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Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

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Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#21

Post by runawaybottle »

codetrotter wrote: post #9

I’ve long been thinking about how things like this are in the Bible: > They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel ... Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around. — Ezekiel 1:15 And I’ve been thinking, that these kinds of things could have their explanation in people having ingested plants or been stung by insect…

Dear friend, they were simply drinking. You don’t need hallucinogenics to ramble with ecstasy, just a few drinks.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#22

Post by hbosch »

elwell wrote: post #3

The serpent wrapped around the tree indicates that this is to represent the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil , not the Tree of Life . So, even if this were depicting hallucinogenic mushrooms, if anything it would mean that Christians viewed them as forbidden.

As soon as I saw the "snake", I made the assumption on my own that this was just a crudely drawn tree with the dots representing fruits/"apples" as the story is commonly known.

Stretching this into an article about psychedelic mushrooms is quite a reach.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#23

Post by iammisc »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #12
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #4

I guess I've never given much credence to this theory. Why would they beat around the bush and use symbols and other words for it. Why wouldn't they just say "eat this mushroom"? Was there even a stigma against it back then?

The idea that there is secret knowledge that only the elect should know goes back to classical times, and probably to the time the old testament was put together. So it might not have to do with stigma per se.

Catholicism has no concept of the elect, at least not in the way you describe it.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#24

Post by iammisc »

theli0nheart wrote: post #6
pram wrote: post #2

The premise doesn’t even make sense, the tree of knowledge is a Bad Thing in the Genesis story. Even if it was a magic mushroom, how could you possibly come to the conclusion that it’s being depicted in a positive light?

> the tree of knowledge is a Bad Thing in the Genesis story Not at all. I'm certain that it differs between faiths, but in mine (Judaism), the tree of knowledge was not A Bad Thing. Eating the forbidden fruit / fruit of knowledge exposed Adam and Eve to evil things; tarnishing their purity. After they ate the fruit, they awakened. They desired to wear clothes, possess things, have children, etc. What we learn from th…

Except, this is a christian fresco, and this is not how Christianity interprets the Genesis story. I understand that Judaism was the source religion of Christianity, but the two religions are substantially different. Christianity has very different interpretations of the Old Testament compared to the Jews.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#25

Post by iammisc »

mandeville wrote: post #8
tk75x wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge of good and evil is a "Good Thing", and one interpretation of the reason God put the tree in reach of Adam and Eve is that he wanted them to eventually partake of its fruit, but they did it early and without whatever other prep was necessary. Think of it as a child slowly learning concepts instead of being immediately presented with complex knowledge and not having the necessary foundation to process it. No…

Ditto. Also in traditional doctrine it was good because the fall led to jesus. Look up felix culpa on wikipedia. As for the mushrooms, it's not as if medieval clergy didn't have a good time.

You can't mention Felix Culpa though without mentioning Original Sin. Like most things in traditional Catholicism, there is a duality and a paradox. You can't get one without the other. Mentioning the Fall as a strictly good thing is simply ridiculous. That does not find any ground in traditional Catholicism, which also believed (and still believes frankly) that all the bad things in life, including the pain of childbirth, disease, sin, and destruction, are directly attributable to the sin of Adam and Eve.

Plus, there are several translations of it. The common rendition into English is 'happy fault', which may be too positive. The other translations include 'lucky mistake', 'happy mistake', blessed fall, etc. Note again the duality, the paradox, and that the fundamental noun (fault, mistake, fall) is negative. It's a paradox, a mystery, meant to get you to think deeper, not some stunning endorsement of listening to Satan.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#26

Post by motohagiography »

If you want to go down a rabbit hole, look into biblical and other references to how important and common the acacia tree was, and then consider that it's thought to be a significant source of DMT. (The second fresco in the article has what appears to be an acacia tree in it). One can only speculate what someone could have imagined if they were around one while it was burning and they inhaled it. The analog feedback patterns one sees when their senses are impaired are by almost all accounts, geometric patterns like fractals, and so the discovery of geometry and association of it with mysticism could have a common chemical origin. If there was something to be known or learned from psychedelic experiences, a national security service would need to know and understand its boundaries. Given radio was only recently discovered, people new to the idea of communicating over long distances using invisible energy would have had to consider whether there was some chemical connection. I'm not saying it's aliens...but it may very well be all drugs.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#27

Post by pmoriarty »

pram wrote: post #2

The premise doesn’t even make sense, the tree of knowledge is a Bad Thing in the Genesis story. Even if it was a magic mushroom, how could you possibly come to the conclusion that it’s being depicted in a positive light?

Something else to consider is that some early Christians (like the so-called Gnostics) believed that there was an esoteric (or secret) meaning or teaching in Christianity.

The esoteric meanings were often mirror images of the exoteric (or plain/obvious/surface) meanings. So where eating of the Tree of Knowledge might be viewed as "bad" in the exoteric interpretation, in the esoteric interpretation it could be viewed as good.

Similar inversions happen with the snake in the Garden of Eden, who is similarly viewed in a negative light in the exoteric interpretation, but as good in the esoteric interpretation. The same thing happens with Judas, and even the creator God himself.

I'd encourage reading up on the Gnostics for more details on exactly what those views were.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#28

Post by oxymoran »

The notion that scholars have “debunked” the mushroom hypothesis is ludicrous given that they don’t postulate a hypothesis that is any more reasonable. The idea that it is a “stylized” tree seems preposterous to me given each branch ending in a cap. If it was just the top, ok. But every branch? It looks like a clump of mushrooms growing out of the ground, Occam’s razor and what not.That doesn’t mean it’s a magic mushroom, but maybe mushrooms had some sort of significance to the artist/church/region etc.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#29

Post by pmoriarty »

iammisc wrote: post #19

The main problem of this article is that it uses modern cultural and artistic norms to interpret ancient art. Traditional Catholic and Christian iconography was not meant to be accurate, but rather to symbolize meaning. For example, in my church, the priest recently pointed out there is a dog in every single stained glass window depicting scenes of Jesus's life. In particular, the dog is a dalmation. If we were to ap…

"At no point is any of the art intended to be realistic."

Well, except that, say, Jesus is supposed to be Jesus. Adam and Eve are supposed to be Adam and Eve. The garden in which Adam and Eve are depicted is supposed to be the Garden of Eden in the Bible. In the various depictions of the Last Supper, Jesus is depicted as having supper with his disciples, and that is supposed to depict exactly that. Jesus is shown as breaking bread in those paintings, just as he does in the Biblical story, etc, etc, etc...

Not to say there isn't a lot of symbolism in Christian art, but it's not all symbolic.

Re: Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden?

#30

Post by 1MachineElf »

colechristensen wrote: post #18
cratermoon wrote: post #10

There are several problems with this article. To start with, it mixes up the Tree of Life[1] and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil[2]. Second, the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries. And most importantly, early Christians were Jews first. Post-Pauline times, pagan or Gentiles in the Roman empire did join the growing movement that was soon to be called Christi…

They’re talking about a late thirteenth century fresco in France, not Roman art by protochristians in the first few centuries CE. As christianity spread or was forced across europe, there was plenty of mixing religions. But this whole thing is a pretty big stretch, you can’t tell if it’s a tree or a mushroom then maybe it’s just the artist wasn’t the greatest and trying to shoehorn psychedelics into it isn’t at all a…

Analysing the fresco leaves us with more questions than answers. Is there a connection between 13th century Christianity and psychedelics? How far back could such a connection go? What would such a connection mean for us today? Maybe the artist's fresco would have sent a clearer message if they hadn't eaten so many mushrooms before making it.
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