The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross: A study of the nature and origins of Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near East

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More examples of mushrooms in Christian art (including some more dubious examples that people often use to support the psychedelic Christianity hypothesis):

As with any art interpretation, it can be extremely difficult to take symbology out of its cultural context and this is perhaps the most challenging point of this project. Has Rush succeeded? Typically, yes and no. Yes, because Rush has demonstrated that the mushroom does play a particular role in Christian art, something hitherto ignored by religious scholars in the main. But no, because the groundwork for the reinterpretation of the symbology is based on an, as yet, still scantily evidenced theory, and the idea that knowledge of the mushroom has remained in secret with an elite priest class within the Church all this time, really needs more evidence than the art itself. That can best be summarized as, “This stuff is in the New Testament because a bunch of ancient, sex-crazed Sumerians ate psychedelic mushrooms and somehow had a unified enough experience while high to draw the same conclusions about the divine, and so did everybody else who was a part of the sex-crazed mushroom cult for thousands of years, including the sex-averse Essenes, who were super influential on the authors of the New Testament, even though they’re never mentioned in the New Testament, and that’s how the mushroom religion was passed down for millennia until a bunch of early Christians took things literally, and that’s when all this stuff was lost, but then I rediscovered the truth that it was all about psychedelic mushrooms, and I discovered that truth ever so conveniently at the time when hippies were really getting into that stuff.” After service in the Royal Navy during World War II, Allegro started to train for the Methodist ministry but transferred to a degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Manchester. In 1953 he was invited to become the first British representative on the international team working on the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls in Jordan. The following year he was appointed assistant lecturer in Comparative Semitic Philology at Manchester, and held a succession of lectureships there until he resigned in 1970 to become a full-time writer. In 1961 he was made Honorary Adviser on the Dead Sea scrolls to the Jordanian government.Set in the Medieval era, a time of intense societal upheaval, Pentiment is a game like few others in its depth and scope, and it's available to play now on Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S platforms.

While it’s always fun to blame the Catholic Church for things — I like to blame it for both the impending collapse of Western civilization and Police Academy 6 — there’s no evidence supporting Rogan’s “Da Vinci Code”-style claim that “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” disappeared from shelves because the Catholic Church worked to have it banned. John Allegro understood from the start that the job of the editing team was to make the Dead Sea scroll texts available to scholars everywhere, and he believed their message mattered to everyone. This Jesus Christ has freed us from the hopeless exercise of trying to bless our sins and hide our vices under the worship of false gods or the embrace of foolish conspiracy theories. This Jesus Christ has given us the right to know that these vices and sins no longer have any power over us. They are forgiven, dead, lifeless, washed away in the flood of Christ’s blood. Considering how fragile the threads by which your composure hangs are – danger Will Robinson – warning warning: Beware Allegro’s END OF A ROAD (1970) his infamous sequel to SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSS. You best be careful to steer the hell clear of that thing if you value your ‘blissful ignorance’– so riled by the informed perspective I speak from.Finally they wrote a big fictional Bible, that kept their lore alive, ensured that their cult and main product line survived through time..” urn:lcp:sacredmushroomcr0000alle:lcpdf:70c5f1d4-4cf9-40f5-a8f8-1c21b98932af Foldoutcount 0 Identifier sacredmushroomcr0000alle Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2jm550826f Invoice 1652 Lccn 73111140 Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9334 Ocr_module_version 0.0.20 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA404095 Openlibrary_edition To sum up, John Allegro believed the Dead Sea Scrolls raised issues that concerned everyone. It wasn’t just a matter of dusty manuscripts and disputed translations – the story of the scrolls raised questions about freedom of access to evidence, freedom of speech, and freedom to challenge orthodox religious views. He believed that through understanding the origins of religion people could be freed from its bonds to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own judgements.

One of our favorite books from the veritable genre of "who was the real historical Jesus" literature! Read the text version a few years ago, and just finished this superbly presented audiobook version. When we saw that this was published on audiobook, we were worried that the abundance of philological nomenclature might make for messy listening, but alas- we have the legendary Martin Swain in our ears again (have listened to his reading of Being and Time, Psychological Types, and Psychology of the Unconscious) and he absolutely killed it; amazing work. Allegro's book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) argued that Christianity began as a shamanistic cult. In his books The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979), Allegro put forward the theory that stories of early Christianity originated in an Essene clandestine cult centred around the use of psychedelic mushrooms, and that the New Testament is the coded record of this shamanistic cult. [23] [24] Allegro further argued that the authors of the Christian gospels did not understand the Essene thought. When writing down the Gospels based on the stories they had heard, the evangelists confused the meaning of the scrolls. In this way, according to Allegro, the Christian tradition is based on a misunderstanding of the scrolls. [25] [26] He also argued that the story of Jesus was based on the crucifixion of the Teacher of Righteousness in the scrolls. [27] Mark Hall writes that Allegro suggested the Dead Sea Scrolls all but proved that a historical Jesus never existed. [28] The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross: A study of the nature and origins of Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near East This is a fun read if you want to hear a philologist make a fun and compelling argument. My scholastic opinion. I wouldn't really put too much onus on one person's argument as an opportunity to come "the truth" on any subject. There are many compelling arguments that discard Allegro's views. Off the top of my head, there's the cost of transcription, the loss of human life, and the choice of the amanita muscaria mushroom as his specified psychedelic. I find it hard to believe that someone would be willing to be torn apart by lions, skinned alive, crucified, etc., over a psychoactive plant that pretty much the entirety of the ancient world was well aware of, i.e. Natural History by Pliny The Elder. Not to mention the other recent historical findings that this book couldn't have accounted for since its publication predates them. J.M. Allegro (1958). "More Isaiah Commentaries from Qumran's Fourth Cave". Journal of Biblical Literature. 77 (3): 215–221. doi: 10.2307/3264101. JSTOR 3264101.After service in the Royal Navy during World War II, Allegro started to train for the Methodist ministry but transferred to a degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Manchester. In 1953 he was invited to become the first British representative on the international team working on the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls in Jordan. The following year he was appointed assistant lecturer in Comparative Semitic Philology at Manchester, and held a succession of lectureships there until he resigned in 1970 to become a full-time writer. In 1961 he was made Honorary Adviser on the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Jordanian government. In October 2008, Jan Irvin published The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity which was the first book to present texts which supported Allegro’s theory. For example, a 16 th century Christian text called The Epistle to the Renegade Bishops explicitly mentions and discusses “the holy mushroom”. Irvin provides dozens of Christian images to support Allegro’s ideas – images that weren’t available when The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was originally published in 1970. The front cover of Irvin’s book includes one of these images – some mushrooms can be seen. Some say that in these kinds of images, it is not the Amanita mushroom that is shown, but psilocybin mushrooms, such as the ones shown below. Throughout the centuries, God added more details to this promise. This Savior would be the son of Abraham, the heir of David who would rule from David’s throne forever. He would be pierced for our iniquities, die, and rise again on the third day.