This article is going to examine religious use of mushrooms around the world throughout history. Some of it is based on confirmed facts, and some of it is just conjecture. The only religious experiences this writer has ever had have been on psychedelics, so the idea mushrooms helped start much of world religion is maybe not too crazy. By the 20th century mushroom's important role in the formation most religions had become almost totally forgotten, due to a concentrated effort by Christian missionaries to wipe them out.
Mushrooms and religion get rediscovered
"There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead lives, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way I can understand. I ask them and they answer me. When I return from the trip that I have taken with them, I tell what they have told me and what they have shown me." - Maria Sabina Mazatec Indian shaman
In the mid 1950's relgious use of mushrooms was re discoved in the western world when Gordon Wasson went to Mexico and participated in a mushroom ritual with Mrs Sabina. The encounter was published in the Magazine Life in 1957. The religious use of mushrooms was still happening in modern times, but it's roots go back quite far:
Ancient use
The oldest (7000 to 9000 years old) known example of art depicting sacred mushrooms was found in a cave in Libya by an Italian archeologist
It has been argued that most modern religions are based on ancient fertility cults and those groups used mushrooms and other visionary plants for religious visions. Many people believe that Soma of the ancient Hindus was a mushroom. Although it's more popular to believe it is Hashish I think it's more likely to be a mushroom..
Ancient Sumerian history has evidence of mushrooms
Ancient Greece
Mushrooms featured in Buddhism too:
In 1500 a Spanish priest was the first to write about an Aztec mushroom ritual:
"... they ate, still before sunrise, mushrooms with honey. When the first signs showed (which can be compared to drunkenness with hallucinations) everyone started dancing and singing, while others were weeping. At the end of the ritual everyone gathered to share their visions.
The Aztecs even had a kind of Drug's God, who was called Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers. He was the sacred protector of the `flowery-dream' as the Aztecs called their hallucinatory trance. The mushrooms they used were probably the Psilocybe mexicana
In this photo you can clearly see the mushroom on the back of the headdress of Xochipilli
So what about Christianity?
Christianity was heavily influenced by paganism and those pagans used visionary plants. There were reflections of this in Christian art around the world. From stained glass to frescoes you can see depictions of mushrooms in many old churches.
This is a Christian church is France with Adam and Eve next to mushroom
So where do we go from here?
Well I know where I am going, to see the mushroom gods. All uncredited pictures by me
Read more
http://www.magic-mushrooms.net/paddos/Teo-nanacatl__Flesh_of_the_Gods.html
http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/Lect20b.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross
https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/the-sacred-mushroom-and-cross-by-john.html
https://www.trufflemagic.com/blog/religion-spiritual-use/
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