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

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.

Someone has put quite a lot of work into mapping the phenotypic traits of Amanita Muscara onto Christian iconograhy (the lamb of god being the wooly mycelium, and the living cup having to do with the way it colonizes wooden containers, etc). They've also got instructions on preparing it for consumption.

https://www.npr.org/2010/12/24/132260025/did-shrooms-send-sa...

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

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?

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.

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 worthwhile way to spend your time.

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.

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.

Alternatively, some scholars have argued that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is just another name for the tree of life.

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 that during Easter, many European pagan symbols are incorporated, and mistakenly apply that to all Easter celebrations.

In reality, Christianity is not a european religion. In other centers of christianity, like Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India, European pagan symbology for easter was not adopted until recently. For most of history, there would either have been local rituals incorporated, or none at all.

This does not contradict the fundamental idea of Easter or Christmas though, because the Church explicitly desires that local rituals be incorporated. Catholic missionaries are happy to include anything non-contradictory with the Christian religion into Catholic practice. For example, it is the official policy of the church, after much deliberation, and much back and forth, that Chinese Catholics who desire to do their ancestor veneration rites are allowed to do so, with certain changes made to ensure that the rites fit the Catholic understanding of prayers to ancestors. But for the most part, Catholic Chinese are allowed to partake in these confucian rituals, and can even do so in the context of Catholicism. There is no contradiction.

To support my claims, here is an article on a traditional Syro-Malabar (Indian) Catholic celebration of easter. The Syro-Malabar Church has existed for 2000 years since the times of Thomas. If easter was a European pagan incorporation, we'd expect to see lots of European pagan symbology, like Easter bunnies, eggs, etc. Except we don't. The traditional syro-malabarese feast is a celebration of passover, but with Indian food instead of the middle eastern stuff.

https://homegrown.co.in/article/802431/a-traditional-easter-...

That is not to say that European traditions haven't been incorporated (american cultural hegemony is an unstoppable force), but the rituals that are traditional are nothing close to them.

I can speak to this myself, as an Indian Catholic. I didn't know what the Easter bunny did (apparently he brings candy to little American boys and girls? -- I was clearly short-changed and am still somewhat bitter haha) until middle school. Although my family mentioned the Easter bunny in passing, it was not part of our celebrations at all. Although we dyed eggs with other people in our church because that's what they did, we didn't really do it at home. It was just a social thing.

But the fresco the article is about is from the 13th Century. Christians at that time or even earlier might have re-interpreted the Genesis story in light of psychedelic experiences.

However, on the subject of psychedelic use in early Judaism, there is an interesting article titled "Strange Fires Weird Smokes and Psychoactive Combustibles Entheogens and Incense in Ancient Traditions"[1]:

"The incense cults of Israel have been the subject of a wide variety of theological and academic treatments. Researchers have speculated on the use of entheogens of a variety of species in the Bible (Shanon 2008; Merkur 2000; Allegro 1 970) as well as linking a shared entheogenic heritage with Persia in such crucial texts as the Book of Ezra, which sheds much light on foreign influences on Jewish cultic practices (Dobroruka 2006). A number of scholars have discussed the psychoactive incense used in the temple with various theories as to ingredients (Ruck, Staples & Heinrich 200 I ) and cannabis has been suggested as the kaneh bosom (appearing throughout the Old Testament with the first mention in Exodus) that eludes -- along with the other ingredients of the holy incense -- positive or at least complete identification (Benet 1976). ...

...

The exact recipe of the Old Testament incenses (Levitical and foreign), if there ever was an official recipe that persisted with exact continuity, will likely never be known. Some of the ingredients may be deduced from other examples in the ancient world of incense cults and their psychoactive aromatics. A starting point would logically be Egypt, from which the Israelites made their Exodus, and their various temple incenses and magico-medical fumigants, which included benzoin, cannabis, Hyoscyamus, bitumen and arsenic sulphide (Shehata 2006). Psychopharmacologists link Egyptian plants found in the various Greek writings and Egyptian medical papyri with the soma/haoma of the ancient world and Peganum harmala, which is still used as a magical incense to this day. Linked with the nybt of the Papyrus Ebers (Flattery & Schwartz 1 989) Peg anum is also mentioned by Dioscorides as being used by ancient Syrians as besasa, or "Plant of Bes" and that it was burned in Egypt before the statue of Bes. The ancient kyphi has been speculated by some scholars to have contained cannabis as well as other psychoactive plants such as Acarus calamus and from sixteen to fifty other ingredients, many of which are unidentified."

[1] - https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Just thought this contradiction was amusing.

This is silly. Its shared by a number of religions since abrahamic religions generally have a common root.

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 this is that knowledge is not good or bad; it's how we use it that makes the difference. And from the standpoint of an "awakening" and mystical experience, the connection to psilocybin deserves further study.

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.

https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1037.htm

Another one: guess why Jesus rites on birth and resurrection are highly related in time to Winter and Spring which is seeding time and later harvesting time.

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.

Also, it is not 6 feet tall.