October 22, 2021

"[T]he United States is in the midst of a spiritual reboot. Just look at the stats: Four in ten millennials no longer identify with any religion..."

"But while people are leaving organized religion in droves, Americans are still hungry for spiritual nourishment.... Astrology and other psychic services are booming, and the pandemic has only accelerated the trend of consumers seeking out mysticism. Psychedelics fit perfectly into this new framework.... 'Our religious and spiritual institutions have become hollowed-out shells. They’re bereft, in a way, and a lot of people want something more than that—an affirmation to their intuition that there’s something beyond ordinary day-to-day life,' says [ethnopharmacologist Dennis] McKenna... [T]he same religions that people are today abandoning were themselves, [according to Brian Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion With No Name], built on the foundation of psychedelic mysticism. In his book, he advances a renegade academic theory that claims the original sacraments of Western civilization, born in ancient Greece, were spiked with primitive, mind-altering drugs. Annual pilgrimages were made to an ancient city called Eleusia to participate in secret ceremonies where adherents consumed a potion, kykeon, that contained ergot, the same fungus that Albert Hofmann used to synthesize LSD. Similar rituals and sacraments were then adopted by the earliest Christians sects, which suggests that Christianity itself was potentially founded on a psychedelic sacrament."

26 comments:

Achilles said...

They are trying to replace Christianity with Global Warming and Wearing Masks.

But only for the stupid serfs.

The elites don't need the masks and use private jets.

Earnest Prole said...

The Great Awokening is a modern Great Awakening / Puritan Revival.

Narr said...

Delphi's fumes come to mind.

Robert Graves (soldier, novelist, Mother Goddess theorist) was on this ages ago.

I recall a historian who had a very rough time--by his own account, granted--being taken seriously when he wanted to write on drug use in ancient Greece and Rome. It was simply not a proper topic for research as far as the vast majority of ancient historians were concerned. It was embarrassing to them, too far from their idealizations. It could be
likened to the 'discovery' that those gleaming white temples weren't intended to look like that at all.

For all the high-profile public posturing of many historians as radicals and boundary-crossers, on a lot of topics they're as uptight as any 1957 Rotary Club Republican.




gilbar said...

people are leaving organized religion in droves

Mainstream "Christianity" Left Christ, a LONG TIME AGO.. Now their members are leaving them
BUT!
you Know which sects are GAINING members. That's Right, the fundamentalist evangelical ones
People have Little reason to belong to a Church that doesn't believe in...
Sin
Heaven
Hell
Salvation
Grace
Christ
GOD

People* WANT TO be members of Churchs that believe in...
Sin
Heaven
Hell
Salvation
Grace
Christ
GOD


People* Not, ALL People, Obviously

Joe Smith said...

False...liberalism is a religion.

And it's growing like wildfire.

Mea Sententia said...

I belong to a Christian sect called Presbyterians. Our sacraments are baptism and the Lord's Supper. Each traces its origin to events in the life of Christ: his baptism by John in the Jordan and his final meal with his disciples. No psychedelic drugs needed. The author also seems unaware that Christianity itself has a long mystical tradition, in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant forms.

khematite said...

Have to wonder, as so often lately, what price I have to pay for going through these things twice.

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the publication of John Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro

"Allegro's book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) argued that Christianity began as a shamanistic cult. In his books The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979), Allegro put forward the theory that stories of early Christianity originated in an Essene clandestine cult centred around the use of psychedelic mushrooms, and that the New Testament is the coded record of this shamanistic cult.[23][24] Allegro further argued that the authors of the Christian gospels did not understand the Essene thought. When writing down the Gospels based on the stories they had heard, the evangelists confused the meaning of the scrolls. In this way, according to Allegro, the Christian tradition is based on a misunderstanding of the scrolls. He also argued that the story of Jesus was based on the crucifixion of the Teacher of Righteousness in the scrolls. Mark Hall writes that Allegro suggested the Dead Sea Scrolls all but proved that a historical Jesus never existed.

"Allegro argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult."

rhhardin said...

Professor of religion Paul E Schmidt said that it was discovered that true religious experiences and drug-induced experiences can be distinguished by the absence of a hangover.

farmgirl said...

Whatever could go wrong??

Sgtpepper said...

Have at it, don't fall into the sea.

Lurker21 said...

Gimme a break. 80-90% of them are just looking for a high, and now that pot is legal, they've become more venturesome. They may looking for an unusual experience, but I doubt there's much spirituality involved.

Jamie said...

I'm gonna go with Lurker. Our SoCal cousins, Episcopalians all, were just this past weekend comparing what level of "edibles" each of them likes to consume in their daily lives.

Jamie said...

Los Angeles always seems to lead the way in believing - with all their hearts - that they've invented something both new and lasting.

Maybe they're slightly more self-aware about this subject, in that the article does refer to past drug use. But assuming that drug use, even for spiritual purposes, will take the place of a fully realized, complex belief system that has endured through millennia? They're high.

Heh.

Critter said...

The ideas that the Golden Age of Athens was about drugs is the product of an hallucination. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had no censors to their views and writings and they simply don’t feature drugs and instead focus on the rational mind.

The idea that Jesus Christ was the product of a drug cult is absurd. Why can’t people take him at his word? Christophobia?

I’m fine with people doing drugs voluntarily. America was founded on the principle of individual liberty so long as it does not affect other people significantly. But please let’s not glorify them as role models to follow. And please keep your practices discreet. Let only those without other resources find mind-altering drugs as their last resort.

I know many among the internet/Hollywood creative community resort to low dose drugs for capitalistic reasons. My question to these people is what society have they established that benefits all people. I think none. Drugs are inherently about yourself and not others. I’m not holding my breath for them to help make for a better world except on the margins of existence.

traditionalguy said...

Some laughed and said, “These men are drunk.” Acts 2:13. The druggies are just jealous.

Ryan said...

These articles, I know know....

I live in LA, and know lots of people who go to synagogue or church, and nobody who is taking psychedelic drugs.

I guess I just need to go to more house parties.

Ryan said...

I do have to say though, LOTS of people smoke weed here. It's one thing the boomers and the zoomers and millenials and yes even my gen x-ers can agree on. They all jones for it.

wendybar said...

Abortion is the Progressive religion. They will do and say anything to protect killing babies. It's like a sacrifice.

Kai Akker said...

--- Have to wonder, as so often lately, what price I have to pay for going through these things twice.

Well done, khematite, and so true in this case.

Any bellbottom sightings yet?

Anonymous said...

For all the high-profile public posturing of many historians as radicals and boundary-crossers, on a lot of topics they're as uptight as any 1957 Rotary Club Republican.

"Everyone is reactionary about the things they know best."
-- Robert Conquest's First Law of Politics

hombre said...

As I have posted before there is no need for concern. It’s just this: Matthew 3:12, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

I regularly ask God’s forgiveness for feeling good about this.

Narr said...

@Skookum John723:

Right, as well as elitist.

If someone claims that Christianity was some kind of drug cult, they're smoking crack. If someone says that there was probably a lot of knowledge and use of herbs and fungi for various purposes, including spiritual ones, they're on to something IMO.

Although, I did see a documentary about some reefer-mad Christians in Boston or somewhere, who have found marijuana everywhere they look in the story, and consider being high a sacrament.

Religioso Cannabississimo.

Bilwick said...

And yet the Cult of the State seems to be riding high, and under Dementia Joe getting stronger than ever. I wish statists would get perpetually high on 'shrooms or weed or acid or something, and leave the rest of us in peace and freedom.

Skippy Tisdale said...

I remember the 70's.

Jeff said...

an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult

I was just about to order a pizza and reading that ruined it.

Narr said...

"I remember the 70's"

I have 'trashbacks' to the worst moments--the ridiculous hair, the pretentious lyrics to loud bad songs, the conformity of the non-conformists.

And some still say if you can remember the 70s you weren't participating fully.