Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 110 posts

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

#71

Post by jazzyjackson »

pmoriarty wrote: post #27
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…

The book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn includes a retelling of genesis in this mirrored sense: the devil has adam and eve convinced that the garden is paradise and there's no need to leave. god has to sneak in to convince eve to eat the apple and become free. (paraphrase from 10 yrs ago, I should pick that book up again...)

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

#72

Post by wut-wut »

iammisc wrote: post #17
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…

> cf Easter, Christmas There is no evidence of roman paganism being the origin of either holiday. Easter and Christmas were celebrated before the romanization of Christianity. The only thing that was added were pagan symbology to the existing feast days, which is typical, as the church is happy to incorporate pagan traditions. The issue here is that in America we see a myopic view of Christianity from Europe. We note…

Ha! Bitter.

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

#73

Post by pessimizer »

bawolff wrote: post #56
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…

> Second, the Genesis story is Jewish, and predates Christianity by at least five if not ten centuries. This is silly. Its shared by a number of religions since abrahamic religions generally have a common root.

The root of Judaism.

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

#75

Post by buovjaga »

Arguments against Christian mushroom trees:

The Fungi-Pareidola of The Psychedelic Gospels by Chris Bennett https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2021/08/05/__trashed...

Mushroom Trees Debunked by Thomas Hatsis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrfeNp1FSUY

I remember Hatsis elsewhere referring to a chemical study of the pigments used in the Plaincourault fresco revealing the red was originally green. I can't find the mention atm.

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

#76

Post by swayvil »

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?

Maybe societies of scholars reject empirical input.

I've seen such.

The "religious institution" becomes all about authoritative literature.

Consuming it, digesting it, debating it. Who's read the books. Who hasn't read enough books. Who's the top certified holy-book-interpreter.

An airtight power hierarchy.

Real experience just threatens the bubble.

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

#77

Post by ARandomerDude »

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…

> maybe it’s just the artist wasn’t the greatest

This seems likely, especially given that Eve's thighs are larger than her torso in the painting.

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

#79

Post by tokenpreneur »

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?

It's not the Tree of Knowledge that is a 'bad thing', but rather Adam and Eve did a bad thing by defying God's command not to eat from that tree.

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

#80

Post by carlmr »

bawolff wrote: post #61
cratermoon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tradition credits" seems like as much weasel words as "some people say". Whose tradition? Since when? Where does the tradition come from? > Note, it would be against wikipedia policies to say "Some scholars say X" But.. that's exactly what the linked wikipedia article says! I'm not vested enough to care to change it, but if you're right, that is a violation of policy.

I think its pretty clear in context that they mean the traditions of the people who view the book as holy, particularly Jews and Christians. They go in more detail if you click the link. The big difference is that "Some scholars believe X" and "Some scholars believe not X" are basically true for most X. The traditional view of Jews & Christians being that moses wrote genisis is a fact about the world. It can be eithe…

>The traditional view of Jews & Christians being that moses wrote genisis is a fact about the world. It can be either true or false. They either believed that traditionally or they did not. Both it and its negation cannot both be true.

How so? If there was more than one early Jew/Christian they could have held different beliefs about that. If you want to be exact, you can't state any facts about the beliefs of somebody, living or dead. And if there's more than one person you can't say they all held the same belief.

Post reply on HN