Product Description

An illustrated foray into the hidden truth about the use of psychoactive mushrooms to connect with the divine.
*Draws parallels between Vedic beliefs and Judeo-Christian sects, showing the existence of a mushroom cult that crossed cultural boundaries.
*Contends that the famed philosophers' stone of the alchemist was a metaphor for the mushroom.
*Confirms and extends Robert Gordon Wasson's hypothesis of the role of the fly agaric mushroom in generating religious visions.
*First North American Edition of Strange Fruit.

Rejecting arguments that the elusive philosophers' stone of alchemy and the Hindu elixir of life were mere legend, Clark Heinrich provides a strong case that Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom, played this role in world religious history. Working under the assumption that this "magic mushroom" was the mysterious food and drink of the gods, Heinrich traces its use in Vedic and Puranic religion, illustrating how ancient cultures used the powerful psychedelic in esoteric rituals meant to bring them into direct contact with the divine. He then shows how the same mushroom symbols found in Hindu scriptures correspond perfectly to the symbols of ancient Judaism, Christianity, the Grail myths, and alchemy, arguing that miraculous stories as disparate as the burning bush of Moses and the raising of Lazarus from the dead can be easily explained by the use of this strange and powerful mushroom. While acknowledging the speculative nature of his work, Heinrich concludes that in many religious cultures and traditions the fly agaric mushroom-and in some cases ergot or psilocybin mushrooms-had a fundamental influence in teaching humans about the nature of God. His insightful book truly brings new light to the religious history of humanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178961 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Terence McKenna, author of Foods of the Gods and True Hallucinations
. . . fascinating, scholarly and original . . . I love it.

Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions
No researcher to date has tackled the subject with Heinrich's painstaking ingenuity. His conclusions are as fascinating . . . controversial.

Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD and coauthor of Plants of the Gods
[An] extraordinary and beautiful book. . . . I have learned a good deal.

Customer Reviews

Magic Mushrooms - Almost there, but not quite.
Clark Heinrich is probably one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of entheogens and Hinduism. This book gives one of the best reasoned arguments of microcosmic mushroom use in the Hindu religion with a near 100% accuracy. Unfortunately Mr. Heinrich either doesn't know, or avoids the macrocosm completely, not only in Hinduism, but for Christianity and Alchemy as well. Those who've read the works of theologists such as Acharya S., Jordan Maxwell, Manly P. Hall, Kersey Graves, Ernest Busenbark, David Fideler, G.A. Wells etc. will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Mr. Heinrich's avoidance of the obvious anthropomorphisms of the Christ figure and Moses is rather odd, especially after seeing him whip thru the anthropomorphisms of the Rig Vedas with such accuracy. He brings up dozens of references that make it clear that Christ "himself" as well as Moses on the microcosm is indeed the mushroom, as John M. Allegro pointed out over 3 decades ago. His accuracy for Christianity is rather weak because of this, which he says "Isn't crucial to me if the name Jesus means "mushroom" in some long-lost tongue, although I will consider it to be quite significant if it happens to be true". After which Mr. Heinrich continues to write nearly 100 pages showing us that it is true.

When one understands the macrocosm, and knows that Jesus too is the mushroom on the microcosm, the entire Bible unfolds. Mr. Heinrich's weak attempt at showing Jesus as a shaman in his 'John Pilch' sort of way is rather unpersuasive. If he had spent that same energy showing Jesus is the mushroom, instead of implying it (which he does probably 50 times), he would have been far better off.

For the Song of Solomon Mr. Heinrich is 40% accurate at best, as he completely omits (or misses) the references to Cubensis mushrooms, and completely misses the fact that the book is a mycology guide not only for Amanita Muscaria, but for Stropharia Cubensis as well. There is even more to this wonderful story than that, but I don't want to give it all away.

His references of Jonah, though true to a point are still missing about 90% of what this book is about... The ups and downs of the Amanita experience. For the book of revelations, Clark correctly identifies the Amanita, but here too misses the many references to Cubensis. I could go on and on, but this is not a book, so I will reserve this for those "in the know".

This book is a far better read than Dan Merkur's weak explanations of everything in the Bible being ergot, never even questioning if Jesus was a man or not. At least Mr. Heinrich has experience with the substances he's talking about, where as Merkur doesn't have the slightest clue and calls everything a cult. How Mr. Merkur ever even thought to consider that the Bible was about entheogens is a question in and of its self to ponder.

Mr. Heinrich gets 5 stars for his work on the microcosm in Hinduism. He gets 3 stars for his work on the Bible for obvious avoidance of anthropomorphisms, and lack of knowledge on the macrocosm. He gets 4 stars for his incredible accuracy on the microcosmic representations of alchemy (Or rather anti-alchemy), where only a knowledge of the macrocosm would have scored him another 5 star. So, I give this book an average score of 4 stars.

Thank you Clark for your wonderful work and inspiration.

Sex, drugs, and Godhead!
Clark Heinrich is an exceedingly clever, authoritative writer, who keeps readers in thrall with his subject by colorful propositions and turns of phrase that tease and engage the intellect. In this speculative history, he demonstrates an astonishing erudition for religion, myth, art, and the cultural history and botanical details of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. In making his case, speculative as it is, he provides innumerable references to genitalia, sex acts, and various bodily processes and their by-products, which has a way of anchoring his often far-fetched-seeming ideas in the corporeal realm. He also piques interest when his tone turns irreverent, specifically in his treatment of the Judeo-Christian belief system he was born into, where he rightfully, if self-consciously blasphemously, points out that there is little if any reason for sentient beings to believe that the so-called miracles cited in the Bible were the work of supernatural forces. He offers a more concrete and perhaps more likely explanation for seminal religious phenomena: the ingestion of Amanita muscaria and the subsequent encryption of its inspirations in the literature, rituals, and symbols of religion and alchemy. I was blown away by the amount of thoughtful research that went into this insightful and entertaining work. To arrive at his conclusionns, controversial and speculative as they are, he would have had to spend many hours poring over and interpreting esoteric texts in varying translation, and then on the trial and error of attempting to fit the Amanita key to unlock their mysteries. While I came away fairly convinced that the Amanita mushroom likely played a role in the development of at least some religious creeds, I found some of the author's "proof" to be of the "you had to be there to really appreciate it" sort. The "evidence" is sometimes so visual or semantic and so multilayered, that it dosen't hit home with imeediacy. Several questions emerge. Does the Amanita have any role in the Islamic faith (a almost entirely overlooked in this volume)? If so, why wasn't it documented? If not, how and why would it have eluded the third of the three Abrahamic creeds? Why is it that in all the instances of Amanita cult around the world, the identification of the mushroom in question is disguised and not outrightly revealed? Why if even mainstream religions are allegedly built on visionary experiences prompted by the "plants of the Gods" is the identity of these plants not more plainly revealed, at least from some likely sources or at certain logical historical junctures? It's hard for me to believe entheogenically derived inspiration would be so rigorously relegated and obscured as "forbidden knowledge" over the milennia. The ambiguity of encryption leads to speculation that is bound to turn nutty and implausible even in the most capable hands. Still, by incisive analysis as well as persuasive insinuation, Heinrich's highly readable and scholarly work makes a strong case for the entheogenic underpinnings of religion. The narrative of his own personal experience with Amanita ingestion is hilarious, compelling, and numinously stirring -- so much so that I included an excerpt of it in my own book Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures published in the interim between the release of the original, British edition of Heinrich's book, Strange Fruit, and the expanded, American, edition, the one I'm reviewing here. This is a fun and brilliantly illustrated book. Enjoy!

shroomified
a well-researched (but fun-loving) exploration of the psychedelic underpinnings of religion. Vibrantly illustrated and effectively carrying the torch from greats such as R. Gordon Wasson, this one's a keeper.