only really fitting and effective act-of-acknowledgement, to establish and demonstrate that we fully comprehend that our egoic kingly controlling-agent self is a logical impossibility, illusion, and mental error, knows that it is the ego itself that must be sacrificed. 

The Christ figure as an agent in the mythic realm acts as this ego who is deliberately ritually sacrificed to give birth to transcendent truth.  This death is a death in the mental-contruct realm, or mythic or symbolic, vision-logic realm, and is like a bodily death but is not bodily death and rebirth.  It's a mental death and rebirth, a radical revision of our core identity as a self-driving agent who invents our own acts of will -- now seen as a channel through which the ground of being (the Father) acts.  A king is a sovereign self-controller who creates his own acts of will, but if we are such kingly free-agents, our kingship is illegitimate and in light of the truth and Reason and vision-logic, we are destined for the guillotine (Rush: acid-rock song Bastille Day).  In truth, we are like kings, but only puppet-kings.  This is the gravest insult to the ego which is personal free agency (I'm focusing on the metaphysical realm here, not the political realm).  This explanation is my contribution.  I'm moving people from Literalism and magical thinking and ego, to mythic entheogenic vision-logic thinking.  If ego remains, we have switched from the egoic ego to the transcendent ego, from the deluded ego to the enlightened ego.  We change from being a pre-resurrection Christ to a resurrected Christ.

I have written a lot about this at the site, for those who want to do the work to read my early attempts at explanation.  I write a lot from experience of the control vortex and trembling desperate prayer, then hammer out the clarification of the high reasoning.  So it turns out I'm not interested in Jesus, but rather, Christ, of which the Jesus figure is a subset.  See my Christ-myth page for required reading - the 6 or so books all say the same thing and The Jesus Mysteries is the most enjoyable.

(following your thoughts) The beast represents the falsely told resurrection story, told as a Literalist lie to deliberately deceive others to enslave them.  The leaders are hypocrites of the worst sort, entirely pretense, deliberately, to gain power over others.

Entheogen philosophers should ideally be drug-policy reform activists.  http://www.reformnav.org.  Lies told by prohibitionists of entheogens are certainly a major, central part of the Beast -- see booklet The War on Drugs and the Rise of Anti-Christ.  Drug policy reform enables using entheogens and these, with scholarship, help kill the beast.  But the beast is about power, and power is not necessarily killed simply by exposure and knowledge.  After conquering delusion, it seems there are no more challenges, but it remains a challenge to provide entheogenic enlightenment and explanation to everyone.

I have only started reading Apples of Apollo.  I don't expect it to blow my mind at all, don't expect any major insights, revelations, and mental shifts.

It was mind-blowing to still believe in Jesus as a literal person but to discover the swoon story that's only slightly obscured in the bible. 

Almost in the same conversation with the holy spirit, it was mind-blowing to realize that I could commit totally to rationality and do away with all sorts of puzzling problems related to Christianity, and this was become fully cleared of egoic agency (and culpability of sin). 

After Clark provided the clear explanation of the identity of the main biblical entheogen (I knew there was one, on my own, for years but didn't know which it was), I foresaw (reading Clark through the lens of the holy spirit) a great shift in the relation of the religious moralists, the Jesus figure, entheogens, and prohibitionists.  That was a revelation (that Jesus would publically join the reformers at the same time as he publically fell from grace as miracle man). 

Most recently, it blew my mind to read The Jesus Mysteries (and then the 5 or so related recent books) and realize that an insight of a few months prior was right-on: during the instability-peak, we are rescued from being a tragic sacrificial victim not by a bodily Jesus in a magical act of sin-transfer, but by our own mental construct of Christ, Christ in us.  We become our own priest and sacrifice, all within the proper, personal (even solipsistic), symbolic, mental-construct realm. 

As a Christ, I sacrifice and kill my egoic self-concept, in order to gain a true self-concept.  There *is* a price that high reason and integrity demands of me, to acknowledge that all my previous assumptions and ideas of being a sovereign self-originator were confused, but it's not my bodily death or sacrifice of my power of reproduction or firstborn that is effective and appropriate; the true price of truth is to kill and deliver-up the lie of the egoic me, the free and self-originating me.  The price of enlightenment is your metaphysical freedom, or egoic free-agency.  What marks newagism as delusion most of all is the assumption that enlightenment brings "freedom" plain and simple.  If anything, it shows that freedom is our normal assumed mode of being, associated with egoic delusion.  Freedom is compound, though -- we retain political freedom if we are fortunate, and in any case we retain existential freedom (we are forced to make choices), but ego death is all about the loss of the confident accustomed sense of metaphysical freedom.

The penalty for sin, and the payment to set me free from bondage to sin, is to simply mentally acknowledge my lack of metaphysical freedom and kinghood and my profound dependence on the Ground of Being -- that's all, that's fitting, that's appropriate, and anything else is just a repetition or elaboration of that mental act of acknowledgement.  Mentally understanding and mentally experiencing ego death and metaphysical disempowerment is the full price of admission into enlightenment, any other price would be ineffective and missing the mark.  There is only one way to pay the penalty for pretending to be a king in the land, the ground of being, ruled by the Father -- the mental experience of ego death.  The price *cannot* be paid through the body, through blood, through reproductive organs, through sacrificing offspring or standins for them.  It is a mental price for a mental gain and can only be paid in mental coin, through undergoing the symbol-realm experience of humiliation of the ego.  The pure-mental realm is where all the spiritual action is.  On that realm, I have been crucified as one with the archetypal Christ figure, not as physical body but as a mental egoic being, a would-be kingly sovereign reduced to a puppet and vehicle for the ground of being, of which I, in my every thought and act of will, am but an epiphenomenal projection.

What is the importance of entheogens and scholarship about endless classical myths around entheogens?  What is the importance to those now experiencing ego death in a Jesus-Church dominated society?  Our main task is to use and understand entheogens to encounter Jesus but truly as the rightly-conceived Christ.  Finding how other cultures approached Christ as a mental/mythic-realm entity representing ego death in the mystic peak helps us to recognize Jesus too as a mental/mythic-realm entity representing ego death in the mystic peak.  We can never experience lasting, significant, compelling, high vision-logic oneness with Christ while considering him a literal bodily magical sin-transfer agent; we'd only experience a magical form of oneness (a capability out of reach of most people, and only fleeting and unsatisfactory for many others).  The magic form of uniting with Christ, as orthodox (Literalist) Jesus figure, is designed to be unfulfilling and frustrating so we keep granting more money and power to the institutionalized Church.  But the whole story of Jesus is about a rejection of this salvation on an installment plan that profits the priests; salvation is complete and free, the price being mere faith that Christ's death (transient such as it is) has paid the price for each and every person, in all cases.  The magic Literalist form of salvation is the old story Jesus railed against -- salvation as an ongoing profit-driven business.  The mythic, entheogenic, vision-logic form of salvation I'm explaining is what Jesus claimed to bring: fulfillment, free and complete, for each person.  Free except that you must kill and stop believing in the lower Christ; kill the magical egoic Christ, the historical Jesus along with yourself as metaphysically free egoic kingly sovereign agent.  I'd say Jesus the false sovereign king died to become Christ the metaphysical puppet and passive vehicle through which the all-powerful ground of being manifests.  Then the Jesus as kingly ego in us has to be sacrificed by us in order for the Christ, the Father, the Ground of Being, to be given due claim as the real author behind our every thought and act of will.

The Jesus Mysteries is better than the comparable Christ-myth books because it delves into mystic concepts somewhat -- it starts from a broad base of Mediterranean Christ-myth study, and then focuses on the Jesus story, while the other books limit themselves to the Jesus story without philosophically considering the surrounding universal Christ-myth traditions and philosophies and controversies.

At the site I will note Heinrich's publishing-priority over Merkur in several ergot hypotheses.

-- Michael Hoffman

Egodeath.com

Religious culture rejecting entheogens (Spirit Molecule book) --

The religious politics of entheogens is interesting.

http://www.rickstrassman.com/dmt/chaptersummaries.html -- "I began a relationship with an American Zen Buddhist monastery in the early 1970's, which provided ongoing spiritual training and support. Many monks shared with me the importance of their previous psychedelic experiences in choosing a spiritual lifestyle, which supported my nascent theories regarding psychedelics and mysticism. Buddhism also stimulated many of the ideas guiding the studies, providing the model for developing a new rating scale for DMT effects, and informing my method of supervising drug sessions. However, a disastrous conversation with a psychedelic-na•ve monk coincided with the terminal illness of the monastery's leader, and the lobbying for succession to his authority. The monk's condemning my work caused formerly supportive monks to either turn silent or reverse long-standing support for my work. The issue came to a head when my article linking psychedelics and Buddhism appeared in Tricycle. The Buddhist Review. The head temple's calls for me to stop wore down my remaining desire to continue the research, and I ended it several months after moving to Canada. I returned all drugs and the last year of grant support to the Federal government."

Carla Higdon (MAPS Director of Community Relations) wrote: "Rick Strassman's long-awaited book on his human DMT research is out. Entitled DMT: The Spirit Molecule. A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Mystical and Near-Death Experiences. It is published by Inner Traditions and costs $16.95. You may purchase a signed, personally inscribed copy from Dr. Strassman at his website, www.rickstrassman.com , where more information about the book is available. You may also purchase it from the publisher www.innertraditions.com , your local bookstore, or the usual internet sources."

Nov 25 2000 - this page is outdated. This page is better for recent additions: Links

Charles Tart's archive of scientists' transcendent experiences

http://www.grand-illusions.com/pinwheel.htm -- small application spirals. Look at screen, then look away -- get visual distortion like with entheogens for a few seconds.

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country. Online book by activist Peter McWilliams. Highly recommended by Sledhead, a leading mapinc.org drug-reform newshawk.

In Search of the Ultimate High: Spiritual Experience Through Psychoactives

Author : Nicholas Saunders, Anja Saunders, and Michelle Pauli

Pages : 272

Pub Date : 2000

Publisher : Ridler Books

ISBN : 0712670874

Can order from Amazon Books

List Price : $19.95

Discounted Price : $15.96

"Throughout history, people have taken mind-expanding substances. Whether out of curiosity, a need for development or a deep longing for something greater than themselves, they have always searched the realms beyond the here and now.

In Search of the Ultimate High looks specifically at the use of psychoactive drugs in the spiritual quest - at how those who honestly seek the truth have taken them, not as an escape route but as a way to inspire their lives. While explaining that they need to be treated with enormous care and respect, this unusual book opens up the debate on an often hidden and little understood part of our culture. Absorbing and wide ranging, In Search of the Ultimate High shows how some have had profound experiences through psychoactive drugs, have been able to explore the limits of view - and the vastness of life itself.

The use of psychoactives in different societies and religions, including shamanism, New Age movements and Rave Culture.

From LSD, Magic Mushrooms and Ecstasy - to Ibogaine and Ayahuasca

Fascinating personal accounts

Clear medical and legal sections

Foreword by Alexander and Ann Shulgin

"A rational and important addition to the debate concerning the use of psychoactives in our own culture."

-- Richard Rudgley, author of The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances

"An easy-to-understand, immensely practical guide to the sane and safe application of psychoactives. I recommend it highly."

-- Ralph Metzner, author of The Unfolding Self and The Well of Remembrance

"At last here is a book that tells the truth about psychoactive drugs ... a guide and inspiration for anyone who has glimpsed the ineffable and wondered what on earth to do with their insight."

-- Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine

Nicholas Saunders authored the books E for Ecstasy, Ecstasy and the Dance Culture and Ecstasy Reconsidered.

Marihuana - the Burning Bush of Moses: Mysticism & Cannabis Experience

Author : Robert Thorne

Pages : 399

Pub Date : 1998

Publisher : Clarus Books

ISBN : 0967105609

Can order from Amazon Books

List Price : $22.95

"This book was written to explain in a simple, non-confusing and non-religiously oriented manner a reliable method to achieve a genuine mystical experience. This book is a product of my own personal experiences and research. One of if not the main reason hallucinogens generally (and cannabis specifically) are illegal today is to protect the Judeo-Christian religion from being exposed for what it is and always has been: just another myth from the ancient world based, in part, on the use of drugs, without which their experience of revelation (divining the future, prophesying, communing with god) would never have happened."

---

Ready-made Martyrs for the Drug Law Reform Movement

>At 10:04 AM 11/25/99 -0800, jinxette wrote:

>>It occurred to me last night that we already have martyrs at hand.

Will these martyrs be useful for drug-law reformers?

>>Many of the greatest free-thinking minds of the Renaissance period during

>>the infamous inquisitions were tortured and burned alive for speaking their

>>minds and voicing thoughts contrary to church doctrine.

Why did the Church care enough to bother? Did the Church get to confiscate their property? Was the Church desperate to preserve a monopoly on worldviews, to keep people in mental pain with the Church as the only way of easing this pain, conditional upon all these people giving their wealth to the Church?

>>Galileo barely

>>escaped execution by renouncing his beliefs on how the planets revolved

>>around the sun and affirming the churches view that the earth/christians

>>were the center of the universe.

The Church didn't care that he believed this or that anyone believes anything about the planets in particular. What the Church did care about was preserving people's belief that the Church was truly the arm of God and infallible like God and thus could dictate whether one were forgiven or not -- conditional upon how much material wealth one gave to the Church. The Church's one and only primary concern was material wealth by any means possible; a secondary concern or a chosen strategy was to claim identity with Truth and the power to forgive "sins" including "original sin", and that this forgiveness, at the bottom line, was connected with how much material wealth one gave to the Church. But that strategy was short-sighted and bound to fail; the Church failed at keeping everyone in the dark about everything, the Church was unable to stamp out the light everywhere, and eventually it became clear that the Church was not infallible, thus the whole line of reasoning about buying forgiveness collapsed -- people rejected the core idea of the Church (and the core idea that Jesus railed against with the Jewish authorities as well) -- the idea of the "intercessor", which is of course the idea of the *paid* and *financially supported* intercessor. Jesus essentially said "hold back your money -- hold back your support for the intercessor class -- believe that I am your complete and all-sufficient intercessor, *for free*. He symbolically showed he had nothing to gain from anyone. Try to imagine the materialist authorities doing that. When people resent the church authorities for demanding the people support them and give them money, you gain credibility by proving you are not in it for the money. I'd like to see the prohibitionism leaders prove that they are not in it for the money. I know the average tv-viewing sheep have nothing to gain financially from persecution of people who use drugs, but the people in power who promote the WOD all have a conflict of interest: they are all invested in the drug war materially; they have everything to gain materialistically and monetarily from furthering and indefinitely continuing the persecution and the robbing and plundering and shooting and killing in the name of protecting people from drug fiends. The people in power who promote the persecution must shield themselves from their terrible awareness of their own guilt by mental gyrations of demonizing and mentally de-personalizing the people who use drugs. The drug warriors can take all their own guilt and hatred and fiendishness -- their taking advantage of others -- and project it upon others, then send those others to hell/prison, taking care of the problem for awhile.

>>But---there were many many others who did not give in.

>>We only have to pick and choose.

>>It's worth looking into.

>>Jinx ( http://www.kassey.net/ )

At 11:21 AM 11/25/99 -0800, Jim Rosenfield wrote:

>Great Thinking! We need this list. Please put it together.

>

>Mention Lenny Bruce. McCarthy Blacklists.

Please clarify how citing a list of persecuted intellectuals and inventors and philosophers can help the drug reform movement. How does this persuade prohibitionists and their careless followers -- to argue that "We all agree many good people were persecuted, we all agree druggies are persecuted, therefore we all conclude that druggies are actually good people"?

How about a list of people who are not martyrs, but counterexamples disproving that drug use is destruction:

· Clinton, who inhaled

· Bush Jr., who inhaled and snorted

· Nobel-prize winning physicist (recently)

· Carl Sagan

· Actors, artists, musicians, pop stars -- very successful, very drug-involved.

· Many politicians have confirmed their drug use.

· Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on -- didn't they all use and promote acid? Doesn't Jobs, still?

The entire technology industry uses recreational drugs heavily -- and have lots of money. These people should be profiled and solicited more. We need a concerted reform outreach coordinating the tech industry with drug law reform.

Galileo was forced to refer to his model as a mere mathematical convenience but not intended as a literal description of the universe. The Church had made the idiotic, self-destructive move of insisting on infallibility, and the pigeons were coming home to roost: it is *easy* to get money for a while by claiming infallibility, but *impossible* in the long run, and as soon as you make a single mistake, your whole institution comes crashing down. If the government is shown to be fallible about cannabis, then their whole WOD comes crashing down just as the Catholic Church did at the Protestant Reformation. Congress insists on declaring by force that cannabis is a gateway drug and is deadly toxic, in the same position statement that the whole WOD is crucial to continue. They act infallible, but when the little lies about cannabis are exposed, so does their credibility for the *entire* set of laws about all recreational drugs. The Church inquisitionists *are* the congress and police and the prohibitionists in power -- the authorities. When I see a police car, I see the Church authorities -- I see the immoral, anarchist plunderers. Any morality they proclaim is a ruse by purely materialist cynics, con men manipulating the beliefs and worldview of the gullible in order to take their money, car, and house, and belongings. But this ruse can only proceed so far before it backfires and collapses, as British power collapsed after too much taking advantage of the American colonies. When the scam escalates far enough, it becomes too obvious to convince people any longer, too hard to hide the real motives behind it all.

I don't really understand the motivation behind racism, so I can't completely understand the real motives behind the WOD, which is largely racist.

The drug law reform movement would benefit from more study of the following and the background of the following:

· Catholic Church: witch hunts, selling indulgences, Protestant Reformation

· McCarthyism

· Bill of Rights

· Gay rights movement

· Laws against various consensual sex acts

· Civil Rights movement

I liked that one article in the recent The Nation political magazine special issue about the drug war. The article tries to re-direct reform efforts away from the powerless ONDCP toward more relevant, primary strategies and agencies. So many letters to the editor and so many reformers seem to be boxing at shadows, missing the real motives, the real heart of strategy.

The WOD is not "like" the old Inquisition, it *is* the old Inquisition. The best book explaining this is Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Patriarchy and the Drug War. Dan Russell. 11/98.

The Catholic Church formula was to take all the money and possessions of anyone who used plants to have independent religious experiencing. The authorities forcefully insisted that life must be lived within the total framework they provided, mentally, experientially, and economically. To live outside that framework and to have religious or philosophical experiencing outside that framework was to break the law, which the church liked because then they could gain all your possessions and money. Science, democracy, and the renaissance were largely rejections of that sort of authoritarianism and forced hierarchical government which could treat people as having no rights and no property rights. America was founded on the principle of no martyrs, no victims of government campaigns, of inverting the power relation and rights-relations of citizen and government. The government exists to serve the people; the people do not exist to sustain the government. Property belongs to citizens, not to the king, pope, or governmental hierarchy, nor to the police/guard/soldiers.

We need a better understanding of persecution by the church. People think it is about belief and doctrines at bottom, but as far as the power brokers in the top of the Church hierarchy is concerned, it is purely about worldly money and the power of money and the power to accumulate more money. Ultimately, the Church didn't directly care what people *believed*, but rather, what happened to the people's *money*, which was directly affected by people's beliefs.

The police love druggies and hope for lots of them, because every identified or accused druggie means another property and batch of money to seize. The police-authoritarians love accused druggies for the same reason the Church-authoritarians loved accused witches -- these demarcated "devils" or boogiemen give the authoritarians the green light to take all the wealth which the person has accumulated, without the person having any recourse. The person is sent to hell either way, or some other realm, from which the person has no power to stop the authorities. Whether the person marked as a damned one is sent to jail for a long, long time, or killed and sent to hell or heaven or purgatory, it's all the same to the authorities' bank account: the person is removed, and their wealth is freed up to be confiscated by the authorities.

It is crucial that we study the similarities between confiscation of the property of plant-using people (branded as "witches"), the Boston Tea Party, and forfeiture in the War On Drugs. These are all about the exact same thing at the core. I want to emphasize this above all: it is not an accident that the WOD is covered by the Boston Tea Party; or that drug use is covered by religious freedom. America was not started to prevent things *like* the war on drugs, it was started and the constitution and bill of rights were created to prevent specifically the war on drugs, not to stop things *like* the war on drugs. The Bill of Rights was not created to prevent this *sort* of thing; it was simply and frankly designed to stop this *very* thing. The WOD is not accidently covered by the Bill of Rights; the Bill of Rights was meant to stop the WOD and also other things like it. The Bill of Rights was crafted and designed expressly to block exactly what is really going on at the heart of the WOD, this dynamic of people being victims of arbitrary searches and seizures of contraband, money, property, wealth.

Problem: authorities wield power to pillage and confiscate anything they feel like; all possessions potentially are the property of the State, on excuses so flimsy and accusations so vague, in the final analysis, no excuse or accusation is needed at all. Authorities see something they want, and they take it; this is complete and blatant government anarchy.

Solution: restraints on government. The foundation of America is the idea of restraint on government to prevent arbitrary persecution, persecution which is most perfectly represented by the war on drugs, the war on contrabands, the war on alternatives to the governmentally enforced lifestyle and worldview. Such governments only permit one worldview, the one which causes all wealth to flow their way. If you adopt a worldview which doesn't willingly send your flow of wealth in the direction of the authorities, then they take your wealth against your will, by force and by fiat.

Part of the strategy the authorties must use is propaganda designed to coerce the will of the citizens, the will of "the governed". So we see manipulation of beliefs and encouraging a sense of respect: respect for the King, for the Pope, for the police, for the media. Sure, many Americans favor police action against drug use, but what is the nature of this "favor"? Most Americas have no idea of the dynamics of forfeiture, no idea of the punitive jail terms and realities of jail, no idea of the alternatives, no idea of the debates going on, no idea of the destruction of prohibition itself; they are carefully fed a diet of lies, partial pictures, censored reporting, distortion, biased reasoning, propaganda. *Of course* most Americans favor police action against drug users -- that is what they are trained to think by the establishment media. Chomsky's idea of "manufacturing consent" explains that people will consent to whatever view and opinion the establishment media teaches them to hold, so the will of the people becomes uncritical, uninformed, just a puppet and a dumb mirror reflecting what the establishment media projects onto them. Citizens become clouded mirrors more or less simply reflecting what they are trained to believe by the media machinery of television and newspapers. Only when the parallels with, or repetition of, the Church witch burnings, and the British searches and seizures leading to the Boston Tea Party, and the McCarthy figurative "witch hunt" become painfully obvious to all tv viewers, does the persecution collapse, as the KKK collapsed in the early part of this century and as the persecution of gays recently collapsed, and as the Catholic Church collapsed and caused a backlash. We have reached the necessary bottoming-out point at which the WOD becomes so persecutive, it becomes obvious that it is the same dynamic as with the old literal witch hunt. Church indulgences (buying forgiveness) and forfeiture are seen to be the same thing, to accomplish the same thing, and people reject this when it goes too far.

There are numerous historical parallels to give reformers hope and a sense that things are getting bad enough while awareness is spreading, that this situation will bring about its own collapse as long as we persevere. The WOD is wound up so tight now, it all stands or falls together, and becomes entirely brittle so that the slightest mishap explodes the whole thing. I sense more and more attention given to wholesale rejections of the fundamental idea of jailing people simply for drug use itself -- more mentions of the idea that we should legalize-and-regulate all drugs.

The WOD and its propaganda must keep on ramping up to the point of being blatantly absurd and psychotic to everyone even when watching the official propaganda. When the propaganda becomes so extreme and foaming-at-the-mouth, with calls for the death penalty or worse, and declarations that drug use is worse than murder... at *some* point, the audience will turn against the punitive, alarmist prohibitionists. At *some* point, people ask "this story is obviously motivated, so what is the real goal and the real force driving this campaign to demonize people who use drugs?" However, if people are totally passive and totally apathetic, they will become cynical but inactive; they will gain understanding and have the truth, but won't take action. Even that could be an improvement; that inaction could be better than today's active support by citizens who ignorantly buy into the propaganda.

Don't think of "witch hunt" and "martyrs" as a metaphor; these are literal terms. The WOD is literally a witch hunt, when you conceive of the persecution of witches in the dark ages as a programme of accusing people of taking entheogens for religious experiencing as a way around the Church's economic framework. One of the most paradoxical things about entheogens is that they provide real religion and cast doubt upon organized dogmatic wishful-thinking religion. Entheogens can reveal reality as opposed to wishful thinking. When people live in reality rather than childish wishful thinking that is controlled by manipulative authoritarians (who are not themselves true believers, but are just immoral materialist opportunists), people are unlikely to support the authoritarian manipulators by supporting forfeiture or indulgences or other ways the authorities line their pockets with the wealth of "the governed". Witches (entheogen users and freethinkers) are not inclined to support the manipulative systems which are designed especially to draw wealth from the people toward the authorities.

Philosophy and religion are both directly related to psychedelics. Psychedelics do not mimic religious experiencing synthetically; they are the actual historical foundation of religion. Organized religion typically is a substitute for actual religion, which is plant-inspired religious experience; and organized religion is essentially motivated by financial opportunism, which requires declaring plant-based religious experiencing strictly forbidden. Plant-based religious experiencing and finance-driven, organized religion, are inherently mortal enemies. If anyone can continuously cultivate plants which give full-blown religious experiencing and full-blown philosophical experiencing twice a week, people have no need to buy their way to religious fulfillment. When a material is free and widely available, and you have a product to sell that addresses the same need as the free and abundant material, the only way to sell your product is to make an artificial scarcity. The governor of Mars in the movie Total Recall tried to hide and suppress the discovery of the alien oxygen-generator in order to sell air to everyone. Jesus said salvation is a free gift, gotten not through paying for sacrifices or paying for forgiveness, but simply through the non-monetary, abstract act of "believing in" the figure of Jesus instead. From reading Barbara Thiering, I believe he wanted every person to eat of the special sacramental loaves which were baked exclusively for the high priests. He said that everyone should be a high priest themselves, for free -- there is no need for church authorities and thus no way for church authorities to charge people a lot of money to be saved. The Catholic Church was, above all, a financial scam, selling people the fantasy of forgiveness and the fantasy of postponed bliss, conning them into experiencing themselves as guilty of invented abstract "original sin" in order to sell them Product. I do not believe that the religious leaders themselves believed in their own religious stories; the con man does not con himself but is only cynically manipulating the outlook of others, to fleece the sheep.

Religious truth and philosophical experiencing are a free gift from psychoactive plants. There is no need to pay anyone for religious or philosophical fulfillment, since the fulfilment is already freely available in the form of plants. The only way to make money off of people's desire for religious and philosophical fulfillment is to absolutely suppress and demonize the use of plants to achieve that fulfillment.

It's true that some people who don't stand to profit believe that drug use really is evil and that it is evil to not believe in the authoritarian religions. However, these misguided beliefs are only a symptom, not the main drive to demonize use of drugs. Those people are merely puppets dimly repeating what the authorities trained them to think. The real drive to tag druggies as demonic non-persons is driven not by beliefs, but by strategy for robbing people. People think they are tough on burglars, but the actual burglars, the main burglars who merely lead to burglary by heroin users, are the police. Violent crime in the WOD is primarily caused by police against "the governed", and only *secondarily* caused by drug users. Burglary in the WOD is primarily committed by the police, and only secondarily committed by drug users. When a news item starts off by talking about a burglary or a violent crime that has been committed, my first, natural assumption is that the crime is committed by police. Criminal means police.

When hysteria escalates far enough, people are embarrassed by it and dissociate themselves from it. The WOD is blatantly becoming pure hysteria. The strangest thing is that the prohibitionists signed a pact with themselves that prohibition by definition would be absolute, with literally zero tolerance -- and cannabis counts too. Prohibition thrives on the ease of cannabis persecution and shall die by the absurdity of cannabis prohibition. The prohibitionists might as well have included air in their list of demon drugs: air is easy to bust people for carrying, so it's convenient to lump into prohibition, but by the same token, it's so absurd to prohibit air, that strategy is *bound* to backfire sooner or later. Cannabis makes prohibition easy to pursue and escalate, but the goodness of cannabis eventually brings down the entire prohibitionist programme. Cannabis is destined to have the center stage in prohibition and its repeal. Without cannabis, prohibition would not be worthwhile for the police. Cannabis use is so easy to detect and so easy to persecute, it's a suitable excuse for the profitable forfeiture industry. Leary claimed he was busted for a roach planted by police and was hated for his LSD and mind-freeing ideas -- this shows how useful cannabis is for the prohibitionists... their strategy is to fight hard-to-fight drugs by, in propaganda, equating easy-to-fight drugs (cannabis) with the hard-to-fight drugs (LSD is the most extreme), but then, instead of fighting the hard-to-fight drugs, fighting mainly the easy drugs. "Heroin is bad, cannabis = heroin, and we made all these busts of cannabis suspects and obtained all their wealth, therefore we are winning the war against heroin." Cannabis is convenient to persecute in the name of hard drugs, but cannabis itself is ultimately a *terribly* impractical drug to demonize, and when it inevitably falls and fails to be seen as demonic any longer, so does the rest of the drug persecution fall, all in one blow. The ability to practically continue the drug war depends on the ability to continue cannabis persecution, entirely in the name of protecting people from heroin -- so the WOD hinges totally on the gateway theory. If you disprove the gateway theory, the justification for persecuting cannabis collapses, and so the practical foundation of WOD forfeiture strategy collapses, so the entire WOD collapses. If the gateway theory is publically shown to be a myth and recognized as such, the entire WOD soon collapses. If voters accept cannabis, then the WOD becomes too much trouble for the authorities to bother with.

---

The Christianity Gap in Entheogen Religion Scholarship

Looking over the literature to see "how come I didn't hear about Amanita in regards to Bible-religion much earlier?" Well, as Britannica.com says in the drug cult article, "Amanita Muscaria (fly agaric) is another mushroom having hallucinogenic properties that has not been thoroughly studied. It may be extremely important..." The author, as is typical, goes on to justify the importance of this plant in terms of Hindu religion, not realizing any relevance to the Jews or Christianity (see excerpt below). Why is the most important, dominant religion left until last, for discovering the entheogenic aspect? *Because* it's the most dominant, important religion, with the most entrenched biases and assumptions, and the deepest degeneration, due to authoritarian manipulation and deliberate distortion of the religion to cut off direct access to divine experiencing, in order to sell people a substitute, placebo salvation year after year.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,118686+2,00.html

Amanita Muscaria (fly agaric) is another mushroom having hallucinogenic properties that has not been thoroughly studied. It may be extremely important, since it may have been the natural source of the ritual soma drink of the ancient Hindus and the comparable haoma used by the Zoroastrians. Fly agaric, which is extremely toxic, is said to have, in addition to its hallucinogenic properties, the ability to increase strength and endurance; it is said also to be a soporific. ... Both the secular and the cultic use of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom in Siberia probably go back more than 6,000 years, and cultic use has spread beyond the cool temperate climates where the mushroom grows. ... One of the pharmacological mysteries is the nature of the Zoroastrian haoma and the early Hindu soma, both sacred drinks made from plants. Their source may have been the Amanita Muscaria mushroom, the mind-affecting chemicals of which pass into the urine with their properties very little diminished; there are scriptural references to sacred urine drunk as the source of divine insights. Allusions to the twigs and branches of haoma, however, suggest other plants, perhaps hemp. The mushroom, which does not grow in hot countries, may have been introduced to India by Aryan invaders from the north; subsequently, other plants may have been substituted until their identity was confused and lost."

The Small Number of Good Indo-European Entheogens, Compared to the Americas

Another reason why entheogenic research has made the mistake of chasing after exotic entheogenic use and overlooking the entheogen use right in front of our faces in the dominant religion is that there are so *few* good entheogenic plants in Indo-Europe, while there are many dozens in the Americas. The idea of waiting for the (annual) return of a divine savior in the flesh reflects how deeply the Indo-Europeans depended on the one decent entheogenic plant they had, which only appeared two months of the year and was the only species around, and only in the mountains.

Why Isn't the Ur Plant S. Cubensis Instead Of A. Muscaria?

I don't know why there is not a universal widespread usage of S. Cubensis throughout Indo-Europe; it was hot and there were cattle, right? So as McKenna argues, would not the Ur Plant, the definitive divine plant in that region, be S. Cubensis? Why did Amanita rather than Cubensis have the main role in the early Hindu, Jewish, and Christian religions? Why didn't the seekers of the holy grail, and the alchemists, simply hang out in the cow pastures all the time -- too easy? That happened in later Hindu religion, according to Clark Heinrich in the book Strange Fruit. S. Cubensis is *far* more straightforward and ideal an entheogen than A. Muscaria. You can eat S. Cubensis fresh, without having the ill feeling of predominantly body-oriented experience. There is no processing required. Hunting and gathering would surely discover the psychedelic effects of S. Cubensis much earlier and more readily than discovering the effects of A. Muscaria, which must be processed (dried, at least, if not rehydrated and pressed as well) to have much mental effect.

As a philosopher wishing for an ergonomic entheogen with a duration less than that of LSD, S. Cubensis fits the bill better than A. Muscaria.

o Can be consumed fresh, with same effects as if dried.

o Minor, not major, nausea and throwing up.

o No unpleasant decision of whether to drink the urine -- S. Cubensis is not known to pass through the body leaving active amounts in the urine

o Can be easily cultivated and in arbitrarily large quantity; no tree roots required

o No troublesome cycle of phases. Amanita has a nausea phase, a 2 hour sleep phase, a psychedelic phase, then an energy phase. S. Cubensis may have this cycle, subtly, but the strong emphasis is on the psychedelic phase.

(LSD has this cycle, too... queasiness, then the feeling of needing to lie down, then a mind-blowing trip phase, then a speedy, non-trippy phase; what is desired is purely the mental part. Actually, the duration of the mental part is often the right, desired length... if only we could discard the other 3 phases (nausea than hypergravity then afterward, speediness). That would compress the trip to just the main window, about 3 hours long.)

Mapping Fundamentalism to Entheogenic Mysticism

One interesting property of fundamentalist theology is that though it starts from supernaturalist premises and is thus false, it *is* committed to logical consistency, and is thus a challenging symbol of systems that the logician can seek to manipulate and translate, to search for a simple, determinate global translation of the entire system to another system which is not only logically consistent, but which is based, instead, on non-supernaturalist premises. This would be a way of discovering the "real meaning" of Christianity and postmodern, post-supernaturalist Christian theology. In my mapping of entheogen religion to fundamentalism, I claim that lack of entheogens *is* the real meaning of being condemned to hell: "Those who refuse to eat and drink the sacred plant, which is the flesh of God, condemn themselves to eternal torment, eternal unquenched thirst and unfulfillment, and separation from God." This portrayal might seem to overly soften and distort the fundamentalists' position on hell, to explain away the essential hellishness of hell. But my wording is taken straight from the conclusions of the definitive fundamentalist scholar Dave Hunt on the nature of hell, what it means to be damned to hell, and he concludes that the torment of hell is like a perpetually unquenched thirsting and separation from God, never drawing near to God.

In Defense of the Faith (1996) - chapter "What about Suffering and Hell?". Sections:

o Like a Fish out of Water

o Why Must the Damned Burn in Fire?

o The "Burning" of Unquenchable "Thirst"

o What about "The Lake of Fire"?

o Why Eternal Torment?

These sections in this chapter contain the heart and core of fundamentalism. If we can translate and explain this entirely in terms of entheogenic mysticism, we can show how the logically consistent fund theology, minus supernaturalism, converts simply and straightforwardly to the truth, which is entheogenic mysticism. There are logically consistent relations between the fundamentalist concepts of torment, hell, salvation, being in God's company, death and resurrection. Rather than rejecting this entire system as a meaningless network of fantasy/supernaturalism/ superstition/ wishful thinking, it is more effective to defuse this thought system by discovering a way to translate it wholesale, item-by-item, concept-by-concept, to entheogenic mysticism. This strategy provides a path for fundamentalists to be quickly converted to entheogenic mysticism. They get to keep every one of their doctrines and concepts, but now, each concept is merely slightly revised. This is the strategy of converting fundamentalist theology to entheogenic mysticism, and the latter is helped by giving fundamentalists the entheogen experiencing, which manifestly gives people immediate sense of salvation, revelation, and fulfillment which fundamentalist theology can never give. Fundamentalist theology never gives people the promised sense of wholeness and fulfillment, which can only come through entheogen use. Fundamentalists do not in fact feel fulfilled and sure of their spiritual reconciliation with God; this inner malaise is what causes them to be aggressive proselytizers, driven by self-doubt of their own faith, and the need to bolster their flagging faith by acting certain and acting fully committed to cover up their painful awareness of their lack of certainty and fulfillment. That Christian life is lived entirely in a state of self-doubt and self-recrimination for lack of faith. Fulfillment can only come from the one true savior, which is not faith, but rather, direct personal experience through entheogens -- given to us by the god of the living (in this life), not of the dead (after supposed bodily resurrection in the afterlife).

The "Burning" of Unquenchable "Thirst" (p. 238) --

> The "fire" of hell and the "burning" torment of the doomed and damned are consistently [in the scriptures] likened to thirst. ... The Bible tells us that the pain suffered by the damned has nothing to do with bodies and nerves. That Christ's description of the rich man and beggar, the one in hell and the other in paradise, is no... The rich man also died and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment.... and cried... "Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame" (Luke 16:22-24). While the words "eyes" and "tongue" and "flame" are mentioned and the torment of thirst for water is implied, these words clearly have another meaning than that which is attached to them in this life. ... the [body parts][referred to could not be physical.... the flame in the lake of fire is not physical either... Physical fire has no effect upon spirit beings. Whatever fire this is must be a special kind of fire for spirits, no doubt far more horrible than physical fire. ... It makes more sense both logically and biblically for the torment to arise from the burning thirst for God that separation from Him would create, together with the exquisite pain of remorse. The physical torment of incredibly hot fire burning continually reconstituted flesh would be so terrible that it would allow for no contemplation of past wrongs, for no remorse, for no regret for having rejected the salvation God offered. There would be no moral dimension to such torment; it would be simply physical and so overwhelming as to allow for no thought or regret. That hardly seems to fit the crime of rebellion and rejection. ... Those in the lake of fire would be so very desperate to escape that they could think of nothing else. Certainly they would be incapable of repenting for the right reasons.

Hunt is careful to be logically consistent, given his premises. This is the strange character of scholarly rational fundamentalism: they are concerned very much with logical consistency given their premises, premises which allow the supernatural. It is a strange marriage of supernaturalism and rational consistency. Dave taught me how to think rationally about the supernatural, so that when the Holy Spirit inspired me to shift the premises all at once to neatly identify, sever, and reject the supernatural aspects of Christian theology, I was left with the need to rationally, consistently explain in what way Christianity *is* true, given that it is not true in its supernatural aspects but only in its mystical aspects. It is important and crucial to map fundamentalist theology to entheogenic mysticism. How can Christianity be mystically true, if even the most respected mystic Gospel in the canon, John, states clearly that Jesus claimed to be the *only* way to religious fulfillment? How can Christianity possibly be mystically true if contains such blatant falsities as the prime premise that those who don't follow Jesus are condemned to eternal torture in a supernatural afterlife? If Christianity which is based on the canonical scriptures really is mystically true, this necessarily would require that there is a technique for *translating* rather than simply *rejecting* such blatantly supernatural and thus false doctrines as the supernatural uniqueness of Jesus, and the assertion that all people will be supernaturally resurrected and will exist in a supernatural afterlife, and the assertion that those who do not conceive of themselves as Jesus' slave-like, obedient followers worship the supernatural devil and will suffer some supernatural torture in a supernatural hell. What is needed, if it is possible to discover the mystical truth, if any, within the system of supernaturalist Christian theology, is to de-supernaturalize the supernatural itself -- which means, specifically, to find a systematic and consistent way of translating each and every of the supernatural concepts to non-supernatural concepts, resulting in a system which is fully self-consistent and which maps consistently to each point in the supernaturalist network of concepts. *This* is the way, if there is any, to extract the mystic truth from supernaturalist theology.

A formative experience not too long ago was reading books of Christian theology which try to rationally explain the meaning of the atonement of the Crucifixion. How does Jesus' spilling of blood and (supposed) death on the cross achieve salvation for us? Like the great atheists of the 19th century, I discovered the secret that Christians don't rationally understand why it is that Jesus' (supposed) death on the cross accomplished something for us. Ask a fundamentalist to explain, in comprehensible language, *how* Jesus' death on the cross accomplishes our salvation. They cannot answer, they cannot explain; Christian salvation can hardly even attempt to make sense. You must believe *that* his death accomplishes our salvation, but there is no explanation of how it does so. The theology books dedicated to this question make the attempt, but after I read several of them, I was astonished at how diverse and unpersuasive the explanations all are; they are *floundering* to try to make sense of how the death of a Christ accomplishes our salvation. Especially, I saw clearly and first hand the very character and style of mythic or magical thinking, supernaturalist thinking. You accept that supernaturalist premises are the right sort of premises, and reason from one supernaturalist premise to the next, in a network that completely floats on its own, uniformly supernaturalist, not touching ground. It is all in la-la land, even though it is logically consistent. It is the same as creating an artificial system of theoretical mathematics. Such a system of theoretical mathematics can turn out to have some relevance to reality, just as some synthetic entheogenic molecules turn out to be also found in nature. But the main essence of Christian theology is that it is a *supernaturalist* system through and through. You can really see this character in Dave Hunt's book In Defense of the Faith. The book is perfectly logically consistent; you generally cannot refute the fundamentalists as being logically inconsistent. But this rigor combines so very strangely with the acceptance of supernaturalist premises, just as with the theology in the Church around the year 400, when theology of the finest hair-splitting points was practiced in order to excommunicate people and thus exercise political power. Such theology is all a bunch of more-or-less consistent hand-waving, explaining supernatural ideas with yet more supernaturalist ideas, never touching down to the hard earth.

The Bible is either true, or false, or true *in a way*; the challenge for the rational entheogenic mystic is to determine in what systematic way all the supernaturalist ideas can be true, given the new premise that supernaturalism is false (while retaining the idea, partly evident in the Bible, that mystic experiencing and insight is true). How to convert (translate, re-conceptualize, re-think) the network of false but consistent supernaturalist ideas to a network of true, and of course also consistent, mystical ideas.

It might be too big a task, or impossible, to make sense out of all verses in the canonical Bible by translating and mapping them systematically to rational entheogenic mysticism. But many of the key points of conventional Christian theology *can* be satisfactorily mapped this way, enough to satisfy me for now. I have shown that such a mapping is generally possible; I have provided the essence of such a systematic transformation or translation.

Down with supernaturalist theology, up with entheogenic mysticism. That's my goal for theology. But even so, we need cooperation of supernaturalist Christian and entheogenic Christians (and entheogenic supernaturalist Christians) toward drug-law reform. We should argue about theology, even while both groups work together for drug-law reform.

If you can consistently translate fundamentalist hell to entheogenic mysticism, with entheogenic mysticism providing a way to avoid an entheogenic mysticism sort of hell, , then that's the most important; salvation and Christianity is for nothing except avoiding hell. Then the rest of the supernaturalist religion follows easily, and you have solved the problem. Can fund hell concept be explained away , translated satisfactorily to an entheogenic-mysticism hell concept, with entheogen being savior from that hell? with not only psychologically fulfilling results, not only psychological sense of salvation/heaven/ god's presence, but actually a high spiritual result, with an incontrovertible spiritual knowledge and sureness of spiritual salvation which is fulfilling?

---

How to Make Holy Water

1. Collect ergot pebbles from a grain field.
2. Powder them.
3. Soak this in cold water for three hours.
4. Filter out and discard all particles.

The remaining water is LSA water.

About Holy Water

LSA is ergine which is lysergic acid amide which is LA-111. This is holy water, the water of life. You can mix it into bread which is cooked at a low temperature so as not to break down the LSA. You can make a pool and baptize in it. You can sprinkle it to sanctify. You can mix it with wine. You can minister it.

Contact a farming co-operative organization to collect ergot sclerota from the fields. Or, as Ott says in Pharmacotheon, obtain a sack of organic rye and pick out the sclerota from there.

Surely the kingdom of God is at hand.

Jesus and his disciples moved through the wheat field, plucking grains. Is that working, on the sabbath?

Moses struck a rock with a rod, and water flowed forth from it.

I took the little scroll from the angel, and it was sweet in my mouth but bitter in my belly. I fell to the ground as one who was dead. He said fear not, and raised me up.

What a man taketh in does not cause him to sin; what comes out of a man is sin.

-- Michael the Archangel

Books about Ergot

• The Mystery of Manna: Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible (promind.com)
• The Elixir: An Alchemical Study of the Ergot Mushrooms (amazon.com)
• The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (promind.com, and my books page)
• The Story of Ergot

A person on the Net wrote: Ergot is one of those things that is both simple and very complex. You need to understand that there are several species and strains within species, and each has different alkaloids. Even one chemo-type can vary its alkaloidal makeup depending on environmental factors. None of which, to the best of my knowledge, is catalogued. Without some form of testing aparatus, safe extraction of ergot is impossible. If I were going to go down this path, I'd develop a simple paper chromatography test that could be performed on the result of an ergot extraction to verify its consituents. If I remember correctly, Springer published a series of books relating to chromatography, one of which was devoted to alkaloids. I'd start there. Remember to handle ergot and its solutions with rubber gloves.

The hero with a thousand faces - campbell -- trippers liked.

had confined himself to obviously psychedelic acts, that would have been sufficient space for a relatively comprehensive coverage of the genre. Instead, Strong includes many acts which haven't even a tenuous connection to psychedelia of any sort. Thus, Babe Ruth, Rick Wakeman, the Trashmen, and many more of these various ilks (heavy, garage, and progressive) are included while hundreds (maybe thousands) of genre-defining acts are left out. Where are the Human Expression, Remaining Few, Bluethings, Flower Power, Fallen Angels, Freeborne, Flat Earth Society, etc? Admittedly, these are not household names but for any purported scholar of psychedelia (if this isn't too poncey an expression), they are essential. Still, the book does cover quite a lot of territory (even if much of it is not germane to the title). It's a pity there are still quite a few inaccuracies remaining (always remember to double-check your facts, Martin!). My recommendation - search out Vernon Joynson's books, Tapestry Of Delights and Fuzz, Acid, and Flowers for the full story (or as close as the

http://www.egodeath.com/ -- LSD and Ego Death. The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence. Ego Death and Self-Control Cybernetics.

Meditation is a feeble imitation of psychedelic experiencing, which is the real thing.

Genuine Christianity has an emphatically psychedelic basis. Jesus probably used psychedelics.

Psychedelics are the foundation and inspiration for philosophy as well as religion.

Jesus used his group's ("the healers") chemical knowledge to fake his death on the cross; the 100 pounds of aloes were used to revive him. (Pilate: "I don't believe that he can be dead so soon.") This supported the ego's wish for the impossible, genuine free moral agency, by seeming to prove the possibility of resurrection and moral reward and punishment in an extended existence for the ego into the moral afterlife. The interpretation of the Crucifixion is an extremely challenging problem, requiring psychedelics for sufficiently insightful thinking.

Ego death entails identfication with Jesus' *virtual*, metaphorical death and rebirth.

The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible

by Dan Merkur

Our Price: $16.95

Paperback - 208 pages (June 1999) Inner Traditions Intl Ltd; ISBN: 0892817720 Not Yet Available: You may still order this title. We will ship it to you when it is released by the publisher. Amazon.com Sales Rank: 704,186

* Compelling evidence that the early Jews and Christians used psychedelics as part of their religious rites. * Reveals the Bible's disguised references to this tradition and traces knowledge of this secret to the gnostics, masons, kabbalists, and the legends of the Holy Grail. * Explores the idea that psychedelics have played a role in nearly all religious traditions. When Moses fed manna to the Israelites, he told them that after eating the miraculous bread they would see the glory of God. And indeed they did: "They looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of Yahveh appeared in a cloud." In The Mystery of Manna, religious historian Dan Merkur provides compelling evidence that this was the Israelites' initiation into a psychedelic mystery cult that induced spiritual visions through bread containing ergot--a psychoactive fungus containing the same chemicals from which LSD is made.

Citing biblical material, as well as later Jewish and Christian writings, Merkur reveals the existence of an unbroken tradition of Western psychedelic sacraments, from Moses and manna to Jesus and the Eucharist. Most important, Merkur shows that this was not a heretical tradition, but instead part of a normal, Bible-based spirituality, a continuation of the ancient tradition of visionary mysticism. Even when this practice became unacceptable to the religious orthodoxy, it was perpetuated in secret by gnostics, masons, and kabbalists, as well as through the legends of the Holy Grail. Merkur traces a long line of historical figures who knew of manna's secret but dared only make cryptic references to it for fear of persecution. The Mystery of Manna is the strongest contribution yet to our growing realization that, contrary to popular belief, psychedelics and religion have always gone hand in hand.

About the Author Dan Merkur, Ph.D., has taught at Syracuse University and Auburn Theological Seminary. His research focuses on the varieties of religious experience in historical, cross-cultural, and psychoanalytical perspectives. He is the author of many books, including Powers Which We Do Not Know, Gnosis, and The Ecstatic Imagination. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

_________

Actually, we are under damnation *now*, under separation -- Jesus's re-uniting us with God does not happen in some afterlife, but rather, a substitute reuniting. We are now under the curse of god -- we are *now* in hell, *now* in separation from him (as far as conscious mode of existence), and Jesus' reconciling does not bring us to him; it makes us feel confident and virtually united with God, while maximally apart from Him. He loved our separateness (virtually separate existence) so much that he used his body as a way of emphasizing separateness even more -- he distorted the nature of salvation in order to make us (virtually) free (as opposed to living as slaves/puppets/servants of God. He lied to us about the nature of sin, salvation, freedom, moral afterlife... all to make us experience ourselves as free agents. Everyone knows that while we are in our sin he saves us, but this state is *not* to be confused with the unity that we are promised to enjoy in the afterlife.

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/v/vonmeierk/7-09AMA.html -- Indian spir is really a subst for Soma.

the sacrifice of Soma, from once occupying the focal point of Vedic religion gave way to the expedient of systematic yogic practice as a liturgical substitute. If this aspect of our ethnobotanical understanding is correct, it leads to the point of view that the whole of Indian mystical practice from the Upaniads through the more mechanical methods of yoga is merely an attempt to recapture the vision granted by the Soma plant, then the nature of that vision--and of that plant--underlies the whole of Indian religion, and everything of a mystical nature within that religion is pertinent to the identity of the plant. [ Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, "The Post-Vedic History of the Soma Plant," in Wasson, Soma, p. 95. See also, Schultes and Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, pp. 82 ff.]

http://csp.org/chrestomathy/a_author.html - book reviews, Council for Spir Prac (good bib)

It is widely thought that Rush is a philosophy/mysticism band, but a crucial point for understanding the nature of this "philosophy" and "mysticism" is that it is *acid*-mysticism.

The lyrics are crafted to lend themselves particularly well to carrying subtle double-entendres alluding to common experiences of the LSD mystic altered state. The result is a language of hidden reference, a systematic, definable scheme of encoding and decoding of meaning. The acid lyricist writes while on LSD, subtlely phrasing things in a way that suggests common LSD experiences and perceptions. These allusions are not recognized except by listeners who are also in the LSD mystic altered state. For example, "waves roll by so fast... save my ship of freedom, I'm lashed helpless to the mast" are recognized by everyone as telling the story of a sea voyage and a storm. But for those on LSD, the rather odd or arbitrary phrasings are seen as referring, with a perfect fit (perfect beyond the possibility of coincidence), to the common LSD experiences of perceptual waving and of loss of the sense of free will.

Ego death is the most interesting phenomena in human experiencing and warrants such research and explanation as my site puts forth.

There is no need for psychology buzzwords and high intelligence to experience and explain this. Just a familiarity with Rush lyrics and common altered-state experiences.

-- Michael Hoffman

>From: C Bruce
>To: cybermonk@cybtrans.com
>Subject: Weird
>Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 22:01:05 -0400
>
>I've read more of your discussion about Rush lyrics and have concluded
>that you're either very intelligent or you're an idiot with a psychology
>book in front of you and you're using as many psychology buzzwords as
>possible to put forth the illusion that you're intelligent!
>
>CDB

^ > ^ Hastert, who was recently given a 100% favorable rating by the Christian
^ > ^ Coalition, was also one of the architects of "super-ban" legislation...
^ >
^ > That just makes me want to puke. The so called 'Christian' coalition
^ > wouldn't know Christ if they were nailing Him to a cross!
^ >
^ > Not trying to grind an axe or anything; but really...the Bible speaks
^ > of 'food for the mind' as being a _GOOD_ thing.
^ >
^ > I think 99.9% of the problem with Christianity today, is that the vocal
^ > majority who call themselves such; just use that name as a platform to
^ > further thier OWN goals...ie the 'christian' coalition.
^ >
^ > I tell you the truth; I am a devout follower of Christ; and if He were
^ > beside me in the flesh; I'd pass the joint and toke up with Him.
^ >
^ > ^ ...
^ > ^ Not surprisingly then, Hastert has indicated that he stands in favor of
^ > ^ spending more federal dollars on prison construction, increasing
^ penalties
^ > ^ or drug offenses, mandatory minimum sentences, and the death penalty for
^ > ^ those convicted of drug smuggling.

[1Cor 10]:[29] Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for
why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience? [30] For if I by
grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give
thanks? [31] Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God.

^ That's right and biblical. You would be extremely interested in these
^ verses:
^ http://www.cybtrans.com/egodeath/mcpnotes.htm#xtocid153121
^ Prohibitionist christians vs. users of psychoactives
^
^ Jesus emphatically permits eating or drinking anything, the New Testament
^ emphasizes that sin comes from within, we are not prohibited to eat or drink
^ anything: Mark 7:6, Mathew 15:7, the Bible clearly says that you may ingest
^ anything
^
^
^
^ It is very likely that Jesus used psychedelics -- "the sacred food of the
^ masters" in the Essene book of rules, referred to several times. Jesus *is*
^ on our side, though the "Christian" false-moralists are not.
^
^ Please write down and memorize the above verses. They are the most
^ important Bible verses for legalizers to have.

And they are not alone, either:



[Rom 14]:[2] For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who
is weak, eateth herbs. [3] Let not him that eateth despise him that
eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for
God hath received him.

[1Cor 9]:[2] If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to
you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord. [3] Mine
answer to them that do examine me is this, [4] Have we not power to eat
and to drink?

[1Cor 10]:[1] Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be
ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed
through the sea; [2] And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and
in the sea; [3] And did all eat the same spiritual meat; [4] And did
all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual
Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. [5] But with many
of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the
wilderness.

* * * and my personal favorite (along this subject-matter):

[1Cor 10]:[29] Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for
why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience? [30] For if I by
grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give
thanks? [31] Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God.

nnd we mustn't forget:

[Rev 22]:[2] In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of
the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of
fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree
were for the healing of the nations.

glen at ipass.net

---

Pubdate: Thu, 30 Nov 2000

Source: World Magazine (MA)

Website: http://www.uua.org/world/

Address: 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108

Copyright: 2000, Unitarian Universalist Association

Author: Mike Young

THE DRUG WAR'S TRUE FAILURE AND THE YEARNING FOR A DEEPER SELF

On Good Friday 1961, 20 theological school students served as subjects for Harvard's last legal experiment with psychedelic drugs. It was classical science: double-blind, control group, outside evaluators, the works. The question: Does the drug (psilocybin, in this case) give the subjects a mystical experience? Nine of the 10 who got the drug, and one of the 10 who didn't, said that's what they had. Three evaluators, specially trained to judge whether the subjects' narratives matched the characteristics of classical mystical experience, agreed.

None of the 20 seminarians went on to abuse drugs. Indeed, in a 25-year follow-up, those who got the drug said the experience had positively influenced their lives. Further, research outside the US with this class of drugs has shown significant value in treating mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, and intractable pain and alleviating fear and anxiety in the terminally ill. Yet if repeated today, the experiment would result in one very large drug bust.

I was the one who got the drug and said, "No, I didn't have a mystical experience." But within a year, I had changed my mind. I didn't meet God. I didn't acquire any new religious beliefs. I certainly didn't become a saint. What did happen was that my little ego died, quite painfully. Oh, I have managed to resuscitate a serviceable replacement, but I have known ever since that my ego isn't me. [emphasis added - mh]

If I hadn't had the experience, would my life have been different? I have no way of knowing. There are too many other reasons why it might have gone the way it did. But a different me walked out of the experiment in 1961 from the one who had walked in. I had learned that human consciousness is richer, more profound, more filled with shining potential than both fundamentalist secular humanists [think Ayn Rand - mh] and fundamentalist Christians have ever guessed.

Part of the human propensity to ingest drugs comes from religious motives. The drug experience feels like an encounter with something deeper, more intense, more real, more awe-some than the bland rounds of daily existence. It's no accident that some people return from it spouting language that sounds like quotations from the mystics. There's a deep human hunger for such depth and intensity, more than ever in our overorganized, overroutinized spectator society.

Among the motivations for altering one's consciousness is a yearning, if not for a higher power, then at least for a deeper self, which may be a distinction without a difference. I'm not talking about "believing what you know ain't so." I'm talking about that shift of attention from the narrow ego to a larger sense of self, the discovery of the deep connections between that self and others and "the interconnected web."

>From 1969 to 1982, I worked as a probation officer in Los Angeles County, California. The drug scene provided stiff competition for anything I had to offer my clients. Even when they weren't high, their experience, as they related it to me, was more intense, exciting, and real than anything they had seen in straight society. This may be part of the reason there is no "cure" for drug abuse, other than a life with depth.

For those who successfully navigate the path to a drug-free life, it's not a path back to health but a path onward, to a life more fully human.

The drug problem is real [I'd say "the prohibition problem", with Szatz - mh], resulting in lost lives, trashed families and relationships, lost human potential and productivity, and distorted social institutions. But not all drugs are the same, nor are they always used in the same ways. Our laws against drugs, however--the rules of engagement for the War on Drugs--show scant recognition of this fact. They lump psilocybin, mescaline, LSD, and marijuana--all nonaddictive--together with heroin, morphine, and cocaine. Meanwhile, heroin and morphine continue to be withheld from terminally ill patients, even when nothing else successfully controls their pain, in order to keep these dying patients from becoming addicted. The government is now insisting on the same insane standard for the medical use of marijuana. Such is the failed and crazy-making logic of the War on Drugs.

The Harvard drug experiment that I took part in points to one avenue by which we might begin to understand the human propensity to modify our consciousness. Such understanding may give us some badly needed handles on alternative responses. For until we begin to formulate nuanced and thoughtful strategies for dealing with drug use, we will continue to distort every aspect of our society, and make the real drug problems worse.

------------

The Rev. Mike Young, minister of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, HI, currently serves on the citizen advisory committee for the needle exchange program in Honolulu. In the 1960s he served as UU campus minister at Stanford University, and in the 1990s he was minister of the UU Church of Tampa, FL, where he belonged to the police chief's citizen advisory committee.

---

Panic Attack

> > John Lennon had that problem (chronic ego loss). Someone had to actually tell him what songs he wrote and what he has done. He completely annhialated his ego thru years of HEAVY LSD use.

> And how do you know *that*!? I've read many books on Lennon, and he was quite a user in his time. Most notably 1966-1968. Check out the book by Ian MacDonald on the Beatles.

Panic Attack FAQ

Scary Thoughts and Impulsives -- These are thoughts like you'll lose control and start stabbing your loved ones, your kids, yourself. Impulse to hit, kill, jump out of a window, drive into oncoming traffic. Such impulses are never acted on. Violent or suicidal people are not anxious about their actions, just the opposite. They may be anxious about not getting caught, but not about doing the action.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN:Your brain calculates the possibilities in each situation, the natural affordences. For a knife, you can bend it, break it, slice vegetables, or stab you neighbor with it. Since your anxiety sensitizes your brain for danger, the "danger" part of these unconscious affordences pops into consciousness, you resist it and the adrenaline surge locks it in. Also serves as a distraction mechanism from your other anxieties.

TREATMENT: Write out the scary thought or impulse in full, gory detail. Do this 2X a day, each day exaggerating it more and more. Write the thing that makes you most anxious "killing your kid, gutting your wife, boiling your gold fish". Do it in detail. Face your fear, and the fear will flee, flee your fear and it will chase you.. Do it every day until it seems silly and no longer causes much anxiety. You are free at that point. Occasional setbacks may occur for awhile, just repeat the treatment.

SYMPTOMS LIST

Someone suffering from high states or anxiety with or without panic, also tend to suffer from some of the following. All quite normal and boring -- none of these are dangerous, only annoying:

Feeling you are going to die
Feeling you are going to go crazy
Feelings of unreality
Feeling "I can't cope"
Feeling stressed
Feeling like wanting to crawl out of one's skin
Feeling of doom or that "something may happen"
Feeling that one has a disease such as cancer
Excessive attention to sounds,
Excessive attention to health matters like one's skin
Excessive attention to self
Hot or cold sweating
Muscle tension, especially in forehead, shoulders or throat
Can't get enough breath
Dizzyness
Confusion
Visual blurring, darkening, distortion
Seeing as if stuck inside a fishbowl or in cellophane
Pounding heart
Skipping heart
Sharp pains in chest, neck, limbs
Rushing noises in ears
Sleep too much, not restful
Sleep too little (hard to get asleep and or early moring waking)
Headache
Fatigue
Irritability
The runs from nervousness
Constipation
Frequent urination
Dry mouth
Cold hands
Sweaty palms
Back pain -- tense muscles lead to easy injuries
Sensory distortions -- legs feel closer
Impulses to hit, crunch, etc., not acted on
Scary thoughts such as violent images, jumping out of windows, and so on.

Don't worry, they all go away as you relax and learn how not to react. None of these symptoms are dangerous, they are just annoying. You never act on scary thoughts, just scare (distract yourself) with them. Violent or suicidal people are not anxious about their actions, just the opposite.

Anxiety does not lead to Insanity. No one was anxious and panicked for years and then slowly (or suddenly) went insane. Anxiety waxes and wanes over all time scales, insanity is a constant, enduring misperception of reality. If *you* notice that you are "crazy", you are not. If one is insane, it is other people who will notice it, not you; If you are anxious, *you* will notice it, other people may or may not.

Agoraphobia - There are many definitions of this, probably the most common one is being so afraid of panic that one becomes house bound. My and other's definition is simply a fear of fear -- being so afraid of that uncomfortable feeling of fear, that one fears to feel it and does anything to avoid the discomfort. Common also is a simple fear of one's thoughts -- "What if?!!"

PTSD - Post traumatic stress disorder. A reaction triggered by a traumatic event that one feels powerless in. Common to war and rape. Seems to hypersensitize the brain so that it can replay the scene in flashbacks which are viewed in fear and panic.

Posting on ego death:

http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ap]/getdoc.xp?AN=370737094&CONTEXT=921350674.1351090261&hitnum=95

In college I mellowed out a bit re: religion. Being against the Vietnam War I had contact with many anti-war Christians. & LSD -religion -- turn on, tune in, experience ego death , & talk with God -- influenced me. On my 20th birthday, I had a bad acid trip at VPI. I was visiting a peace freak friend (son of a Virginia state policeman -- last name Weaver) at the Methodist Student Union & was invited to trip with some of the Methodist youth there. A female Methodist student there sold me the LSD . The trip was quite a bit more intense than any of my trips heretofore. We dropped our acid & sat down to a spagetti meal.

The girl did some prayer / ritual, & I zoomed! Returning to forever, we students dropped our mortal guises & became once again cosmic gods. I remember seeing censers dispensing colored smoke. The girl said something about all but one of us dying that evening. I suspect she was doing a mindfuck on me. All of them being Methodists & me being the outsider -- she probably meant that they were ALREADY dead to their egos & had Jesus on the throne of their wills (like in the Campus Crusade for Christ propaganda) & I was unsaved. Anyway, my tripping mind filtered whatever she said into: all but one of us gods would die that night & the surviving god would rule the cosmos. I guess that was my intro to the concept of kathenotheism. (I didn't learn the word 'kathenotheism' until more than a decade later.) Anyway again, I got uptight & walked outside. The Methodist students joined me outside -- in astral form.

God in Pavlovian guise tried to get me to submit to his will. I resisted and ran away. Running from God became running to hell. I became St. Stephen being stoned to death. The stoning of St. Stephen was familiar to me from early childhood religious training, & I especially liked the Grateful Dead _Live / Dead_ album, which included the song "St. Stephen." I attempted to die by lying in somebody's flower garden (what's a funeral without flowers) but didn't quite die.

I became a euglena afraid to join the group euglena, or maybe I was a alien life form afraid to join the group alien life form. I was at the cosmic carnival & took a chance on the cosmic Wheel of Fortune. The wheel was spinned & my fate came up "bad trip." I panicked (later I learned from Robt. Anton Wilson that Pan-ic is the most common reaction to encounters with diety) & ran.

Had lots of scary visions & scary auditory hallucinations. Ended up in jail, lying in Methodist Student Union spagetti puke & remembering little of what had happened that evening. I found out later that a doc had shot me up with thorazine, though my tripping version was that Dracula had a hypodermic needle, & was stealing my blood.

So in months afterwards, bits & pieces of the bad trip / nervous breakdown filtered back into my conscious memory, & I became afraid that I would go to hell permanently next time unless I became a Christian again. I was paranoid as HELL (probably at least borderline schitzophrenic) then & remained so for years. I started going to church again, started reading the Bible, & became insufferably religious. After a decade or so (too much wasted time), I figured out that fear ain't a good foundation for religion or for one's life. Nowadays I try to give voice to the whole of myself, the whole of my contradictory feelings re religion.

How can one integrate one's personality without acknowledging one's contradictory feelings? Tell it all! In the last few years, I've been reading Robt. Anton Wilson & Philip K. Dick, so I know that my experience aren't unique, aren't even especially unusual. That knowledge helps me. -- BOB_STUMP at prodigy.net

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