The Connection Psychedelics Have to Early Christianity, Christmas

One of the things you talked about was that there was this transference like the Eucharist eventually became a placebo. Do you think that that, what do you think it was initially? Do you think it was a psychedelic mushroom? So that's, Allegro certainly thought that, right? Right. John Marko, Allegro, author of The Sacred Mushroom and the Scroll. So he releases that book in 1970 and he claims that Christianity is the guise for a near eastern fertility cult. And it's, I mean, I think it's very interesting, but there aren't many linguists who support the proposition. Right. There's a lot of people that disagree with him pretty heavily, right? I mean, from like a purely linguistic perspective, it's, I mean, to explain it briefly. So he says that- Did you read this? The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Did you read it? Several times. Did you read the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth as well? From Allegro. Yeah. That's the one that was, so the Catholic Church bought out the original one, right? And it was very difficult to get a hold of for the longest time you had to buy copies of it. I've heard rumors to that effect, yes. Yeah. And then he, so he comes out with the second book, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. What, knowing as much as you know about language, did you feel like he made leaps? Did you feel like he made these connections that maybe were based on speculation? So he writes, it's pure philology, right? So it's word games and things that only linguists- I mean, I think it's incredible that people who aren't linguists can actually read that. It's really, really difficult to read Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. But the basic premise is that the New Testament, written in Greek, has this Semitic substratum. So underneath the Greek, the Gospel writers and Paul are actually referring to different terms in Hebrew or Aramaic. And that these terms have in turn come from the Sumerian, which any linguist would say is a language isolate. That there is no real relationship between Sumerian and the Indo-European languages like Greek and the Semitic. So the premise of the argument is something that most linguists don't accept. However, and Carl Ruck has written the Afterword to one of the editions you probably have of Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. And he gets into some complex theories about psycholinguistics and this interesting idea that just because they aren't related, there are certain words, certain names, certain vocabulary like plant definitions, which would carry across the different languages. And I find that somewhat interesting. But when you dig into the words that Allegra was recreating, he places an asterisk actually next to these words because they can't be corroborated by the ancient texts. So some of these Sumerian words, he straight up hypothesizes as existing, but they can't really be found in the existing tablets. So it's hard to correlate some of those meanings he draws down from the Sumerian. But that said, he makes very interesting claims, for example, like in 1 Corinthians 22, there's this interesting line where he says about that we preach Christ crucified is a skandalon for the Jews and a folly for the Greeks. And skandalon in Greek means like a bolt or a snare, like a trap. And Allegra ties it to like a tikla in Aramaic, which is like what he calls the bolt mushroom. And in Sumerian, ukushtigila. And so he's saying that Paul's actually telling the Jews that, you know, the Christ crucified is a mushroom instead of a skandalon. It's like a code word, like the skandalon is a mushroom. And then for the Greeks, he says it's a folly, which is moira in Greek, which actually means mandrake, which is another psychedelic plant. So there's all this different wordplay going on, but it's really hard to tease out any physical forensic evidence for this stuff, which was what I went after. Was Allegra's position, if I recall correctly, that the sacred mushroom was Ammonita muscaria. Yeah, that was even the cover of his book was a photo of Ammonita muscaria. And that's where I have a I think Allegra did amazing work. But that's that's one area where I where I have a problem with with Ammonita muscaria as the as the psychedelic of choice in early Christianity. Because in in shamanic cultures where Ammonita muscaria is used, it's recognized that the potion that the mushroom is much more effective after it's been passed through a human body or indeed through the body of a reindeer and emerged in urine. And so so the those those shamanistic cultures of Siberia use Ammonita muscaria by drinking it in the urine of a shaman who has previously consumed the mushroom. And I don't see a lot of evidence for that in early Christianity. And it's why I like the work that Brian has done looking at the really hard evidence for psychedelics in early Christianity, which are not which are not in this case, Ammonita muscaria, if I'm correct, Brian. Isn't the speculation about Ammonita muscaria that it's seasonable? It's it's it's seasonal. It's also genetically variable. Like there's there's there's different species out like much like different fruits taste differently. There's different versions of the Ammonita muscaria that have more psychedelic compounds in them. And then there's all sorts of ways of preparing them that we've completely lost. Am I getting this wrong? I've only had one Ammonita muscaria experience and it wasn't very convincing. And this is this is often often the case. But but I'm told I've not had the experience myself. But I'm told that if you can bear the idea of drinking the shamans urine after he or she has consumed the Ammonita muscaria, you will have a really powerful journey. Yeah, but you don't want a shaman just laughing hysterically after you drink his urine. Absolutely. Jokes on you stupid. Yeah, there's there's also so many correlations between the Ammonita muscaria in Santa Claus and Santa Claus to two shamans. There's so many colors, the red and white. Yeah, there's also the you know, the bag, the toys, the the fact that they would dry them on on these coniferous trees. The fact that these mushrooms have this Michael Riser relationship with coniferous trees where they they tend to grow under pine trees, which is the tree that we use for Christmas trees. The fact that they're bright red, like a toy that is in a package waiting for a child to open it up. It's there's so many of these weird connections, the colors, the fact that reindeer are with Santa Claus, the fact these reindeer fly. Yeah, I mean, it's in that caribou are notoriously attracted to Ammonita muscaria mushrooms. In fact, people that have had psychedelic rituals and gone outside to urinate have talked about caribou knocking them over to try to get to their urine and caribou are reindeer. And they have been observed eating these things. So they have this weird relationship. All those things are together, connected in some sort of a strange way. And there's also a history of shamanic rituals being outlawed in Siberia. And the way they got around it was they would come through the chimney, which is just crazy. They would they would climb onto people's roofs and and slide down the chimney to deliver the mushrooms. Well, it's just another another example of the way that our culture takes an ancient historical truth and completely castrates it and turns and turns it into Santa Claus. You know, whereas what we're what we're actually dealing with are profound experiences in deeply altered states of consciousness. Well, it's also this information seems to have been lost fairly recently, because if you go back to the early 1950s and 40s and look at birthday or Christmas cards, the Christmas cards and depictions of Christmas almost always contained elves and Ammonita muscaria mushrooms. The Ammonita muscaria mushroom was synonymous with Christmas for some strange reason. Have you seen those old? Yeah, it's crazy, right? Like, what is that? It's all over the the fairy tale books, too. You can't you can't avoid the the Ammonita. Yeah, everywhere you look, which is why I think Allegro was also interested, writing in 1970 and studying it in the 50s and 60s. I think that's why he glommed on to the Ammonita. But it's such an unconvincing mushroom, like the people that I know that have experienced it in terms of a psychedelic ritual. It's just I don't know anybody who's really blown their brains out with it. No, and Gordon Watson also thought it was the the ingredient behind Soma as well. He writes a book about this in 1968, Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality. That was his guess, too, for Soma. But Watson was experienced with psilocybin, which is so universally regarded as being effective. That's why it's so confusing. I always found that strange, too, to be honest. So so so Watson, I mean, to explain where this where this comes from, Watson has this incredible experience with Maria Sabina in 1955 in Oaxaca, Mexico. And when he consumes the we think Silas to be Mexicana and he is catapulted to the heavens and he has this vision that that he describes as the realest thing he's ever experienced under the influence of the psilocybin. And the thought occurs to him. He writes later in 1957 in Life magazine. He says that the could it be the case that the divine mushrooms are in fact the answer behind the ancient mysteries, which is why he then went and started looking at the Amanita, perhaps, or eventually ergot, which is where I pick up the scent at some point in his correspondence with Albert Hoffman. They together began focusing on ergot, like we said, because it's so common and so natural, but so highly toxic, too. And Albert claimed to have this experience with it. And so for years and years after teaming up with Karl Ruck, they were convinced that ergot had to somehow be involved. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye.