Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/759264
T he Browns, anthropologist Jerry and psychologist/art historian Julie, adventurously research and convincingly present a controversial thesis. Entertaining as well as informing, they write as much a travelog and evocative mystery as a scholarly tome. Embarking on a voyage of discovery and a retelling of early church history, they traipse spontaneously if somewhat randomly across Europe and the Near East, following a fungal directive through the cultural geography of art and iconography. Their planned itinerary began at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, where it quickly transformed with the discovery of Amanita muscaria conspicuously displayed—Soma of the Rig Veda, Gordon Wasson's 'divine mushroom of immortality.' In the odyssey that ensued, accounts of locals, priests, curators, and seekers directed the Browns to sites both familiar and obscure, as the icons proliferated in myco-profusion, Canterbury to Chartres, Eleusis to the Vatican, and myriad shrines, churches, and caves along the way. Throughout, the images seemed to visibly sprout, 'hidden in plain sight,' across centuries—a challenging and to some, threatening, thesis. Psychedelic plants appear in depictions of illuminations of saints, portrayals of sacraments and the Last Supper, the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ Consciousness itself, and the likelihood of Jesus' own mystical voyages in the 'lost years.' Seems as though Wasson met Dan Brown on the way to McKenna's. Knowing the accelerator to awakening offered by entheogenic plants, and observing the frequency of their depiction as motifs, it's easy to conclude that early Christian mysticism—long suppressed by the 'modern' church—was indeed so catalyzed. Clearly just a catalyst, though; the true sacrament resides within us all. (Park Street Press) — Mac Graham BOOKS art & soul By Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D. and Julie M. Brown, M.A. SHAMANIC SANTA O n the shortest, darkest day in the far north, 4000 years ago, a wizened greybeard ceremoniously honored the North Star, about which all the panoply of stellar wonder whirls. He ritually placed its likeness atop a tall straight fi r, the Tree of Life, axis of the world, affi rming the complete link, heaven to underworld, humans stuck in middle-earth. Here in the middle browse the reindeer, vital and sacred partners, providing transportation and food, clothing and shelter, fuel and spirit-companionship. The Nordic shaman then decorated the tree with bright red and white balls to cure there. Donning his warm, magical red robe and cap trimmed in white, he ascended through the yurt's roof-portal above the crest of deep snow outside, to fl y behind the reindeer, delivering sacks of these treats around the whole spinning sky, entering homes through the same smoke vents, open to the Pole Star, hanging them by the chimney with care… The shaman received his magical initiation from the reindeer— his spirit guides. Observing with characteristic curiosity the animals' passion for bright-red mushrooms, speckled with white, conspicuous and brilliant in the bleak northern autumnal landscape, they paw the earth, locating an abundance of the round ripe fruit, then eat heartily, and begin prancing and leaping most merrily. Imitating, the shaman ate, danced, and then fl ew. So too did he meet the realms of vast intelligence and vitality as his inner world conjoined the immensity of the whirling cosmos, where he recruited his cadre of elven assistants. Thus it became possible, and only natural, to manufacture in a timeless instant gifts for children everywhere, delivering them in a single 24-hour polar night, just as the whirling animated constellations visibly course the complete round. A Jolly Old Elf indeed, spreading Christ-consciousness. Concealed in the almost comic tradition of our highest and most holy of seasonal celebrations resides a deeper, lingering truth born of our Pagan, pre-Christian ancestry. See Jerry and Julie Brown's The Psychedelic Gospels, Chapter 3, for references and much more! — MG The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity The Psychedelic Gospels 34 wholelifetimes.com