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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with M
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Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy |
Author: Clark Heinrich
Published: 2002-09-30 |
List price: $19.95
Our price: $13.57
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Rosetta Stoned
This book breaks new ground on the topic of comparative religion, breaking the universal veil of secrecy (and ignorance), revealing the mystery of the ages. Is this book the ultimate in sacrilege, or the dawning of a new age? For better or worse, the genie is out of the bottle. Here is the real Rosetta Stone, allowing one to begin to decipher the most holy of books. Thank God for this book!
 An excellent book
Clark Heinrich's book is excellent. Clark provides practical information on the Amanita muscaria mushroom, its natural history and practical uses as a psychoactive, and he provides a "speculative history" of the role of the mushroom in human history through analysis of works of art and literary narratives.
To the newcomer to this field, much is surprising. As one begins to explore the territory, some of what Clark asserts appears to be well-supported. Some of what he says may find more support as he and others pursue lines of inquiry he opens or extends. Some of it may just be wrong, and Heinrich admits he is fully aware of the risks of exploration.
We have today a few bits and pieces of solid information about people using Amanita muscaria as a psychoactive, often in a religious context, in scattered locations around the world. For example, we have reports from western observers of Amanita use by tribes in Siberia. In addition to describing how they used it, they also described some of the local lore of the mushroom, its "nicknames" and mythology. Scholars like Heinrich have found (or, some would say, have spun) a far-flung web of speculative associations between this mushroom lore known from a few localities and the mythologies of many cultures. While the analysis of the stories passed down the ages through oral and then written traditions has many perils, another thread in the web is the persistent reappearance of mushrooms, often disguised but sometimes obviously, in paintings and sculptures through the ages. These paintings often depict the events of stories where Heinrich and others find the symbolic connections between the known mushroom lore (Siberia, etc.) and the speculated upon lore within the warp and woof of the history of culture and civilization.
Here's an example of a series of connections, from mushroom natural history, to known lore, to speculation, to "seeing is believing": the mushroom first emerges as a white "egg" shape, then grows to maturity, the cap eventually inverting so that its margins are higher than its center. If one slices across the cap, the view explosed is like that of uplifted wings of a white bird. Birds and eggs are of course an association pair, and there are reports of users of the mushroom giving it bird nicknames. In addition to this appearance of wings, there is the association of the psychoactive mushroom with visionary flight. And so Heinrich and others suggest that where we see winged angels or descending doves in words or pictures in mythology, we may be seeing psychoactive mushroom referents.
It sounds like perhaps a stretch. But then we open another book co-authored by Heinrich, "The Apples of Apollo" and find photographs of ancient Greek vase paintings of the winged Gorgon Medusa (whose blood was medicinal), and of Hyakinthos riding to Paradise on the back of a swan, and quite clearly the depicted wings bear much more resemblance to sliced mushroom caps than to the pattern of feathers on bird wings, which the artists were fully capable of rendering, had that been their intention. It appears obvious that these vase painters were communicating to an initiated audience traditions into which they were themselves initiated. If the mapping of mushroom lore onto religious symbolism is simply a "confusion" created by drug-addled minds, it appears that this "confusion" has existed a long time and surfaces again and again where we have glimpses into esoteric traditions which may have been carried on continuously for thousands of years.
Heinrich is deeply indebted to R. Gordon Wasson, the father of ethnomycology, especially for Wasson's thesis that Amanita muscaria was the "Soma" of early Hindu religion. Heinrich contributes additional information to corroborate this thesis, and his chapters on the traditions the subcontinent are a strong part of the book. Here we also have mention of the Psilocybe species.
Speculation on the role of the mushroom in the semitic traditions that brought us Judaism and Christianity were introduced by John Allegro, a tenured professor who took "early retirement" in the wake of the controversy surrounding his "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross", which contained much far-flung speculation and a certain amount of mean-spirtedness toward both modern christians and drug users past and present. Heinrich reports on Allegro's theories and offers his own speculations on Adam, Eve, the serpent, the fruit, Moses, the visionary prophets and the New Testament. He devotes a chapter to the Gnostics, and another to the Holy Grail, a Christianized ancient Celtic legend.
It appears that Heinrich is the first person in recent history to speculate that the Amanita muscaria mushroom occupies a central role in the alchemical traditions pertaining to the Philosopher's Stone. He offers a tantalizing set of parallels between the mushroom and the "stone", and includes some illustrations from alchemical texts which are strongly suggestive of these connections. Alchemical symbolism is deliberately obscure, as the alchemists were sworn to secrecy. It was their habit to publish works regarding the stone which deliberately teased the non-initiate while entertaining the initiated ones. Alchemical traditions continued to be passed from masters to apprentices from the classical world through the medieval, into the 18th century.
Indeed, it appears that the 18th and 19th centuries mark a point of transition, as the alchemical tradition disappears. If it did indeed include a full and conscious knowledge of a tradition of the mushroom as the "Philosopher's Stone" and of its use, this is the last time we see it written about by them "in the know". Today we can only speculate and attempt to re-construct and rediscover. Heinrich's tips on mushroom use may be useful to those who would seek to rediscover the secret of the stone. Indeed, the fact that most people do not find Amanita investigations especially fruitful is one reason that speculations that this mushroom once played a huge role in human history meet with resistance. Part of the mushroom mystique is the possibility that some people of the past were more adept in mastering its use, in bringing to fruition its hidden potential.
Sexual imagery plays a role in Heinrich's speculations, and in the history of religion. The themes of unity underlying apparent multiplicity and oppositions and of creation from couplings are ancient and recurring in the human quest for meaning and in the stories that seem to have written themselves within us. The mushroom, with its columnar stem and wheel-like cap, appears to be a perfect metaphor for the creative process in which from unity dualities emerge and then join to bring about new creation. The psychoactive mushroom appears as flesh, but it releases spirit with us. Given the power of the mushroom metaphor, and the power of the mushroom, it is not surprising that Heinrich sees it "everywhere", and perhaps it is everywhere, even if not every person in history who ever painted or sculpted a winged messenger from heaven consciously intended to depict the visionary shroom. Heinrich stimulates us to see the mushroom everywhere and also to wonder how many of those who went before us have seen it thus. Perhaps more than a few of them.
Amanitas everywhere.
The author has been accused of seeing amanitas everywhere and since reading this short and enjoyable book ... so do I. The author admits that some of his links are a bit of a stretch and I would agree with this assertion. Overall the research is scholarly, well done, and a pleasure to read even if you don't agree with the theories. For the most part the theories make logical sense and could explain many events in the past. The book also backs up claims made by andria puharich in "The sacred mushroom key to the door of eternity" ( <---must read), Terence Mckenna's "Food of the gods" and John marco allegro's "The sacred mushroom and the cross". IMO A lot of the events are better explained by reading zecharia sitchin's earth chronicles (10 books on old sumerian texts) but heinrich's theories fill in the gaps. Where the book really shines is in exploring the alchemical, new testament and vedic references. Also check out the erowid website for supplemental information.
Sex, drugs, and Godhead!
Clark Heinrich is an exceedingly clever, authoritative writer, who keeps readers in thrall with his subject by colorful propositions and turns of phrase that tease and engage the intellect. In this speculative history, he demonstrates an astonishing erudition for religion, myth, art, and the cultural history and botanical details of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. In making his case, speculative as it is, he provides innumerable references to genitalia, sex acts, and various bodily processes and their by-products, which has a way of anchoring his often far-fetched-seeming ideas in the corporeal realm. He also piques interest when his tone turns irreverent, specifically in his treatment of the Judeo-Christian belief system he was born into, where he rightfully, if self-consciously blasphemously, points out that there is little if any reason for sentient beings to believe that the so-called miracles cited in the Bible were the work of supernatural forces. He offers a more concrete and perhaps more likely explanation for seminal religious phenomena: the ingestion of Amanita muscaria and the subsequent encryption of its inspirations in the literature, rituals, and symbols of religion and alchemy. I was blown away by the amount of thoughtful research that went into this insightful and entertaining work. To arrive at his conclusionns, controversial and speculative as they are, he would have had to spend many hours poring over and interpreting esoteric texts in varying translation, and then on the trial and error of attempting to fit the Amanita key to unlock their mysteries. While I came away fairly convinced that the Amanita mushroom likely played a role in the development of at least some religious creeds, I found some of the author's "proof" to be of the "you had to be there to really appreciate it" sort. The "evidence" is sometimes so visual or semantic and so multilayered, that it dosen't hit home with imeediacy. Several questions emerge. Does the Amanita have any role in the Islamic faith (a almost entirely overlooked in this volume)? If so, why wasn't it documented? If not, how and why would it have eluded the third of the three Abrahamic creeds? Why is it that in all the instances of Amanita cult around the world, the identification of the mushroom in question is disguised and not outrightly revealed? Why if even mainstream religions are allegedly built on visionary experiences prompted by the "plants of the Gods" is the identity of these plants not more plainly revealed, at least from some likely sources or at certain logical historical junctures? It's hard for me to believe entheogenically derived inspiration would be so rigorously relegated and obscured as "forbidden knowledge" over the milennia. The ambiguity of encryption leads to speculation that is bound to turn nutty and implausible even in the most capable hands. Still, by incisive analysis as well as persuasive insinuation, Heinrich's highly readable and scholarly work makes a strong case for the entheogenic underpinnings of religion. The narrative of his own personal experience with Amanita ingestion is hilarious, compelling, and numinously stirring -- so much so that I included an excerpt of it in my own book Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures published in the interim between the release of the original, British edition of Heinrich's book, Strange Fruit, and the expanded, American, edition, the one I'm reviewing here. This is a fun and brilliantly illustrated book. Enjoy!
shroomified
a well-researched (but fun-loving) exploration of the psychedelic underpinnings of religion. Vibrantly illustrated and effectively carrying the torch from greats such as R. Gordon Wasson, this one's a keeper.
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