There might be a great debate in here somewhere, but for now it’s just something I must share.
Dr. Benny Shanon claims to be intimately familiar with the effects of the hallucinogenic plant himself, and says it can induce profound religious feelings. He also admits he has no way of ever proving his hypothesis.
I remember in one of my history classes hearing about some group of people who thought that Jesus was a mushroom. Unfortunately, I don’t remember who they were.
Well, He’s not a fun guy.
Those who get it, please don’t smite me.
snort
Wasn’t there a hypothesis floating around about the Salem witch trials being caused by some bad, bad ergot in the crops? Or the whole Pied Piper of Hamelin legend?
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The best part was Olbermann’s reporting of this with “All You Zombies” in the background.
“Holy Moses on the mountain…”
Yes, though Cecil found it not likely.
It also forms a central plot point in Philip K Dick’s The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
The ergotism banner has been taken up by others in recent years, and you can buy new books at the sites in Salem championing it. I’m not a big fan of this explanation, but have to admit it’s possible. A lot of the counterarguments in Uncle Cecil’s column don’t convince me – it’s not the visions supposedly occurring during the trial that might have been caused by ergot (those are, indeed, rather suspicious in their timing), but the very vivid and bizarre visions that people had before the accusations, many of them not by the girls themselves, but by otherwise sober townspeople who weren’t accused of the falling-down-frothing-at-the-mouth behavior. Read Chadwick Hansen’s Witchcraft in Salem. He reprints a number of the visions and the “possessions”. It’s pretty clear that something extreme was going on in Salem, and it’s hard to dismiss it as Bored or Scared teenage girls just making it up. Hansen pointed out the similarity to Charcot’s hysteria patients, and when you put descriptions side-by-side, they do match pretty closely.
The Sacred Cross and the Mushroom, by John M. Allegro. A Time Article from 1970 about the work. Few academics give credence to his theories, and his work is pretty much disregarded.
I’m only familiar with the work because my wife’s grandfather wrote a refutation called The Mushroom and The Bride which is sitting in our bookcase.
Si