Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita

In reading the old accounts one finds a strange mixture of fact and fantasy. Some are so fantastic that if they had not been accepted by other authors they would not find a place in even a most detailed historical summary. Then there comes an observation of such merit that all seems set for real progress. But these facts, even when accepted, are often misinterpreted, almost as if in a superfluity of naughtiness, and again there is confusion. – John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms & Toadstools, 1953, p. 17

Introduction

This article summarizes the theory that visionary plants play an instrumental role within Christian origins and the Bible, and helps straighten out the citations, issues, and relationships among John Ramsbottom, Erwin Panofsky, R. Gordon Wasson, and John Allegro, to clear up many of the inaccurate assessments and characterizations regarding their views on these hypotheses. More precision has been needed about exactly which arguments or issues were mentioned by whom, and what the reasoning and argumentation was, specifically. The treatment of the views of Wasson and Allegro has been too undifferentiated and careless.

Scholars of Christian history have too readily utilized the mycologist Wasson to dismiss Allegro’s theory that there was no Jesus, that the first Christians used entheogens, and that the first Christians considered Jesus to be none other than visionary plants. Wasson’s dismissal of Allegro together with mushroom trees has thus proven to be important for the study of Christian origins, the ahistoricity of Jesus, and historical Judeo-Christian use of visionary plants.

This detailed treatment shows examples of pseudo-arguments in disputes about religious history, and demonstrates point-by-point critical reading of a set of arguments. Even if the reader considers the interpretation of Christian ‘mushroom trees’ in art to be trivially obvious and to need no intensive point-by-point argumentation, or is uninterested in the subject of mushrooms in religious history, there are nevertheless interesting patterns of argumentation exposed and explained here. Recognition of these argumentation patterns is useful in other potential disputes as well, including the historicity of Jesus and the authenticity of all the Pauline epistles.

Wasson’s positions are clarified on the emphatically distinct topics of whether there are psychoactive mushrooms in the Bible; whether the authors of the Genesis story of Eden meant the two trees as Amanita mushrooms and their host trees; whether the Christian artists who painted ‘mushroom trees’ meant them as mushrooms; and whether the painter of the tree in the Plaincourault fresco in particular meant it as Amanita mushrooms and their host tree.

These findings help set the record straight and critically integrate Allegro’s work into the corpus so research can move forward past the question of the tree of knowledge. This research brings together the study of visionary plants in religious history and research in the ahistoricity of Jesus – fields that support one another. This article advances the research by showing the following:

The Panofsky/Wasson argument for reading Christian mushroom trees as representing Italian Pine trees but not mushrooms fails on all points, when critically examined. The Ramsbottom/Allegro interpretation is justified and has not been effectively challenged or put into doubt.
Wasson considered psychoactives in Christianity and the Bible very little and narrowly. He was surprisingly un-curious and averse to opening the question of visionary plant use in Christianity.
Wasson asserted that the two trees in the story of Eden in Genesis deliberately meant Amanita and its host tree, but that the painter of the Eden tree in the Plaincourault fresco was unaware of that meaning (even though the Plaincourault tree looks like Amanita mushrooms).
Wasson neglects to address the relevant question of whether the tree of life at the end of the Bible meant Amanita mushrooms. He asserts that the tree of life in Genesis meant Amanita, while implying that the tree of life in Revelation did not mean Amanita – an unlikely combination of ideas, which he fails to address and justify.
It’s an illusion that the passage in Persephone’s Quest about the Garden of Eden story was written 18 years after Soma and reverses Wasson’s denial of later Jewish and Christian entheogen use such as at Plaincourault. This illusion is propped up by the failure of Wasson’s readers to differentiate between his positions regarding the Eden text in Genesis versus the Plaincourault fresco, and by the essential incoherence of his views, which is misread as a change of views on the fresco.
Wasson takes for granted the assumption that no one after pre-history understood Amanita, and dogmatically asserts this assumption as a given, without attempting to substantiate this assertion.
Allegro assumes that the use of visionary plants was rare, distinctive, and a deviant practice in Hellenistic/Roman culture. He posits secret encryption to hide mushroom use from the Romans.
Allegro was the first to attempt to combine the ahistoricity of Jesus and the apostles; early Christian use of visionary plants including Amanita mushrooms; and searching Christian writings for entheogen allusions.
Wasson and Allegro share the unexamined assumption that entheogen use was rare in Christian history; neither of them inquires into the extent of entheogen use throughout Christian history and in the surrounding cultural context.

There have been significant, great, and long-lasting confusions about the positions and arguments of Wasson and Allegro on various questions related to the Plaincourault fresco. This article slows down to read the related materials closely, with critical commentary and analysis at each step, to settle and disperse these confusions. The issue becomes intriguing upon sustaining a consistently detailed and critical reading, refraining from falling into the usual entrenched assumptions and misreadings that have obscured the dispute.

The Entheogen Theory of Christianity and the Bible

The entheogen theory of religion asserts that the main source of religion by far is visionary plants, including Psilocybin mushrooms, Peyote, Ayahuasca combinations, Cannabis, Opium, Henbane, Datura, Mandrake, Belladonna, ergot, Amanita mushrooms, and combinations of these. Religious myths are, above all, metaphorical descriptions of the cognitive phenomenology accessed with a high degree of efficacy through these plants.

Religious myths are descriptions of visionary plants and the experiences they produce. Visionary plants are incomparably more efficacious and ergonomic than meditation; they are historically the source and model for meditation, and meditation was developed as an activity to do in the midst of an entheogen-induced mystic cognitive state. There is abundant and plentiful evidence, in various forms, for the entheogen theory of each of the major religions, including Jewish religion and Christianity.

The entheogen theory of religion finds visionary plants in the Bible and related writings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi library, and Gnostic writings, together with metaphorical descriptions of the experiences and insights induced by the plants. The fruit of the trees of knowledge and life in Eden meant Amanita muscaria and its host trees such as birch and pine. Ezekiel’s visions were induced by ingesting entheogens. John’s visions in Revelation were induced by ingesting entheogens. ‘Strong wine’ in the Old Testament means wine with visionary plants such as henbane.

‘Drunk’ means inebriated with visionary plants, not merely alcohol, throughout the Bible. ‘Mixed wine’ means visionary plants, including its use in the Last Supper and Eucharistic meals, banquets, and feasts. In one metaphor, for example, the king drinks wine and sees the foreboding writing on the wall which indicates he will lose his kingdom. This is a metaphor for the initiate’s visionary-plant inebriation and its revealing of the illusory aspect of the personal autonomous power of control.

The ‘Holy Spirit’ means the dissociative cognitive state, including the experience of divine wrath and then divine compassion toward the initiate as pseudo-autonomous agent. Anywhere any form of ingesting plants is found in the Bible – anointing, eating, drinking, or incense – likely indicates visionary plants.

There are common, shallow misunderstandings and misreadings to avoid. The effects of visionary plants are very unlike that of alcohol, except that alcoholic inebriation is a common metaphor representing visionary plant inebriation. Ironic reverse metaphors are common such as, visionary plant inebriation makes you sober, no longer drunken.

The moderate entheogen theory of religion holds that entheogens have occasionally been used in religion, to simulate the traditional methods of accessing mystic states. The maximal entheogen theory of religion holds that entheogen use is the primary traditional method of accessing the mystic altered state, and that pre-modern cultures differ from modern cultures precisely in that they are altered-state-based cultures; the modern era is deviant in its lack of integrating the mystic altered state into its cultural foundation.

Avoidance of Scholarly Response to Christian Entheogens and Jesus’ Ahistoricity

Several entheogen scholars including John Allegro, James Arthur, myself, Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit, and Jack Herer have maintained the definite ahistoricity of Jesus together with entheogens in Christian origins, and Clark Heinrich has openly considered it. Conversely, scholars asserting the ahistoricity of Jesus have been interested in considering the explanatory power of the entheogen theory of Christian origins.

A personal conversation revealed that some prominent authors on the topic of Jesus’ ahistoricity suggested that Christians used visionary plants, but their editors omitted coverage of that subject to avoid the kind of controversy associated with Allegro. Most publishers have avoided covering the entheogen theory at the same time as covering Jesus’ ahistoricity, to stay above a certain threshold of perceived credibility, although the result may be the least consistent position of all.

However, there are indications we’re finally moving past the automatic moratorium against taking Allegro seriously. Merely making the raw assertion that Allegro was worthless – as though mere ridicule and dismissal is a convincing presentation – has become less compelling; there are demands for justifying the rejection of the central idea in Allegro’s theory, that for early Christians, Jesus was none other than the Amanita mushroom.

In 1902, William James wrote his often cited passage, albeit cited in a censored form, about how Nitrous Oxide forced upon his mind the realization that our normal waking state of consciousness is surrounded by other forms of consciousness which are separated from it as if by as filmiest of screens. At a touch, the other forms of consciousness are there in all their completeness. He concluded that these other forms of consciousness must be considered, to provide an adequately complete account of the world, reconciliation into unity consciousness.

Aldous Huxley enthused about mescaline in 1954, in The Doors of Perception. The Catholic scholar R.C. Zaehner wrote Mysticism Sacred and Profane in 1957, putting forth debatable arguments that mescaline-induced mystic experiencing was an imitation of authentic, traditional Christian mysticism, and an innately significantly inferior substitute only capable of immanent, not transcendent mysticism. Many other books about religious experiencing induced by visionary plants and psychoactive chemicals were published by 1968. 1968 was a tense, charged year, regarding cannabis and LSD.

In the midst of this tension in the late 1960s, Wasson published Soma, which mostly covered other religion, but has a few pages that proposed that the trees of knowledge and life in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden meant Amanita host trees and that the fruit of these trees meant Amanita<