The Hidden Symbols - by Clark Heinrich
(Excerpted from "Magic Mushrooms in Religion & Alchemy) - AVAILABLE
HERE
Part II | Part I
Moses may or may not have been a religious man before he went into
hiding, but he certainly was after his first encounter with Yahweh
on the Mountain of God. A burning plant, indeed. After all the
stories of Agni and Shiva that have been presented it is difficult
not to think of the fly agaric once again, and the setting is
perfect. It is in the high mountain conifer forests of the Middle
East that the Amanita genus is found, and if there were any segment
of the desert population with a knowledge of mountain mushrooms it
would have been shepherds. Few people had reason to climb to the
high mountain meadows, but shepherds routinely did so. During and
after the rainy season the mountain forests fill with grasses and
flowers, so during these times desert shepherds drive their sheep to
the mountains to feed. The rain also brings many species of
mushrooms to these same meadows. The only "burning" plant that
enables one to speak with God, at least the only one I have found,
is the fiery fly agaric (plate 18).
It is possible that the burning bush story represents Moses' finding
the fly agaric on his own accidentally, but it is more likely that
he was initiated into a shepherdic mushroom cult by Jethro, the
Midianite priest whose flocks Moses was pasturing. This part of the
tale hides several other mushroom analogies, in addition to the
"flaming plant" correspondence these other parallels seem to be
cultic details intentionally inserted into the story. For example,
after getting Moses' attention the first thing the god-plant says
is, "Take off your shoes! The ground on which you are so carelessly
stamping is holy!" This is vital information, not a pious religious
observance, if the plant doing the talking is a mushroom. A cult
would want its novice foragers to know that when hunting for the
fiery prey, as soon as the first mushroom is sighted it is a good
practice to stand still and look around carefully, especially in the
immediate vicinity of one's feet, because if a person can see one
mushroom there are probably others nearby, possibly underfoot and
unbeknownst to the hunter. Walking through a fruiting grove barefoot
is not only more respectful of the god, but it is also more prudent.
There is less likelihood of damaging the harvest.
Moses was made aware that he was in the presence of a god; one can
sometimes feel the same way during fly agaric intoxication. One can
also feel extremely energetic and strong, and this strength is not
an illusion. It is well known among Siberian users of the fly agaric
that feats of tremendous physical endurance are possible under its
influence. After "meeting" the god-plant, Moses felt strong enough
to come out of hiding and try to right the wrongs being done to his
people. He could now speak forcefully enough to argue with the
Pharaoh, and well enough to convince the Israelites to follow him.
This from a man with formerly "uncircumcised lips," which implies a
speech impediment of some kind. We are reminded by this phrase of
Abraham's similar conversation with God on a mountain top and must
wonder about the inordinate interest these men had in circumcision.
Moses protested that he wouldn't know how to name the god when
people asked him on whose authority he spoke, and the god said his
name was, "I am," and "I am who I am." On one level this can be
viewed as sophisticated philosophy, a way of forcing people to
accept that the god exists within them by making the god's name an
act of identification with the person. "Who is God?" "I am." Moses
realized that "Lam" is the nature of God because when Moses ate the
mushroom he felt the god within himself as himself. And because this
is a difficult concept to grasp without personal experience, Moses
kept it to himself once he arrived in Egypt to round up the
Israelites, since there wouldn't be enough mushrooms for everyone
anyway.
The two "signs" Moses received from Yahweh may be signs of the
mushroom and not tricks to show Pharaoh. The first sign, his staff
turning into a serpent and back again, is reminiscent of the serpent
and the tree in the Garden of Eden story as well as the "Pillar"
appellation of Soma and Shiva. The "stiff staff' that changes into a
"wriggling snake" and back again is undeniably phallic as well as
being another mushroom parallel.
The second sign occurred when Moses put his hand "into his breast"
and it came out covered with scaly white patches. These patches
correspond to the white veil fragments covering the "breast" of the
fly agaric. The somewhat sticky pieces sometimes adhere to the skin
when handling the fresh mushroom but are easily wiped off, just as
they can be wiped off the cap.
If the serpent-staff and the white patches failed to convince, Moses
was told to pour water that would "turn bloody." Dried fly agarics
immersed in water turn the water a dilute red as though a quantity
of blood had been mixed with it. The same thing happens to urine, as
noted earlier.
These were the signs given to Moses to convince others that he had
found the correct god-plant: the plant grows in the mountains, low
to the ground; it contains the power of a god; it resembles a
serpent in several ways; it stands on one "staff' and is phallic in
appearance; it has white patches covering its "breast"; and it glows
red like a live coal.
Scholars are at a loss to explain why Yahweh tried to kill Moses
just as Moses was leaving to perform the task Yahweh himself had
assigned. Anyone wishing to demonstrate the perfidy of the ancient
God would have to go no further than this verse, so its inclusion
here is curious. Since no one has been able to come up with even a
remotely plausible explanation of the episode, I will offer one.
We know that sex magic was used extensively by the Tantrics and
others in India who also used the fly agaric, and I have conjectured
that the fly agaric was used in the sexual practices. The foreskin
of the penis is related to the cap of the fly agaric. It could
easily be construed to refer to the whole cap and not just the
universal veil, and since the entire cap separates from the base at
"circumcision," cutting off the cap still leaves the phallic stalk
intact. Moses' wife touches her son's "foreskin" to the penis of her
husband and says, "Surely you are a bloody husband to me." What
could this possibly mean? We know that Shiva found a golden "linga"
that had been placed in a vagina, perhaps with a penis-stone. There
is no reason an actual penis couldn't be used for the same purpose,
which would certainly have made Moses a "bloody husband" to his
wife, given the way "bloody" juice flows from the moistened "cap. A
woman using the fly agaric in similar fashion by herself could also
address the mushroom directly with the same statement, "Surely you
are a bloody husband to me." For that matter, so could a man.
The story also appears to record a near death experience that Moses
suffered, because "Yahweh tried to kill him"; a fly agaric consumer
sometimes unexpectedly experiences the same thing. The same
god-plant that had revealed mysteries and given Moses newfound
strength now appeared to be taking his life; his wife may actually
have made a desperate offering of her son's foreskin to placate the
penis-mushroom that was raging inside Moses, touching it to his
penis in an act of sympathetic magic. Or perhaps the near death
experience prompted Moses to experiment with ways of bypassing the
digestive system in order to avoid getting sick, as explained in
chapter 5.
Moses recovered, of course, and made his way to Egypt. He and Aaron
met with Pharaoh and showed him their magic, but Pharaoh was not
impressed by it. What he was impressed by was the series of natural
disasters the area was going through at the time, which probably
included earthquakes and climate-altering volcanic activity. With
crops failing, livestock dying, and food stocks running low, the
thought of suddenly having 600,000 (or whatever the real number)
fewer mouths to feed every day must indeed have seemed providential
to Pharaoh, and he let the Israelites leave. Yet it appears Moses
played one last trick on Pharaoh.
The angel of death passed over the houses of people who had painted
blood on their doorposts and lintels, an act that is curiously and
specifically linked with unleavened bread. The people had to leave
so quickly, the story says, that they had no time to leaven their
bread dough, and this odd fact is mentioned a number of times; it
was considered so important that unleavened bread became
incorporated into the Passover ritual. Yet it wasn't because they
had to leave quickly that the Israelites ate unleavened bread; Moses
had already told them not to eat leavened bread on that day. What is
the reason for this pretext?
A dried fly agaric cap bears a resemblance to a small loaf of
unleavened bread and has a similar consistency. Perhaps this is a
reminder to eat the mushroom only in its "unleavened" or dried
state, not its expanded blood-red state, so that the angel of death
will pass by.
There may be more, however, to this story of a petty god who
mercilessly slew innocent people to prove a point. There are
documented reports even in modern times of the poisoning of whole
villages due to the consumption of contaminated grain, usually in
the form of bread. The last large-scale outbreaks occurred in France
in 1816. The poisoning agent was a fungus, Clavkeps purpurea, a sac
fungus that attacks the ripening heads of grains; it is a powerful
hallucinogen that is effective in minuscule dosages. Commonly called
ergot, the plant has long been used in obstetrics and is the source
of the extremely potent drug LSD.
Ergotamine poisoning is of two types: gangrenous and spasmodic. The
gangrenous type is characterized by the cessation of circulation in
various parts of the body, resulting in gangrene of the limbs. If
the respiratory muscles are affected death quickly follows. The
symptoms of the spasmodic type are more LSD-like in nature and
include itching and tingling of the skin, visual distortion,
twitching and spasms, deafness, hallucinations, and psychotic
episodes. The different reactions are caused by two or more
different species of Clavkeps, one of which, Clavkeps paspilli, is
significantly more benign in its effects.
Ergot poisoning can occur wherever grain is grown and consumed; a
trained eye can easily pick out infected heads of grain. Moses had
been trained in the wisdom of both the Semitic tribes and the
Egyptians. He was familiar with their magic and their pharmacopoeia;
it is entirely feasible that the knowledge of the various ergot
species was part of his education from either or both sources. The
growing of grain, after all, is thought to have come to Egypt by way
of Palestine.
Although there are no Egyptian records of the Israelite "sojourn" in
Egypt, it appears from Hebrew writings that by the time of the
Exodus a large part of the working class was comprised of Hebrews.
There is no reason to assume that they were only brickmakers, the
only Jewish trade mentioned in the story. If the circumstances
required it, foreigners were employed at virtually every type of
work that needed to be done, including farming, milling, and baking;
cooks and housekeepers were especially prized among the upper
classes. If Moses had really wanted to impress Pharaoh with the
power of an angry Yah-weh, he could have made a great show of
threatening Pharaoh in front of witnesses, as he did prior to the
killing of the firstborn; if Yahweh had done nothing by the next day
Moses would lose face and leave defeated, but if Yahweh performed
according to Moses' threat, Pharaoh would be forced to recognize
Yahweh's power and capitulate. The story tells us that Moses won:
there were dead people throughout the city, yet the Israelites were
all healthy and unharmed.
Barring as unreasonable partisan complicity on God's part, what
should we assume happened here? Could Moses have poisoned the
Egyptians' bread supply with ergot? Logic dictates that if the story
has any validity at all the people were poisoned. Moses could have
delivered poison to virtually every Egyptian in the city and many of
their animals if he had somehow been able to get it into the daily
bread, which was the staple food of the whole country; large
bakeries were common in the cities. The only poison possibly
available to Moses, which could have caused such widespread sickness
and death overnight, seemingly selective in its bizarre symptoms and
with low, effective dosages was ergot. But how would this have been
accomplished?
Consider this: Moses has word sent secretly to Jewish domestics and
bakers throughout the city, especially those in the Pharaoh's palace
and the homes of influential citizens, that the bread of the
Egyptians is to be leavened on a certain day with leavening "from
Yahweh," which will help the Israelites win their freedom. They are
supplied with a lump of leavening that is infected with species of
Claviceps fungus, dried and ground into fine powder. In those days
all leavening was done in the "sour dough" method; that is, for each
day's baking a small amount of fermented dough kept over from the
previous day was kneaded into larger amounts of fresh dough,
leavening the whole amount. On the given day the Israelites are to
use only this "special" leavening when they make bread and must eat
none of the bread themselves. Only the Egyptians are to eat it. To
be sure of their own safety the bakers must eat bread with no
leavening whatsoever.
The same prohibition is given to all other Israelites as well: on
that day eat only unleavened bread and do not even have leavening in
the house. When the fateful day arrives everyone does as instructed,
and soon most of the Egyptian population is in the throes of a very
bad LSD-type experience (or worse). There is wailing in the streets;
there is bedlam everywhere. Many are extremely sick or dying; many
are completely out of their minds. Pharaoh, whose own firstborn son
was among the dead, summons Moses and orders him and the Israelites
to leave Egypt immediately. Pharaoh realized then that Moses was not
the smalltime magician he had appeared to be; he had the ear of a
powerful and cruel god. Pharaoh's whole city was sick or dying, yet
the Israelites were all fit and healthy. Pharaoh had no choice; he
let them leave.
Yahweh, through Moses, told the Israelites to "ask" the Egyptians
for silver and gold to take with them, each one asking his or her
neighbor. The author says the Egyptians complied because "Yahweh
gave the people great prestige in the eyes of the Egyptians, and
they gave what was asked of them." Sure. In the midst of
unparalleled misery and death the whole city revives just long
enough to cheerfully give all their gold and valuables to the
Israelites, the same Israelites, who were despised slaves.
Now imagine a city filled with sick, hallucinating, and dying people
who don't quickly revive when the Israelites walk into their homes,
and the inappropriate generosity of the Egyptians suddenly makes
sense. They were too sick or out of their minds to put up any
resistance whatsoever; the Israelites, as the story so indelicately
phrases it, "plundered" the Egyptians; they robbed them blind.
Leaving with vast herds of animals and all the gold, silver,
jewelery, fabric, and clothing their animals could carry, the only
thing the Israelites seem to have neglected in their looting was a
raid on the granaries; as a consequence they ran out of staple
foodstuffs quickly on their journey.
Before reaching the Mountain of God the wanderers experienced the
miracle of the manna. What this was is anybody's guess, but it does
have certain mushroom parallels that, while probably not relating
directly to the fly agaric in this instance, may be a remnant of a
story that does. The manna made its appearance overnight, just as
mushrooms seem to. They were round and white, as some mushrooms are,
notably puffballs and embryonic fly agarics. If the manna-balls were
kept overnight they bred maggots; mushrooms are vulnerable to maggot
infestation, and this is a real problem with the fly agaric. Many is
the time I brought home what seemed to be an uninfected specimen
only to find it teeming with maggots in the morning. The manna kept
overnight also stank: rotting fly agaric flesh smells like carrion,
truly horrid. Fly agaric also has an anorexic effect when eaten
which lasts for many hours. The mushroom correspondences indicate
that the story is a conflation of cultic lore and an early survival
tale.
The next miracle we encounter is the striking of a rock to obtain
water. As well as looking like an egg in its early life, the young
fly agaric also resembles a rough white stone, an image later
encountered in Christianity and alchemy. This means that an unusual
reference to a magic stone could possibly be a reference to the fly
agaric.
We've seen that the pillar gods of India correspond to the fly
agaric, as does Moses' "Staff of God." Not only does he carry the
serpent-staff of God, he becomes known as the Staff of God; Moses
becomes a personification of the god-plant as well as a user of it,
the same thing that happened to Soma, Vishnu, Agni, Shiva and
Hanuman. "Staff," like "pillar" and "serpent," also has the
alternative reading of "penis," as we saw with Shiva. Moses had a
staff that sometimes was like a serpent and sometimes like an erect
penis, which suggests that perhaps the staff Moses used to strike
the mushroom-stone to release the pent-up waters was his penis,
which is not a satisfying image. But the same elements can be stated
in a different way: Moses "makes water" from the mushroom-stone; it
manifests magically through the agency of his "staff." A gloss puts
the location of the miracle at Horeb, home of the fiery god-plant
known for its ability to produce two types of magic water.
It is interesting to note in this regard that Perseus, beheader of
the snake-festooned Medusa and recent convert to the worship of
snake-festooned Dionysus, named the city of Mycenae after a
toadstool he found growing on the site. A stream of water poured
forth from the toadstool. Later, as we will see, the European
alchemists likewise extracted divine water from a stone.
When the vast caravan finally reached the Mountain of God it was the
rainy season and thunderstorms were raging on the mountain's slopes.
Moses' timing was perfect: the rainy season meant it was also
mushroom season. The first thing he did on arrival was to issue a
spurious decree from Yahweh: "Anyone who so much as touches even the
foot of the mountain will immediately be put to death." Then he put
up boundary markers along the base of the mountain so there would be
no question about the point past which it would be deadly to tread.
Let us assume that Moses came back here primarily (or wholly) to
harvest mushrooms during the rainy season. These mushrooms could
serve him well in his new role as leader and priest of a small
nation in terms of the spiritual counsel and sheer physical energy
they would provide. But if the people found out, two things could
happen. They might want mushrooms for themselves, which due to the
limited supply would mean he wouldn't end up with any; or they might
brand him as a magician or necromancer and kill him (which wasn't as
likely since the people seemed to like magicians and necromancers at
the time). It was the Moses the magician's—I mean God's—own laws
that made these practices a capital offense.
So it was probably for reasons of supply that Moses kept the real
purpose of his expedition secret as well as the unavoidable fact
that the mushrooms gave him an immense advantage in his dealings
with the people. It allowed him to operate at another level of
consciousness entirely; the Israelites believed anything he told
them because when he was under the influence of the fly agaric,
which appears to have been often, he spoke with the power and
authority of a god. These people were not twentieth-century
sophisticates; they were conditioned to superstition and magical
thinking, a trait that Moses exploited to the maximum degree.
Moses didn't want anyone even to see a fly agaric, because they are
so striking that they elicit immediate interest. They do not go
unnoticed. If secrecy is the intent it becomes imperative to keep
people away from the whole area in which the mushrooms are found, in
this case an entire mountain or range. And this was not a
half-measure; the death penalty assured that the prohibition would
be taken seriously. Once the taboo was established (the second taboo
of the Hebrew Bible; the first was the fruit of Eden) Moses had free
run of the mountain and its forests. He knew exactly where he was
and where he was going, and he also knew that he would not soon pass
that way again, if ever. As a priest of the fiery god-plant Yahweh
he was duty-bound to harvest every fly agaric he could get his hands
on. The story tells us that Moses spent a total of at least eighty
days alone on the mountain, which in a bumper year could have
resulted in numerous specimens. A harvest can easily extend to that
length if the rains are propitious and evenly spaced.
A bumper crop would have presented problems to someone who wanted to
keep his harvest a secret. It would have been difficult keeping
anything secret among the thousands of people living together in the
most intimate conditions imaginable; trying to hide several large
bags of dried mushrooms would have been nearly impossible,
especially for Moses, whose every move was scrutinized. His solution
was ingenious: he told the ever-gullible throng that Yahweh had
ordered them to construct a box of certain dimensions and out of
certain materials, and that the box was to be used exclusively for
storing the tablets of the Word of God; Moses even showed the people
the two small tablets that would go inside. No one seems to have
noticed that the ark itself was vastly overbuilt: measuring 52
inches x 31 inches x 31 inches, it could have held dozens or even
hundreds of such tablets. Or thousands of dried mushroom caps.
No sooner had Moses issued the decree to build the ark than he
pronounced still another taboo: once construction was complete,
anyone who so much as touched the ark would be put to death
immediately. It was carried by rings and poles so that even the
bearers would not be in danger of touching it. There were no
exceptions. Years later when a faithful steward reached out and
righted the ark when it was about to tumble to the ground, the man
was executed on the spot, even though he had saved the ark from
desecration.
There had to have been as great a secret attached to the ark as
there was to the Mountain of God for the same excessive taboo to be
applied to both. There was, and it was the same secret: the fiery
god-plant, grown on the Mountain of God and carried away in the Ark
of God. And for those who inadvertently discovered the secret, or
simply got too close to it, the penalty was the same: instant
execution.
After his first forty days on the mountain Moses returned with the
Tablets of the Pretext and was shocked to see the people dancing and
fornicating in front of a gold bull. The worship of God as a bull
was happening at the time in several places, including Canaan,
Syria, and of course India, where the "bull" was the red mushroom
that turns to gold when it dries. Which form of bull worship the
Israelites were performing is not known, but once again there are
curious similarities to the ritual use of fly agaric in other areas.
We are told that Moses "burned" the bull and ground it to powder,
which, unless the bull had been made of wood and merely coated with
gold, would not have been possible. He then put the powder in water
and made all the participants drink. This sounds more like a ritual
than a form of punishment, but punishment comes swift and sure after
the drinking episode. "Put the bull-plant next to fire until it
becomes golden and so dry that it is easily powdered. Mix the powder
with water and drink." These imagined instructions give a
sophisticated recipe not only for bringing about the vital chemical
changes that drying produces, but also for getting the mushroom into
the stomach without chewing it. Whatever the Israelites were really
doing in Moses' absence is unknown, but the inclusion of the
bull-burning episode in the story seems to be another misplaced
remnant of cultic mushroom practice.
After ordering the slaughter of thousands of innocent people Moses
issued instructions for constructing the ark and the tabernacle and
then went back to the mountain for forty more days. When he returned
his face was glowing so much that people thought something was wrong
with him. When a user consumes a large quantity of fly agaric
mushrooms this is what happens: the face glows like a red lantern.
Capillaries in the skin dilate and the face can become engorged with
blood to the extent that others become concerned for the person's
well-being. It is not a subtle blush; it is extremely noticeable.
Adding to the overall effect is the fact that portions of the face
can drain of blood while the rest of the face remains engorged,
creating an even stranger sight: a bright red face with white spots.
This is what happened to Moses every time he "talked" with God in
privatey and it was so unusual and noteworthy that it has a
prominent place in the story.
The veil Moses wore to cover his brightness can be seen as symbolic
of the veil that covers the face of Yahweh's angel, the cap of the
mushroom, and therefore can be seen as an act of sympathetic magic
on Moses' part. It appears though that Moses used the veil as
another ruse. The story says he wore the veil at all times except
when he came out of the tabernacle tent with face aglow to reveal
Yahweh's latest messages to the people; then he would again put on
the veil and wear it until the next time talked to Yahweh. I propose
that far from being worn to hide his illuminated countenance, the
veil was instead worn to hide his ordinary, non-illuminated face
during the times he was not intoxicated. It would have been more
advantageous for Moses to have the people think that he was always
in such an exalted condition.
Toward the end of their wanderings the Israelites passed through a
mountainous region near Mount Hor and the people were attacked by
"fiery winged serpents," whose poison evidently killed some of them.
Moses was asked to intervene with Yahweh on their behalf and was
told by Yahweh to make a fiery serpent of metal and put it on a
pole: this would stop the poisoning. Once again we seem to have
cultic information masquerading as a historical event, although it
is entirely possible that an actual event forms the basis of the
story.
We are told that the people had no food, then that they were
poisoned by fiery winged serpents, which we immediately recognize as
a metaphor for the fly agaric. Hungry people forage for food; if fly
agarics were found it is likely they would have been eaten, which
would have resulted in numerous poisonings, some of them fatal if
the hungry person in question could have wolfed down enough of them.
In order to stop the poisonings the simple expedient would be to
turn those fiery serpents into fiery metallic serpents; that is, dry
the fresh mushrooms to make them safer and more tolerable.
It has been pointed out that when a mature fly agaric specimen is
viewed in profile it resembles a bird. If that same mushroom is
allowed to dry intact the bird disappears and is replaced by a
"fiery serpent," due to the changing shape of the cap and its new
metallic color. It is the fiery winged serpent on a pole that
eliminates poisoning.
An Italian artist of the late fifteenth century seems to have been
aware of the secret meaning of the fiery winged serpent in his
depiction of the same event (plate 20). The painting shows a fiery
serpent attacking the Israelites. The serpent is directly under a
tree, where one finds the fly agaric. Its back, or top, is red with
white spots and a convex curve in the manner of a mushroom; his
underside is not only white like the mushroom's underside is but
also has thin, protruding scales that resemble mushroom gills. The
beast looks directly at the viewer with a conspiratorial smile on
his face. The two lower victims, already dealt with by the monster,
have the look of wishing they were dead; the one with his fingers on
his chest looks as though he is about to vomit More examples of
suspicious medieval and Renaissance artworks will be explored later.
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