This is a classic episode for the week, and Uh, to tell you the truth, this is an episode that we were We weren't able to solve this one, but it's a great question. Oh yeah, we um took some stuff. We huddled around a campfire and we wanted to see if we could create religion. It didn't work out, but maybe maybe you know, great apes back in the day found some strange mushrooms laying on the ground and that's what created religion. What do you think did hallucinogens create religion? All right, we'll tune in, folks. This is the one where where Matt and I try to nail down the answer and end up with more questions. Uh, please do right in and let us know if you are having a religious experience of your own. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My name isn't known. They call me Ben and you are you that makes this stuff? They don't want you to know. The gang's all here. The gang is all here, uh, and we're talking about something that a lot of people have some very passionate opinions on. Yes, and this is that old disclaimer that we make in front of every podcast that has to do with anything religious or belief system that is held tightly, and that is that we are not telling you what to believe. Beliefs are your own. Yes, there will be no poo pooing of faith. Yes, every single person as a right to their own personal spiritual beliefs. Two posit otherwise would be at the very least not well thought out correct. And it's kind of the and and an athemat to what we do overall. We're not here to tell you what's what. We're here to look at some sides of issues and presented all as fairly and balanced. Lee, is that a word is American English? Everything is the word. I couldn't agree more so. So we're gonna do is examine the history of one particular religion, look at some you know, sides to it that maybe aren't explored very often in your daily ongoings. Yeah, it's very important. We're looking at this from an historical academic perspective. We want to give a shout out to a friend of the show longtime listener Henry h who gave us this idea. You might remember him from our previous episode on the FBI and counter culture and our whole disclaim or thing. Basically, I feel like we're what we're always implying is science hoologists in the audience. Oh man. We left how her disclaimer on that last episode, though it should have said don't do drugs. I know, speaking speaking, yes, everyone listening, we discourage you from doing drugs. Uh outrightly, we cannot legally tell you that drugs are cool. Most importantly, though, we were joking and we said we were on drugs doing that. Oh yeah, that is very true. That was a joke based on and I know you guys probably know this, but we just had to say it again. We were sleep deprived, me less so than these fellas, but we were playing off of that sleep deprived vibe and writing that like a crazy snake to Valhalla. And yeah, I hope everyone was aware of that. If not, and you thought we were dosing up in the studio, I'm here to tell you otherwise. And we we appreciate all the emails we got. We had several people right in and say, hey, just be sleep deprived all the time, but nol did a great job editing because the raw form had some that was brutal. Yeah, yeah, slippery. So here we are religion. The big are the earliest evidence of religious ideas dates back hundreds of thousands of years, all the way back to what is commonly called the Middle and Lower Paleolithic periods. And just for some perspective here, the average creature qualifying as human during this time would probably disturb you if you just saw them walking on the street today at least, wouldn't recognize them as human. Well, even if they were wearing, you know, the clothes that you yourself were wearing, you would you would notice some obvious, obvious differences. And we don't want to get too too caught up in this, but we did an episode on what are called the like lost races of humanity, such as Dennis Ouvans, looking at differences between Homo rectus and Homo sapiens, Neanderthal and Homo flunzis. Those the little uh huh yeah, the skeleton have been found on on just a very small patch of the world, and the current the current debate is whether it was a true speciation of some sort or whether it was just a community condition for last a better word. So do check that out if you haven't checked it out before. And there's another there's another thing that's really interesting. You can hear. Uh. You can hear our colleague and occasional guest on the show Joe McCormick, who works over its stuff to blow your mind, uh, when he and his co host Robert Lamb did an episode on what is called the bicameral mind. This is crazy. There's this theory that for part of human civilization, people were not self where the way you are now, Like, if you're listening to this, you're thinking in your head, maybe I am listening to this right, just just thought that sentence, right, and then the words that you hear are translated into your own thoughts. Yeah, like an internal model. I usually just see them visually as like letters in a cartoon spelled out in the sky. You know, you know, No, I think it makes sense. You got the you got the word balloons that time. I think I might be working with a tri cameral mind. So what happens is the idea is that in in the distant past of civilization, instead of hearing a voice in your head and thinking, that's my internal dialogue, that's my internal dialogue. These early people would hear a voice and they would think, holy crap, somebody's talking to me. Who who is that in my head? Uh? What are you? Why are you? Are you there? Are you there? God? It's me Kraigner, you know? And uh. And one piece of evidence for folks who believe this is the dramatically different writing style of the Iliad. In the Iliad, classical scholars amongst us will remember it was written somewhere between eight hundred and seven b C or b C E, whatever your favorite flavor is. U. Characters just sort of do things, you know, and their motivations for a large part of this story aren't kind of not present to something happens. Things just happen. And since we know, Greek culture very quickly became a literature of consciousness. Uh. The Iliad is sometimes seen as a great turning point, tipping point shout out to Malcolm Gladwell. Uh, and a window back into what they call the unsubjective times. And every kingdom was at theocracy, and every man was the slave of voices heard whenever novel situations occur. That's crazy and religion. It might also predate humanity, depending on how you define religion. Right, so, higher order mammals like cetaceans a new word, fancy word for dolphins and uh, whales that I just learned, Um, elephants, canines, they all recognize the difference between a living thing and a corpse. Hopefully you can as well. Uh. Millennia before Homo sapiens existed, UM, its predecessors and parallels practiced some form of ancestral recognition, which is an understanding that the body was nothing but a vessel for the mind or an idea. UM. And then archaeologists referred to apparent intentional burials of early Homo sapiens from as early as three hundred thousand years ago as evidence of religious beliefs, which makes sense to me, right, Yeah, they realize that something was there, there is a ritual going yeah, and then it's not and ritual occurs. Other evidence of religious ideas include symbolic artifacts from the Middle middles Stone Age sites in Africa. But of course it's kind of tricky to interpret this. You know, even even in the best case scenario, there's room for interpretation, which is going to be important as we explore this. Archaeological evidence from more recent periods is less controversial. Number of artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic are generally interpreted by scientists as representing religious ideas, meaning, in general, a bunch really smart people who have spent their lives figuring out what this stone shard means all got on the same page and said, you know, cool, they knew he was dead and they did a thing. Yeah. Well, I suppose you could also argue that with enough experience, you know, you might realize that a dead thing starts to be gross and we should probably just get it out of sight and out of mind, or it makes you sad, so you don't want to look at anymore. So let's PERI in the hole in the ground, just Devil's advocating. Now, that's an very you know, that's a very good idea, because you know, many animals, if I remember their pure group or their mate or their offspring dies, they just leave. I'm just like, all right, but I like it here. I don't want to have to look at dead, rotting grand mob for the rest of you know, until for the foreseeable future. Let's let's get her out of let's bury her in this upit. Uh yeah, there are people who know there, there are people who keep keep the remains of their loved ones. And Faulkner has a great story about it. But of course spoilers just in case for a year old story. Well, okay, so spoilers. So we talked about these, let's let's talk about like examples of things that are clearly agreed to be religious. The venus figurines are you know, rather voluptuous, often headless figure right certainly looks headless. All of the examples that I've seen, and there are elaborate burial rituals around the world, there are cave paintings. But where did this all come from? That's today's question. What prompted early humanity or it's close predecessors and parallels? Has Moll said to ascribe occurrences in the physical world to the winds and the systems something unsuitable? Is it drugs? Maybe? Well? Yeah, what connected the either the bicamera mind, what connected the parts of the brain that were previously not connected or you know, was it just an evolutionary thing or was it a chemical yeah? Or was it a social thing? Is essentially we're not sure, Like we as a species. They're they're kind of still tossing this one around, spitballing. But there's theories, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's theories. Uh, let's call one. We had to do it. H d oh, it's not it's not funny for you guys yet, because you're listening and you don't. It's funny if you read it. This is a theory that was put forth by Kelly James Clark. He's a senior research fellow at Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Oh, that is a mouthful a lot. So. He believes that humans on the Serengetti who quote survived to procreate were those who had developed what evolutionary scientists call a hypersensitive agency detecting device or had H a d D becomes in a fourth dimensional pun so in basic terms, in plain terms, this meant that people who are more likely to survive and reproduce, reproduce and pass on their experiences as well as their genes were people who perceived that many other things in the world external things have agency, and what we mean by that is the ability to act of their own cord I have agency. Other things have agency, Like, like, what else what would have agency? Animals walking around might be the one of the first things you notice secret agents other humans secret very didn't say human secret ages like Perry the platypus on Phineas and firm he's a secret agent with agency who was also a platypus. I gotta tell you, I don't know what that is. It's a great show. It's like a kid's show, but adults like it too, all right, kind of like an Adventure Time thing. Right, Yeah, it's a Disney show, but it's actually very clever. It's very well written. Looking into it, do it while looking into it, you'll you'll notice that this this had h a d D. This understanding of how the world worked facilitated this rapid decision making process that people had to go through when they, for instance, heard rustling in the grass. So yeah, perfect, not so much stopping to reflect on the transants of life as going, holy smokes, lions do what they want. I better run. I love that picture of the some of the first humans understanding that that lion can come over here and attack me at any time. Not just oh there's a lion, not just the grass moves, but the grass moves because because so that's the kicker, right. In addition to helping humans make rational decisions, survival based decisions, had may have planted the seeds for what we know as religious thought. Is it sort of like object permanence where it's sort of like, you know, that thing will always behave in that way, or that thing is only behaving this way at this moment that I'm observing it. Yes, So sort of like that if a tree falls in the forest and you're not around, doesn't make a sound, or it's like if that if my mom is there behind that bush, is she really not there? Yeah? Yeah, those are important distincts, That's what I'm saying, Like, well, those are things that we come to psychologically as we grow older. But it's important what we're talking about, you know, in terms of evolution, to make those distinctions that allow us to actually learn from our mistakes. And it's absolutely crucial, and it's one of those early developmental milestones, right like when when your children are growing up, there are really sensitive times in the early years when all of a sudden they have that Eureka moment and you see it happen. Yeah, I've seen it firsthand. Recently with my kids, especially with mirrors, little things like that. We don't have to go into it anyway, it's cool, but mirrors are weird, agreed. So it wasn't just animals and other things moving around that they ascribed agency to. They also ascribed it to things. Sure, these rain drops now are falling on purpose on droptops, but but yeah, things that absolutely don't have agency, like drop tops. I don't know the first human drop. You gotta make the top drop drop on its own drop top. You got to apply something drops the top though, Right, So when the rainfalls, like something dropped that rain, what was it? Yeah, like creation demands a creator? Yeah exactly. I mean we're sitting in this room right now recording this and wait, some someone is going to cut to an ad break. It's me and we're back. But who was it? It was? It was me? It was definitely it was I got it. You don't see it happen. That's the magic of podcasting. That part happens away from your prying eyes. In the same way that some sort of prime mover creates her deity dropped the drops on the tops? What drop? But where does the drop ultimately dropped here's another theory about religion. What if instead of a single individual um adaptation or Shamalan plot twist and the story of humanity, But if it's not just a story about things that apply to individuals reproducing, What if religion is more of a group adaptation. Oh, I could go along with that. This is an idea by Robin Dunbar, and evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist at the University of Oxford in the UK. His work focuses mostly on the behavior of primates, including you know, things like baboons. Why does he sound familiar to me? I think you know? No, I don't. He is the famous proponent of something called Dunbar's number. Ah, you made a video on this, yes, and we talked about this on the show too. And it's the idea that the human brain is physiologically limited. Think about for anyone who works with computers extensively, think about the physiological hardware limits of a computer. There's some software it can't run, there are some things that it doesn't have enough memory to store. Right. We run into this often, as you can imagine daily. What was his number? Is it a hundred something? It was two on four, six, five, three, no, no, no, okay, yes, I think it's yeah one eight eight eight, you know, just keep it, Nate, it was it was a hundred and fifty maybe. Yeah, humans that you can ever really maintain a relationship with or see as a peer. Yes. And then after see as you know, the way that you see your friends, you understand that they are the main characters of their own story. And no matter how close you are, you are a cameo. You are a secondary character and everybody else's story. And after that number, your brain is just incapable of understanding that those other people past that, like number three hundred and forty seven that you meet, is just the thing that takes the garbage out, or the thing that walks by you on the way to the bus every morning, the thing that runs the justice department, the thing that you vote for. You know. It's a scary idea. But Dunbar also applies this thinking to your religion. Um, and that he says that religion may have actually evolved as what he calls a group level adaptation, which we mentioned before religion being a quote kind of glue that holds society together. Um. We've also heard it as referred to as the opiate of the mass is a similar yet antithetical notion to that in an interesting way. Yeah, perfect, because it is like, that's religion and ideology. A value system is a way for number three seven to have something in common with you. You know. Now, it's not just the thing in the justice department or the thing that cooks the food. It's also the thing that believes what I believe. Yeah, yes, exactly. And there's one more theory. It is one of the most controversial theories. Do we need another disclaimer? Um, if you if you're feeling uncomfortable at this point, stick your fingers in your ears. No, yes, do that, and then also rewind back to that part where we had a disclaimer, and then come back here just to reassure yourself. Here's the question, what if the original inspiration for some of the world's most influential religions was ultimately not evolution but hallucinogens. WHOA, that's right, magic mushrooms, psilocybin, simple simon. Have we already said psilocybin. Let's say it again. I think that's where simple simon comes from, because it kind of sounds like psilocybin. Yeah, how about those Mario make big bites God's flesh. Did you make that last one out? I don't know. Is that in the vernacular it's a mushroom? Okay it is. Now. I love mushrooms. Now when I say that, I mean I love delicious mushroombe portobellosaki is trumpeters, the weird ones, the weird, bulbous looking ones. But as we know, when you grow them a certain way, certain species, they can make They get a little funny, make you think, make you feel a little funny, think a little funny, see things a little differently. Here's where it gets crazy. In his book The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross, an author named John Marco Allegro argues that quote our present concern is to show that Judaism and Christianity are cultic expressions of an endless pursuit by man to discover instant power and not knowledge. Granted the first proposition that the vital forces of nature are controlled by an extra terrestrial intelligence, these religions are logical developments from older, cruder fertility cults. With the advance of technical proficiencies, the aim of religious ritual became less to influence the weather and the crops than to attain wisdom and the knowledge of the future. Essentially, his argument is that modern religions, especially the Abramaic ones, Judaism, Christianity, Islam of Islam to a degree, sprang from these ancient fertility cults. I gotta pause really fast here and just point out that I've never thought in my head about a religion as focusing on an extra terrestrial intelligence, as an um an intelligence that is not on earth or of earth. Even when you say it that way, isn't that with like all religion, Yeah, it is, it is, But I've never I've never used it. I've never used the phrase extra terrestrial intelligence in that manner of thinking about what God could be or is. Extraterrestrial has become very specific in our time, at least in our version of this language. It's become this kind of like there's like hocum surrounding it to the point where you can't use it in a way that people don't sort of like turn their noses up at in a way, you know what I mean. I don't know, like not all people. Obviously, let people listen to the show, and we are, you know, into that those explorations, But the term extraterrestrial, which when it really just means not of this Earth, has become sort of a buzz phrase that has negative connotations in terms of like its use in veracity. But I think it's totally applicable to what God is, to what religion is, to what these deities actually are. They're totally extraterrestrials in many ways. In many ways, people regardless of the particular religion, would say this is something beyond us to some degree incomprehensible or dawned, difficult to comprehend. Allegro goes on and he argues that these ancient cults had knowledge of psychoactive drugs and plant form, but they prevented this knowledge from becoming two widespread. They were the shaman, you know, and they were the priests, and the quote is quote. These were the drug herbs, the science of whose cultivation and use had been accumulated over centuries of observation and dangerous experiment. Those who had this secret wisdom of the plants were the chosen of their God to them alone, had he vouchsafed the privilege of access to the heavenly throne, and if he was jealous of his power, no less were those who served him in the cultic mysteries. Theirs was no gospel to be shouted from the rooftops. Paradise was for none but the favored few. The incantations and rights by which they conjured forth their drug plants, and the details of the bodily and mental preparations undergone before they could ingest their God were the secrets of the cult, to which none the initiate, bound by fearful oaths, had access. That reminds me of ayahuasca rituals, that, like that, takes the laborious thing to create the substance that will take you on this spiritual trip, and the and the ritual of ingestion is as important as the substance itself. In times of war, though the widespread social disruption, something happened. This These um orally transmitted mysteries became difficult to transmit right. People were dying, people were being imprisoned and slaved, slaughtered and mass So the priests had to write this knowledge down, And Allegro's idea is that they wrote it down in an esoteric or coded form that only another priest, only another initiate, would recognize and be able to translate essentially, if you're going to teach someone else about this, And Allegro argues that the specific instance where this occurred the turning point was the Jewish revolt of sixty six eight sixty six, and we have a quote on that one too, Instigated probably by members of the cult swayed by their drug induced madness to believe God and called them to master the world in his name. They provoked the mighty power of Rome to swift and terrible action. Jerusalem was ravaged, her temple destroyed, Judaism was disrupted, and her people driven to seek refuge. With communities already established around the Mediterranean coast lands, the Mystery cults found themselves without a central fount of authority, with many of their priests killed in the abortive rebellion or driven into the desert. The secrets, if they were not to be lost forever, had to be committed to writing, and if found, the documents must give nothing away or betray those who had dared to defy the Roman authorities. So this need for coded communication about the use of sacred plants and the performance of sacred rituals. Then again, we cannot emphasize this enough. According to this author. According to Allegro, it led to the creation of a rabbi named Jesus, to tell the story of a rabbi called Jesus and invest him with the power and names of this magic drug, to have him live before the terrible events that had disrupted their lives, to preach a love between men, extending even to the hated Romans. Thus, reading such a tale, should it fall into Roman hands, even their mortal enemies might be deceived and not probe farther into the activities of the cells of the mystery cults within their territories. Oh it sounds so cool. Grand conspiracy, And this guy Allegro acknowledges that his sub diffuge failed, as evidenced by the majority of Christians who believe Jesus Christ was an historical figure, not a metaphor for a psycho go active drug in some sort of mystery religion. But what drug was it, you might wonder. We have one last quote. Above all they forgot or purged from the cult in their memories, the one supreme secret on which their whole religious and ecstatic experience depended, the names and identity of the source of the drug. The key to heaven, the sacred mushroom, the fungus recognized today as the Amanita muscaria or the fly a garrick. So let's take a moment, guys, what do you think you want to do? Some pros and cons? It sounds like all prose to me. Speaking of all prose, his argument hinges on pros or more specifically atomology. Yeah, we're we're getting weird with the puns today. It relates the development language to the development of myths and religions and cultic practices. So, for example, he relates mushrooms to fertility or experience of the divine, So he's connecting it to the phrase son of God. He's arguing that since he's tracing this back to fertility cults, he's arguing that the mushroom, by being an encounter with the divine, was seen as, you know, the offspring of God, and in some ways it might be seen as like a reproductive fluid, in other ways might be seen as the flesh of this of this extraterrestrial divine creature. He believes ancient evidence about the other phrases used to refer to this stuff will bear out the argument, and he does acknowledge that it's largely concerned with words and titles, and he believes that only when we discover the nomenclature of the sacred fungus within and without the cult can we begin to understand its function and the theology behind it. So you know, this leads into naturally the concept that eat of my flesh. He also talks about the visual similarities between uh iconic depictions of the crucifixion and the shape of a mushroom. I feel like that's kind of a stretch, but I mean, I get it unless we not forget that a mushroom does bear some resemblance to a phallus male reproductive organiz thallus thallus in Wonderland, gotta say, specifically circumcised in most mushroom cases. Lewis Carroll is such a creep. I just want to put that out there. Did you know that part of his diary pages were torn out and destroyed? It was death because they were that it was too hot for TV. We'll never know. There's also the idea of manna from heaven being the bread of a life that comes from God himself itself. Mm hmmm, yeah, Yeah, that's that's something that mystifies a lot of people, especially growing up with a belief system. A lot of people, you know, think that manna is something on a tree like an apple or you know, a other fruit orange. Sure, yes, wasn't it like a like the way you regained health in the Final Fantasy Games? Wasn't that manna? I think? So? It was definitely magic in Skyrom. In most RPGs and games I play, manna is yeah, your magic power which comes from this. I mean, it's this idea that it's sort of a replenishing spiritual force, that it can be squandered and regained or sort of feeds your spiritual life force in some way. In Magic the Gathering, you have to tap your manna and make use of all the land that you control to cast spells. More of a Pokemon game, d Lloyd. Now I'm kidding. I actually want to get into that. If I've recently with the kid, she's finally got the attention span for games like that, and I'm I'm the one who just wants to force her into it because I want to do it. I need someone to play with. So that we've been playing Pokemon, but I'm gonna try to graduate her magic gathering. Oh my gosh, Tyler's okay, you guys will know who Tyler is. He's another producer here. His kid is like getting hard on the paint and with the Pokemon cards, and both of us are just banking that he's gonna be ready to play magic with us. Isn't really expensive? Yeah? Is that? Though? We have like three decks, and you know, I bought a couple of booster packs, but our decks are pretty well masked. I think what happens is you get tired of seeing the same cards over and over again, or you need to like fit your trick your deck out so that you, you know, can defeat someone that has a super tricked out deck. But we digress and we progress as well. So the the weird thing is all right. We know we're fully conscious of the fact that this sounds like maybe comformation bias. Maybe this guy just really wants to see it. Uh. But there are numerous paintings of religious uh moments in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, they clearly depict mushrooms. There's a thirteenth century chapel in France. In there there's a clear depiction of Adam and Eve and the next to a tree. It's very Garden of Eden, but the tree is made out of Emminita muscaria mushrooms and the serpents coiling around the tree. It seems weird, right that this would be the most arguably one of the most famous stories in the Bible, Right, Yeah, the when Adam and Eve betrayed God ate the fruit that it was like the only thing you're not supposed to do appear that fruit? Well, apparently it was there are you know, there are a lot of beliefs that the fruit itself was knowledge of like what I am? You know, I am Eve? Have you tasted pure knowledge? It's that fruit? Well, in this case, what if it was the key? That the key that unlocked all of the mysteries. That's good. I like that, especially compared to those quotes we were reading earlier. I mean ingesting something, you know, like whether it's a metaphor or a stand in for like enlightenment, but the idea that maybe it's not, maybe it's an actual substance. Well, yeah, it's again. I go back to the invisibles because Ben, thank you again for introducing me to that. But the there's a substance in there, right, that allows access to a higher level of some sort in it, and it's some kind of hallucinogen. It's like an where the guy likes the homeless guy who kind of takes him on as a really kid. He like smokes something, and then all of a sudden they're like through the looking glass. Yeah, this, uh, this idea is you know, um, this idea exists on several different levels metaphorical literal. As you can see, it's open to interpretation, which brings us to some of the cons. Not very con not dragon con, comic con. Yeah, so many cons in this case. One big con is that all major scholars rejected Allegro's idea, and this guy's a legit, a legit scholar. His mentor was like, man, what are you doing, buddy, And the publisher who published it was like, ah, we shouldn't have gotten involved. So the full text is available online, The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross. You can read it. Uh, you can read it online. It has its own internal argument, it's own internal logic rather, but it makes certain jumps assumptions that leave room for criticism and invalidation. Just like the guy wrote Chariots of the gods. Eric von Dannikin It's easy for people to see what they want to see when they look at ancient writing and ruins. That's why, you know. In the beginning of the show, we talked about how even the most well read erudite people will disagree on the purpose or the intention behind an ancient thing that they found the flotsam and jetsam of the world, because many times there's not another human or a piece of writing that will will come out and give you a definitive answer. So ultimately, like a lot of things, you're left with your own interpretation or the interpretation of somebody who's studied it for a long time. But but, but, but, but there's a big butt. It is certainly true that many religions have had relationships with psychoactive substances. Oh yes, and we will wade into those psychedelic waters when we get back from this. Feel like, out of so many shows that we've done, this would be the one where we were just inexplicably paused for a psychedelic guitar. There we go, You're tuned into stuff they don't want you to know. Just just keep looping that. In the end, it so so We've got some examples of different hallucinens playing a role in different religions, not just uh, not just in the abramaic stuff that Allegro is talking about, but around the world. In book nine of the classic Hindu text to the rig Vada of this pressed juice called soma is mentioned as something that was drunk by priests, and some sort of visionary state is reported when you when you ingest this stuff, um like this realm where happiness and joy and all kinds of things just kind of combine. All the good positive things combine, and it's also where longing wishes are fulfilled. And some people believe that soma could have been a psychedelic mushroom, maybe even amanita our Gordon Wasson is a scholar who held this opinion, and in Foot of the Gods, Terence mckinnas says that a more likely candidate for soma, due to its better efficacy at inducing psychedelic states, is a different mushroom, the Psilocybe cobenses. This is a mushroom that can grow in cow dung in certain climates, which may explain why the cow has gained such a sacred status in the Hindu tradition, but other academics claim that soma was cannabis. You know, and I've actually had someone make soma for me before, but it was not a hallucinogen. It was just this relaxing route. There's also a pharmaceutical drug called Soma that's like a muscle relaxer or like an antipsychotic. I want to say, wow, I think out as Huxley right, Uh references Soma Brave New World. You just to confirm what I said before, Soma is in fact a drug on the market called keras so prod all um and its brand name or Soma or vana dem And it's a muscle relaxer that can block pain to the nerves. So you might take it if you have a skeletal muscle issue, back injury, or the like. I just think it's interesting this term has persevered over the years. Uh. Yeah. And in addition, there were other examples. The blue lotus flower was worshiped by the ancient Egyptian civilization, and it's now believed that this flower had some psychoactive properties itself, maybe a little naturally occurring d MT. We've we saw that in our exploration of d MT right, there are tons of plants that just contain it. I yes, to everyone who's writing to us about d m T, we do have uh an existing at least a video or two on it. Again, dimethyl trip I mean, don't do drugs, even though d MT naturally occurs in trace amounts in your own brain. But don't worry about that. Just keep on keeping on. And they're mushroom cults in Mesoamerica dating back to at least a thousand BC. Uh These are indicated by mushroom stone effigies found in the Guatemalan Highlands. In addition, frescoes from Central Mexico also show signs of mushroom worship. Then we get to these things called mystery religions. Matt, that's right. The Lucinian mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone in ancient Greece. And there was this drink called kaikon, and it was consumed, which the Iliad says was made up of barley, water, herbs, and goat cheese. That sounds disgusting. In the Odyssey, however, the character circ adds a magic potion to it, and some people have speculated that the barley used in this drink was parasitized by ergot that's a fungus that it is believed to be responsible for intense experiences people reported during these mystery initiations and rituals. And ergot contains ergotamine, which is a precursor to l s D. You've also maybe heard about this as a proposed cause for uh St almost fire and for the Salem Witch trials. Yeah, and all kinds of other vampire panics throughout the United States history. And just to put this out there, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Go see The Witch, one of my favorite last year. In my opinion, this plays a part and that it's up for debate. But cool, don't you mean The Witch? The Witch? It's titling is really cool. It's like two vs. What is that like? To live deliciously? Yep, black. Oh, we haven't spoiled it, but we hope we've wetted your appetite for it. Right to us. Let us know what you think about this movie, because we will literally sit around off air and talk about it. Actually saw it with co worker fellow podcaster Lauren Vogelbaum of food stuff fame. Uh and but when it was over, we were both just kind of sat there looking at each other like what we saw something we weren't supposed to see. I watched it alone in my house in the dark, with headphones on, and I was unnerved in in the most spectacular way. I like to play it while I exercise. Just watch the witch while you work out. Yeah, that in the shining mm hmm, it just motivates I get it. Well, well that's we don't want to get too deep into the off air stuff. But yes, the which is completely worth your time. So here we are with a cursory examination of this theory. Now this make no bones about it. This is very controversial. Some indeed found allegros exploration offensive, but it is at this point still an exploration. Only it's completely possible that psychoactive substances have played crucial roles in numerous religions. We know they have. We know they have ayahuasca for instance. However, if this specific mushroom did play a role in the formation of fertility cults that later led to the Abramaic religions, and if the priest of the time really did manufacture Jesus Christ, as some sort of metaphor or code for these mushrooms, these plants, and these rituals. Then they clearly failed to preserve their original meaning, because, as h No I think you pointed out earlier, the vast majority of Christians today do not believe this idea. And if preservation of these mysteries was the key, wouldn't the priest have wanted people to know? Unless that is, of course, the Catholic Church has a few very very well kept secrets, more than we suspect up their sleeves, which I would be I'm I would be very surprised, But it's true. The Catholic Church has a lot of secrets. That's about to say, they've got like whole rooms that are just for secrets, right, especially fitted to house various shapes and flavors of secrets. Just to be fair here, I think if these Mystery Religion cult leaders were trying to get all of this stuff down in this incredibly complex allegory and they're doing mushrooms on a consistent basis, I think I think, if it's true, they did a pretty darn good job, because I mean, the hat tipped to you Mystery Religion priests for keeping it together with a head full of dreams. Right, we want to hear from you. Have you have you explored this idea yourself? What's what's your take on this? Is this maybe um, just just a fringe theory where someone's just out there to be out there on the fringes? Is there something to it? Because again, those depictions, those those paintings do have clear depictions of mushrooms. But is this author reading too much into it or is there something there? Well? I have a lot of thoughts on this. You guys, do you listening out there? Do you have any ideas or thoughts on this subject? I'm sure you do. Have you tried one of these substances and experienced something? Maybe don't write to us about that. Maybe that's a bad idea. Is that a bad idea? Of course it's not a bad idea. We will not compromise your identity, and if you wish, we will use an alias. Again, don't do it. But if you happen to find yourself into that position where you've happened to do it, it would be cool to hear about it. Okay, that's not being irresponsible. We legally cannot tell you to do drugs. But if someone you know does send us a message, yep, this is probably the one. Speaking of message is it's time for shut at corners. So we received We received a lot of feedback on our earlier episode called Lake City Quiet Pills. It's just about a Reddit mystery, and we wanted to share with everyone some of the follow up correspondence we had, which really surprised us. We have one email that came to us through a blocker, meaning that we were able to read it like a like what you would read an anonymous post. We do not know the identity of this person, which both means we cannot verify it and we can't really make any any definitive decisions, but we'd like to read it to you. Hello, stuff they don't want you to know. Long time listener, though never expected to be reaching out, especially not like this. I had a bit of a personal revelation during your episode referencing Lake City Pills. More than ten years ago, I walked in on my father sit in a jailbait pornographic website. I was aghast, and he screamed that we should never speak of it, which made perfect sense to me. However, I was terrified by what he was doing, so I installed a key logger on his computer to determine if this was accidental on his part or if I needed to reach out to the authorities. The key logger generated normal usage data and rather generic pornographic terms late at night, only occasionally referencing the same jail bait site Old Guys Image Hosting, and then followed by what at the time I felt was gibberish. I felt it was gibberish until I heard you three read the same sort of code out in the air on this podcast, and I immediately broke out into a cold sweat. There is additional information that ran home that my father was involved in this, though some of it is two on the nose and its identification of those close to me to be been able to verify that information. Suffice to say, he went on far too many business trips for one in his position. I suppose I should also mention that the retire prior to nine eleven, my father was a ranger, later a member of Delta. He came in during the eighties and spend extended time doing ground operations in the Middle East. I can still remember getting letters from him with every word redacted. Aside from love Dad at the bottom, I can also clearly remember Blackwater coming to recruit my father post nine eleven, which was unnerving and unannounced. He refused their offer. My father has also gone on at length and private regarding the important role extra judicial killing serve and keeping the relative peace in the world. He's very much in needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few. I will not be able to receive any replies to this mailbox. I also apologize for not providing any proof to you, but it's an unnecessary risk for me. Thank you. It is strangely comforting to find out so many years later that my father is a murderer and not a pedophile. Sometimes bad people need a quiet pill so good people can sleep peacefully. Unsigned wow wow, Okay, are our second one, our second piece of correspondence. Thank you to whoever that was um second piece. I think one reason no need to comment on that, because if you're of the episode, you understand what an amazing artifact that is. And we really do appreciate you sharing and shedding some light on this system that we talked about that we we honestly uh yeah, that there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, if it is, you know true, because we can't confirm or deny any of it. Um, But let's move on. Our second piece of correspondence comes from someone who signs their letter T and it says to conspiracy. Hey guys Dutch. Milo was not part of a hit squad. He was associated with a military contracting service. He would get people in touch with a gentleman named Thomas Leahy, who, after being removed from dp D, began recruiting for a company called Alpha Omega Security Solutions. Milo was friends with Alpha Omega because their operations in Central America lead to a large amount of association in things that Milo had an interest i e. Child porn. Milo helped recruit and some people returned the favor. He did not die piece fully in his philosophy of some people being evil so they just needed to go was what ended up leading to his demise. Wow, and our final shout out today is for ron b Um. He says, I've been a fan of the podcast since the videos first started coming out, and I was zapped temporarily off to a reality where it disappeared. When I finally made it back to this reality, I discovered that there was now an audio version, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. That's good to hear. Thank you. Um. I just got done listening to your crime Kidnapping and Organs the Red Market episode, and I couldn't help but write about it. During the parts of the episode where the Oregon Trail was being discussed, I could not help but think of the game the Organ Trail. The game has done faithfully to the old school Oregan Trail graphics and play style, but with zombies and a wood paneled station wagon in lieu of the covered wagons. It even has the first person you meet die of dysentery. Anything less would be a travesty. That's my line, not ron B. Keep up the good work. I look forward to the notifications that pop up in the app with each new episode. Oh man, he even gets the notifications app ron by thanks and speaking of that reality with video, with lack of videos, what's what? What's it? What it do? Guys, We're back in the game. We're back in the game. I'm gonna expect more from as soon. You can also find our first long form documentary on the Georgia Guidestones that all three of us put a lot of effort in uh for free on Amazon. Yeah, if you go to Amazon, search guidestones or etched in secret. You can even search for Ben Bowling if you want to, or Noel Brown and you'll find it. And this concludes, but not our show. We are going and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three st d w y t K. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.