Cults, Secret Societies & Hellfire
So far, our subject has been hallucinogenic mushrooms, but there is another class of hallucinogens that we must be aware of. These are the various varieties of ergot that grow on some grains and grasses. This group of fungi contrasts to the fruiting mushrooms in that they are nearly invisible, infecting only a few grains within a seed head. The Amanita muscaria, with its eye-catching color, eagerly seeks out symbiots and offers its fruit gladly. The psilocybians are less conspicuous, with their plain brown hues, but still, they are promising good things to their partners. Ergot, in its natural form, promises nothing but pain, terror and misery. Ergot sneaks into the food source at intervals and provides its unfortunate partakers with a taste of living hell.
In our modern times, this fungus has provided our pharmacologists with a variety of drugs useful in childbirth and the control of bleeding, as well as the famous drug, LSD. In its natural state the alkaloids manufactured by the fungus can wreak havoc with the human body. In the past, when grain infected with ergot was baked into bread, whole villages were driven to madness. The citizens unfortunate enough to eat the contaminated bread were launched into a never ending "bum trip" that was surely a gift from the devil. Not only did this potent combination of alkaloids tear up the nervous system, it caused many physical disorders. A general condition of "contraction" caused reduced circulation and paralysis that often resulted in gangrene and an agonizing death. It was called, among other things, St. Anthony's Fire, after an order formed for its treatment.
It has only been in recent history that the fungus has been identified as the villain of the story. Modern farming has almost eliminated ergot from the crops on which it once thrived, but occasionally, it pops up again. In the early '50s, in a small village in France, some sacks of infected flour made it to the bakery. The result was a smaller and less violent example of what must have ravaged whole cultures in bygone times. It seems that the variety and maybe the strength of alkaloids produced by this fungus may have diminished since ancient times, but it gives us a glimpse of what kind of punishment those gods could dish out.
The story of this modern epidemic of ergot poisoning is chillingly reported in the book, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, by John G. Fuller. On August 16, 1951, a baker in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, was forced by circumstances to use some flour that was of a poor quality. It was grey in color and somewhat sticky to the touch. The reason for its poor consistency was that it contained rye that had been infected with the ergot fungus. The bread baked from this flour was distributed to a hundred or so families in the village and surrounding countryside. Within the next two weeks, 300 citizens had "lost their minds" to the psychedelic madness. One young girl was attacked by giant tigers, while others felt the wrath of terrible monsters and visions of dripping blood and grinning skulls.
The hallucinations would have been manageable in themselves, but they were accompanied by irresistible compulsions. A young pilot jumped from a second story window, thinking he was an airplane, while another thought he was a circus performer and tried to tightrope walk a bridge cable. A man of letters wrote page after page of poetry, recording his inner torment. He wrote constantly, wearing pencils down by the score and filling notebook after notebook, day and night. One man locked his attention on the window panes in his bedroom. He began counting the six panes in the window in a loud voice. "One, two, three, four..." He and his family lived in an apartment above their grocery store where his days were spent counting his stocks and his money. He must have felt like he was doing his job, making sure he had accounted for those six important window panes. He counted them, over and over, uninterrupted for nearly three weeks.1Fuller
For some of the victims, the compulsion was to walk and talk. The village square was filled nightly with citizens who could not sleep. They milled around the town, talking loudly and laughing at their predicament. There were others who simply stared off into space. Throughout the first week of the epidemic, the symptoms got steadily worse, and by its end, the hospital was an insane asylum gone out of control. Ambulances, attendants, straightjackets and soldiers were pressed into service from the surrounding towns. The victims were finally giving in to their delusions and running wild in the streets, pursued by volunteer attendants, gendarmes and soldiers who were trying to confine them for their own protection. Many of the afflicted showed superhuman strength requiring several strong men to subdue. The man who thought himself an airplane, and jumped from the second floor of the hospital, broke both legs, but before anyone could get to him, he jumped up and ran 50 meters with green-stick fractures in both legs. It still took several workers to get him back inside.2 Fuller
Another young man shredded seven straightjackets before they could restrain him. With two straightjackets on him and thick leather straps holding him to the bed, he should have been no more trouble, but he began tearing at his bonds with his teeth. He ripped at his restraints until all of his teeth were torn from their sockets and blood filled his mouth. When the attendants finally checked back on him, he had freed himself from the bed and was pulling at the iron bars on his window. He succeeded in bending one over an inch out of place before the six men were able to pull him free.3 Fuller
The victims showed no wish to harm anyone and directed most of their energy at themselves or simply in an effort to escape. They would swing from hyperactivity to deep depression in a matter of minutes. Then they would burst forth again from the calm into a demented frenzy. At its peak, there were 300 people suffering from varying degrees of insanity, and then they started to die.
Not only did this affliction leave the nervous system in shambles, but it also affected the cardiovascular system. In some cases, the symptoms of lowered body temperature and blood pressure worsened and they fell into a coma and died. The decreased circulation brought about another complication. Gangrene began to develop in the extremities of some of the victims. There was no medicine, no treatment, nothing that relieved any of the symptoms. There was nothing to do but wait it out.
Of course, the call letters for this tragedy are LSD, the nucleus of the molecule that brought on the dementia. It is no wonder that we of the modern age have a built in paranoia regarding these hallucinogenic compounds. There are unimaginable dangers connected with the use of these potent agents. In small doses of its purified form, LSD doesn't cause anything but hallucinations, but the rest of the molecule produced by the ergot fungus, has its deadly components.
There are some lessons we can learn from this episode of ergot poisoning besides not eating any bread contaminated with the fungus. One of the symptoms of their psychosis was that the victims tended to fix their attention on something that was familiar to them; the grocer counted, the poet wrote, the doctors and mothers tended to the afflicted. The people who could find something important to focus their attention upon were the ones who fared the best. The way to hold onto your sanity is to turn your back on the demons and concentrate on what it is you do best.
Two of the three doctors that served the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, had eaten the contaminated bread, yet they both worked through the crisis. One doctor went without sleep for 200 hours. He used the characteristic insomnia to help combat the creeping lunacy. This doctor never reported any hallucinations, although he was certainly entitled to them, just for staying awake so long. Under the stress of being a doctor whose patients were all going berserk before his very eyes, who needs demons?
That tendency, to become fixated on some habitual behavior pattern, is exploited in our relationship with the fungus. The same pressure that the ergot alkaloids exerted on the individuals that caused them to stubbornly stick to some simple task, has been exerted on whole cultures by the sacred fungi.
What we have been calling the "savior syndrome", is that same tendency to fixate on some important task. There is nothing more important than saving humanity, and that is the goal they have set for their direct symbiots. The religious fanaticism fostered by the ritual use of these fungi is that same drive, given focus by religious dogma, and tempered by some "user friendly" alkaloids.
Another similarity that we see with the mushroom style fungus, is that the victims of the poisoning did indeed exhibit superhuman strength. They apparently felt no pain in their bodies, although there seemed to be considerable anguish present in their minds. We can see again that these drugs could make a strong potion for warriors if the alkaloids could be controlled. The ability to fight on no matter what the injury would certainly be as valuable to a warrior as the strength of half a dozen men.
It is also worthy of note that the effects of the villager's psychosis developed over a two week period. By the time anyone was sure that they were really seriously ill, so long a time had lapsed that no one could be sure what they had eaten that could have caused their epidemic. I have noticed that in some modern psilocybin encounters, the person doesn't really start feeling their religious conversion until some days after their ingestion of the magic mushroom. Of course, some of these people deny that their mushroom trip had anything whatever to do with their being "reborn", but then there are just as many who have no doubt about the source of their illumination.
Although the ergot was like a wildfire, there were those who knew how to tame it and its power. Research by a trio of fungus detectives banding together has shown that the probable intoxicant used in the Greek initiation at Eleusis was a "tea" brewed from one or more varieties of ergot. Rather than baking the whole kernel into bread, they dissolved the water soluble hallucinogenic elements.
R. G. Wasson was the ring leader, with Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, handling the chemistry and Carl Ruck, expert on Greek ethnobotany, putting the whole thing together. The Eleusinian ceremony was performed continuously for two thousand years. Most of the movers and shakers of Greece took their, once-in-a-lifetime peek into the nether-world during the initiation rites. The secret of the rites has been kept through many centuries in spite of regular attempts to discover it. The religious conversion brought on by the experience was the mainstay of the belief system practiced in ancient Greece. In their book, The Road to Eleusis, the three researchers give a good case for ergot as the probable source of the "Eleusinian" experience, but the very symbols used in the ceremonies show a more ancient origin.
Although the motifs of their temples and artifacts are generally based on grains and their brews, there are several clues as to the origin of their beliefs. In the first place, the temple itself is constructed with beautiful fluted columns that support the familiar triangular roof of the main temple. This architecture shows its itself to be descended from the Sumerian Amanita cults. The other clue is in their sacred chest that holds the ritual objects. These objects are shown only once, at the time of the initiation. These are their most ancient symbols, and included phallic artifacts to the god Dionysus, a favorite of the mushroom religions.
The myth connected with the founding of the original Eleusinian cult is full of mushroom deities like Hercules, Hades and Zeus. It is very likely that they too, ran out of their original "son of god", and were forced to substitute something similar, in this case LSD.
LSD is the popular name for a chemical that forms the nucleus of several compounds found in Nature. Besides Ergot, the LSD core is found in some seeds. This nucleus contains within its shape, ionic charges and such, the keys to open the doors to our most sacred inner vaults. The rest of the molecule, as produced by the plant, contains messages and the keys to further chambers in our control centers. The fact that these plants manufacture these molecules is no accident. They are designed by the DNA of the plant to perform specific functions in the environment. Their message ranges from, "Grow me next to your house, and I will get you high on those low days," to "Take me to the stars."
"Pure" LSD, has been stripped of most of the plant messages and just "opens the doors" for awhile and can leave some of them standing open. There are few messages at all and the "tripper" and the environment are free to mess around with the internal programs. With access to this inner control equipment, incredible behavioral changes can be wrought. For the artist, any drug that can alter the perception is valuable in that it provides another point of view. Besides this, LSD offers the artist the opportunity to set up basic operational programs like "poetry" or "music" or "painting". It is common knowledge that some song writers and musicians have used LSD to provide their insights. Once the right dosage level is reached, so that the person can still function in whatever mode desired, without being incoherent and sloppy, the internal circuits will begin to generate volumes of whatever you are working on. Personally, one desert morning several years ago, LSD and I wrote more than a dozen poems that were easily the best thing this poet had ever done. There is indeed some potential for positive application of these drugs. LSD can perform miracles in the rehabilitation of alcoholics, for example, but can also give us raving maniacs.
"Israelitism was based upon the cult of the sacred fungus, as its tribal names and mythologies now show. ...after the disastrous rebellions against the Assyrians and Babylonians of the eighth and sixth centuries BC, a period of reaction set in... The mushroom cult went underground to reappear with even more disastrous results in the first and second centuries AD when the Zealots and their successors again challenged the might of Rome."7 Allegro
As far as I have been able to determine, the people quoted on these pages are honest and dedicated. I believe their reports to be true and accurate. Their version may be different from the one you have been taught, but our history must be open to modification as we develop a new understanding of what really happened and what bias affected the history we've inherited.
In this instance the mystery is: What caused our ancestors to lose the identity of their god? Part of the answer can be found in a study of the events that led up to the Jewish revolt of AD 66, and its bloody aftermath.
"When the Zealot revolt began in Caesarea in AD 66, the Romans moved quickly and ruthlessly against the rebels, driving them south and finally besieging them in Jerusalem. In AD 70, the Temple itself was destroyed, and three years later the last rebel stronghold at Masada by the Dead Sea was reduced."
A few years ago there was a popular novel and a television "mini series" about a band of freedom loving rebels who would not "bow down", and so were massacred by the Roman Armies. The last group of them took their own lives rather than give in to their Roman oppressors. Their last stand was within the mountain fortress at Masada. These people were known as the Zealots. Their name meant "red in the face" like with much emotion. It also referred to those who were red in the face because they were under the influence of the mushroom and to the red "face" of the Amanita muscaria itself. These rebels were so "zealous" in the support of their god that they felt obliged to murder nonbelievers who stood in their way. To them, the Romans were the enemy, and they fought their oppressors whenever they got the chance. It seems to be a familiar story; to their supporters they were freedom fighters, but to the Romans they were murderers and terrorists.
"The viciousness which characterized the Zealots, and which made them feared and hated by Jew and Roman alike, probably owed much to the stimulation of the drugs they obtained from the cap of their sacred fungus."9 Allegro
For the decades that preceded this final revolt, there had been many uprisings. There probably hadn't been any real peace in the area for centuries. The tribes that occupied this country had been worshippers of the Amanita muscaria and practiced its rituals. Their god had promised them a "messiah" who would lead them out of bondage. The more radical elements of the Jewish population were looking for a "warrior king" who would lead them in the defeat of their enemies. There was a more conservative element that wanted to live peacefully, even if in bondage, and were not willing to fight the Romans. The rebels were ruthless in their persecution of those who would not join in the fight.
According to Mr. Allegro, in his book The Chosen People, the Zealots were but one of the religious factions popular at the time. They were among the most militant and probably a small minority, but they represented the "true tradition" of the tribes. They were the remnants of the warrior clans that had roamed and pillaged in the past, but were being forced to settle down as farmers and merchants. These Zealots were feared by more moderate Jews because of their murderous ways. The trouble with all of these mushroom religions is that the adherents consider themselves to be special, the "chosen ones", and answerable only to their god. Anyone not believing as they do is considered less than human and not fit to live. The leader of the Zealots besieged at Masada was one Eleazar ben Yair. History gives us a long speech that was supposedly delivered by this rebel chieftain shortly before he met his end. In it he speaks of how the Soul is free to roam at will and that life is an imperfect condition made whole by death. Their god told them that they must kill the Romans, who were not fit to live, but they also killed their own brethren if they refused to fight. Eleazar put it this way.
"I have, with my own hand, killed more Jews than most Romans, because they refused to fight. I am a fighter, and the others know it and that is why I am their leader."
These Zealots were the last of the old guard who would rather die than live in bondage and disgrace. This ancient tradition was based on the Amanita muscaria and its warrior ethic. By this time, these mushrooms would probably have become scarce and unavailable to any but the inner circle of adherents. To those willing to worship a near relative, there was no shortage of their god. By the time that farmers had settled down to tend their cattle and donkeys, they were surely to have encountered many psilocybin varieties growing in their manure piles and pastures. I believe this to be the important event depicted in the New Testament stories of Jesus. The effects of long and short term use of psilocybin produces a far more docile population than the older Amanita muscaria cults and cultures. After all, the psilocybians are designed with allomones targeted for the herding animals; that is, passive behavior, with loyalty to a shepherd or father figure. This was the "Prince of Peace".
At the same time that the Zealots were terrorizing the country side, there were priests of the "peace mushroom" that preached these new ways and gained a wide following.
To the Romans, however, the Jews were causing trouble and unrest. They feared that this foreseen messiah might just lead a revolt. To them there was no difference between the factions or the different varieties of mushroom, these Jews had to be stopped from their abominable practices. They must cease "this urine of drunkenness" to which they are addicted. The Roman governors were ordered to ..."seek out participants in the mystic Christian rites, torture them to discover their secrets, and then execute them by the most vile and painful means. Contemporary Roman historians can hardly find words base enough to describe these worshippers of the 'Chrestus'."11 Allegro
The reaction of the Romans was very much like the reaction of our current government; they launched their own version of the "drug wars", but they went all out. In the mind of the Roman legions, the only good mushroom tripper was a dead one.
"The loss of life in the war was appalling. Josephus estimated that one million one hundred thousand perished in the siege of Jerusalem alone. Before this many thousands had died... with those sent to the mines, or dispatched to the various provinces to be killed in the theatres by the sword or torn limb from limb by wild beasts."12 Schonfield
During the time from AD 66 until the last of the rebels was killed at Masada in AD 73, it is possible that 95% of the practicing Hebrew population was wiped out. That had to have been a staggering blow to the culture and its religious history. During that time, it was very dangerous to be associated with any knowledge of the religion or its sacraments. The ones who may have survived with the true knowledge that these religious terms really referred to the sacred fungus, kept the story of Jesus alive as a way of preserving their religion, but when they died off, leaving no one with the key to decipher the stories, the population came to believe that the story represented an account of a person.
Mr. Allegro, who has studied the history and languages of the time and area a great deal, states, "For the whole of the Jesus story is quite fictional."13 Allegro It is quite possible that he is right. Once the mushroom word-plays and fungus stories are exposed in both the Old and New Testaments, there leaves little doubt that they are certainly not what the Christian scholars would like to believe. The introduction of any mushroom lore into these "Holy Scriptures" would be cause for alarm among religious scholars. Whether or not a person named Jesus really lived and died in those times is not as important as the identity of his sacrament. Either way, it is the story of a people whose god of peace was destroyed by the warrior establishment. No one mourned the dead Zealots, but a whole world has mourned the loss of the "Prince of Peace." And to those who would cling to the thought of a man called Jesus, he most certainly ate hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The story of Jesus seems to have symbolized a new god who would put an end to blood sacrifice and lead the people in peace. This was the message of the psilocybin mushrooms. This new incarnation of the "Son of God" had returned to the people using many of the symbols that had been used by the ancient god, but this one added some different elements. This new god was found in the stable and "riding on an ass", whereas the old warrior god was found in the mountains with the Tree of Life. That meant that there would be plenty of the sacrament available as this "Son of God" grew in the pastures and on the dung-heaps close to home. This new god would no longer require blood sacrifice of its adherents.
It seems very likely to me that there was a mushroom priest named Jesus, who experienced the events depicted in the Bible. It would have been an appropriate name for one of his calling. No doubt had there been such a man, he would probably have been killed and possibly crucified. The word plays and puns cited by Mr. Allegro could have easily been used by the people to poke fun at the Romans, while still carrying on the story of their god and how his worshippers were treated. The New Testament was written in the very languages, Greek and Latin, that would have concealed any word plays attempted in Aramaic, the language of the people. The Bible story is certainly not a fiction, although it isn't the story it was thought to be. In the story, one man was crucified; in real life an entire religion was wiped out.
It could be considered ironic that the Romans reacted so violently to the use of hallucinogenic fungi, because their gods were also descendants of those worshipped by the Sumerians thousands of years before. It is quite possible that the Romans had lost the identity of their god through the same process as the Jews. Their violent annihilation of the Jewish race shows how deeply they feared the mushroom cults and their hold on the people.
The burning and killing of heretics from the Spanish Inquisition to the hanging of the Salem witches is related to these early attempts to eliminate the people who worshipped the sacred fungi.
"Christianity purged itself after the holocaust and drove its drug-takers into the desert as 'heretics', and eventually so conformed to the will of the State that in the fourth century it became an integral part of the ruling establishment. By then its priests were raising wafers and sweet wine at the alter and trying to convince their followers that the host had miraculously become the flesh and juice of the god."
The concept of the "Holy Trinity" is one that is hard for our modern theologians to explain to us. Once we understand its source, it takes on a whole new meaning. The "Father" is, of course, representative of the "God". The "Son" of God is Jesus. So far, we have no problem; the Christians say that he is a divine being sent to this Earth by the Father to instruct mankind. The ancients agreed with that except that they said that the "Son" was a mushroom rather than a man. The Christians, as well as other modern religions sprouting from the same source, have trouble explaining the "Holy Ghost" to us. Ghosts and spirits are not part of our approved belief system, whether they are holy or not. To the ancients a ghost was an apparition or a voice that communicated directly with the individual. Although this voice claimed to be God, it had a "nonsensical" component. Because of the very nature of hallucinations, they can seem whimsical and even a little weird, sort of like an eccentric old man. They saw enough of a separation between Jesus and the Ghost to indicate that they were not the same thing. It is also apparent that the three were of nearly equal value in the hierarchy of their religion. To these ancients, the "Ghost" that communicated to them on "heavenly" matters was the vision or apparition that accompanied ingestion of their "God's Son". When we read in the Bible that some new disciple was "taken with the Holy Spirit", the writer is saying that the initiate tasted the sacrament and had fallen under the influence of the divine drug. The "Holy Ghost" was the "voice of the sacred mushroom". In this case, we define "ancient" as before the Jewish revolt of 66 AD.
"In the Jewish Talmud, Jesus is sometimes referred to as Bar Pandera, 'Son of the Panther'. ...the epithet has remained a mystery and has survived even the zealous activities of the Christian censors largely because its relevance had been forgotten. We can now see that it is, in fact, a descriptive title of the sacred mushroom, the Semitic word being ...our 'panther'. The reference is to the markings of the animal's coat...for the 'Pandera' references show conclusively that the early Jews were well aware of the original mushroom nature of the Christian cult, even though, later, through persecution and the passage of time, this knowledge was lost..."
It seems quite apparent that the surviving Jews knew of the true identity of the Jesus figure. That is probably why they never fell into the trap of worshipping him as a god although the name appears occasionally in Jewish writings in some other forms. It was those who took the story literally that formed the beginnings of the Christian faith. The four "Gospels" that comprise the core of Christianity were written in Greek and Latin by scholars who heard the stories of this "Jesus" who had been martyred in the name of peace. The stories themselves must have been impressive, but the point that must have impressed these men the most was the emotion that the people felt for this event. These writings took place a decade or two after the adherents to this new god of peace had been slaughtered by the Roman armies. The feeling surely ran high within the survivors. It is also obvious from research on the subject, that the people of the times regularly inebriated themselves on a variety of drug plants that no doubt included hallucinogenic fungus of one kind or another.16 Ruck/Hofmann/Wasson
The Roman Empire has been compared with today's Western civilization on more than one occasion and it is probably not any more appropriate than it is in the case of recreational drugs. What is generally referred to as "wine" in the writings of the time was usually a drink containing extracts of drug plants in a wine base. The drug culture of those days was at least as resourceful as ours in finding concoctions to "lead them to madness". Just as the survivors of the '60s peace movement have embraced Jesus as their "savior", the citizens of Rome took this "humble teacher" to their hearts. Within a relatively few years, Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The story they so took to their bosoms was meant by the original storytellers as an insult to the people who spoke those "foreign" languages, Latin and Greek. They used the words of their hated masters, the Romans, and made plays on them using their language which was full of words and phrases with mushroom and sexual allusions. The words of the three languages were similar, having the same parent in the Sumerian tongue, but the Romans had long since purged the words of their "primitive" aspects. The Romans were cultured citizens whose language reflected their virtue by not including such vulgar connotations. The survivors told their stories of the holocaust as if it were about a man because it meant certain death to admit that you knew anything about the "true" savior. They told and retold their stories about their lost god and used every opportunity to ridicule the people who had taken him from them. The surviving adherents needn't have worried about their god. He knew what he was about. His message was well on its way. The "first coming" had taken place, and civilizations were beginning to grow.
"These Jewish fanatics were not the only drug-maddened lunatics to disrupt society with their inflated notions of self-importance and belief in a divinely ordained mission to change the world order. ...Islam, too, has had its "Zealots" prompted very probably by the same drug."
Just about one thousand years after the Zealots met their supposed end at Masada, another secret warrior cult known as the Assassins appeared in the Near East. For two centuries they terrorized Persia, Syria and the surrounding area. It wasn't until the twelfth century when 12,000 cult members were massacred that their grip on the territory was broken. The survivors went underground and some say that the cult still may be active.
As you might guess from their name, these guerrillas were famous for doing in the opposition. They were fanatical killers who were glorified for dying for the cause. It has long been thought that the herb hashish is what put the Assassins in their murderous frame of mind. In fact, the main argument for making marijuana illegal was that pot smokers were sure to behave like Assassins. Upon closer examination we find that the word "hashish" meant "dried herbage" in the language of the time.
Further examination indicates that the Assassin's drug of preference was the Amanita muscaria. It is entirely possible that the Assassins were ancestors of surviving Zealots from a millennium before. There are many similarities between the two groups.
"It seems to be a pattern of religious movements based on the sacred fungus that long periods of relative calm and stagnation are interspersed with flashes of violent extremism which die away again after persecution, only to re-emerge in much later generations."
In our investigation, we have discovered some behavior from the "Natural World" that has a parallel to our situation. We have heard what historians have had to say about our ancient fungus relationships. Researchers into our ancient languages and religions have told us of their findings. Myths and folklore have given some clues. We have been exposed to some first hand experience. There are certainly many more mushroom tales to be told given the number of new adherents drawn to the cults in recent years. However, there is one in particular that we need to cover here.
This is a modern tale of bloodletting in the tradition of the Zealots and Assassins. The Charles Manson family is a 20th century example of a mushroom cult. Although there were many drugs involved in the group psyche of that bunch, as there probably were in the traditional warrior cults, none moved their leader like the magic mushrooms. Charley was a born actor and his performance of his "revelation" must have been a sight to see at its peak. Charley could preach. He would get the group together and get them all stoned on whatever was available. There would be some music and preliminary talk, just like a little church service. When the time was right, he would launch into his sermon. He would praise his "children" and then chastise the ones who had strayed, dominating the room with a steady rap. As a finale, he would launch into his "death and resurrection" story.
It had happened to him while he was living in Haight-Ashbury. Charley was just out of prison for grand theft auto, and was hanging out with the hippies, letting his hair grow out and playing the guitar for the girls. He was a few years older than most of the people he ran around with, but he had no following or reason to expect one. He was not very secure in the outside world after spending most of his life behind bars, and had a hard time making friends. He was a little guy, not what anyone would call a dynamic leader, but one San Francisco day he was reborn.
Charley was lying on a bed, tripping his brains out on Magic Mushrooms, when "The bed turned into a cross," and he would moan in pain. He said he could feel the nails in his hands and feet. He could feel the wound in his side and see the scene of his own crucifixion. He looked down and there was Mary, crying at his feet. "I'm all right, Mary," he told her. His young girlfriend, whose name happened to be Mary, was sure he was dying and was beside herself with fear. Manson would then relive his death for the enthralled audience, giving himself up to god, and suddenly, he could see through the eyes of the whole human race at once.19 Bugliosi The Manson Family was born.
To dispel any thought that the psilocybin mushrooms are only interested in peace, Charley's gang murdered at least 8 people using methods that would have made the ancient Assassins proud. They mutilated their victims for the express purpose of causing terror and fear. They spoke of releasing the soul to roam at will, just as if they were Zealots. In fact, Charley used to tell the family that they were all reincarnated "Christians" that were again being persecuted by the establishment, which he referred to as the Romans.20 Bugliosi Some of his followers believed him outright, others doubted he was all he said he was, but they all admitted that he possessed some uncanny powers. I have talked to several people who spent some time with the Manson bunch and they all seemed to have a story or two about how he could read their minds or see into the future. There seemed to be a high degree of telepathic communication going on throughout the group, often having nothing to do with Charley, but he got the credit for it anyway. During their trial, the Manson family showed the whole World just how fanatical was their devotion to this man they called, "Jesus" or sometimes, just "The Soul". Somewhere along the line he changed his middle name to Willis, so that he could say his name as, Charles' Will Is Man's Son.
Something happened that changed a petty car thief into the leader of a terrorist organization that murdered on command. He marked his mushroom experience as the turning point. We find almost identical behavior occurring thousands of years ago, also claimed as being caused by a hallucinogenic fungus. The characters even attempt to use the same names for their god.
Of course, today's Christianity doesn't want to accept Charles Manson as one of their own, but his rap was Jesus all the way. There are many fanatical "Christians" running around our country today who claim their "mushroom trip" as the turning point in their thinking.
The parallels made between our age and the early first century are well taken. We have come around a full cycle and now are into the time of the "Second Coming". It has been promised that Jesus would return to bring peace to the people. Well, he is here. Up until a few decades ago, hallucinogenic mushroom use among Western civilization was nil. Our involvement with these fungi was mostly confined to beef products in our regular diet. Now, after about two thousand years without any direct contact with the sacred fungus, an estimated 50 million Americans have tasted the "true sacrament". It is hard to speak for the rest of the World, but I assume that the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is no less popular in the other major drug cultures. He is back. There is a Fungus among us, again.
Today, in many parts of the World, there are gangs of rebellious youths who roam the mountains and cities, waging war on the established order. Terrorists plant bombs in crowded places, murdering innocent civilians, for the expressed purpose of spreading fear amongst their enemies. The driving force to their fanaticism is said to be their belief in their god. I have never been in the company of these people, and so, have never asked any of them, but there is little doubt in my mind that along with the secret deliveries of ammunition and explosives that must be made to supply their evil missions, there are bound to be little baggies of dried mushrooms passed along in order to fuel their faith.
There may be some people who will think that to study this information is nothing but a waste of time, but this subject matter is important reading even for the people who will never believe any part of it. That is because each individual will eventually have to defend their belief in the fantasy of "divine beings" against the "mushrooming" evidence. There is no doubt about it, the parent religion to our own Christianity was a belief system based on the ingestion of hallucinogenic fungus. It was more than a cult, it was the central theme for a whole civilization.
Once we accept the fact that the origin of our religion was the worship of this sacred fungus, we must face the question of whether religion is nothing but hallucination or is this mushroom god really what he says he is. Either way, we have opened a nasty can of worms.
"There aren't any hallucinogenic mushrooms in our diet," you say. "Not those kind anyway, and if you don't count the few crazed hippies that go down to Mexico..." Well, it's more than just a few. According to an old "High Times" magazine, (Spring,'82), psilocybin mushrooms have become the number two recreational drug used in the United States behind marijuana. Estimates run as high as 50 million people are eating "magic mushrooms". That one kind of snuck up on us. Magic mushrooms have maintained a low profile, but are certainly popular. By the time you read this we are into the third or fourth generation of people who ingested them. Fifty million has grown into some unimaginable numbers by now.
Besides the folks who eat hallucinogenic mushrooms directly, there are the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people who participate in the same food chain.
"...the distribution of the Stropharia cubensis is world-wide. In fact, since its preferred habitat is cow-dung, its circumtropical distribution has doubtless been encouraged, if not caused, by the world cattle industry. This intimate association with man via his domesticated cattle has probably existed for as long as humanity has possessed pastoral technology."
And most cows are very fond of eating these "little Saints." This allows the fungus to put allomones directly into our diet, in the meat, milk and cheese. These allomones have the power to define the parameters of our behavior. They have had this access to our diet for centuries, and most of the behavior that we despise in ourselves can be blamed directly on our consumption of these allomones.
There have been several studies that show serious behavioral problems with teenagers who drink excessive amounts of milk. That is, they showed aggressiveness and belligerence in excess of the already high acceptable standards for the age group in this already very violent society. Throughout history we find the meat fueled warrior class running rough-shod over the peasantry, usually farmers and poor people without the resources to afford the "luxury" of meat as a steady diet. It is certainly no accident that diet and behavior have been linked so many times in the past.
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Sources
Click on Author to return to quoted text.
1 Fuller, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, Macmillan, New York, 1968, p 65
2 Fuller, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, Macmillan, New York, 1968, p 90
3 Fuller, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, Macmillan, New York, 1968, p 106
7Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Doubleday,
New York, 1970, p 189
8 Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Doubleday, New
York, 1970, p 180
9Allegro, The Chosen People, Doubleday, New
York, 1972, p 243
10 Gann, Masada, Jove, New York, 1981, p 267
11 Allegro, The Chosen People, Doubleday, New
York, 1972, p 246
12 Schonfield, The Passover Plot, Bernard Geis, New York,
1965, p 185
13 Allegro, The Chosen People, Doubleday, New
York, 1972, p 245
14 Allegro, The Chosen People, Doubleday, New
York, 1970, p 190
15 Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Doubleday, New
York, 1970, p 125
16 Ruck/Hofmann/Wasson, The Road to Eleusis, Harcourt Brace
and Jovanovich,
New York, 1978, p 42
17 Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Doubleday, New
York, 1970, p 184
18 Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Doubleday, New
York, 1970, p 189
19 Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, Bantam, New York, p 316
20 Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, Bantam, New York, p 317
21 Oss/Oeric, Psilocybin Magic Mushroom Growers Guide,And/Or Press, Berkeley, 1976, p 14.
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