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book1970

The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross

Disciplines:
religion
christianity
psychedelics
language/linguistics

Summary

John Allegro's 1970 argument — that Christianity originated as a mushroom fertility cult, and that biblical names are encoded references to Amanita muscaria — the most linguistically elaborate psychedelic-origins theory in religious history.

Core Contribution

Creates the most detailed psychedelic Christianity hypothesis — Sacred Mushroom's Sumerian etymological analysis (however academically rejected) is the most systematic attempt to argue for psychedelic origins of religion through linguistic evidence.

Historical Influences

James Frazer Dead Sea Scrolls

Intellectual Lineage

John Allegro Hodder & Stoughton

Allied Works

The Immortality Key The Road to Eleusis

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Psychedelic religion research

Intellectual Posterity

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross Psychedelic origins of religion discourse

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