Does this medieval fresco show a hallucinogenic mushroom in the Garden of Eden? • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by swayvil » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

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…

Thousands of people over thousands of years report seeing gods, spirits, etc while under the influence of psychedelics.

Christianity is all about gods, spirits etc.

We have here a Christian illustration featuring what looks like a famous psychedelic.

It takes very little shoehorning to connect those dots.

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

#92

Post by bjourne » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

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.

The Genesis story is much older than that and rooted in Babylonian creation myths.

We don't know that much about the early Christians. But we do know that there was a lot of competing branches of Christianity and cross-pollination between Jewish traditions, Hellenistic traditions, and pagan traditions. The branch that Constantine favored was the one that won out and suppressed all other branches. It's not beyond the pale to speculate about early Christians mixing "standard" Christianity and rites from fertility cults and using psychedelics. Although there is zero evidence.

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

#93

Post by frutiger » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #38

pmoriarty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I suppose it's realistic in the sense that Christ is depicted as a human as are adam and eve, instead of something else, but there is no presumption that christ actually looked like the way he was drawn.

But by that logic the person seeing your church centuries later could assume there _was_ a dog there, it just wasn’t necessarily a Dalmatian?

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

#94

Post by whatshisface » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

frutiger wrote: post #93

iammisc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it's realistic in the sense that Christ is depicted as a human as are adam and eve, instead of something else, but there is no presumption that christ actually looked like the way he was drawn.

But by that logic the person seeing your church centuries later could assume there _was_ a dog there, it just wasn’t necessarily a Dalmatian?

Fortunately for believers, the interpretation of frescos forms the theological foundation of no major religion.

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

#95

Post by Grieving » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:08 AM UTC

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…

> not the other way around

That's highly debatable. See The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity[1] for a good, detailed counterexample. The reformation and counter-reformation have been likened to a re-Judaization of Christianity with good reason. Based on my reading, though, the pagan roots of Christianity run much deeper; for example, the concept of three gods, separate yet one, is completely alien to Judaism, but integral to Indo-European religion. It's not found in the Bible, but was made use of to explain the relationship between the three divinities found in the New Testament.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Germanization-Early-Medieval-Christia...

edit: I misunderstood you. The statement I thought I was responding to was that christianity absorbed pagan practices but not beliefs.

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

#96

Post by Natsu » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #90

Natsu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'elect' as a Christian concept is a bit different from ordinary uses of the word. In context, the concept from Calvinism seemed to be under discussion until someone came into the discussion using 'elect' in the normal meaning. So I think it's important to keep track of which definition of 'elect' is in use here or you'll just be talking past each other without realizing that you're not talking about the same conc…

I mentioned elect in the context of classical times and the Old Testament. I wasn’t referring to whatever Christians consider the elect, but a more general term describing insiders with the secret teachings that aren’t to be mentioned in front of the masses because they might be led astray. This was certainly not an unknown idea throughout the Greek speaking philosophical world, including the early Christian church.…

Fair enough, I agree that the mushroom thing is quite a stretch. The word 'elect' has a bit of a history in Christianity, though.

There certainly were gnostics of all stripes (not only Christian gnostics, but various other purveyors of secret knowledge, etc.). And while the canonical Bible contains an invective against 'so-called knowledge' which seems to be a dig at gnosticism, there were other gnostic sects and works early on persisting for some time even after it was declared heretical.

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

#97

Post by da39a3ee » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

I know people say Amanita muscaria is hallucinogenic, but my understanding is that it is pretty poisonous. Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata), on the other hand, is also common in Europe at least, and of course is well known to be very hallucinogenic and not poisonous. So if you were gonna depict a hallucinogenic mushroom wouldn't you choose Liberty Cap?

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

#98

Post by inreverse » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

b3morales wrote: post #11

> Eve’s ribs are bold slash marks, as if the artist wanted her to appear almost skeletal. The artist probably wanted to highlight the fact that there are an even number of them, in contrast to Adam's odd number, since the story is that one of his was taken (to make Eve).

Interesting that Adam appears with no ribs at all then.

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

#99

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

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…

Or they experienced an out-of-context problem. Saw something which didn't fit into what they knew.

Yes, I really do mean ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS, or something like that.

Imagine someone from pre-industrial society. No matter where. And then something is touching down from the heavens above. Like some big fucking rocket. Or some tilt-rotor thingy. Or something with Ion-drive. Unloading a remote controlled all terrain rover with really strange wheels.

How to describe something for which you have no concept of understanding it at all?

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

#100

Post by inreverse » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

da39a3ee wrote: post #97

I know people say Amanita muscaria is hallucinogenic, but my understanding is that it is pretty poisonous. Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata), on the other hand, is also common in Europe at least, and of course is well known to be very hallucinogenic and not poisonous. So if you were gonna depict a hallucinogenic mushroom wouldn't you choose Liberty Cap?

The liberty cap is not a distinctive mushroom (small, round cap, brown). The amanita muscaria is beautiful and distinct enough that we recognise it in paintings hundreds of years later.

Perhaps the painter chose it for its beauty, or perhaps because it was both distinctive and psychedelic. No way to know. But the academics claiming that "the plant in this fresco has nothing whatever to do with mushrooms" are embarrassing.