Joseph Smith and Magic Mushrooms

    

 Once one understands the concept of Irony and how mushrooms work, it occurred that others figured this out; and, started a new religion or cult based on it.  One in particular was Joseph Smith and the founding of the Latter Day Saints.  There were the disappearing golden tablets,  and seeing stones.  Both of which in the Bible have been symbols for the Mushrooms.  And he said that Jesus visited North America.  It was suspected that Joe was partying with the local Algonquin natives who ate the mushrooms.  Also, Joe was a free mason.  I started to do some research and lost it.  However, the vibe is out there.  Here is a video by Dr. Rush.

Link to video:

Dr. Rush on Mushrooms as the Golden Tablets

Also was a paper written by Robert Beckstead, called "Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom"

Did hallucinogens facilitate Joseph Smith’s visions & those of early Mormon converts? In his 1975 book, Hearts Made Glad, Lamar Petersen carefully documented the use of intoxicants by Joseph Smith and early converts to the LDS Church. While mostly interested in the consumption of various fermented and distilled alcohols, Petersen also noted strange behaviors associated with the sacramental use of what seemed to outside observers to be medicated wine. It appears that soon after the Church was organized in New York and later in Ohio, members partook of wine in sacrament meetings which occasioned visionary states and strange behaviors not typically associated with alcohol consumption or intoxication. It is my thesis that beginning at a young age, Joseph Smith experimented with psychedelic plants and that many of Joseph Smith revelations and much of his behavior can be attributed to the use of psychedelics. Following Joseph Smith’s death, the pragmatic Brigham Young had no interest in psychedelic material, or was unaware of its use, and hence it did not become a part of Utah Mormonism. However, James Strang and Fredrick M. Smith (Joseph Smith’s grandson and president of the RLDS Church) perpetuated the use of psychedelics in their branches of Joseph Smith’s original movement. The use of psychedelics by the Strangites and the RLDS Church could not be sustained.

Link to paper:

The Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom

William Blake and Magic Mushrooms

“I do not suggest that St. John of Patmos ate mushrooms in order to write the Book of Revelations. Yet the succession of images in his Vision, so clearly seen but such phantasmagoria, means for me that he was in the same state as on be-mushroomed. Nor do I suggest for a moment that William Blake knew the mushroom when he wrote this of the clarity of vision…” page 40, Carl A. P, Ruck, in Sacred Mushrooms: Secrets of Eleusis

I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.  Revelations 10:10, St. John

A dragon red and hidden Harlot which John in Patmos saw
From Milton, William Blake

     In 1954, Aldous Huxley published The Doors of Perception, a book about his experience using mescaline, the active psychotropic in peyote.  He took the title from William Blake’s, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”  In the 1960’s the psychedelic rock band The Doors, would take their name from the same quote. The full quote reads,” If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite/For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern,” (page93).  If Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison used psychoactive substances to open these doors of perception, it would seem likely that William Blake did as well.

     If one never looked at the art of William Blake or knew of his background in Gnosticism, it is possible to come to the conclusion that he was simple inspired. However, If one takes a closer look at his work, in conjunction with such works as John M. Allegro’s, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, or Jan Irving and Andrew R Astrotheology and Shamanism, or my Hacking into Heaven: Mushrooms and the Bible, it should be obvious that William Blake knew the source of the Bible to be the mushroom, Amanita muscaria more commonly referred to as fly agaric; and that he consumed them to become inspired. In this work, I will analyze the engravings and poetry of William Blake to demonstrate beyond a doubt that he used mushrooms, and incorporated them into his art, in fact emulating the Bible.

     Deconstructing a myth is a difficult task, for it involves tearing apart something sacred and rebuilding it into something more realistic; it is akin to ripping the wings off of an angel to bring the image back down to earth.  For example, part of the William Blake myth involves Blake having a vision of god at the age of four.  How can one confirm of deny this happened? How at four years old, do you have the linguistic ability to express a vision of god? Unless of course, Blake relates the story later in life to give credence to the narrative of his poetic vision.  This story comes to us from Blake’s wife, Katharine, and is recounted in the Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, “You know dear, the first time you saw god was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the widow, and set you a screaming” (77).  Furthermore, this comes from a conversation Robinson had with Katherine in 1827, after Blake’s death.  Also, while Blake had some recognition during his own time, he was not published, and most of his work was in private collections.

     Alexander Gilchrist wrote The Life of William Blake in 1863, nearly 40 years after Blake’s death.  While it provides the narrative of Blake’s life, it does so by relying on dated information given to Gilchrist by Blake’s surviving friends.  To really understand Blake’s work, it is more important to look at who inspired his style and philosophies: Jacob Boehm and Emmanuel Swedenborg.  Both Boehm and Swedenborg attempted to reinterpret the Bible, and created their own methodology for their exegeses.  Both men came to the conclusion that the Bible was a sort of code in which the truth was hidden.  Consider the following quote from Boehm’s Clavis :

10. Reason will stumble, when it sees heathenish terms and words used in the explanation of natural things, supposing we should use none but scripture phrase (or words borrowed from the Bible); but such words will not always ply and square themselves to the fundamental exposition of the properties of nature, neither can a man express the ground with them: also the wise heathen and Jews have hidden the deep ground of nature under such words, as having well understood that the knowledge of nature is not for every one, but it belongs to those only, whom God by nature has chosen for it.

And consider a similar quote from Swedenborg’s The White Horse:

7. The Word is not understood, except by those who are enlightened. The human rational faculty cannot comprehend Divine, nor even spiritual things, unless it be enlightened by the Lord (n. 2196, 2203, 2209, 2654). Thus they only who are enlightened comprehend the Word (n. 10323). The Lord enables those who are enlightened to understand truths, and to discern those things which appear to contradict each other.

     Both excerpts suggest that the actual words of the Bible are not to be taken literally, but interpreted.  Furthermore, Boehme suggests that only those chosen by god will receive insight, while Swedenborg suggests that only the enlightened will understand these spiritual truths. Apparently, Boehme and Swedenborg feel they are in possession of this faculty to discern the truth of the word, but where did they get this divine knowledge? How where they selected?

     Secret societies abounded in medieval Europe, and it has been suggested by many that the secrets of the Divine mystery of Jesus Christ have been passed down through secret societies and the founders of these societies, especially through the alchemical works of Paracelsus and secret society of Freemasonry.  Rather than try to prove that William Blake lived across the street from a Masonic temple, and was a freemason, as well as those who inspired him, I would rather focus on the work of Blake to demonstrate the themes he includes come from Freemasonry and alchemy. It was through these secret societies that certain members were initiated in into the inner circle and given the true doctrine of the world’s great religions; civilization evolved out of mushroom use, more specifically the consumption of Amanita muscaria. 

     In 1957, the western world was introduced to magic mushrooms via Life magazine, in an article about R. Gordon Wasson’s discovery of the magic mushroom in Mexico. The ancient mushroom ritual was still being practiced by the Mazatec Indians.  Wasson followed up the article with a self-published book, Mushrooms Russia and History.  And in 1969, he self-published another book, Soma: The Divine Mushroom of Immortality, which consequently was sold out before it was even published.  Only a year later, John M. Allegro would publish his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, claiming that the god the ancient Israelites was the Amanita muscaria mushroom.  It wasn’t until 2001, that Dan Merkur published, The Mystery of Manna, which he suggested ergot rather than amanita.  And in 2002, Clark Heinrich published, Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, in which he suggests that the Amanita muscaria mushrooms was behind both religion and alchemy.  Then in 2006, Jan Irving and Andrew Rutajit published, Astrotheology and Shamanism: Unveiling the Law of Duality in Christianity and Other Religions, which reasserted the Amanita muscaria theory.  Most recently, I published my own, Hacking into Heaven: Mushrooms and the Bible, which I too assert that the Bible is based on the psychoactive mushroom Amanita muscaria.  You can download a PDF copy by clicking on the photo of the cover on sidebar.