Psylocibin Christ - Part 1

Psylocibin Christ - Part 1

The gospels of the New Testament cover the life of the young Jesus until age twelve. They then pick up on his story when he returns to his home land in his early thirties. Despite being from this land he is not recognised. From here the four gospels selected for the bibles New Testament describe his career. Further gnostic gospels since discovered reveal much on the personality of the man revealing a very different picture though none throw any more light on the near on two decades that form the greater part on the life of perhaps the most celebrated human being of all time. Certainly on his return it is clear he was an expert on scripture. Even taking away any political dimension, many now accept that Christ led one of the many messianic Jewish uprisings against both the occupying Roman governance and the Sadducees that dominated society in something like collaboration, he brought a fresh philosophy. The wealthy class of the Sadducees that were aligned with a priesthood little interested in moral philosophy were repeatedly outsmarted by Christ's intelligent and learned approach. Much of Christ's teachings bare a striking resemblance to the Buddhism of his time. Central too was universal access to epiphany. His message was that God loved societies weakest. Delivering his message to the poor and ordinary people, Jesus undermined the priesthood who depended on their status through unique access to the divine. Two thousand years has seen the chief message lost, largely through the Orthodox Church that claimed the same kind of monopoly on the transcendent he had campaigned against. So where did Christ learn his moral philosophy and where did he first reach epiphany and a clear and practical certainty that such epiphany, the kingdom of God, was available to all?

Most theories of Jesus lost years focus on Joseph of Aramatheia. Mary, the mother of Christ was young when she became pregnant. Something of an arranged marriage to the old carpenter or master builder, perhaps near to an architect, saw her cared for with her child. He had at least one brother, James. Joseph died when Jesus was twelve and as was customary the boy came under the custodianship of the man who was either his uncle or perhaps Mary's uncle making him Jesus great uncle, Joseph of Aramatheia. Joseph was a wealthy man. A trader in metal ore who worked, perhaps even supervised, the Phoenician trade routes that were busy at that time. He is most well known as the man who claimed the body of Christ which he placed in his own tomb. Here he is supposed to have taken medicines and herbs, not for embalming but medical. But that's another story. Joseph's travels probably took him to the east. Kashmir has stories claiming Christ's visiting there. Even being buried there. Certainly this would account for his having access to Buddhist teachings. Though Joseph would have certainly come to Britain. A flourishing trade route for tin would certainly have drawn such a trader.

Stories of Jesus Christ in England centre on his arrival with his uncle in Cornwall where it is said he and his uncle taught the miners smelting. Previously they had exported only ore. Also far many tales speak of his being in the Glastonbury and Mendip hills. None of these stories mention any miracles. They are all prosaic. This, certainly for me, makes them more likely to be true. The first Christian church outside of Jerusalem was established in England. Its founder was Joseph of Aramatheia.  This rich merchant that is said to even have run the tin trade for the Roman Empire between England and the Mediterranean. He took the young Jesus on his travels to Glastonbury where this first church was established. Jesus came first as a youth then later as a young man. As a student of spirituality he could well have been drawn toward the Druids and may well have studied under them. It is said that here he built with his own hands a modest prayer house of wattle and daub. St Augustine says he did so for the salvation of the people. He was well known to be a tecton or carpenter builder. This would be natural for him to do. Gildas says "Jesus lights and precepts were afforded to this island in the last year of the reign of Tiberius." Tiberius retired to Caprae in AD27. William of Malmesbury in 700AD confirmed that Jesus had a ministry at Glastonbury. The Domesday Surveys state the Glastonbury contained 12 hides of land that have never paid tax. This was because Aviragus gave these parcels of land to Joseph of Aramatheia when he landed in AD37. Four of the many traditions of Jesus coming are discussed in Captain Cooks book. The one relevant here runs so, "Joseph of Aramatheia was an uncle of the Virgin Mary. He gained his wealth through importing tin trade which existed between Cornwall and Phoenicia. On one of his voyages he took young Jesus. He either remained or returned later as a young man and stayed in quiet retirement at Glastonbury. Here he made himself a home of mud. Later, Joseph of Aramatheia, fleeing from Palestine, settled in the same place and erected a mud an wattle church."

Other versions say that after claiming the body of Christ, Joseph returned to England where he planted his staff in Wearyall Hill. The tree is a species of hawthorn peculiar to palastein. Joseph also brought certain relics including the Chalice Cup. Joseph knew Britain well from his trips here as a tin merchant. Some say the Virgin Mary is buried here too. These tales blend into the Arthur legend.

What is certain is that Phoenecian tin traders would travel this route. None of these tales are sensational nor miraculous, just plain statements with nothing of a supernatural bent that one would expect if fake. Other variants have Joseph returning, planting his staff in Wearyall Hill then asking where the house that Jesus built was implying that Jesus had come alone. The first church is said to have been established during Tiberius reign, ie. before the Roman conquest, five years after the crucifixion. Monk St Giles.

William of Malmesbury said that the first church was built by Christ's own hand.

Another has Joseph's final arrival sometime between AD35-70, freed by the emperor Vespasion who had converted to Christianity. Sending him to Britain to found the first church. Here he was given the 12 hides of land to do so by King Arviragus (most probably now called Arthur.) Aviragus was either the same man or the brother of Caractacus who led the resistance against Vesparian. The Romans had many failed attempts to take over Albion before their final partial success in doing so. Caractacus fought for nine years before his betrayal and defeat. The heroic and respected King was then brought to Rome and yet allowed to live there with his family in peace. Common assumption has Britons of this period as primitive and barbaric, civilised by the Roman invaders. One only has to look at the sophistication of decorative smithing in jewellery to see that technologically Albion craft was superior to that of Rome. Building traditions differed but these were no primitives. Caractacus was king of the British tribe Catuvellauns. They surrendered at Camp Hillfort. It is certainly possible that Caractacus in exile may have suggested his old home as a suitable hide out for Joseph and his party as the overland trade routes would have taken them close.

These stories are deep rooted in the working communities of common people in these areas. Never sensationalised though often inspiring local pride. One particularly resonant tradition has the young assistant to the tin trader travelling to the Mendip Hills. Quarrying of stone and ore mining has taken place here since Neolithic times. "Our Lord, when a boy, came voyaging with a sailor uncle to Britain. Their trading ship put in at Watchet and from there he looked across the Quantocks to Bridgwater where he boarded a punt and crossed the lakes and marshes to the foot of Mendip, ending his journey high up in Priddy. Here, say the miners, he walked and talked with them a happy while, and then, loaded with Somerset gear, He went back to Nazareth."

In Jesus time the sea level was much higher. The Somerset levels were not land but estuary and marsh. Wearyall hills base would have been a muddy beach where a traders boat would have docked. Each place the stories emerge from make more sense if we imagine only the higher land above water. Wearyall hill, Priddy with its Neolithic circles and barrows, Maesbury Castle Hillfort. Being of pious nature Christ would have undoubtedly have sought out the Druids and the sacred sites in his study. Studies that would later fuel his revolutionary campaign on his return to his home land. Such an individual, so spiritually motivated would undoubtedly have ritually imbibed of the native sacramental entheogens. Liberty Cap mushrooms.

The mystic visionary William Blake experienced transcendent states. His famous poem Jerusalem, two century's later during the First World War, put to music forms Britain's most popular hymn. Arguably the true national anthem of these islands contemplates these traditions:

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy lamb of god

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builder here

Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold

Bring me my arrows of desire

Bring me my spear: o clouds unfold

Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem 

In England's green and pleasant land

Last week I returned to take the walk I did two years ago under sacramental use of AL LAD, up Wearyall Hill to see and touch the holy thorn, the now dead tree that grew from where Joseph planted his staff, then across to Chalice Well where some have said Joseph buried the Grail, then up the Tor. Whilst up these hills where Christ may too have walked, I remembered that, even during my lifetime, before crude chemical farming and the establishments war on transcendence led to their dearth, these places were abundant with the native sacrament of Albion, the Liberty Cap mushroom. Could Christ's early epiphanies have come from Druidic instruction in the use of their entheogens? From the Tor I looked out towards the Mendips, imagining which hills and higher land would have been likely places he would have travelled to. Priddy, where Christ is thought to have been, has Neolithic sacred earthworks. Henges built around the same time as Stonhenge. Ceremonial temples for the paganism of the Druids. Places any seeker of enlightenment would have been unable to resist, along with the wise men that practised their craft there. All these now quieter sites are abundant mushroom land.

Priddy Circles, Neolithic henges, visible now as raised ground without stones, are a linear arrangement of four circular earthwork enclosures near the village of Priddy in the Mendip Hills. They range in diameter from 185-194 metres. Three of the circles are spaced in a near straight line while the forth is somewhat out of line, the gap is bisected by the B3135 and the course of a Roman road which runs from Charterhouse to Old Sarum. Excavations carried out between 1956 and 1959 showed that the banks had stone cores with post and stake holes on either side. Contemporaries of Stonehenge Ie. Neolithic 2500BC - 2180BC. Two round barrow cemeteries, Ashen Hill and Priddy Nine Barrows located less than 1km south of the circles would seem to imply the area to the north east of Priddy held ritual significance into the Bronze Age.

I also walked up to the secretive and hidden Maesbury Castle. This small hill fort offers magnificent views and no tourists. A small multivallate Iron Age Hillfort with defences enclosing the summit of a round hill on the southern side of the Mendip hills. The earthworks are oval in plan with two lines of ramparts enclosing the inner area of 2.8ha. The two ramparts are not always concentric and there is a gap between them, particularly at the western entrance. Situated close to the Fosse Way which for the first few decades of the Roman invasion of Britain marked the western frontier of Roman rule. The Fosse Way though known as a road could have been a defensive ditch or road with such. Later it would have sat on the dividing line between the Romano British Celts and the West Saxons, 577-652AD where the nearby Wansdyke fortification comprised part of the border.

Both sites I found abundant with sacramental entheogenic fungi. The mycelium mass beneath the ground had felt the tread of Christ. Either the same mass or descendants of such. The fruiting body, psylocibin mushrooms, could easily have provided the epiphanies of Christ that led him to his divine mission. Stood there I could feel I was on sacred ground. In respectful manner I gathered sufficient from both places with a view to tasting the mana of Christ. Touching the earth, looking at sights Jesus eyes would have studied, holding my sacred fruit I understood where my mission was heading. 

Regular followers of Skreeworld will know that central to my work since abandoning woodwork, much like Christ had, has been research into the biology of mysticism. This research project is ongoing and is too technical in language, being academic study for this blog though I have explained some of the basic thinking. If we are to accept the science of neurological breakthroughs we must dismiss much of the superstition of religion. The soul, even the self, is a metaphor for our experience of biological processes. Alzheimer's, brain damage, brain tumours, lobotomies and the effect of psychoactive drugs reveal that who we are is dependent on a properly functioning brain. Personality, dreams, emotions can all be impaired, totally changed even destroyed by alterations to our skulls grey content. Nevertheless the idea of the soul is so entrenched in our language and thinking that, though we know the truth few will accept it. Not merely the staunch atheists that ridicule the transcendent soul that lives on after physical death but everyone. Dualism, the belief in a seperation of mind and body may be accepted as wrong though we continue under this illusion. Sentences like 'after her death her body was returned to her family' sound normal. But we don't have bodies, we are bodies. Gilbert Ryle referred to Descartes myth as the ghost in the machine. 'I don't know what came over me', this suggests we are two, the self and the body. As though a homunculus or little pilot sits in our heads steering the vehicle of our flesh body. This has been called the third dethrone ment of man. It's implications are as significant, if not more so than Galileo and Darwin, the first and second. Once accepted we must accept that there is no self in control, there is no we to have free will. Decisions begin in neuro chemical sparks taking place way before we are conscious of them. Politically it means no one can truly claim pride in their achievements nor be held responsible for who they are. This realisation so undermines all our cultures heroic self understanding it is effectively rejected. Still the depressed are shouted at to try harder, addicts blamed for their nature, the naturally gifted applauded for the lottery of their condition. Instead we live in denial of this truth. Even scientific atheists struggle with accepting that the most poetic, transcendent and numinous experiences have a biology. Like pain or fear love doesn't exist beyond ourselves. Falling in love has a biology. Religious revelation had a biology. Emotion is not exclusive to higher life forms, serotonin can be found in tiny amoeba. They steer their path by what feels good. So too in us and other complex animals, direct reaction to a threat from a predator is often too late. Instead life forms operate only secondarily by cognition, primarily using emotional reaction. They sense the vibe. Unconsciously taking in the subtlest smell, atmosphere, details logged and marked somatic ally by neurotransmitters moving through the world steering away from places and situations that feel bad and toward those that feel good. Humans that try logic succumbs to depression whilst the best ride the wave. One day all emotions will submit to biology, everything. All types of love, all states of transcendence. It is these, the mystical states that interest me. What are they for? There are commonalities to all religions. Most begin with an epiphany or revelation, shifting perception to a new level. More recently faith has taken on prescedence, certainly to the Abrahamic religious faiths. Though some strands of Buddhism and much more so, Shamanism, focus on taking practical steps to achieve transcendent states. As a child I lost faith. Watching my mother die despite being good and much prayer slashed away the veil. For many years I gave such things little thought, instead being atheistic and engaging in these issues using rational and philosophy. Witnessing the rise of new atheism in Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc I saw myself and saw I'd been missing something. Not long after the death of Christ Christianity divided in to two branches. The Orthodox Church that ultimately came to convert Rome and go on to influence most of the western world for the next two millennia placed unique value on the mystical experiences of special people. Peter, who's lineage the Catholic Church still claims its authority from, never had a mystical experience. Only through the church could God be accessed. This privilege was viciously guarded. Any claiming to have experienced the divine was lucky to be ridiculed as delusional, most were killed as apostates. No epiphany was real unless authorised through the church. Only they had divine access. Gnostic Christianity took Christ at his word. Anyone could experience the divine and many did. Oppressed they took to meeting in secret. Anyone from boy to woman could lead the ceremonies. Many enjoyed their freedom and were filled with God. This key teaching of Christ, the breaking of the preisthoods monopoly, god for all, Gnosticism was persecuted into the shadows. Christ returned the mystical to the people. Transcendence was real and free to anyone committed. 

Like all human conditions, revelation, epiphany, transcendence, numinous, mystical experiences are, or I should say have, a biology. Just like love they can be had by anyone. Most frustrating for priests and the ascetic, a lay about tramp, a prostitute, a bin man or check out girl have statistically even chances of experiencing this. My moral philosophy has always found Christ's Buddhist like teachings a good guide to life. Whilst never achieving perfection, often far worse, I have always aspired to his way of argue ing we should be. Then, as an atheist Christian I had a mystical experience. I've described it in detail but I, for some time, lost any sense of self and became part of the one. As though my molecules dissolved outwards in a spherical expanding dispersal blending with the molecular field around. I was the earth and the history of each soil particle, I was the air and wind and sky, I was the stream in water and in turbulence. I saw a higher truth. I entered what felt like oneness with the all.

My world was changed. Though not always able to touch it or feel as I did it rejigged me. My old life seemed silly. I enjoyed making things but to be good you must do it a lot. To waste even a moment in some sense of guilt or obligation to making money shifted to being such stupidity I had to give up my business. We are not here for long so must see and feel every minute of every day.

The mystical experience that happened came whilst depleted of the masking neurotransmitters endorphins whilst withdrawing from opiate addiction. Recovering addicts often become spiritual in a way they never were before. To be stripped that bare of all that makes you feel safe, secure and free of pain returns you to a similar emotional condition as a baby. On top of this I took the new lysergamides AL LAD. A superior synthesis of LSD. Points in my earlier life I had forgotten about as they found no location in my normal reality frame returned from the quagmire of memory. Mushroom trips in my teens had long ago slipped away into adolescent pranks. I remembered feeling like I had had profound revelations. I'd write phrases down to read when I'd returned to Earth with a view to changing the world through spreading my eurekas. Yet in the morning the words would make no sense. After a few years I grew to think these feelings were up illusions. Pseudo revelations, only feeling like epiphany whilst having no substance. Yet since the major later mid life mystical experience, as an older and wiser person having trained as a craftsman, steeped in tacit knowledge, understanding that has no words nor needs any, I thought again. Dismissing them was similar to remembering how painful it was when I'd broken a leg, yet saying that the pain was not real because it was no longer there. I realised the sensation was all. All that mattered. To feel in love has no material aspect yet should we dismiss that? Of course not, love is our highest condition. Certainly among them. The mystical was real. Accepting that it also had a real biology didn't spoil it, as it does for most who recoil into denial or delusion. Instead it gave it substance. From here I began to think of a biology of the mystical and its purpose for the human animal.

There is a current trend, because of the Internet and cheap travel, to lose sense of the importance of place. Advanced lysergamides can be bought on the Internet, entheogenic plants from all over the world can be delivered to your door. Others take pilgrimages to the Amazon to take ayuashka with shaman supervision then return to their normal world. Shamans of lower morals may take the money but better ones know their knowledge is particular to the place they live. The vine is a god. Mimosa Hostilis, Baanisteria Caapi ( the ayuashka goddess herself) psychotria viridis, these are plants of personage that the earth , Gaia if you like, delivers to them for specific purpose. In food it is becoming accepted that our global reach is not so healthy. Man evolved in context. The foods becoming available at the time of year in the climate they grow provide the correct nutrients for the context. Medicines too. Everything evolved as one and despite our global travel and the continued delusion of seperation, we are organisms like any other, expressions of our environment. Given this nutritional appropriate to environment it seems logical that entheogens, naturally occurring psychedelics must be relative to environmental context too. As a side interest I had become interested in fungi, mycelium etc. It seemed time to take another look at albions native sacrament. The Liberty Cap. 

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