I heard this guy on a podcast a few months ago, and he actually goes into the role of the preparation of the plants in the Bible, as well as attempts to reverse engineer those recipes. I think a good example is ayahuasca, in which the plants containing the psychoactive agent must be mixed with other ingredients in order for the body to absorb it.
The podcast interview was very interesting. He discusses the role of anointing with oil, the structure of the Hebrew temple (Holy of Holies designed to keep in the smoke), and a number of other ideas that honestly make the Bible make more sense. It’s a far cry from irrefutable scientific evidence, but I think he’s on to something.
Reminds me of the time in high school there was a guy handing out miniature bibles in front of the school, so me an some friends went over, accepted bibles, opened them, tore a page out and started chewing it, and then started mugging around acting weird and saying “oh maaaaan, I can feel the religion starting already.”
That is very unlikely to be true.
I don’t doubt your honesty, you’ve probably been told this, but had you known more about shrooms you wouldn’t have believed it either.
There are some edible looking varieties of Amanita (amatoxins) that will cause horribly torturous extended dying.
Not Muscaria (ibotenic acid and muscimol).
The North American Mycological Association has stated that there were: “no reliably documented cases of death from toxins in these mushrooms in the past 100 years”.
Hi Joey - yes it is! This is the reference:
Melatonin, serotonin, and tryptamine in some Egyptian food and medicinal plants Badria, F. J Med Food. 2002 Fall;5(3):pp. 153-7
Those are in such trace amounts that I still don’t buy the overall premise of the piece – the implication that humans somehow intuited that this was a psychoactive plant.
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I just ate 150 lbs of pomegranates. And now I’m feeling a bit… oh I don’t know… sleepy. And my urine will be bright pink for the next 10 years.
Several of the substances mentioned are useful and, more importantly for the thesis, psychoactive. Try eating or smoking a few grains of frankincense, or drinking wine infused with myrrh - you might find it enlightening.
Hey Joey - you’re right, pomegranate won’t be psychoactive on its own. There are reports of a psychedelic synergy, like this one: http://www.entheogen-network.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5698&start=20#p42383
There also may be another reason it was in the garden, because drugs can deplete neurotransmitter concentrations in the brain, and cause comedowns. Like eating bananas on ecstasy - they aren’t psychoactive, but they provide tryptophan which is depleted by ecstasy, and so they make the comedown shorter and easier. Pomegranate might be synergistically useful, even if not psychoactive on its own. Maybe henna too, and certainly spikenard - which is not psychoactive but boosts dopamine, serotonin etc.
Frankincense is psychoactive as in an antidepressant, not psychedelic. Reading all the “trip reports” on the usual forums from people smoking a lot more then a few grains says they feel a dulling of emotion and maybe see something when they close their eyes.
Mryyh is mixed with wine as a painkiller and the pure resin was snorted for sinus infections. It has a mild opiate like effect at the opioid receptors and a mild stimulating effect. Nothing like actual opiates or caffeine though, and even those aren’t “talk to god” drugs.
Now if they somehow managed to get enough DMT from the right species of Acacia Tree bark that would be a talk to god drug. The evidence makes even that seem a really big stretch though…many many cultures religious rituals are based around actual drugs, and many are not. There is a strong case for fasting rituals in judaism and many cultures have used the mind altering properties of fasting for religious experiences.
The extreme unlikelihood that the knowledge of these substances in this culture at this time period was kept secret and then lost with no trace surviving into modern offshoots, makes it this pretty much kind of thing that exists in academia only so far as the stacks of thesis papers profs have to wade through. oh looooook, another original thesis on how judaism was all drugs and jesus grew up in a buddhist temple. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ if someone wants a religion that has drugs there are plenty better ones to pick from that have way better drugs. lol.
