Did Early Christians Use Hallucinogenic Mushrooms? Archaeological Evidence.

[NeoNaut]

This text is lacking the reproductions of ancient art shown in the original.

Franco Fabbro - March 1996


Comments are welcome to franco.fabbro@ping.be



Use of hallucinogenic substances in ancient religions

The ritual use of hallucinogenic substances has been widely documented for various shamanic cults of Asian, American and African culture. In the so-called major religions hallucinogens have also been found to play a relevant role in ritualistic practice. Some hymns of the Rig Veda for instance, were composed under the influence of a plant called soma, which, according to ethnobotanic studies, has been identified as the mushroom Amanita muscaria, commonly known as fly-agaric [1]. The use of soma in early Indian religion spread to ancient Iran: actually, in Zoroastrianism an intoxicating substance, haoma, was used in rites as a drink, and also in this case researchers suggest that haoma was extracted from the fly-agaric [2]. Most probably, the practice of ingesting hallucinogenic substances in order to reach ecstasy and have visions during religious ceremonies later also influenced Jewish sacerdotal environments, in particular during the first and second deportation of the Jewish people in Babilonia (597 B.C. and 587-520 B.C., respectively). The experience of captivity probably allowed some Jewish sacerdotal groups to become acquainted with and then use particular religious practices that influenced prophetism (cf. the books of Ezekiel and Zechariah in the Bible) and apocalypticism (cf. the books of Daniel in the Bible, and Enoch and Ezra of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha). These practices bore typical features of ecstatic experiences induced by hallucinogens (cf. Ezekiel 1-3; Ezra 9:23-28). Religious habits in early Christianity had so many things in common with early Judaism, and in particular with apocalypticism [3], that a transmission of the techniques to reach ecstasy and visions from early Judaism to early Christianity is most likely to have occurred. Philological studies of the past suggested that some early Christian groups also made use of Amanita muscaria as a hallucinogenic substance during specific religious rites [4]. This hypothesis has been vigorously contested [5], in particular because no historical data were said to be available in order to support it.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Basilica of Aquileia

However, it is my purpose to add further relevant data to corroborate this interesting hypothesis, by bringing new evidence in favour of it. In the worship hall of the ancient Basilica of Aquileia, which is located towards the north of the church, measures 37 meters long and 17 meters wide and dates back to a period before 330 A.D. [6], a beautiful mosaic is very likely to attest to the habit of ingesting mushrooms during early Christian religious ceremonies. Aquileia lies in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea where Italy borders on Slovenia, some 5 km from the coast along a canalized river and about 100 km from Venice.


Plan of the northern hall of the ancient basilica of Aquileia with the mosaics of the first Christian church dating back to a period before 330 A.D. The arrow and circle show the location of the two baskets containing mushrooms and snails. A large proportion of the mosaic has been destroyed with the construction of the church tower (T) erected in the 11th century A.D.


It was founded by the Romans in the 3rd century B.C. and by the 1st century A.D. it was a strategically important military harbour and a flourishing trade centre, counting about 200,000 inhabitants. This town had tight cultural and commercial links with Rome and Alexandria in Egypt, the most important economic and cultural centres at that time, and hosted a large Jewish community [7]. In the oratory of the northern hall (Fig. 1), the most ancient part of the whole basilica, the floor mosaic depicts, among a variety of other objects, animals and symbols, two baskets: one containing red mushrooms and the other nine snails (Fig. 2 and 3). An epigraph in the mosaic states that the oratory was part of a building which was used for religious ceremonies.



Part of the Aquileian mosaic showing the basket with mushrooms.There are at least eight exemplars with dark red caps and typical characteristics of the type Amanita muscaria. Since these mushrooms are contained in a basket some scholars [8] suggest that this is a hint for their use during ceremonies as edible substances and not as mere ornamental patterns.



Part of the Aquileian mosaic showing the basket with snails, most probably of the type Helix (Helix) cincta. Also in this case the presence of a basket suggests that snails were eaten during religious ceremonies probably together with mushrooms.



Its words are: Ianuariu(s) ... de Dei dono v(ovit) p(edes) DCCCLXXX (...), which means that Ianuarius contributed with his money, God's gift, to the costs of 880 feet (26 square meters) of mosaic flooring. It has been suggested that the two baskets containing edible plants and animals hint at ritual meals and agapae enjoyed by early Christians in places of worship [8]. In the basket full of mushrooms there are at least eight exemplars with dark red caps scattered with pale orange mosaic tesserae and white radiating gill-shaped lamellae in the undersurface of the caps. On the basis of the colour and the form of these mushrooms, it is reasonable to suggest that these are fungi of the type Amanita muscaria. Just besides the mushrooms there is a second basket containing nine snails of the type Helix (Helix) cincta, which can be found also nowadays in the fields around Aquileia.
In the 4th century A.D. the mosaic floor of the northern hall was completely covered by the pavement of a new church and only after about 1,500 years, at the beginning of the present century, were the mosaics of the first Christian church in Aquileia unveiled again [9]. By remaining covered for such a long time, the mosaic did not suffer from deterioration and rehandlings by other artists, thus preserving a unique iconography of early Christianity. Illustrations of mushrooms and snails are quite unusual within Christian iconography. Snails were a very common food among the ancient Romans, who ate them also during funeral banquets, because these hibernating animals were symbolically related to burials and resurrection [10]. In addition, the Romans were particularly familiar with snail-breeding techniques, knowing that the way they fed these animals determined their taste and postprandial effects. Amanita muscaria, a hallucinogenic mushroom commonly growing in vast areas of Europe and Asia, is part of the typical vegetation of the Carnic Alps around the territory of Aquileia. The ingestion of 1 to 4 fly-agarics may induce an intense feeling of joy and excitation with a reduction of the sense of fatigue and an enhancement of verbal production. By taking in more pieces (5 to 9), subjetcs first become very agitated and have vivid hallucinations, then they fall in a narcotic-cataleptic state, characterized by a deep sleep, from which they cannot be roused, and a very intense dreaming activity [11]. The psychotropic activity elicited by this mushroom mainly depends on the agent muscimol, which is an agonist of the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) [12]. Muscimol has the highest affinity for the GABA receptors with a weak activity at GABAB receptors, thus being able to modify cerebral excitability in general and in particular motor, emotional and cognitive activities, which are controlled by the basal ganglia and the frontal lobes [13, 14].
Since the assumption of Amanita muscaria may cause gastroenteric symptoms (e.g. nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain), most probably these complications were avoided with simple precautions: Instead of directly eating the mushrooms, it was good practice to first feed snails with these mushrooms for several days and then eat the snails. By doing so, the active hallucinogenic substances contained in Amanita muscaria could be ingested without having nasty gastroenteric side effects. A similar practice is also known among Siberian shamans, who have hallucination experiences after eating the meat of reindeer feeding on Amanita muscaria [15].


Conclusions

The presence of mosaic illustrations in the basilica of Aquileia representing mushrooms with psychotropic properties indicates that some religious rites of early Christianity, which were probably linked to mysterial cults meant to be kept secret, were related to the ingestion of hallucinogenic substances facilitating mystic ecstasy. It still remains to be seen, however, whether these ecstatic techniques were a common heritage of all early Christian churches or whether they were known and practiced only within some heretic groups of Christians. Roman authorities repeatedly accused early Christians of practicing sorcery by using hallucinogenic substances (Origen, Contra Celsum, I,68; VI,38) [16]. However, Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.) bishop of Lyon, maintained that only heretic churches, thus also the gnostic churches, made use of hallucinogens within magic rites (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I,13-15; I,24-25) [17].
The identification of pictures reproducing hallucinogenic mushrooms in the premises of an ancient Christian church may help us to understand some aspects of those mysterious rites or of the so-called "discipline of the arcanum" [18] characterizing the most ancient Christian liturgy that, by definition, had to be kept secret and handed down orally to initiated disciples only.

Copyright © Franco Fabbro --draft-- comments are welcomed at fabfra@univ.trieste.it


Notes and References


Wasson, G.R. Soma. Divine Mushroom of Immortality (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968). Wasson G.R. The soma in the Rig Veda: What was it? Journal of the American Oriental Society, 91: 169-187 (1971).

Gnoli, G. Zoroaster's Time and Homeland. A Study on the Origins of Mazdeism and Related Problems (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, 1980). More recently, D. S. Flattery and M. Schwartz (Haoma and Harmaline, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989) claimed that haoma was not obtained from the mushroom Amanita muscaria, but rather from Peganum harmala, a plant containing a strong psychoactive alkaloid, i.e. harmaline. As the authors report, this hypothesis had been suggested to them by Dr. Claudio Naranjo (pp. 23-25) who described the hallucinogenic effects he himself experienced after ingesting a drink containing harmaline. In addition, Naranjo denies having felt any effect after eating some pieces of Amanita muscaria which he had gathered in California (personal communication). However, it is well known that the concentration of psychoactive agents in Amanita muscaria significantly differs according to the place and the season of gathering. On the other hand, the hallucinogenic effects of this mushroom as well as their variability in concentration have been widely recognized already in the first systematic, scientific papers on hallucinogenic substances (See Lewin, L. Phantastika - Die betäubenden und erregenden Genussmittel, Verlag G. Stilke, Berlin, 1924).

Charlesworth, J.H. Jesus within Judaism. New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries (Doubleday, New York, 1988).

Allegro, J.M. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Doubleday, New York, 1970).

King, J.C. A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1970).

Bertacchi L. in Da Aquileia a Venezia (eds Forlati Tamaro, B. et al.) 185-221 (Scheiwiller, Milano, 1980).

Mirabella Roberti, M. Aquileia e l'Oriente mediterraneo (Arti Grafiche Friulane, Udine, 1977).

Brusin, G. & Zovatto, P.L. 1957. Monumenti paleocristiani di Aquileia e di Grado (Doretti, Udine, 1957).

Von Lanckoronski, K. et al. Der Dom von Aquileia. Sein Bau und seine Geschichte (Gerlach-Wiedling, Wien, 1906).

Gallo, G. L'allevamento della chiocciola (Edagricole, Bologna, 1976).

Waser, P.G. in Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs (ed. Efron, D.H.) 419-438 (Raven Press, New York, 1979).

Schultes, R.E. & Hofmann, A. The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (Thomas Pub., Springfield, 1980).

Lloyd, K.G. & Morselli, P.L. in Psychopharmacology. The Third Generation of Progress (ed. Meltzer, H.Y.) 183-195 (Raven Press, New York, 1987).

Bhatia, K.P. & Marsden C.D.The behavioural and motor consequences of focal lesions of the basal ganglia in man. Brain 117, 859-876 (1994).

Wasson, G.R. Soma. Divine Mushroom of Immortality (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968). See Note A: Explorers, Travelers, Anthropologists, pp.231-302.

Origène. Contre Celse (ed. Borret M.) 5 vol. (Cerf, Paris, 1967-1976). See also Tacito. Annales, 15, 44, 2-5, and L'orazione contro i Cristiani di Marco Cornelio Frontone (in Penna R. 1991. L'ambiente storico-culturale delle origini cristiane. Una documentazione ragionata. Dehoniana, Bologna, pp. 275-277, pp. 283-285).

Irénée de Lyon. Contre les Hérésies (eds Rousseau D. & Doutreleau L.) 8 vol. (Cerf, Paris, 1965-1979).

Luck G. Arcana Mundi. Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987)

Aggiornato il 10 aprile 1996

[Cognoscere]

old news

[nusku]

I've read they drink the reindeers urine and visaversa, I don't know about eating it... the muscaria can be recycled up to 6 times this way....

[GeorgeKush]

There is alot of evidence of psychoactives influencing the religious visions, which is a good thing I wouldn't doubt it, since the mushrooms been here before us for centuries, and people did it then, still doing it now, a spirit.
www.jamesarthur.net has alot of info and theories on amanita muscaria.
I noticed the name Exzekiel was in your post,that's my favorite chapter because it has to do with prophecy. The begining of the chapter it mentions the 13th year <- that means something. And the heavens opened up it came as a cloud. And what's crazy is all these prophets were recieving information from a higher dimension. Psychoactive ) It does actually make sense if you sit and think about it.

Well later on in the chapter of Exzekiel the prophet, God told him something was going to happend ( i dont remember). Exzekiel attempted to persuade the village about it, they didn't listen. Maybe they just thought he was tripping on mushrooms...

This is an interesting topic.

[Hammond]

I've only skimmed through the posts, but I wish to submit my hypothetical theory of a religious account of mushrooms being provided to the Jews in the desert with Moses. Now, I'm not crazy about the bible, but of the story of the Jews having to travel in the desert for 40years, God provided a food, a bread for them and all the descriptions of 'mana' (sp?) match up to that of a mushroom, right down to the last detail. And if you're wondering, HTF could a mushroom grow in the desert, well, there's atmopheric moisture present as well as dew in the mornings. Some mushrooms can grow so fast into a fruiting specimen, it would blow your mind. Anway, this is my three cents and theory, I'll come back and read through this whole thread when I've actually slept, lol
-Hammond

[GeorgeKush]

You are right about those facts Hammond, they are in that url i posted along with my post. I read those passages as well, and infact they are indeed there written. I wouldnt also doubt that the authors of the bible themselves were getting information from a higher dimension as well. Prophecies of disaster not only Exzekiel,but the whole Revelations chapter. Who infact wrote the bible is the question to go with this. Im sure some sort of psychoactivity could unlock our sub-concscious mind to recieve information.

[AbbieNormal]

I also purused James Arthur's mushroom site. I've love to see all his information condensed into a TV or film documentry.

Another rather daring hypothesis he talks about is that Jesus gave out Amanita muscaria at the last supper. The flatten caps with the red streaks looking like human flesh. So, it was both metaphoricly and literally the body and blood of God. Certainly ancient man from other continents were using plants to get closer or to communicate with God, why not the Christians?

This leds me into a realization I had some past Sunday, the traditional Christian day of worship. I grew up a Catholic, church every Sunday, and every day while I was at Catholic boarding school (pre high school, 2yrs). And after like age 10 or so, Holy Communion (the wafers) was part if the the ritual. And the repeating of the words from the last supper concerning the body and blood.

Now some decades later I realize that some of the, shall I say "etheogenic" things I have ingested, have been a more tangable and meaningful sacrament than any of my previous traditional Catholic rituals. I have not turned my back on the whole Catholic thing, my foundation was poured by them, I've just made modifications to the top and added a few rooms (the eastern room for example).

So reading Arthur's mushroom page really blew me away. And yes, I know about the Church of the True Inner Light and DPT as their sacrement. And how the S. American shaman consider Ayahuasca to be their sacrement. Its just nice to hear something that ties western religion with etheogens. And a little validation that there is room for both my house.

[Hammond]

For me, books like Beyond Fear and The Voice of Knowledge really put all the BS of religion and bogus belief-systems into perspective, distilling the truth of its making and distortions, that's all I can say about that. I personally don't consider the bible accurate on many levels. It is highly distorted in its content. Remember, this is my opinon and set of beliefs, I do not wish to impose them upon anyone else, I wish only to express them perhaps out the fact that it is an emotionally charged subject and I feel some relief by stating what I believe is truth, what I have come to see as the truth.

Ancient ethnobotany has great appeal to me though...

[amamark]

Did Jesus really hand out pieces of himself at the last supper? Or did he really hand out muscaria? Or was he actually a mushroom incarnate as a man? Or was he really a literary personification of the mushroom. I’ve heard all the above. Pick your level of acceptability.

“Gospel” = good trance.

Hint: The wafer looks like a mushroom cap, and the “Common Cup” that supposedly contained Jesus’ blood is a chalice; exactly the shape of a mature muscaria, with an inverted cap and upturned gills – complete with red inside. (BTW, the chalice was also the shape of one of the forms of the grail.)

Hmmm.

Now consider that the whole purpose of the Eucharist is to commune with god. Christ is the go-between, between god and man. Let’s call him a catalyst. Oh what the hell, let’s be honest and call him a hallucinogenic drug. What else in this world allows you to talk to god? Is it the science of religion, or true religion rediscovered?

Next time you are in church, just look around. It’s not hard to see mushrooms here and there; stained glass, halos, robes, but especially all the ornate crosses. All you have to do is educate yourself on the many growth stages in the life-cycle of the muscaria carpophore to see the many graphic similarities. And listen to the liturgy. And read the lyrics of the old hymns. It’s not hard, once you know the characteristics of the muscaria, to see and read and hear all kinds of representations of muscaria in church. You can almost imagine you are actually there to worship it, the REAL One True God. Even though these representations are relatively accidental, their original message survives. It’s the mushroom calling to us (to those with an ear to hear) from eons past. Listen and learn; much of what is said about Christ and the kingdom of heaven is also true of the muscaria. As with stories of Christmas, there are many levels of truth in Christianity; the muscaria just happens to be one of the truer ones. It is both awesome and frightening to know you are the only one there who knows what it’s all about, and has any idea of the amount of waste that has been spent by untold millions throughout the ages on worshipping a false god.

The late Jim Dugovic (James Arthur) and I used to converse for hours about these theories 10-15 yrs ago.


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