Knowledge- The Real Meaning of Life From the Beginning- Part One of Two

To Build a Structure, there is always a Beginning, a Foundation. From There the Painting Begins, Each Stroke and Color Creates A New Reality. Those we way more that we do, the Shamans, give us a way more detailed image of what reality is. This is an extensive post (over 6 hours) with a whole lot of in it. To say that it is an interesting prespective is a minor understatement. Again, Question Everything!!

by John M. Allegro 1970 from TheInfoVault Website also at Phreak, AntipodiEdizioni, Archive and many more Websites… Italian version

In order to keep this information available to the public, this book has been pirated! A message to those who’ve taken this book out of print. This book will forever circulate. You will never be able to remove it from the public light, as you, the Vatican and Anheuser Busch attempted to do. In such a case as 2000 years of intellectual hijacking, this book will now remain forever free online. Though Allegro’s theories seemed extreme at the time, philology today knows he was right. See a publication by Piotr Michalowski in “Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages”, edited by Roger D. Woodard. To the reader, enjoy a once banned book.     ORIGINAL CHARACTERS OF SUMERIAN CUNEIFORM AND OTHER HIEROGLYPHIC CHARACTERS WERE LOST BY THE CHARACTER RECOGNITION SOFTWARE USED IN THE PIRACY OF THIS BOOK. PLEASE SEEK AN ORIGINAL COPY OF “THE SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSS” TO REFERENCE MISSING LETTERS AND OTHER POSSIBLE ERRORS MADE BY THE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE. Primary errors made by Allegro are HIGHLIGHTED IN RED Allegro did NOT understand the growth cycle, effects and “bitterness” of the Amanita muscaria. Allegro overlooked some references to both A. pantherina and P. cubensis, and wrongfully classified Rue as an “abortifacient”, not recognizing Acacia and Rue as an Ayahuasca analogue. Allegro also wrongfully assumed that the mushrooms, and not religion and government themselves, were the cause of the shaman to protest against their suppression by the churches and governments. With that said, Allegro was a pioneer in the field of ethnomycology, and founded many of the ideas many researchers use today (though most deny it). Enjoy your read!

V – Plant Names and the Mysteries of the Fungus

It is in the secrecy surrounding the collection and transmission of the old medical prescriptions that we can see the beginnings of the mystery cults of the ancient Near East.

If we are going to penetrate their secrets we have somehow to discover the names of their prime ingredients, the plants and drugs the prophets and doctors dispensed. We have now at least the advantage of knowing the most ancient language of the area and can in many cases begin to decipher the names of the plants and their attendant angels and demons.

But it has to be recognized that of all branches of research into the life of the ancient world, identification of plant names is one of the most difficult.

The old botanists were as aware of the problem as the modern researcher.

“An added difficulty in botany”, wrote Pliny some nineteen hundred years ago, “is the variety of names given to the same plant in different districts”.¹

The more “strange” the herb, the more note-. worthy its characteristics, the greater the number of folk—names. Dioscorides, for instance, gives some two—score names to the Mandrake, ² that famous aphrodisiac with which Leah purchased a night of connubial bliss with Jacob (Gen 30: 14ff.), and whose narcotic properties could not suffice to give poor Othello “that sweet sleep which thou owedst yesterday”.³

Until comparatively recently, botanists lacked adequate methods of classification, so that plants tended to be grouped together on the basis of what we nowadays would consider secondary characteristics. Thus speaking of the Ground-pine, Pliny records that “a third variety has the same smell and therefore the same name”.

Even now, the inexactitude of local plant names is the despair of field botanists. Pliny felt as sorely frustrated:

“The reason why more herbs are not familiar”, he writes, “is because experience of them is confined to illiterate country—folk, who form the only class of people living among them. Moreover, when crowds of medical men are to be met everywhere, nobody wants to look for them. Many simples, also, lack names, though their properties are known…

The most disgraceful reason for this scanty knowledge is that even those who possess it refuse to teach it, just as though they would themselves lose what they have imparted to others.” ⁵

We have now one great philological advantage over all previous researchers into the identification of plant-names.

Despite the long gap in time between the Sumerian botanists and their Greek and Roman successors it now appears that many of the important names of plants remained virtually unchanged. During the course of thousands of years those titles became attached to different plants: hence the confusion in nomenclatures of which Pliny speaks. But if we can know what the name originally meant, what characteristic of the plant or its drug was foremost in the minds of its first chroniclers, we have a much better chance of discovering its original identity.

For example, we all know what the Paeony looks like:

a beautiful herbaceous or shrubby perennial plant, bearing large double blooms in crimson, rose, blush, and similar colors, a joy to behold in our cottage gardens in May.

Pliny says the name came from the physician god Apollo, whose chant of praise bears the same name, our “paean”.

But he goes on to say it,

“grows on shaded mountains, having a stem among the leaves about four inches high, which bears on its top four or five growths like almonds, in them being a large amount of seed, red and black. The plant also prevents the mocking delusions that the Fauns bring us in our sleep.”

Apparently, one has to be careful how you pick this precious herb. It is best done at night-time,

“because the woodpecker of Mars, should he see the act, will attack the eyes in its defense”.⁶

Well, of course, this is not our crimson Paeony. It is some magic plant, “the first to be discovered”, as our Roman botanist tells us. For various reasons which will become apparent, we can now differentiate this very special “Paeony” from other plants to which the name was given, and identify it with the subject of our present study, the Amanita muscaria, the sacred mushroom.

Doubtless, the flower Paeony gained the name originally because its flower was thought to resemble the color of the red-topped fungus. It would not have been possible to deduce the relationship between the flower and the mushroom merely on the description given by Pliny: one had first to decipher the name “Paeony” and discover its original significance and point of common reference.

In this case, we can see its original in a Sumerian *BAR_IA_U_NA, “capsule of fecundity; womb”, and connect it with a number of other mushroom names relating to the little “womb” or volva from which the stem of the fungus emerges.⁷

To take another example: Greek knows the plant Naveiwort as Kotulëdзn, Latin Cotyledon. The word means any socket-shaped cavity, such as that of a hip-joint, or the inside of a cup, or the hollow of a hand. In botanical language the Greek word comes to mean the first or “seed leaves” of a plant, usually of simple form, but it can be applied to many plants having some part of them of a “cup” or “hollow” form.

To discover some more particular reference of the name it is necessary to trace it back to its constituent elements. This we can now do for the first time, showing that its Sumerian source provided a phrase, *GU_ TAL-U-DUN, meaning “ball-and-socket”, or, particularly applied “penis-and-vulva”.⁸

It is the sexual allusions of the name which, as we shall see, brought it into the range of fungus nomenclature. Furthermore, the specific reference in Greek of Kotulëdön to “hip-joint” gave rise to a number of myths having to do with “mushroom” figures having their hips disjointed or being pierced in the hip or side of the body.⁹

For the decipherment of plant-names helps us not only to identify those characteristics which caused them to be applied to various species but also to discover the original sources and meanings of the tales which grew up around the plants and their drugs. It is becoming clear that many of the classical and biblical stories are based on pieces of vegetation, and in particular on the sacred mushroom.

There is one overt piece of vegetation mythology in the Old Testament parable of Jotham in the book of Judges. In the story the trees of the forest ask representatives of each species to act as their king.

The olive, fig, and vine are too busy giving of their fruits to men, and in desperation the trees ask the diminutive mushroom (as we may now most probably identify the plant),¹⁰ who insists that in that case “they must all take refuge under its canopy, that is, that they treat him as their protector, king indeed”

(Judg 9:7—IS).

This is a parable, rather like some of those in the New Testament, where the explanation is appended for the benefit of the listeners. Perhaps all plant mythology began in this way, each story having one point to make which was brought out by the narrator’s explanation at the end. In course of time, the instructive element was lost and the parable told and retold without its exegetical commentary, in the end to circulate as just a good yarn.

As antiquity came to lend certain of such stories a gravity perhaps not originally intended, they became accepted into a body of cultic teaching by religious authorities, who then set about providing their own explanations and homiletics and accorded the tales divine authority. A vegetation myth could be adapted by a later writer, fully aware of its original significance, to serve as the medium for some new teaching.

Such may be the case with the story of Jonah in the Old Testament, the prophet who was told to preach repentance to Nineveh.

We are now able positively to identify this story as one of a mushroom group, since the famous plant which gave Jonah shade, which “came into being in a night and perished in a night”, and was subject to the depredation of worms, was certainly a fungus.¹² Even the prophet’s name Jonah reflects mushroom nomenclature,’ and the quelling of the storm motif is found elsewhere in related mythology.¹⁴

But the “moral” of the tale, insofar as we can understand it, seems to have no particular mushroom significance. As we have said, the first step to discovering the nature of vegetation stories and the particular plant or tree that was originally involved is to decipher the proper names. However, in the case of plants regarded as especially powerful or “magic” like the mushroom, additional problems face the enquirer.

The strange shapes and manner of growth of the fungus, along with its poisonous reputation, combined to evoke feelings of awe and dread in the minds of simple folk. Indeed, there must be few people even today who do not sense some half-fearful fascination at the sight of the mushroom, and shrink from taking it into their hands.

Since certain of the species contain drugs with marked hallucinatory properties,¹⁵ it is not surprising that the mushroom should have become the centre of a mystery cult in the Near East which persisted for thousands of years. There seems good evidence that from there it swept into India in the cult of the Soma some 3,500 years ago; it certainly flourished in Siberia until quite recent times, and is found even today in certain parts of South America.¹⁶

Partly because of the religious use of the sacred mushroom, and the fearful respect with which country-folk have always treated it, its more original names became taboo and folk—names and epithets proliferated at their expense. It is as if, in our own language, the only name by which we knew the mushroom was the folk-name “toadstool”, and that some researcher of the future was faced with the problem of deciding what species of plant life served as the habitual perch of large frogs.

Thus the extraordinary situation has arisen that this most important mushroom cult, from which much of the mythology of the ancient Near East sprang, has been almost completely overlooked by the historians. In the Bible, for instance, where mushroom mythology plays a most important part, the word “mushroom” has been nowhere noted although one of its most ancient names, Hebrew kotereth, Accadian katarru, appears many times in its quite straightforward meaning of “mushroom—shaped capital of a pillar” (I Kgs 7: i6, etc).¹⁷

Even among the Greek and Roman botanical works there are scarcely a dozen different words which have been recognized as relating specifically to the fungus, and the whole of extant Semitic literature can produce few more.¹⁸ Mycology, as the study of fungi is called after the Greek mukës, “mushroom”, is a comparatively modern science.¹⁹

Although the ancients knew that the mushroom’s apparent seedlessness put it into a category of natural life all its own, they did not always differentiate it from other plants, so that its names have to be disentangled from those of quite unrelated species. In seeking for mushroom folk-names and epithets, one of our main sources obviously will be its distinctive shape of a slender stem supporting an arched canopy, like a sunshade.

This characteristic was made much of in mythology, like the Jotham and Jonah stories already referred to. Extended to gigantic proportions this figure is reflected in such imagery as huge men like Atlas holding up the canopy of heaven, or of mountains like Olympus serving the dual function of supporting the sky and providing a connecting link between the gods and earth.²⁰

One of the ways we can now identify the Mandrake as the mushroom is that one of its Greek names, Antimimon, is traceable to a Sumerian original, meaning “heavenly shade”, a reference to the canopy of the opened fungus. Incidentally, the same root,* GIG—AN-TI, gave the Greek gigantes, and in English, “giants”, in pursuance of the imagery of the “giant” holding aloft the arch of heaven.²¹

Above all, the mushroom provoked sexual imagery and terminology. The manner of its rapid growth from the volva, or “womb”, the rapid erection of its stem like a sexually stirred penis, and its glans—like head, all stimulated phallic names. Of such is the Hebrew kotereih, just referred to, and, coming from the same Sumerian original, GU-TAR, “top of the head: penis”, the most common Semitic name for the mushroom, phutr (Arabic), pitrã’ (Aramaic), portrayed in the New Testament myth as Peter.²²

One of the names given the Paeony by Pliny is Glycyside. The name which is meaningless in Latin or Greek is but a jumbled form of an old Sumerian plant-name, UKUSh-TI-GIL-LA, meaning “bolt-gourd; mushroom”.²³

The reference to the “bolt” is occasioned by the primitive key which consisted mainly of a rod surmounted by a knob,²⁴ with a right-angled bend at the other end.25 It was pushed through the keyhole and simply lifted the latch on the other side. The phallic imagery of the “knobbed shaft” gave the “key” a sexual significance for the purposes of nomenclature which appears in many instances.

The penis-mushroom was thus in mythological terms, the “key” of the earth, the way to the underworld, the “Peter”, as it were, against which the gates of Hades would not prevail (Matt i6:i8f.; Rev 1:18). Decipherment of plant and drug names not only allows us to share the imagery their shapes provoked in the minds of the ancient botanists, but to learn of the demonic power they were supposed to wield.

This is particularly important with regard to the Mandrake fungus. The Sumerian from which the Greek Mandragoras and our “Mandrake” came was *NMs.TAR.AGAR, “demon or fate-plant of the field”. The consonants m and n have changed places and T has shifted to the closely related sound d.

This particular decipherment has the added interest of revealing the identity and source of another very famous name in drug folk-lore, the “Nectar” of the gods. The Sumerian M of NAM-TAR has made its common dialectal change to Indo-European k and thus produced the Greek Nektar, our Nectar, seen now to be none other than the sacred mushroom, food indeed of the gods.²⁶

It followed, from the reasoning of the ancient philosophers, outlined earlier,²⁷ that if you knew the names of the demonic plants, like the sacred mushroom, you could control them to some extent. It might be possible to make them grow where and when you wanted, and, having found them, pronunciation of the name would enable the finder to take the herb from the ground with impunity. Furthermore, if, like the Mandrake, it had some special drug property which, taken without sufficient care and preparation might occasion bodily harm, it was necessary at certain points in the cultic ritual to speak the sacred name.²⁸

There grew up, therefore, a body of cultic tradition primarily concerned with the accurate transmission of the special, occult names of the and drug plants and their incantations. This was no more than an extension of the secret knowledge of the old witch-doctor or prophetic fraternities. ²⁹ A combination of a highly sophisticated expertise in the nature In t and use of potent drugs with, at times, a pretence to political power, made such communities a menace to government and drew forth a vicious reaction from the authorities.

The whole point of a mystery cult was that few people knew its secret doctrines. So far as possible, the initiates did not commit their special knowledge to writing. Normally the secrets of the sect were transmitted orally, novices being required to learn direct from their mentors by heart, and placed under the most violent oaths never to disclose the details even under torture.

When such special instruction was committed to writing, care would be taken that it should be read only by the members of the sect. This could be done by using a special code or cypher, as is the case with certain of the Dead Sea Scrolls.³⁰

However, discovery of such obviously coded material on a person would render him suspect to the authorities. Another way of passing information was to conceal the message, incantations or special names within a document ostensibly concerned with a quite different subject. Plant mythology, known for thousands of years over the whole of the ancient world, provided the New Testament cryptographers with their “cover”.

Mushroom stories abounded in the Old Testament.

The Christians believed, like their Essene brethren, that they were the true spiritual heirs to ancient Israel. So it was an obvious device to convey to the scattered cells of the cult reminders of their most sacred doctrines and incantatory names and expressions concealed within a story of a “second Moses”, another Lawgiver, named after the patriarch’s successor in office Joshua (Greek Iësous, “Jesus”).

Thus was born the Gospel myth of the New Testament. How far it succeeded in deceiving the authorities, Jewish and Roman, is doubtful. Certainly the Roman records speak with loathing of the Christians and they were hounded with extreme ferocity reserved for political troublemakers within the realm.³¹ Those most deceived appear to have been the sect who took over the name of “Christian” and who formed the basis of the Church, the history of which forms no part of the present study.

What is of far greater importance is that we may now break the code and discover the secret names of the Holy Plant, as it was called from the earliest times, and gain a deeper insight than ever before possible into the nature of the cult and its place in the ancient world.

In the following chapters we shall look in detail at the way this codification within the biblical stories was achieved.

Foremost among the literary devices used was word-play or punning, already well-established as an important and widespread means of deriving hidden meanings from sacred texts.

VII – The Man-child Born of a Virgin

Describing the growth of the mushroom ( boletos) , Pliny says: “the earth produces first a ‘womb’ (vulva)… and afterwards (the mushroom) itself inside the womb, like a yolk inside the egg; and the baby mushroom is just as fond of eating its coat as is the chicken.

The coat cracks when (the mushroom) first forms; presently, as it gets bigger, the coat is absorbed into the body of the footstalk (pediculi)… at first it is flimsier than froth, then it grows substantial like parchment, and then the mushroom – is born.¹

More prosaically, perhaps, the process is thus described by a modern mycologist: “In the genus Amanita a membrane surrounds the young fungus. In addition to this wrapper or volva there is another membrane, stretching from the margin of the cap and joined to the stem, as in the mushroom.

Thus it is as if the,

“button stage” were surrounded by an outer skin. As the fungus develops this is torn apart. If its texture is sufficiently tenacious to hold it together, it is left as a cup at the base of the stem . . . With growth the membrane covering the gills tears and is left as a ring on the stem.”

Of the Amanita phalloides, the writer adds:

“Before the volva breaks the fungus looks somewhat like a pigeon’s egg half-buried, or like a small phallus ‘egg’. It is common in glades in woods and adjoining pastures after the first summer rains, and continues through early autumn.”²

It was the fertilization of the “womb” that most puzzled the ancients, and remained a mystery until the end of the last century. To Pliny the fungus had to be reckoned as one of the “greatest of the marvels of nature”, since it “belonged to a class of things that spring up spontaneously and cannot be grown from seed”.³ It was surely “among the most wonderful of all things” in that it could “spring up and live without a root”.⁴

Until the invention of the microscope the function of the spore, produced by each fungus in its millions, could not be appreciated. The mushroom has, indeed, no seed in the accepted sense, germinating and giving out a root and later a stem apex with or without seed leaves. The walls of each minute spore extrude to form thread-like tubes which branch further until all mass together to form the spongy flesh of the fungus.

The result is neither animal nor vegetable, and the mystery of its proper classification persisted until relatively modern times. Thus a sixteenth-century naturalist wrote:

“They are a sort of intermediate existence between plants and inanimate nature. In this respect fungi resemble zoophytes, which are intermediate between plants and animals.”⁵

One explanation for the creation of the mushroom without apparent seed was that the “womb” had been fertilized by thunder, since it was commonly observed that the fungi appeared after thunderstorms. Thus one name given them was Ceraunion, from the Greek keraunios, “thunderbolt”. Another was the Greek hudnon, probably derived from Sumerian *UD_NUN, “storm—seeded”.⁶

It was thus uniquely-begotten. The normal process of fructification had been by-passed. The seed had not fallen from some previous plant, to be nurtured by the earth until in turn it produced a root and stalk. The god had “spoken” and his creative “word” had been carried to earth by the storm-wind, angelic messenger of heaven, and been implanted directly into the volva.

The baby that resulted from this divine union was thus the “Son of God”, more truly representative of its heavenly father than any other form of plant or animal life. Here, in the tiny mushroom, was God manifest, the “Jesus” born of the Virgin “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation – in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…“ (Col i :isff.).

The phallic form of the mushroom matched precisely that of his father, whom the Sumerians called ISKUR, “Mighty Penis”, the Se— mites Adad, or Hadad, “Big—father”, the Greeks Patër-Zeus, and the Romans Jupiter, “Father-god”.⁷ To see the mushroom was to see the Father, as in Jesus the uncomprehending Philip was urged to look for God: “He who has seen me has seen the Father. . . Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (John i4:9ff.). Even the detutns recognized him as “the Holy One of God” (Mark i :24), and it was as “the Holy Plant” that the sacred fungus came to be known throughout the ancient world.
 

The slimy juice of the mushroom which, in some phalloidic species, spills over the “glans” and clown the stem, seemed to the ancients like the viscous exudation of the genital organs prior to coitus and the seminal discharge at orgasm. The Hebrew word for “smooth, slimy” derives from a Sumerian phrase meaning “semen running to waste”,⁸ and figures in a number of biblical allusions to the mushroom.⁹

It was otherwise known as “spittle”, and Job asks if there is any taste in the “spittle of the mushroom” (as we should now read the name of that plant) (Job 6:6).¹⁰ To have “spittle in the mouth” was a euphemism in the Jewish Talmud for “semen in the vagina”, ¹¹ and the close relationship between the two fluids resulted in the very widespread belief that spittle had strong curative and prophylactic properties.

Thus, as human semen was a cure for scorpion stings, according to Pliny,¹² spittle was a repellent to snakes and an antidote to snake venom.¹³ Jesus is pictured making a clay poultice to lay over the eyes of the man born blind (John 9:6), mixing his spittle with dust, as Pliny reports that saliva used each morning as an eye ointment cured ophthalmia.¹⁴

Rain, the semen of the god, was spurted forth from the divine penis at his thunderous orgasm in the heavens, and was borne as “spittle” from the lips of the glans to earth on the storm wind.¹⁵ It was a unique concentration of this powerful spermatozoa in the juice of the “Holy Plant” that the Magi believed would give anyone anointed with it amazing power. They could “obtain every wish, banish fevers, and cure all diseases without exception”.¹⁶

So the Christian, the “smeared or anointed one”, received “knowledge of all things” by his “anointing from the Holy One” (I John 2:20). Thereafter he had need of no other teacher and remained for evermore endowed with all knowledge (v. 27). Whatever the full ingredients of the Christian unction may have been, they would certainly have included the aromatic gums and spices of the traditional Israelite anointing oil: myrrh, aromatic cane, cinnamon, and cassia, all representing the powerful semen of the god. Under certain enclosed conditions, a mixture of these substances rubbed on the skin could produce the kind of intoxicating belief in self-omniscience referred to in the New Testament.

Furthermore, the atmosphere of the oracular chamber would be charged with reek of sacred incense consisting of “sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense . . .“ (Exod 30:34), giving the kind of overpowering hypnotic effect referred to by an early Christian writer when he speaks of “the frenzy of a lying soothsayer” as a “mere intoxication produced by the reeking fumes of sacrifice”.¹⁷

That these ingredients formed only part of the sacred incense formula is well known. Josephus says there were thirteen elements,¹⁸ and the Talmud names eleven, plus salt, and a secret “herb” which was added to make the smoke rise in a vertical column before spreading outwards at the top.¹⁹

With the characteristic shape of the mushroom in mind, we can hazard a fair guess now at this secret ingredient. Knowledge and healing were two aspects of the same life-force. If to be rubbed with the “Holy Plant” was to receive divine knowledge, it was also to be cured of every sickness. James suggests that anyone of the Christian community who was sick should call the elders to anoint him with oil in the name of Jesus (Jas 5:14).

The Twelve are sent out among their fellow-men casting out demons and anointing the sick with oil (Mark 6:13). Healing by unction persisted in the Church until the twelfth century,²⁰ and the anointing of the dying, the so-called “extreme unction” has persisted in the Roman Catholic Church to this day.²¹ The principle behind this practice remains the same: the god’s “seed—of— life”, semen, found in spring or rain water, in the sap or resins of plants and trees, and above all in the slimy mucus of the mushroom imparts life to the ailing or the dead..

Herein lies also the idea of embalming corpses with ointments and spices. They were not expected to halt decomposition, as Martha appreciated in the case of her four-day dead brother Lazarus (John 11:39), although in Egypt additional measures were taken also to preserve even the flesh. The Hebrew of the story of Joseph’s embalming for forty days uses the word “healers”²² for the practitioners of the craft (Gen 50:2), and the word for “embalm” means also “to come filly to life, mature”, as well as “make spicy”.²³

The root goes back to Sumerian words for “spilling seed”, and the conception seems to have been to impart life and rebirth to the dead person in the underworld. So the two Marys come to the grave to anoint the dead Jesus (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56) as did Nicodemus, bringing myrrh and aloes for the purpose (John 19:39), and as Mary, Martha’s sister, had earlier anointed his feet with nard, anticipating the event (John 12:3).

Things, as well as people, could be anointed with semen so that they became “holy”, that is, separated to the god’s service. The Semitic root q-d-sh, “holy”, is, as its probable root meaning indicates, fundamentally a fertility word. It has to do specifically with the uterus,²⁴ the “holy of holies” of the female, and the inner sanctuary of the temple.

So the cultic furniture was anointed (Exod 3:26, 40:10 Lev 8:ii), and particularly the altar, that replica of the penis standing before the open portals of the temple. In the story of Jacob and his ladder dream, when he saw angels going up and down between earth and heaven, he took the stone on which he had laid his head in sleep and erected it as a pillar and “poured oil on the top of it” (Gen 28:10W, cp. Gen 35:14).²⁵

The anointing into holiness of kings and priests is again largely imitative in character.

The prime duty of the king was to ensure the fertility of the land and well-being of his subjects. Many of the Greek and Semitic words for “lord” and “lordship” convey this idea when seen in their original form.²⁶ The priest’s function was also to see that the god played his part in inseminating the land. The most common Hebrew word for “priest”, köhën, familiar as a well-known Jewish surname, comes from a Sumerian title, GU-EN-NA, literally, “guardian of semen”.²⁷ He had charge of the god’s house, regarded as the uterus where he enacted his role of creator.²⁸

Pouring the god’s semen over 3 Section through the calyx and fruit of Henbane (after F. Howarth, in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities [Loeb, iv] p. 399) the heads of these dignitaries was intended to represent them as “gods”, replicas of the divine penis in heaven.²⁹

The head-gear of the Jewish high priest, called simply a “turban” in the Old Testament (Exod 28:4, etc), was apparently intended to represent the glans penis. Josephus has an extended account of this piece of ceremonial attire.³⁰ He describes it by alluding to several different plants, all of them having a mushroom relevance. One, indeed, Sideritis, actually is a name of the Holy Plant.³¹

First, the priest dons a skull—cap (Greek pilos, Latin pileus, incidentally, the botanist’s name for the cap of the mushroom), as worn by the generality of the priesthood. Over this he puts a turban of violet embroidery, further encircled with a crown of gold. Sprouting from the top of this was a golden calyx, or seed—vessel.

In order to satisfy the curiosity of his remarkably ill-informed readers, Josephus goes on to describe in great detail the nature and shape of the calyx, “for those unfamiliar with it”, comparing it with that of Henbane, Hyoscyamus niger (fig. 3).

“Imagine”, says our ingenious author, “a ball cut into two: the calyx at the stem presents the lower half of this, emerging from its base in a rounded form.”

He then enlarges on the graceful turn of the sides to the “rim” on to which the “hemispherical lid adheres closely”.

This calyx, he says, is enveloped in a husk or sheath which detaches itself of its own accord as the fruit begins to develop. This is not a very accurate account of the Henbane calyx and its ovary, but it well suits the volva of the Boletus mushroom as the embryo begins to expand. Josephus speaks further of the ragged edge of the lip of the calyx, “like thorns quite sharp at the end”.

This is presumably an allusion to the three— tiered golden crown surrounding the violet turban,82 and in human terms to the edge of the circumcised foreskin. The Bible makes no mention of a golden crown, but it does speak of a “plate of gold” (sis), affixed to the front of the priest’s turban (Exod 28 :36).³³

As Josephus was well aware, the word sis is used in late Hebrew for the fringe of shreds of the prepuce remaining after an insufficient circumcision operation, a kind of “crown of thorns” around the bared glans.³⁴ In mushroom terms, this “fringe” will be the membrane that joins the margin of the pileus cap to the stem before its full development. When the skin breaks it remains as a ragged ring around the stem. New Testament imagery has Jesus crowned with thorns and clothed with royal purple (John 19:2).

The deep red cap of the sacred mushroom added to its phallic significance in the eyes of the ancients and provided them with words for that color, as will be noted. These “glans-crowned” officials, kings and priests, were then, the messiahs, or christs, said in the Ol Testament to be “smeared with Yahweh” (I Sam 26:11; Ps 2:2), “having the consecration, or crown of God’s unction upon them” (Lev 21:12).

In that holy condition they were not allowed to leave the sanctuary precincts (Lev 21:12; cp. 10:7), unless by some ill chance and erotic dream, they were to spoil their ritual purity by inadvertently mixing their own semen on their bodies with that of the god. In that case they were obliged to leave the sacred area of the Jerusalem temple by an underground passage leading to the profane area of the city.35 Both the Semitic and the Greek words for “christ”, the “anointed, or smeared one”, came from Sumerian terms for semen or resinous saps, MASh and SKEM.

Used as descriptive titles in that language, they appear as a “MASh—man”, exorcist, that is, the priest who drives away demons, and as a “ShEM-man” a compounder of perfumes, the equivalent of the Old Testament mixer of the holy anointing-oils.³⁶ Semitic furthermore combined both Sumerian words into a new root sh—m—sh, “serve” (tables, as a steward; the temple, as a priest; the heavenly throne, as an angel; the genitals, as a penis or a vulva).

Thus the noun means a steward, priest, angel or prostitute.³⁷ An independently derived form very early on came to be used for the greatest “copulator” of all, the sun, Hebrew shemesh, whose fiery glans every evening plunged glowing into the open vulva of the earth, and in the morning “came forth like a bridegroom from his marriage chamber” (Ps 19:5).³⁸

Another important word for a servitor of god in Greek was therapeutes, the verb therapeuo implying both service to god and attendance on the body as physicians, in which sense we have derived our “therapy”, “therapeutics”, and the like. This root also has a sexual origin, as a “giver of life”, and is connected with the Sumerian DARA, “beget”, appearing as a name for the fertility and storm gods Ea and Adad.³⁹

The word therapeutës is of particular interest since it was the title of an ascetic, contemplative sect who have often been compared with the Essenes. They lived mainly in Egypt, at the turn of the era, but probably had a long history prior to that date. We know of them through the writings of the first-century Philo,⁴⁰ and Eusebius, the Church historian (third and fourth century) ⁴¹

The Therapeutae, as they are called, lived in mixed communities, cut off from their fellow-men, rejecting personal property, completely celibate, the women being mostly “aged virgins …who have kept their chastity of their own free will in their ardent desire for learning”. They all met together only on the Sabbath, the women being separated from the men by a dividing partition in the assembly hail.

But every seventh week after supper, both sexes mingled, singing and dancing until dawn, when they returned to their own quarters. Eusebius was so struck by the likeness of the Therapeutae to Christian monks of his own day that he thought they may have been Christians, and that the books referred to by Philo as “the writings of ancient men who were the founders of the sect” may have been the Gospels and Epistles through which they had become converted.

The Church Fathers followed him on this and even Jerome reckoned the Jewish Philo as among the “Church historians”. We hear, too, of an unorthodox Christian sect called the Sampsaeans (Greek Sampsënoi), whose name is certainly connected with the Semitic root sh-m—sh (and so has been hitherto thought to indicate “sun (shemesh)-worshippers”).⁴²

Epiphanius, the fourth-century Christian writer, links these people with the Essenes but thought their Christianity was of a spurious kind, something between Judaism and the true faith.⁴³ Apparently in his time they dwelt in Transjordan, in Peraea, on the borders of ancient Moab, and by the eastern shores of the Dead Sea. Whatever their sectarian connections, their name, as we can now see, demonstrates a clear philological relationship with both the Essenes, “healers”, “life—givers”, the Therapeutae, and the Christians.

In the phallic mushroom, the “man-child” born of the “virgin” womb, we have the reality behind the Christ figure of the New Testament story. In a sense he is representative also of the initiates of the cult, “Christians”, or “smeared with semen”, as the name means.

By imitating the mushroom, as well as by eating it and sucking its juice, or “blood”, the Christian was taking unto himself the panoply of his god, as the priests in the sanctuary also anointed themselves with the god’s spermatozoa found in the juices and resins of special plants and trees. As the priests “served” the god in the temple, the symbolic womb of divine creation, so the Christians and their cultic associates worshipped their god and mystically involved themselves in the creative process. In the language of the mystery cults they sought to be “born again”, when, purged afresh of past sin, they could apprehend the god in a drug induced ecstasy.

Fully to understand the part played by women in the mushroom cult it is necessary to appreciate their role in the creative process itself. The fungus represented a microcosm of the female part of the birth cycle. The “man—child” was born from a womb or volva and its gestation and parturition was as much a part of the female worshipper as the birth of a human baby required the active participation of the mother and the midwife.

In the following chapters, then, we shall pay special attention to the woman and her special contribution to the process of conception and birth, her religious role as a cultic prostitute, and the part played by her ritual lamentation in the raising of the sacred mushroom.

VI – The Key of the Kingdom

In a passage dealing with the wisdom and apparent foolishness of Christian preaching, a New Testament writer includes these words: For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles… (I Cor i :22f.). In these words is an ingenious word-play or pun on two words for the sacred mushroom, the “Christ crucified”, and it will serve as an example of this literary device and its extensive use in the New Testament.

The word “stumbling—block” (Greek skandalon, our “scandal”), is properly used of a “trap” or “snare”. It denotes a stick or bolt upon which bait is placed and which, if tripped by the prey, sets off the trap itself. So metaphorically it is used for any impediment which hinders or traps an unwitting person. The Greek word skandalon, we can now appreciate, originally meant “bolt” like its Aramaic equivalent tiqla’, and we saw earlier how the phallic mushroom was called a “bolt— plant” because the shape of the primitive key or bolt was in essence a short rod surmounted by a knob, and so likened to an erect penis.¹

Thus we may decipher the first part of the passage: “to the Jews” (that is, in the Jewish tongue, Aramaic), the “Christ crucified”, the semen— anointed, erected mushroom,² is a tiqid’ , “bolt—plant”. Another name of the mushroom is the Greek Mörios,³ and the word for “folly” is mona; so the writer to Corinthians adds “… and folly (mOna) to the Gentiles” (that is, the Greeks), thereby completing the word-play and confirming the one against the other.

An amusing pun on the same Aramaic tiqlO’ , “bolt—mushroom” name, occurs in the story of Peter’s encounter with the taxmen.

“On their arrival in Capernaum,” runs the story, “the collectors of the half—shekel tax went up to Peter and said, ‘Does not your master pay the tax?”

Peter assured them that he did, like any good Jew, since it was an obligatory levy for Temple funds. On receiving his report of the incident, Jesus reacted strongly.

“However,’ he concluded, ‘so that we should not put a stumbling-block in their way (skandalisJmen), go to the sea and cast a hook, and take up the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel”

(Matt 17:24ff.)

The word-play here is mainly on the various meanings of tiqla’, and its cognates: “mushroom”, “shekel”, and “tax”. The intriguing nonsense about the shekel in the fisWs mouth has all the appearance of a piece of earthy folk-humor. The “knobbed-bolt” epithet of the mushroom, tiqia’, has strong phallic allusions, as we have seen. The fish’s mouth also has a sexual connotation, being envisaged as the large lips of the woman’s genitals. The “bearded” mullet in particular was credited with lustful tendencies and associated with the womb.⁵

To have a “shekel (bolt) in the fish’s mouth” was probably a euphemism for coitus. Pliny has a curious little note which seems to support the idea that “shekels” and mushrooms were connected in folk—lore. He says that he knew “for a fact” that some years previously a Roman official in Spain had “happened, when biting a truffle (tuber), to have come upon a denarius inside it which bent his front teeth”.⁶

Pliny recounts this highly improbable “fact” to support his quite erroneous view that the mysterious fungus was a “lump of earthy substance balled together”. Is it perhaps a Latinized version of a “shekel in the fish’s mouth” name of the mushroom?

The Old Testament also contains a mushroom story based on the tiqia’, “bolt—fungus” — “shekel” word—play. It concerns the mysterious message written on King Beishazzar’s dining-room wall. It will be recalled that the Babylonian monarch, in the days of Daniel the Jewish prophet, was about to sit down to what promised to be the Babylonian orgy of a lifetime.

Scarcely had the drinks begun to flow and the party to warm up generally when a disembodied hand suddenly appeared before the astonished king and began writing the strange device: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. (Dan 5:5—25). Much perturbed, he called for his magicians and other men of wisdom to explain the words to him; but all to no avail. Finally, in despair he called the hero Daniel, who treated the company to a long harangue on the evils of the Babylonian monarchy and Beishazzar and his forbears in particular.

He ended this enlightening discourse with his interpretation of the fateful words: “MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” In each of the mysterious words, Daniel found an Aramaic pun: MENE, on the root m-n-y, “number”; TEKEL, on the root t—q—l, “weigh” (cognate with the Hebrew she qel, “weight, coin”); and PERES, a twofold word-play on the root p-r-s, “divide in two”, and Parsi, “Persian”, the Babylonians’ hated enemies.

The introductory formula, MENE, MENE, is comparable in form and content with the invocation, Eloi, Eloi (E-LA-UIA) that preceded the secret mushroom name (see Ch. XVII). It refers probably to the Semitic god of fate, Meni (Isa 6 :ii; RSV “Fortune”), equivalent of the Sumerian NAM-TAR, “fate demon”, source of the mushroom designations Nectar and Mandrake. TEKEL is our “bolt-” fungus, and PARSIN is the Sumerian BAR-SIL, “womb”, a reference to the mushroom volva.

We meet PARSIN in the Greek form Perseia, as the magic herb that sprang from the ground after Perseus had dropped the chape of his scabbard (mukës, also meaning “mushroom”) whilst flying over the site of what was to become Mycenae (the “mushroom” city).⁸

The combination TEKEL and PARSIN will then be of the “ball-and- socket”, “penis-andvulva” type of mushroom name.⁹ In his pseudo-translation of the awful message on the wall, Daniel refers TEKEL to the Semitic root of “shekel” just like the Gospel story about the tax-collectors.

Apart from the pun involved, the particular interest of the tale for our present study is that the writer of Daniel has shown that the device used so often in the New Testament of following a genuine name for the sacred fungus with a false translation for the sake of the plot, was an established part of mushroom mythology long before the writer of Mark’s gospel “explained” Boanerges as “Sons of Thunder”.¹⁰

The “stumbling-block” figure occurs frequently in the New Testament, but of particular note is its application to the apostle Peter following Jesus’ prophecy of his forthcoming suffering, “Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you!’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me. . .“ (Matt 16:22f.). Peter’s name is an obvious play on the Semitic pitrJ’, “mushroom”, and we have already seen that his patronymic, Bar—jonah, is really a fungus name cognate with Paeonia, the Holy Plant.¹¹

Now called a “stumbling-block”, he is given the tiqlJ’, “bolt— mushroom” name,¹² a theme which is repeated elsewhere in that over—emphasized and completely misunderstood passage about having the keys of the kingdom: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock¹³ I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. . . (Matt 16: I8f.).

The sacred fungus was the “bolt” or “key” that gave access to heaven and to hell, a double reference to its shape as a knobbed bolt for opening doors, and to its ability to open the way to new and exciting mystical experiences.¹⁴

Calling the apostle “Satan” is in line with his other title of Cephas. Both names are in fact plays on designations of the mushroom, elsewhere seen of that other “bulb” plant, the onion. Greek and Latin apply the name stanion, setania to the onion, and Latin has caepa, cepa for that vegetable, cognate with the French cèpe, ceps, “mushroom The well-known word—play in Matt i6:i8: “you are Peter (Petros), and upon this rock (petra) I shall build my church. . .“ can now be seen as of much greater relevance to the cult than a mere pun on Peter’s title Cephas and the Aramaic word for “stone”, këpha’.

The real point of the whole passage is the word-play on the names of the sacred fungus that “Peter” represented. The commission of authority: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:19), has its verbal basis in an important Sumerian mushroom name *MAShBA(LA)GANTA…T41..BA..J?J,lO read as “thou art the permitter (releaser) of the kingdom” by a play on three or four Aramaic words spun out of the Sumerian title.¹⁷

It has, probably, like most other of the directives and homilies of the “cover” story, no real— life significance. Least of all would the passage have been taken by the cult members that one of their number should take upon himself the kind of spiritual authority indicated by the face reading of the text. The sole prerogative of “binding” and “loosing” lay with God.

To the worshipper of the sacred fungus, the deity was present in the mushroom and offered his servants the “key” to a new and wonderful mystic experience. It was this “re— birth”, as it was called, that cleared away the debts of the past and gave promise of a future free from the cultic “sin” that destroyed the initiate’s free communion with God. It was left to a later development of the cult, also calling themselves “Christians” and reading the words at their face value, to accord to their leader and his designates a divine authority for forgiving sins and pronouncing on moral matters which Judaism would have found abhorrent even blasphemous.

If it seems strange to us that the writers of these stories should have used such a trivial literary device as punning so extensively, it should be remembered that they were heirs to a very long tradition of this kind of word-spinning. The Old Testament is full of it, particularly where proper names are concerned, and very many more instances almost certainly lie beneath the surface, where writers are playing with dialectal forms of the words which have become lost over the centuries.

Furthermore, it is now becoming clear that many of the Old Testament traditions have reached us in a Semitic dialect which was not the one in which they were composed, so that the original word-play which they expressed has been lost.¹⁸

Again, what we call “the lowest kind of wit” was much more meaningful for the ancient writer. Words to him were not just vocalic utterances communicating ideas from one mind to another; they were expressions of real power in themselves. The word had an entity of its own; once released it could effect the desire of its creator. The god’s or the prophet’s word was a thing to be feared, and if maleficent, “turned back” as the Bible would say.

Words which looked alike, we might think accidentally, were considered actually to be connected in some way. Therefore deriving some moral tale or religious instruction from a single word in the sacred text, even though it be interpreted in a way at complete variance to its context, and philologically quite insupportable, was quite legitimate to the ancient commentator on the Scriptures, as it often seems to be among modern preachers.

In the New Testament writings a further element is involved, however. Word-play here can be a purposeful disguise, a means whereby special, secret names of the Holy Plant could be conveyed to the initiate through his informed group-leader without their being revealed to the outsider.

In general, there are at least three levels of understanding involved in the New Testament writings. On the surf ace, there are the Greek words in their plain meaning. It is here that we have the story of Jesus and his adventures, the real—life backcloth against which they are set, and his homiletic teachings. How much reality there is at this level is a matter for further enquiry, but probably very little, apart from the social and historical background material.

Beneath the Greek there lies a Semitic level of understanding (not necessarily, or even probably, a Semitic form, that is, actual Semitic versions of the Greek texts). It is mainly in this level that the word— plays are made. For instance, in the “stumbling—block” cycle of stories just mentioned, the puns are on the various meanings of the Aramaic word underlying the Greek skandalon, that is tiqia’, “stumbling—block” — “shekel, tax” — “bolt—mushroom” Under that again there lie the basic conceptions of the mushroom cult.

Here is the real stuff of the mystery-fertility philosophy. For example, to find their parables of the Kingdom, the writers make comparisons with objects and activities which, at the surface level of understanding, are often really absurd, besides being self-contradictory about the manner and form of the Kingdom’s coming.

The passage that likens the Kingdom to a mustard seed, for example, and then speaks of birds nesting in the branches of the grown plant (Matt 13:31f., etc.), has driven the biblical naturalists to distraction looking for a mustard “tree” suitable as roosting places for the fowls of the air. They could have saved themselves the trouble since the reference, at the “lower” level, is simply a play on the Semitic khardelä’, “mustard” and ‘ardilã’, “mushroom”.¹⁹

Furthermore, the whole discussion about the Kingdom stems from a play on the secret mushroom word TAB-BARI, read as the Semitic root d-b-r, “guide, manage, control”,²⁰ the real meaning of this mystic “Kingdom” into which the initiate into the mysteries hoped to pass. For despite the trivial nature of the word-play by which it finds literary expression in the New Testament, the Kingdom of God was a very real experience in the minds of the Christians. It meant the complete domination of the mind and body of the celebrant by the god. He was “enthused” in the proper meaning of that word, “god_filled”.²¹

So in their respective times were the Maenads of Bacchus,²² and, less violently perhaps, the Methodists of John Wesley. The manner and means of the “domination” were of the utmost importance to the initiate for he was entering upon an extremely dangerous experience. Even with all their knowledge of the identity and power of their drugs, these worshippers at the throne of the “Jesus Christ” fungus knew well that the “Kingdom” they sought might well be eternal as far as they were concerned.

We should not, therefore, be tempted to underestimate either the intelligence of those participating in the cult, or their literary methods in committing their vital secrets to written form. In view of the hostility understandably being shown them by the authorities of the time, Roman and Jewish, writing the New Testament at all was scarcely less dangerous than chewing the sacred mushroom.

It may be of interest here to list the more important secret names of the sacred mushroom on which much of the mythology and homiletics of the New Testament is based. The full forms given here are the Sumerian originals, found actually extant in the texts surviving, reconstructed from transliterations in other dialects, or composed from known values of the words on otherwise existing patterns: *LI_KIJR_ BA(LA)G-ANTA/AN-TI- TAB-BA-RJLI-TI; ANTA; KUR-KUR; *MASh TAB BA R/LI TI UKUSh-LI-LI-GI; *T_BA_Pj..GI; and variants.²³

In exactly what forms the Christians knew these words we cannot know; some will have been as Greek transcriptions, others in Semitic form. Now and again the names appear in vocabularies attached to other plants related in some way to the mushroom, and their original Sumerian form can be recognized. Of such are the Syriac and Arabic names for Hellebore, khurbekãnã’ and kharbaq respectively, traceable to Sumerian *KUR_BA(LA)CANTA, “cone of the erect phallus”, that is, the mushroom top. Sumerian KUR means a “mountain” or other conical shape.²⁴

So a doubled KUR will sometimes indicate a double-cone shaped or glans- headed plant. The mushroom, with its split volva was so described, hence the derived Greek name Kirkaion among the Mandrake lists. Our word Crocus has the same Sumerian origin, referring to the phallic form of the flower stem and head. Another of our common vegetable names so derived is Chicory, a variant form of whose name in Greek is Korkoron.

This last occurs also as a mushroom name, and Pliny’s description of “Chicory” shows that whatever magic plant he is describing it is not the culinary root we know so well:

those who have anointed themselves with the juice of the whole plant, mixed with oil, become more popular and obtain their wishes more easily so great are its health—giving properties that some call it Chreston. ²⁵

There has clearly been some confusion here in traditions regarding the plant, with which we may reasonably identify the Kirkaion, Mandrake. The juice was to be “rubbed on” or “anointed” (khristos) , and its properties were so beneficial that it was called Chreston (Greek khrëstos, “good, honest, health-bestowing”, etc.).²⁶

One is reminded of the form of the name by which non-Christians spoke of the object of the sect’s adoration, Chrestus. So Suetonius speaks of the emperor Claudius having to expel Jews from Rome because they were making a disturbance “at the instigation of Chrestus”.²⁷

What Pliny is describing then is the “Jesus Christ” mushroom whose consumption brought on the first—century Christians the vilification and contempt of the Roman historians. The Greek Korkoron, the “Christ” mushroom, appears also as an alternative name for Halicacabus,²⁸ another of the “bolt” designations of the fungus. Its name is related to the Semitic word for “star” envisaged as a penis in the sky, a miniature “sun”.

Our own word “star” comes via Greek from a Sumerian word for “knobbed bolt”. Of Halicacabus, Pliny says: The root of Halicacaks is taken in drink by those who, to confirm superstitious notions, wish to splay the inspired prophet, and to be seen publicly raving in unpretended madness.

He adds that the root is,

“so antipathetic to the nature of asps, that if it be brought near to the reptile it stupifies that very power of theirs to kill by stupefaction”.²⁹

Allusions like this to serpents and antidotes for their poisons or malign influences over the mind, usually imply some special relationship between the plant and the reptile. Mushrooms and serpents are closely related in folk—lore, and in this case we are reminded of the Old Testament passage about Moses’ brazen serpent, on which Jesus models himself,³⁰ that anyone “bitten by a snake might look on it and live” (Num 21:9).

Of the other Sumerian elements that went to make up mushroom names, RI, or dialectal LI, also meant “cone”— or “bun”—shape, MASh (-TAB-BA), “twin”, so LI-MASh meant “two cones” or “hemispheres”, like, MASh-TAB-BA-R/LI. The word GI means “stem” so that LI-LI-GI could describe the mushroom as two halves of the volva separated by the erect stem.3’ Very common in the phallic nomenclature of the mushroom is the Sumerian BALAG, “crown of the penis; glans”. Supplemented by ANTA, “raised”, we shall meet the word in the name given to the Maenads, Bacchantes, and the Hebrew “weepers” for Tammuz.³²

In Sumerian, the orgiasts whose task it was to cause the erection of the male organ, and in the cult, the raising of the phallic mushroom, were called BALAG-NAR. By natural association of ideas this combined word came into Greek as the name for an axe-handle, pelekunarion, which was pushed through the central hole of the double- axe head, the peleL’us.³³

The extension of “erect penis” words to stakes, rods, cudgels, and the like is common in any language. Of the BALAG-derived words we might cite the Greek plialagx, Latin and our phalanx, meaning a “roller, log, or rank of soldiers”³⁴ Another onion name, referring to the “knobbed root” of the vegetable that provoked phallic allusions, was the Latin pallacana, precisely our Sumerian *BALAG…AN(TA).³⁵

The ancient naturalists speak of a poisonous spider whose name Phalaggion stems from the same root. Its connections with the genital organ are clear from their descriptions of the effects of its bite: The eyes become bloodshot, a shivering settles upon his limbs, and straight- way his skin and genitals grow taut, his penis projects, dripping with foul ooze. ³⁶

Among the antidotes for this fearsome poison is listed Asparagus, a well-known antaphrodisiac, and also named from the Sumerian BALAG, presumably on account of its straight stalk.³⁷ Semitic made a number of roots from BALAG, “crown of the penis”, and found therein words denoting a hemispherical or “bun” shape, as those for a young woman’s firm breast, the similarly shaped whorl of a spindle, half a pomegranate skin, a human temple, and a cake of figs.³⁸ As in the title “Bacchante”, the middle “L” of BALAG became assimilated to the following consonant in pronunciation, giving sounds like “bacc-” or (from the cognate BULUG) “bucc-”.

Latin thus gained its bucca, “cheek”, and Hebrew one of its names for the mushroom, paqqu’ah.³⁹ From the New Testament myth-maker’s point of view, this double pronunciation greatly enlarged his scope for punning. He could use BALAG in full for Semitic roots like p-l-kh, “make”⁴⁰ (“On this rock I will build (make) my church”), but could shorten it and run into the preceding MASh of the fungus name, finding roots like sh-b-kh, “bless, praise” (“Blessed art thou, Simon Bar—jonah. . .“),⁴¹ and sh—b—q, “release, forgive” (“whatsoever you release on earth. . .“),⁴² and so on.

Having seen something of how the New Testament writers use the old sacred names of the mushroom for their word-play, we have now to look again at the nature of the fungus itself.

From the manner of its growth and its sexual resemblances come many of the “human” allusions in the stories that grew up round it. Its main parts, the “volva” and the “penis” stem, represented the essential distinguishing features of men and women, and in mythology they served as symbols for the male and female characters in the stories.

VII – The Man-child Born of a Virgin

Describing the growth of the mushroom ( boletos) , Pliny says: “the earth produces first a ‘womb’ (vulva)… and afterwards (the mushroom) itself inside the womb, like a yolk inside the egg; and the baby mushroom is just as fond of eating its coat as is the chicken.

The coat cracks when (the mushroom) first forms; presently, as it gets bigger, the coat is absorbed into the body of the footstalk (pediculi)… at first it is flimsier than froth, then it grows substantial like parchment, and then the mushroom – is born.¹

More prosaically, perhaps, the process is thus described by a modern mycologist: “In the genus Amanita a membrane surrounds the young fungus. In addition to this wrapper or volva there is another membrane, stretching from the margin of the cap and joined to the stem, as in the mushroom.

Thus it is as if the,

“button stage” were surrounded by an outer skin. As the fungus develops this is torn apart. If its texture is sufficiently tenacious to hold it together, it is left as a cup at the base of the stem . . . With growth the membrane covering the gills tears and is left as a ring on the stem.”

Of the Amanita phalloides, the writer adds:

“Before the volva breaks the fungus looks somewhat like a pigeon’s egg half-buried, or like a small phallus ‘egg’. It is common in glades in woods and adjoining pastures after the first summer rains, and continues through early autumn.”²

It was the fertilization of the “womb” that most puzzled the ancients, and remained a mystery until the end of the last century. To Pliny the fungus had to be reckoned as one of the “greatest of the marvels of nature”, since it “belonged to a class of things that spring up spontaneously and cannot be grown from seed”.³ It was surely “among the most wonderful of all things” in that it could “spring up and live without a root”.⁴

Until the invention of the microscope the function of the spore, produced by each fungus in its millions, could not be appreciated. The mushroom has, indeed, no seed in the accepted sense, germinating and giving out a root and later a stem apex with or without seed leaves. The walls of each minute spore extrude to form thread-like tubes which branch further until all mass together to form the spongy flesh of the fungus.

The result is neither animal nor vegetable, and the mystery of its proper classification persisted until relatively modern times. Thus a sixteenth-century naturalist wrote:

“They are a sort of intermediate existence between plants and inanimate nature. In this respect fungi resemble zoophytes, which are intermediate between plants and animals.”⁵

One explanation for the creation of the mushroom without apparent seed was that the “womb” had been fertilized by thunder, since it was commonly observed that the fungi appeared after thunderstorms. Thus one name given them was Ceraunion, from the Greek keraunios, “thunderbolt”. Another was the Greek hudnon, probably derived from Sumerian *UD_NUN, “storm—seeded”.⁶

It was thus uniquely-begotten. The normal process of fructification had been by-passed. The seed had not fallen from some previous plant, to be nurtured by the earth until in turn it produced a root and stalk. The god had “spoken” and his creative “word” had been carried to earth by the storm-wind, angelic messenger of heaven, and been implanted directly into the volva.

The baby that resulted from this divine union was thus the “Son of God”, more truly representative of its heavenly father than any other form of plant or animal life. Here, in the tiny mushroom, was God manifest, the “Jesus” born of the Virgin “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation – in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…“ (Col i :isff.).

The phallic form of the mushroom matched precisely that of his father, whom the Sumerians called ISKUR, “Mighty Penis”, the Se— mites Adad, or Hadad, “Big—father”, the Greeks Patër-Zeus, and the Romans Jupiter, “Father-god”.⁷ To see the mushroom was to see the Father, as in Jesus the uncomprehending Philip was urged to look for God: “He who has seen me has seen the Father. . . Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (John i4:9ff.). Even the detutns recognized him as “the Holy One of God” (Mark i :24), and it was as “the Holy Plant” that the sacred fungus came to be known throughout the ancient world.
 

The slimy juice of the mushroom which, in some phalloidic species, spills over the “glans” and clown the stem, seemed to the ancients like the viscous exudation of the genital organs prior to coitus and the seminal discharge at orgasm. The Hebrew word for “smooth, slimy” derives from a Sumerian phrase meaning “semen running to waste”,⁸ and figures in a number of biblical allusions to the mushroom.⁹

It was otherwise known as “spittle”, and Job asks if there is any taste in the “spittle of the mushroom” (as we should now read the name of that plant) (Job 6:6).¹⁰ To have “spittle in the mouth” was a euphemism in the Jewish Talmud for “semen in the vagina”, ¹¹ and the close relationship between the two fluids resulted in the very widespread belief that spittle had strong curative and prophylactic properties.

Thus, as human semen was a cure for scorpion stings, according to Pliny,¹² spittle was a repellent to snakes and an antidote to snake venom.¹³ Jesus is pictured making a clay poultice to lay over the eyes of the man born blind (John 9:6), mixing his spittle with dust, as Pliny reports that saliva used each morning as an eye ointment cured ophthalmia.¹⁴

Rain, the semen of the god, was spurted forth from the divine penis at his thunderous orgasm in the heavens, and was borne as “spittle” from the lips of the glans to earth on the storm wind.¹⁵ It was a unique concentration of this powerful spermatozoa in the juice of the “Holy Plant” that the Magi believed would give anyone anointed with it amazing power. They could “obtain every wish, banish fevers, and cure all diseases without exception”.¹⁶

So the Christian, the “smeared or anointed one”, received “knowledge of all things” by his “anointing from the Holy One” (I John 2:20). Thereafter he had need of no other teacher and remained for evermore endowed with all knowledge (v. 27). Whatever the full ingredients of the Christian unction may have been, they would certainly have included the aromatic gums and spices of the traditional Israelite anointing oil: myrrh, aromatic cane, cinnamon, and cassia, all representing the powerful semen of the god. Under certain enclosed conditions, a mixture of these substances rubbed on the skin could produce the kind of intoxicating belief in self-omniscience referred to in the New Testament.

Furthermore, the atmosphere of the oracular chamber would be charged with reek of sacred incense consisting of “sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense . . .“ (Exod 30:34), giving the kind of overpowering hypnotic effect referred to by an early Christian writer when he speaks of “the frenzy of a lying soothsayer” as a “mere intoxication produced by the reeking fumes of sacrifice”.¹⁷

That these ingredients formed only part of the sacred incense formula is well known. Josephus says there were thirteen elements,¹⁸ and the Talmud names eleven, plus salt, and a secret “herb” which was added to make the smoke rise in a vertical column before spreading outwards at the top.¹⁹

With the characteristic shape of the mushroom in mind, we can hazard a fair guess now at this secret ingredient. Knowledge and healing were two aspects of the same life-force. If to be rubbed with the “Holy Plant” was to receive divine knowledge, it was also to be cured of every sickness. James suggests that anyone of the Christian community who was sick should call the elders to anoint him with oil in the name of Jesus (Jas 5:14).

The Twelve are sent out among their fellow-men casting out demons and anointing the sick with oil (Mark 6:13). Healing by unction persisted in the Church until the twelfth century,²⁰ and the anointing of the dying, the so-called “extreme unction” has persisted in the Roman Catholic Church to this day.²¹ The principle behind this practice remains the same: the god’s “seed—of— life”, semen, found in spring or rain water, in the sap or resins of plants and trees, and above all in the slimy mucus of the mushroom imparts life to the ailing or the dead..

Herein lies also the idea of embalming corpses with ointments and spices. They were not expected to halt decomposition, as Martha appreciated in the case of her four-day dead brother Lazarus (John 11:39), although in Egypt additional measures were taken also to preserve even the flesh. The Hebrew of the story of Joseph’s embalming for forty days uses the word “healers”²² for the practitioners of the craft (Gen 50:2), and the word for “embalm” means also “to come filly to life, mature”, as well as “make spicy”.²³

The root goes back to Sumerian words for “spilling seed”, and the conception seems to have been to impart life and rebirth to the dead person in the underworld. So the two Marys come to the grave to anoint the dead Jesus (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56) as did Nicodemus, bringing myrrh and aloes for the purpose (John 19:39), and as Mary, Martha’s sister, had earlier anointed his feet with nard, anticipating the event (John 12:3).

Things, as well as people, could be anointed with semen so that they became “holy”, that is, separated to the god’s service. The Semitic root q-d-sh, “holy”, is, as its probable root meaning indicates, fundamentally a fertility word. It has to do specifically with the uterus,²⁴ the “holy of holies” of the female, and the inner sanctuary of the temple.

So the cultic furniture was anointed (Exod 3:26, 40:10 Lev 8:ii), and particularly the altar, that replica of the penis standing before the open portals of the temple. In the story of Jacob and his ladder dream, when he saw angels going up and down between earth and heaven, he took the stone on which he had laid his head in sleep and erected it as a pillar and “poured oil on the top of it” (Gen 28:10W, cp. Gen 35:14).²⁵

The anointing into holiness of kings and priests is again largely imitative in character.

The prime duty of the king was to ensure the fertility of the land and well-being of his subjects. Many of the Greek and Semitic words for “lord” and “lordship” convey this idea when seen in their original form.²⁶ The priest’s function was also to see that the god played his part in inseminating the land. The most common Hebrew word for “priest”, köhën, familiar as a well-known Jewish surname, comes from a Sumerian title, GU-EN-NA, literally, “guardian of semen”.²⁷ He had charge of the god’s house, regarded as the uterus where he enacted his role of creator.²⁸

Pouring the god’s semen over 3 Section through the calyx and fruit of Henbane (after F. Howarth, in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities [Loeb, iv] p. 399) the heads of these dignitaries was intended to represent them as “gods”, replicas of the divine penis in heaven.²⁹

The head-gear of the Jewish high priest, called simply a “turban” in the Old Testament (Exod 28:4, etc), was apparently intended to represent the glans penis. Josephus has an extended account of this piece of ceremonial attire.³⁰ He describes it by alluding to several different plants, all of them having a mushroom relevance. One, indeed, Sideritis, actually is a name of the Holy Plant.³¹

First, the priest dons a skull—cap (Greek pilos, Latin pileus, incidentally, the botanist’s name for the cap of the mushroom), as worn by the generality of the priesthood. Over this he puts a turban of violet embroidery, further encircled with a crown of gold. Sprouting from the top of this was a golden calyx, or seed—vessel.

In order to satisfy the curiosity of his remarkably ill-informed readers, Josephus goes on to describe in great detail the nature and shape of the calyx, “for those unfamiliar with it”, comparing it with that of Henbane, Hyoscyamus niger (fig. 3).

“Imagine”, says our ingenious author, “a ball cut into two: the calyx at the stem presents the lower half of this, emerging from its base in a rounded form.”

He then enlarges on the graceful turn of the sides to the “rim” on to which the “hemispherical lid adheres closely”.

This calyx, he says, is enveloped in a husk or sheath which detaches itself of its own accord as the fruit begins to develop. This is not a very accurate account of the Henbane calyx and its ovary, but it well suits the volva of the Boletus mushroom as the embryo begins to expand. Josephus speaks further of the ragged edge of the lip of the calyx, “like thorns quite sharp at the end”.

This is presumably an allusion to the three— tiered golden crown surrounding the violet turban,82 and in human terms to the edge of the circumcised foreskin. The Bible makes no mention of a golden crown, but it does speak of a “plate of gold” (sis), affixed to the front of the priest’s turban (Exod 28 :36).³³

As Josephus was well aware, the word sis is used in late Hebrew for the fringe of shreds of the prepuce remaining after an insufficient circumcision operation, a kind of “crown of thorns” around the bared glans.³⁴ In mushroom terms, this “fringe” will be the membrane that joins the margin of the pileus cap to the stem before its full development. When the skin breaks it remains as a ragged ring around the stem. New Testament imagery has Jesus crowned with thorns and clothed with royal purple (John 19:2).

The deep red cap of the sacred mushroom added to its phallic significance in the eyes of the ancients and provided them with words for that color, as will be noted. These “glans-crowned” officials, kings and priests, were then, the messiahs, or christs, said in the Ol Testament to be “smeared with Yahweh” (I Sam 26:11; Ps 2:2), “having the consecration, or crown of God’s unction upon them” (Lev 21:12).

In that holy condition they were not allowed to leave the sanctuary precincts (Lev 21:12; cp. 10:7), unless by some ill chance and erotic dream, they were to spoil their ritual purity by inadvertently mixing their own semen on their bodies with that of the god. In that case they were obliged to leave the sacred area of the Jerusalem temple by an underground passage leading to the profane area of the city.35 Both the Semitic and the Greek words for “christ”, the “anointed, or smeared one”, came from Sumerian terms for semen or resinous saps, MASh and SKEM.

Used as descriptive titles in that language, they appear as a “MASh—man”, exorcist, that is, the priest who drives away demons, and as a “ShEM-man” a compounder of perfumes, the equivalent of the Old Testament mixer of the holy anointing-oils.³⁶ Semitic furthermore combined both Sumerian words into a new root sh—m—sh, “serve” (tables, as a steward; the temple, as a priest; the heavenly throne, as an angel; the genitals, as a penis or a vulva).

Thus the noun means a steward, priest, angel or prostitute.³⁷ An independently derived form very early on came to be used for the greatest “copulator” of all, the sun, Hebrew shemesh, whose fiery glans every evening plunged glowing into the open vulva of the earth, and in the morning “came forth like a bridegroom from his marriage chamber” (Ps 19:5).³⁸

Another important word for a servitor of god in Greek was therapeutes, the verb therapeuo implying both service to god and attendance on the body as physicians, in which sense we have derived our “therapy”, “therapeutics”, and the like. This root also has a sexual origin, as a “giver of life”, and is connected with the Sumerian DARA, “beget”, appearing as a name for the fertility and storm gods Ea and Adad.³⁹

The word therapeutës is of particular interest since it was the title of an ascetic, contemplative sect who have often been compared with the Essenes. They lived mainly in Egypt, at the turn of the era, but probably had a long history prior to that date. We know of them through the writings of the first-century Philo,⁴⁰ and Eusebius, the Church historian (third and fourth century) ⁴¹

The Therapeutae, as they are called, lived in mixed communities, cut off from their fellow-men, rejecting personal property, completely celibate, the women being mostly “aged virgins …who have kept their chastity of their own free will in their ardent desire for learning”. They all met together only on the Sabbath, the women being separated from the men by a dividing partition in the assembly hail.

But every seventh week after supper, both sexes mingled, singing and dancing until dawn, when they returned to their own quarters. Eusebius was so struck by the likeness of the Therapeutae to Christian monks of his own day that he thought they may have been Christians, and that the books referred to by Philo as “the writings of ancient men who were the founders of the sect” may have been the Gospels and Epistles through which they had become converted.

The Church Fathers followed him on this and even Jerome reckoned the Jewish Philo as among the “Church historians”. We hear, too, of an unorthodox Christian sect called the Sampsaeans (Greek Sampsënoi), whose name is certainly connected with the Semitic root sh-m—sh (and so has been hitherto thought to indicate “sun (shemesh)-worshippers”).⁴²

Epiphanius, the fourth-century Christian writer, links these people with the Essenes but thought their Christianity was of a spurious kind, something between Judaism and the true faith.⁴³ Apparently in his time they dwelt in Transjordan, in Peraea, on the borders of ancient Moab, and by the eastern shores of the Dead Sea. Whatever their sectarian connections, their name, as we can now see, demonstrates a clear philological relationship with both the Essenes, “healers”, “life—givers”, the Therapeutae, and the Christians.

In the phallic mushroom, the “man-child” born of the “virgin” womb, we have the reality behind the Christ figure of the New Testament story. In a sense he is representative also of the initiates of the cult, “Christians”, or “smeared with semen”, as the name means.

By imitating the mushroom, as well as by eating it and sucking its juice, or “blood”, the Christian was taking unto himself the panoply of his god, as the priests in the sanctuary also anointed themselves with the god’s spermatozoa found in the juices and resins of special plants and trees. As the priests “served” the god in the temple, the symbolic womb of divine creation, so the Christians and their cultic associates worshipped their god and mystically involved themselves in the creative process. In the language of the mystery cults they sought to be “born again”, when, purged afresh of past sin, they could apprehend the god in a drug induced ecstasy.

Fully to understand the part played by women in the mushroom cult it is necessary to appreciate their role in the creative process itself. The fungus represented a microcosm of the female part of the birth cycle. The “man—child” was born from a womb or volva and its gestation and parturition was as much a part of the female worshipper as the birth of a human baby required the active participation of the mother and the midwife.

In the following chapters, then, we shall pay special attention to the woman and her special contribution to the process of conception and birth, her religious role as a cultic prostitute, and the part played by her ritual lamentation in the raising of the sacred mushroom.