Sunday, January 29, 2006
All things shall appear as they are...infinite and holy
When I mentioned the basic theme of McKenna's book to Silenus (that hallucinogenic plants were vitally important in the evolution of consciousness, and that we should all start tripping again to get back in balance with Nature), his response was: "That sounds like something you'd think while stoned; it sounds really logical and interesting until you revisit it sober the next day." An apt description on the surface, but McKenna is more serious, and his arguments more substantial, then say my friend Brett the Hermeneuticist of Snack Foods, who, while fingering Doritos with orange-coated digits under the influence of hashish, proclaimed his discovery that there was a Braille-like "bubble language" on the triangular chips encoding the 9,000,000 names of God. McKenna is more rational than our dear Champollion of Frito-Lay esotericism, and even if parts of his book contain suspect speculative leaps, his case is not insubstantial, and is, at the very least, enjoyable. The discussion of the loss of the Feminine in religious ceremony complements nicely similar arguments made by Carl Jung, and his presentation of cultures like the Tassili and Catal Huyuk and their potential dissemination of a mushroom cult down through the Middle East and to Crete is great fun. I particuarly enjoyed McKenna's plea for a saner drug policy in the West, with its anecdotes about booze and caffeine and the reasons these drugs gain acceptance over others.
Shelve with Joe Campbell, Robert Graves , John Zerzan, and dear old Huxley.
Meanwhile, I've continued my own experiments with ego-dissolving plants of disparate usefulness, like blue lotus, white lotus, and Kona-kava, all of which keep my pituitary chakra ramped with only mild euphoric and introspective effects and no intoxication. The mint still astonishes--I've backed down from the 15X and 20X extracts because there's too powerful an erasure. The 6X turned me into a whirling vortex of naught Friday, disintegrating the universe and re-inventing it as a blue serpent with red wings; I'm more interested in the introspection post-weird-out than the pyrotechnics at my age.
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My ongoing study of ancient mushroom cults led me to your web page. As a result of my own study of anciant mushroom cults, after following up on my late father's research Maya archaeologist Stephan de Borhegyi of pre-Columbian mushroom stones. I now believe that Mesoamerica, the High cultures of South America, and Easter Island shared, along with many other New World cultures, elements of a Pan American belief system so ancient that many of the ideas may have come from Asia to the New World with the first human settlers. These include ideas concerning resurrection based on observation of the constant cycle of death and rebirth in nature, and veneration of the planet Venus based on its predictable cycle of death and rebirth as both an evening star and as a morning star. I embarked on my own study of pre-Columbian art beginning in 2007, and found images of mushrooms and mushroom rituals with significant frequency in the art of the ancient Maya, but also in the art of the Aztecs, Mixtecs, Olmecs and Toltecs. I even found mushrooms and related symbolism in the art of the Inca, Mochica, Chavin, and Paracas cultures of South America, and in the Rapa Nui civilization of Easter Island.
By the time the first native Mesoamerican religious texts appeared, whether in pictorial codices or, at the urging of various Spanish priests and chroniclers, in Spanish or one of the indigenous languages, there is evidence that this religion was identified with a supreme creator deity. This deity, first known as a serpent with bird and feline attributes, was known by different names at different times and in different indigenous languages and culture areas. Over time he appeared in many incarnations, being associated with the the planet Venus, the Sun, and the gods of rain, lightning, and wind. He is probably best known by his Toltec/Aztec name, Quetzalcoatl. I have chosen to call this ancient belief system the Mushroom-Venus/Quetzalcoatl-Tlaloc religion.
Carl de Borhegyi
For more on mushroom cults of Mesoamerica, visit mushroomstone.com
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