The Tree of Life: a Mushroom?

[SLD]

I was reading an interesting article on psychedelic mushrooms and their impact on the development of religion. Basically arguing that even European people ate such mushrooms in prehistoric times. Needless to say, they saw gods. But the article sent on to point out that such use may be the source of the tree of life and tree of knowledge myths of Genesis. Note the picture here.



The tree of life closely resembles Amanita muscaria which is well known for its psychoactive properties. Eat some of it and you likely will see a god. Or several. It was used in Northern European religions and the theory is that such use permeated southward and into Mesopotamia and influenced myths in that region.

Interesting thought.

SLD

 

[rousseau]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if this were the case. When people see weird things, they tend to want to believe it, because the alternative is much less interesting.

 

[SLD]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if this were the case. When people see weird things, they tend to want to believe it, because the alternative is much less interesting.

in an unscientific world, there may be little choice but to believe it. At least these people saw God! Unlike modern Christiains who just claim to "experience him."

SLD

 

[dystopian]

You know what else the tree of life looks like?

...a fucking tree.

You don't need to be on drugs to come up with the idea. Even primitive societies would be able to figure out the basic principles behind how a tree scatters its seeds, which are then nourished in the earth. They'd even be able to figure out that decaying life;corpses; can nourish the seeds, becoming part of the cycle in the process. From that, a primitive culture might well conclude that everything is connected, life and death all being part of the same cycle, the world just being a bigger tree, etc etc. Which certainly seems to fit the description of the tree of life concept a hell of a lot more than "ate shrooms, saw gods."

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Somebody has been reading John M. Allegro's "The Cross and the Sacred Mushroom." Everything longer than it is wide is a penis, and therefore SACRED MUSHROOM!

Eldarion Lathria

 

[SLD]

Somebody has been reading John M. Allegro's "The Cross and the Sacred Mushroom." Everything longer than it is wide is a penis, and therefore SACRED MUSHROOM!

Eldarion Lathria

It was quoted! But different. Nothing in the article discussed sex. It talked a lot about how a lot of religions were based on psychoactive plants causing people to really see a god, and then later linking those religions to European based religious groups and ultimately to Middle Eastern mythology. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but it is interesting.

SLD

 

[SLD]

You know what else the tree of life looks like?

...a fucking tree.

You don't need to be on drugs to come up with the idea. Even primitive societies would be able to figure out the basic principles behind how a tree scatters its seeds, which are then nourished in the earth. They'd even be able to figure out that decaying life;corpses; can nourish the seeds, becoming part of the cycle in the process. From that, a primitive culture might well conclude that everything is connected, life and death all being part of the same cycle, the world just being a bigger tree, etc etc. Which certainly seems to fit the description of the tree of life concept a hell of a lot more than "ate shrooms, saw gods."

No. That picture, a Chrisitan Fresco, looks nothing at all like a tree. It looks exactly like a mushroom.

Maybe the argument is a bit out there, but it isn't completely off base. Of course we'll never know for sure absent the invention of a time machine, but it is an interesting idea that a lot of religion may have arisen simply because of hallucinations.

SLD

 

[dystopian]

You know what else the tree of life looks like?

...a fucking tree.

You don't need to be on drugs to come up with the idea. Even primitive societies would be able to figure out the basic principles behind how a tree scatters its seeds, which are then nourished in the earth. They'd even be able to figure out that decaying life;corpses; can nourish the seeds, becoming part of the cycle in the process. From that, a primitive culture might well conclude that everything is connected, life and death all being part of the same cycle, the world just being a bigger tree, etc etc. Which certainly seems to fit the description of the tree of life concept a hell of a lot more than "ate shrooms, saw gods."

No. That picture, a Chrisitan Fresco, looks nothing at all like a tree. It looks exactly like a mushroom.

Most depictions of the tree of life, christian or otherwise, do in fact look like trees. Finding one or two exceptions doesn´t somehow demonstrate that mushrooms are at the base of it all. The tree of life is a common concept in many religions, Christianity did not invent it. Even in religions which we know partook liberally in psychotropic substances, the tree of life is still most commonly depicted and described as an actual tree, and not a mushroom. Besides, that particularly fresco is actually relatively recent and not very close to the religion´s origins. It dates from 1291, found in Plaincouralt Abbey in France, and many art historians do not in fact consider it a depiction of a mushroom at all. I found this reference to it from the 1969 book ´Soma, Divine mushroom of life´, -

..the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms...and the similarity with Amanita muscaria is purely fortuitious. The Plaincourault fresco is only one example -- and, since the style is provincial, a particularly deceptive one -- of a conventionalized tree type, prevalent in Romanesque and early Gothic art, which art historians actually refer to as a "mushroom tree" or in German, Pilzbaum. It comes about by the gradual schematization of the impressionistically rendered Italian pine tree in Roman and Early Christian painting, and there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this development -- unknown of course to mycologists...What the mycologists have overlooked is that the mediaeval artists hardly ever worked from nature but from classical prototypes which in the course of repeated copying became quite unrecognizable. (Erwin Panofsky, p 179)

 

[SLD]

Fair enough. The artist meant for it to be a tree. It still looks like a mushroom though. I suppose by the time Xtianity came around, the shroom meme had worn off.

But whether the original story was related to ingesting hallucingenic mushrooms is still an interesting thought deserving of serious discussion.

SLD

 

[Juma]

Fair enough. The artist meant for it to be a tree. It still looks like a mushroom though. I suppose by the time Xtianity came around, the shroom meme had worn off.

xtianity??? You know where the tree of life and fruit of wisdom is mentioned? It has very little to do with jesus...

 

[SLD]

It was a Xtian fresco. That's all.

SLD

 

[bilby]

Fair enough. The artist meant for it to be a tree. It still looks like a mushroom though. I suppose by the time Xtianity came around, the shroom meme had worn off.

But whether the original story was related to ingesting hallucingenic mushrooms is still an interesting thought deserving of serious discussion.

SLD

It is an unsupported hunch; a notion; at best, an idea. Such notions are myriad and valueless. It is not very interesting unless you were the originator of the thought; and is deserving only of a couple of sentences of discussion:

Was the story of the tree of life related to ingesting hallucingenic mushrooms?

No. There is no reason to think that it was.

 

[dystopian]

Fair enough. The artist meant for it to be a tree. It still looks like a mushroom though. I suppose by the time Xtianity came around, the shroom meme had worn off.

But whether the original story was related to ingesting hallucingenic mushrooms is still an interesting thought deserving of serious discussion.

No, it isn't. As I already explained, you don't need to be on drugs to come up with the tree of life concept. It's practically self-evident to any primitive culture.

 

[Atheos]

Slightly off topic I know, but why is this fresco believed to be a depiction of the tree of life? It looks more to me like it would depict the tree of knowledge as it has the serpent intertwined on it.

 

[Malintent]

In a pre-industrialized society where Fire is the supreme force and wood the only fuel.. Eat it's fruit, climb its branches to safety, and burn its wood to stay warm and cook. The tree was holy. The tree IS life.

 

[Atheos]

In other news I guess Eve didn't have boobies until she needed 'em for Cain and Abel. Before then she was sporting a tight set of abs and big ol' biceps. Adam and Steve after all!

 

[dystopian]

Slightly off topic I know, but why is this fresco believed to be a depiction of the tree of life? It looks more to me like it would depict the tree of knowledge as it has the serpent intertwined on it.

There's actually no clear distinction between biblical tree of life and the tree of knowledge; some scholars argue that they are one and the same.

 

[Atheos]

First I've heard of that interpretation. Interesting.

 

[Kharakov]

First I've heard of that interpretation. Interesting.

You can't live without learning, you can't learn without living. The lessons are not all pleasant, and some of the solutions (manipulating your children for a bit of peace) can end up backfiring horribly.

 

[credoconsolans]

Nah.

Mushrooms grow where it's mild, damp and dark with humus for soil.

People who lived in deserts or above the Arctic Circle still came up with gods. No mushrooms necessary.