Here man, see if weed can replace half of this.....

http://www.rxlist.com/drugs/alpha_a.htm

Well, at least it would replace what it could with "non toxic" chemicals.

Perhaps a list of ailments would be a better and more obvious point to start from.....

Wartroll, you mean you have proven nothing, just more childish ranting and raving. Smoke a joint buddy, chillllllll.

In regards to potential effects from the cannabis based oils, which you now admit Jesus may have used, as I note in Cannabis and the Soma Solution: As one shekel equals approximately 16.37 grams, this means that the THC of over 9 pounds of flowering cannabis tops were extracted into a hind, about 6.5 litres of oil. The entheogenic effects of such a solution, even when applied topically, would undoubtedly have been intense. Health Canada has done scientific tests that show transdermal absorption of THC can take place. The skin is the biggest organ of the body, so of course considerably more cannabis is needed to be effective this way, much more than when ingested or smoked. The people who used the Holy oil literally drenched themselves in it. Based upon a 25mg/g oil Health Canada found skin penetration of THC (33%). “The high concentration of THC outside the skin encourages penetration, which is a function of the difference between outside and inside (where the concentration is essentially zero)” (James Geiwitz, Ph.D, 2001).

Cross cultural references to such topical preparations of cannabis have been identified (Bennett & McQueen, 2001; Bennett, 2006). Closer to Moses’ own time, as noted earlier, ancient Assyrian inscriptions indicate that a similar preparation was in use for identical purposes:

An Assyrian medical tablet from the Louvre collection (AO 7760)(Labat, 1950)(3,10,16) was transliterated as follows…, ‘ana min sammastabbariru sama-zal-la samtar-mus.’ Translating the French [EBR], we obtain, ‘So that god of man and man should be in good rapport: - with hellebore, cannabis and lupine you will rub him.’ (Russo 2005)

Only those who had been “dedicated by the anointing oil of...God” (Leviticus 21:12) were permitted to act as priests. In the “holy” state produced by the anointing oil the priests were forbidden to leave the sanctuary precincts (Leviticus 21:12), and the above passage from Exodus, makes quite clear the sacredness of this ointment, the use of which the priests jealously guarded. These rules were made so that other tribal members would not find out the secret behind Moses and the priesthood’s new found shamanistic revelations. Or even worse, take it upon themselves to make a similar preparation. An event that would likely lead to Moses and his fellow Levites losing their authority over their ancient tribal counterparts. Those who broke this strong tribal taboo risked the penalty of being “cut off from their people”, a virtual death-sentence in the savage ancient world. Secrets revealed equals power lost, is a rule of thumb that is common to shamans and magicians world wide, and as shall be seen, the ancient Hebrew shamans guarded their secrets as fiercely as any.

The sacred character of hemp in biblical times is evident from Exodus 30:22-23, where Moses was instructed by God to anoint the meeting tent and all its furnishings with specially prepared oil, containing hemp. Anointing set sacred things apart from secular. The anointment of sacred objects was an ancient tradition in Israel: holy oil was not to be used for secular purposes.....Above all, the anointing oil was used for the installation rites of all Hebrew kings and priests. (Benet 1975)

Moreover, this Holy Oil was to be used specifically in the Tent of the Meeting, where the Lord would “speak” to Moses. From what can be understood by the descriptions in Exodus, Moses and later High Priests, would cover themselves with this ointment and also place some on the altar of incense before burning it. “Besides its role in anointing, the holy oil of the Hebrews was burned as incense, and its use was reserved to the priestly class” (Russo, 2007). The Exodus account describes Moses as seeking the Lord’s advice, from a pillar of smoke emanating from the altar of incense, in the enclosed chamber of the tent of the meeting. This is reminiscent of the cannabis burning tents of the Scythians and also Assyrians.
The burning of specific psychoactive plants in tents may have spread from the Indo-European nomadic cults the prime example of which are the Scythians... [participating] in the enclosed inhalations of Cannabis vapors... the enclosure in tents or closed rooms is similar to the common practice in modern Cannabis culture referred to as “hot-boxing.” (Dannaway, 2009)

In the TORAH, the pillar of smoke that arose before Moses in the ‘Tent of the Meeting’, is referred to as the ‘Shekinah’ and is identified as the physical evidence of the Lord’s presence. None of the other Hebrews in the Exodus account either see or hear the Lord, they only know that Moses is talking to the Lord when the smoke is pouring forth from the Tent of the Meeting. It is hard not to see all the classical elements of shamanism at play in this description of Moses’ encounter with God, and like Zoroaster, Moses can be seen as a ecstatic shamanic figure who used cannabis as a a means of seeking celestial advice.
end quote


Here is lots of evidence of Jesus and other Chrisitan figures getting stoned.... from Cannabis and the Soma Solution (adapted from Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible http://www.forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/SexDrugs/Book

The NEW TESTAMENT makes it clear that the Holy Oil contained more than mere medical properties, and like the Soma-Haoma it was a means of revealing divine knowledge as well: “The anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him” (1 John 2:27).

The Christians, the “smeared or anointed ones,’ received ‘knowledge of all things” by this “anointing from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20). Thereafter, they needed no other teacher, and were endowed with their own spiritual knowledge. As Jesus and his followers began to spread the healing knowledge of cannabis around the ancient world, the singular Christ became the plural term “Christians”, that is, those who had been smeared or anointed with the holy oil.

In the first few centuries AD, Christian Gnostic groups such as the Archontics, Valentians and Sethians rejected water baptism as superfluous, referring to it as an “incomplete baptism” (The Paraphrase of Shem). In the tractate, the Testimony of Truth, water Baptism is rejected with a reference to the fact that Jesus baptized none of his disciples (Rudolph, 1987). Being “anointed with unutterable anointing”, the so-called “sealings” recorded in the Gnostic texts, can be seen as a very literal event. “There is water in water, there is fire in chrism” (Gospel of Philip). “The anointing with oil was the introduction of the candidate into unfading bliss, thus becoming a Christ” (Mead, 1900). “The oil as a sign of the gift of the Spirit was quite natural within a semetic framework, and therefore the ceremony is probably very early. . . In time the biblical meaning became obscured” (Chadwick, 1967).

The surviving Gnostic descriptions of the effects of the anointing rite make it very clear that the holy oil had intense psycho-active properties, which prepared the recipient for entrance into “unfading bliss”. In some Gnostic texts like the Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu, the “spiritual ointment” is a prerequisite for entry into the highest mystery (Mead, 1900).

In later time, as Christianity fragmented into different sects, one of the main points of contention between those collectively known as Gnostic Christians, and those of the Church of Rome which formed around the teachings of Paul, was initiation by this ointment, seen as heretical by the Catholic Church, vs what the Gnostics saw as the Catholic’s placebo rite of baptism. In the Gnostic view, as described in the Gospel of Philip, those who “go down into the water and come up without having received anything”:

The anointing (chrisma) is superior to baptism. For from the anointing we were called ‘anointed ones’ (Christians), not because of the baptism. And Christ also was [so] named because of the anointing, for the Father anointed the son, and the son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us. [Therefore] he who has been anointed has the All. He has the resurrection, the light. . . the Holy Spirit. . . [If] one receives this unction, this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ.

Similarly, the Gospel of Truth records that Jesus specifically came into their midst so that he, “might anoint them with the ointment. The ointment is the mercy of the Father. . . those whom he has anointed are the ones who have become perfect.”

The apocryphal book, The Acts of Thomas, refers to the ointment’s entheogenic effects as being specifically derived from a certain plant:

Holy oil, given us for sanctification, hidden mystery… you are the unfolder of the hidden parts. You are the humiliator of stubborn deeds. You are the one who shows the hidden treasures. You are the plant of kindness. Let your power come by this [unction].

Descriptions of the Holy oil give clear evidence that like Soma and Haoma, it had both healing and spiritual properties, and these effects in all cases were associated with the plant from which it was derived, and the ‘divine’ power inherent within it. In reference to the “plant of kindness” referred to in The Acts of Thomas, it is important to note that the account where the above reference occurs, takes place in India! As well the ancient Christian text also includes a hymn The Ode to Sophia, that is connected with the ‘Bridal Chamber’ ceremony, a Gnostic sex rite analogous to the rite of mathuna (sexual union) in Tantrism, where “a man and woman come together for the mingling of their bodies, the exchange of their fluids, and the mutual recharging of their energy” (Walker 1982). As cannabis has been commonly used since ancient times in such Indian rites (see Chapter 18), it is important to to note that the room prepared for this Gnostic counterpart of Tantric rituals was rich with the scent of “Indian Leaf”:

Her chamber is bright with light and breatheth forth the odor of balsam and all spices, and giveth out a sweet smell of myrrh and Indian leaf, and within are myrtles strown on the floor, and of all manner of odorous flowers... (Ode to Sophia)

Accounts from early Catholic sources attacking these practices, such as Irenaeus’ condemnations of the Gnostic figure Marcus below, make it abundantly clear that the use of drugs in such sex rites was an integral part of the ritual:

Moreover, that this Marcus compounds philters and love-potions, in order to insult the persons of some of these women, if not of all, those of them who have returned to the Church of God -- a thing which frequently occurs - have acknowledged, confessing, too, that they have been defiled by him, and that they were filled with a burning passion towards him. A sad example of this occurred in the case of a certain Asiatic, one of our deacons, who had received him (Marcus) into his house. His wife, a woman of remarkable beauty, fell a victim both in mind and body to this magician, and, for a long time, travelled about with him. At last, when, with no small difficulty, the brethren had converted her, she spent her whole time in the exercise of public confession, weeping over and lamenting the defilement which she had received from this magician. (Irenaeus of Lyons, ADVERSUS HAERESES, Book I, Chapter 13:5, 178 A.D.)


Fig. 1 (Illustration by author).

Gnostic texts indicate that besides topical use, entheogenic preparations of cannabis were also burnt and inhaled as well as drank and ingested, and through these the Zoroastrian influence is further identified. Indeed, the Gnostic tractate, The Apocryphon of John, has Jesus make mention of Zoroaster’s teachings himself, declaring to John the son of Zebedee: “if you wish to know them, it is written in the book of Zoroaster.” A tractate that was popular with early Gnostics had the title of Zostrianos, and the author has been identified as a person in “the lineage of the famous Persian magus Zoroaster” (Sieber 1988), and by others the Persian shaman Zoroaster himself; “[I]n the Nag Hammadi document Zostrianos,...the ancient Iranian prophet is [Zoroaster] portrayed, in accordance with the ideas of late antiquity, as the proclaimer of secret doctrines. His wisdom he obtains in the course of a heavenly journey which he experiences in the desert” (Rudolph 1987).

As shown in Chapter 15 Zoroastrian texts indicate that Zoroaster used a preparation of hemp to achieve the type of shamanistic flight that is described in the Gnostic tractate Zostrianos, and that the ancient Persian sage initiated others into its use. Interestingly, and pointedly, the sadly fragmented Gnostic tractate Zostrianos has some obvious references to a drink which acted as a catalyst for the author's voyage: “After I parted from the somatic darkness in me and the psychic chaos in mind...I did not use it again...” And again later, tying in the effects of the drink with references to “baptism”; “And I said, I have asked about the mixture [....] it is perfect and gives [...] there is power which [has...those] in which we receive baptism...”

The experiences of the ancient Gnostic psychonaut recorded in Zostrianos, with its Baptism to the different levels or realms of heaven, closely parallels the experiences had by the Zoroastrian hero Ardu Viraf, who was transported in soul to heaven after drinking a preparation of bangha (hemp, bhang). The similarities between Viraf's ascent and those attributed to the later Gnostic groups have been noted (Hinnells, 1973). In fact it is from the Zoroastrian tradition that the supposedly Christian concept of Heaven and Hell originated. How sadly few modern Christians are aware that historically their belief in these Fantastic Realms have their origins in visions from the hemp induced shamanistic ecstasy of a non-Judaic pre-Christian tradition! (Bennett & McQueen, 2001)

Clearly in the 2nd century account of Zostrianos we find further corroboration of a Zoroastrian influence and origin of Ezra’s fiery cup, discussed in the previous Chapter, and this later Gnostic text attests not only to the popularity of this method through the intervening centuries, but also of its considerable antiquity, a fact that has until now remained in question due to the later age of the existing Zoroastrian texts (although they are believed to have been derived from an older oral tradition).

One of the more significant and widespread Gnostic sects, the Manicheans, which survived into the twelfth century in parts of Europe and China, worshipped Jesus right alongside Zoroaster, and performed ceremonies similar to the one that Jesus is described as presiding over. As noted in Chapter 9, Tocharian speaking people are thought to have brought the Manichean religion into China, and there the “general opinion of their religion was that it involved drug-induced ecstasy, for their leaders had titles like ‘spirit-king’ and ‘spirit-father’ and ‘spirit-mother,’ but the common folk deliberately mispronounced the word for ‘spirit’ (mo) as ‘ma,’ meaning ‘cannabis sativa’ (as if ‘Pater’ were changed phonetically to ‘pothead’)” (Ruck et al. 2001).


The Treasure of Light and the Mystery of the Five Trees

In the Gnostic text the Second Book of Ieou Jesus takes on the role of shamanic initiator, and in this text we find of evidence of an incense akin to that which had been dedicated to the Queen of Heaven, causing Jeremiah to burn with anger, and Yahweh to reject future offerings of keneh bosem (Jeremiah 6:20)

At the turn of the present century Professor GRS Mead summarized a German translation of a surviving Gnostic text, the Second Book of Ieou. The text describes Jesus bidding both male and female disciples to join him so that he can reveal to them the great mystery of the Treasure of Light.

In order to accomplish this, the candidates have to be initiated by three Baptisms: The Baptism of Water, the Baptism of Fire, and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, “and thereafter the Mystery of the Spiritual Chrism [anointing].” Jesus tells his followers that the master-mysteries of the Treasure of Light are involved with the mystery of the Five Trees, which may mean having knowledge of the magical plants that were used in the ceremony.

All of these mysteries Jesus promises to give to His disciples, that they may be called “Children of the Fullness (Pleroma) perfected in all mysteries.” The Master then gathers His disciples, and sets forth a place of offering, placing one wine-jar on the right and on the left, and strews certain berries and spices round the vessels; He then puts a certain plant in their mouths, and another plant in their hands, and ranges them in order round the sacrifice. (Mead, 1900)

Continuing with the ritual, Jesus gives the disciples cups, along with other articles, and seals their foreheads with a magical diagram. Then, like shamanistic and magical ceremonies the world over, he turns his disciples to the four corners of the world, with their feet together in an attitude of prayer, and then offers a prayer which is prefixed with an invocation, and continues with a number of purifications and into the Baptism of Fire.

In this rite vine-branches are used; they are strewn with various materials of incense. The Eucharist is prepared...

The prayer [this time, is to] the Virgin of Light. . . the judge; she it is who gives the Water of the Baptism of Fire. A wonder is asked for in “the fire of this fragrant incense”, and it is brought about by the agency of Zorokothora. What the nature of the wonder was, is not stated. Jesus baptizes the disciples, gives them of the eucharistic sacrifice, and seals their foreheads with the seal of the Virgin of Light.

Next follows the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. In this rite both the wine-jars and vine-branches are used. A wonder again takes place, but is not further specified. After this we have the Mystery of Withdrawing the Evil of the Rulers, which consists of an elaborate incense-offering. (Mead, 1900)

The “wonder” in the incense which so perplexed Mead was presumably a reference to its psychoactive effects, as does the other undefined “wonder” likely indicate the magical properties of the different plants used in the ceremony. As well, the references to “wine-jars and vine-branches” opens up the possibility that the Gnostics were practicing the age old method of infusing cannabis into wine.

It would seem to follow that the identity of the different plants, vines, and berries described in the excerpts were identified to the participants as the Mystery of the Five Trees.

At this time we can only speculate what other plants were used in the ceremony. The account of mandrake in Genesis 30: 14-16 and in the Song of Songs 7: 13 (which seems to indicate its addition to the holy anointing oil) clearly document the long term interest the Hebrews had with these seemingly magical plant angels.

That the use and knowledge of such plants could have been passed down by Zoroastrian and Jewish sources to certain “heretical” branches of the faith like the Gnostics seems self evident. The addition of such a powerful hallucinatory drug such as mandrake (or belladonna, datura, henbane, all of which were also popular in the Middle East at that time) would help to explain some of the extreme experiences related to the holy anointings and baptisms described in the Gnostic literature. Recipes for medieval witches’ “flying ointments” contain cannabis, mandrake, belladonna and other entheogens, and the out-of-body experiences attributed to the Gnostics have many parallels with the Witches Sabat, as do aspects of their cosmology.

Although there is clear evidence of the use of a variety of psychoactive substance amongst the ancient Jews, in the case of the Gnostic’s “five trees”, it is likely that a marked Persian influence can be found. The surviving Mithraic iconography indicates that as with the Gnostic’s 5 Trees, a number of psychoactive plants may have come into use among Mithra’s cult by Roman times. Interestingly, the pscilocybin containing mushroom popularly known as the Liberty Cap mushroom, gets its name from Mithra’s cap (which was also worn by the medieval alchemists and gained popularity during the French Revolution). but as the hat is red, it is more likely symbolic of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. In favor of this is Mithra's connection with the Greek hero Perseus (whose name is derived from Persia), who wore a magic hat that was similar to Mithra’s except for its white spots (a similar spotted cap came to be one of the key symbolisms of the seventh and highest grade of the cult). This hypothesis is backed up by reintroducing the psychoactive urine theory through a depiction of Mithra’s slaying the bull, in which a chalice (or Grail?) is placed beneath the bull’s penis collecting his urine. (psychoactive properties of the Amanita muscaria (and certain other psychoactive chemicals) can pass through urine and can be re-ingested. (But as discussed in Chapters 2 and 14, this may also be a carryover from the Persian practice of drinking Bull’s urine for ritual purification).



Fig. 2 Fig.3
Fig. 2, Mithra being born from the Earth, looking like the mushroom personified. Fig. 3, Mithra’s slaying the sacred bull, note chalice placed beneath bull’s genitals for collecting urine.

Franz Cumont in THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA put forth that by the Roman period “Grapes… in the West replaced the Haoma of the Persians…. Haoma, a plant unknown in the Occident, was substituted for the juice of the vine,” (Cumont, 1956). A similar suggestion was put forth by Nyberg in 1938, who felt that with the reemergence of the Mithraic Haoma cult in Zoroaster’s day, “the clean alcoholic intoxication” eventually beat out “holy intoxication of the magus, which was possibly supported by the much deeper acting hemp intoxication... The drinking of Haoma caused a more ordinary/standard inebriation than ecstasy” (Nyberg, 1938). Although this case seems unlikely when set against the background of Iran, as there is no record of the Iranian Haoma as an alcoholic beverage and the reforms there likely resulted in the Ephedra concoction still used. However, considering the Mediterranean love of wine, and that Roman depiction of Mithra holding a bunch of grapes are known, it is clearly plausible that such may be the case in this later defused foreign situation for the cult. If this is the case it would explain much about the later Roman Catholic sacraments of bread and wine, as the Catholics borrowed so much from the Roman period cult of Mithras for the mythology of their own Messianic savior, Jesus Christ.


Fig. 4, Mithras, Zoroastrian Haoma God, emerging from the earth, with grapes in hand. From (Cumont, 1956).

Regardless of what substances were used in the Mithraic rites, and as it has been demonstrated that intoxicants were used in the Gnostic initiation ceremonies, it is interesting to note that even the use of wine in these rites has been connected with the planetary ascension, and stages of initiation. Originally, the ritual consumption of wine, was “unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour” (James 1929). Franz Cumont believed that it was only the Mithraic devotees being initiated to the level of Lion, that were given the sacramental wine, and the ritual commemorated the banquet Mithra celebrated with the Sun before his ascension.

From this mystical banquet, and especially from the imbibing of the sacred wine, supernatural effects were expected. “All religions in which mysticism and contact with the supernatural play an important part attribute a sacred character to an intoxicating drink or other intoxicant. The tradition of sacred drinks and ritual libations is found in all ancient civilizations. Wine is still today a part of the Christian ritual” (Danielou 1992).

The intoxicating liquor gave not only vigor of body and material prosperity, but wisdom of mind; it communicated to the neophyte the power to combat the malignant spirits, and what is more, conferred upon him as upon his god a glorious immortality.... The fermented beverage which he imbibed excited his senses and disturbed his reason to the utmost pitch; he murmured his mystic formulas, and they evoked before his distracted imagination divine apparitions. In his ecstasy, he believed himself transported beyond the limits of the world, and having issued from his trance he repeated... “I have transcended the boundaries of death, I have trodden the threshold of Proserpine, and having traversed all the elements I am returned to earth. In the middle of the night I have seen the Sun scintillating with a pure light; I have approached the gods below and the gods above, and have worshipped them face to face.” (Cumont 1956)

As Dannaway has noted, the “cult of Mithras, which may have been one of the main cults that retained and preserved... [ancient] mysteries for later generations of mystics, had strange incense rites as well” (Dannaway, 2009). In Did the Mithraists Inhale? Prof. Radcliffe Edmonds describes Mithraic fumigation rites in relation to shamanic-flight, indicating that this rite may have eclipsed the drinking of Haoma in its importance: “The magician in the Mithras Liturgy raises himself to the world of the gods through the inhaling of pneuma ... and the sun rays are the path by which the pneuma from the divine realm comes down to the magician. Although the references to this ritual practice are brief in the Mithras Liturgy, they are clearly the primary means of [shamanic] ascent, since no other mode of ascent is ever mentioned” (Radcliffe, 2000). Radcliffe refers to the “incense burning lions” as seen in Fig. 5 as indications of this practice.

Fig. 5, Illustration of a Mithraic Lion-Headed deity and altar of incense, from a Roman period relief (artist unknown).

The entheogenic effects of the Mithraic sacraments were focused and magnified by the clever manipulation of light on divine statues, the movement of costumed participants, chanting, and animal noises such as wings flapping and lions roaring. As discussed in SEX, DRUGS, VIOLENCE AND THE BIBLE in some detail, the Gnostics used entheogenic sacraments for their almost identical planetary ascension. In Mithraism, seven different sacraments were given to the initiate as he passed through the seven grades of the cult. This Mithraic rite itself was an adoption of the Babylonian and Semitic initiatory shamanistic ascension through the seven planetary spheres and elements of this earlier mythology also carried over into the Gnostic counterpart of the ritual.

Like the numerous animal-headed deities depicted in Mithraic art, and enacted by costumed participants in Mithraic rites, Celsus, who pits Mithraism against Christianity in his True Discourses, ridiculed the Christian Gnostics of the second century for what he saw as their make-believe ascents through the planetary spheres, accomplished through “the demonic words addressed to the lion, the animal with double forms and the one shaped like an ass, and the other illustrious doorkeepers, whose names you hapless folk have wretchedly learnt by heart.” Celsus description of the Gnostic text The Ophite Diagrams describes the Seven archontic demons, all of which but the amphibian appear in Mithraic depictions: “the first is lion-shaped; the second is a bull; the third is amphibious and hisses horribly; the fourth is in the form of an eagle; the fifth has the appearance of a bear, the sixth, that of a dog; and the seventh, that of an ass named Thaphabaoth or Onoel. Some persons return to the archontic forms so they become lions or bulls or serpents or eagles or bears or dogs.”

Such similarities were obviously more than the product of mere accident, and indicate that at some early point in Christian development the two faiths had come into contact. It can safely be concluded that the profound similarities in the rites of the Gnostic and Mithraic rites included the use of entheogenic potions and plants, such as those Jesus is depicted as giving his disciples in the Second Book of Ieou, and elsewhere.

Significantly, in the case of the Second Book of Ieou, the “fragrant-incense” is offered to the Virgin of Light, and this would seem to be reminiscent of the offering of keneh-bosm incense to the Queen of Heaven that we have discussed so fully in Chapter 16. Also of interest concerning the incense, and further evidence of syncretism, is that the wonder of the incense is brought about by a figure known as Zorokothora, a name which Mead records is interpreted as Melchizedek, who was an ancient Canaanite king. On the other hand, indicating further cultural syncretism, Zorokothora does have strong indications of the name Zoroaster, the Persian sage who played psychopomp initiator to his disciples, in a similar way to that attributed to Jesus in the Second Book of Ieou.

The suggestion that cannabis was in use in this area of the world in the first few centuries A.D. is not left to pure textual interpretations, but rather solid archeological evidence indicating its use as both a topical preparation and medicinal fumigant has been documented. “Residues of cannabis, moreover, have been detected in vessels from Judea and Egypt in a context indicating its medicinal, as well as visionary, use” (Ruck 2003).

A 1992 archeological dig in Bet Shemesh near Jerusalem has confirmed that cannabis medicine was in use in the area up until the fourth century. Thus it would seem to stand to reason that it was used for these purposes throughout the intervening Christian period. In the case of the Bet Shemesh dig, the cannabis had been used as an aid in child bearing, both as a healing balm and an inhalant. This find garnered some attention, as can be seen from the Associated Press article, Hashish evidence is 1,600 years old, that appeared in Vancouver newspaper THE PROVINCE, on June 2, 1992:

Archaeologists have found hard evidence that hashish was used as a medicine 1,600 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said yesterday. Archaeologists uncovered organic remains of a substance containing hashish, grasses and fruit on the abdominal area of a teenage female’s skeleton that dates back to the fourth century, the antiquities authority said in a statement. Anthropologist Joel Zias said that although researchers knew hashish had been used as a medicine, this is the first archeological evidence. (ASSOCIATED PRESS 1992)

As Zias and his colleagues explained: “We assume that the ashes found in the tomb were cannabis, burned in a vessel and administered to the young girl as an inhalant to facilitate the birth process” (Zias, et al., 1993). This find of cannabis in a Judean cave was further supported by the later analysis of glass vessels from the site which also contained evidence of cannabinoid residues (Zias, 1995).

Although the idea that Jesus and his disciples used a healing cannabis ointment may seem far-fetched at first, when weighed against the popular alternative (one that is held by millions of believers) that Jesus performed his healing miracles magically, through the power invested in him by the omnipotent Lord of the Universe, the case for ancient accounts of medicinal cannabis seems a far more likely explanation. When one considers that Jesus himself may have healed and initiated disciples with such topical cannabis preparations, the modern reintroduction of cannabis based medicines becomes, if not a miracle, at least a profound revelation.

Moreover, the Chrisitan Eucharistic ceremony itself is a ripp-off of the much more ancient Persian cannabis based Haoma ceremony, from Cannabis and the Soma Solution:

Mithristianity

Superimposed over the story of this shamanic initiator [Jesus] and the obvious political inspiration of independence which surrounded his short ministry, are mythical elements associated with the Persian god Mithra, a Zoroastrian deity referred to earlier, who inherited the Haoma rite from Indra, albeit, possibly in a denatured form, at least in most quarters.

After the time of Zoroaster the figure of the world-saviour or Soshyant merged with one of the older pre-Zoroastrian Vedic gods, known originally as Mitra-Varuna, but later and more popularly as Mithra, “The Unconquered Sun”. The Mihr Yast has Ahura Mazda declare; “When I created Mithra of the broad pastures I made him as worthy of veneration as myself.” The god-plant Haoma was then consecrated as the priest of Mithra and all further Haoma sacrifices were made in Mithra’s honor.

The worship of this Persian God, and its 7 stage system of initiation, became so popular in the ancient world, that up until around 350 AD, it rivaled Christianity for the attention of the masses. Mithra's cult is said to have been spread throughout the ancient world and particularly to Rome, by a group of Cilician pirates, who adopted the god and extended his worship to the West.

...The Roman Mithras is very different from the Persian Mithra of the Zend-Avesta, and seems to have represented a type of Persian paganism condemned by the pure Zoroastrians of that country... the god collected in his travels a selection of “magical” beliefs. From the Chaldean Magi astrology was borrowed, and from the remnants of Greek philosophy a whole theology was devised to unite the different elements in Mithra’s cult. The Emperor Comodus (A.D. 180-92) was initiated into the Mysteries; and from that period onwards, continuing favour was shown to the cult from the Imperial house. Mithras made many converts, but principally in the army, for his religion was that of a soldier. (Webb, 1974)

Mithra’s followers were very secretive and left little written records regarding their beliefs and activities. Most of what is now known of the cult has come to us through interpretations of pieces of monuments which survived the destructive hammers of Christian monks upon the commencement of the Roman Catholic Empire, an event which marked the beginning of the rightly so called Dark Ages.

The Christian monks were obsessed with destroying any surviving remnant of the cult of Mithra’s, because the Persian God particularly threatened the supremacy of their own god in the form of Jesus. In fact, many existing Churches were built right over the top of Mithraims. Thus, in both a very real and symbolic sense, Christianity based its foundation on Mithraism. Historically, the undisputable fact is they had borrowed so much symbolism from the Persian god’s mythology that many historians now refer to Mithra as the proto-Christ.

Mithras was born in a cave and watched over by shepherds on December 25th, and it wouldn’t be until over three hundred years after the life of Jesus, that this date became Christmas. After his death and resurrection, Mithras celebrated a last supper with his elect before ascending to heaven, telling them in a voice almost indistinguishable from that of the later Jesus: “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation” (Goodwin, 1981). The fathers of Christianity, explained the many similarities between Jesus and the earlier Mithras, by suggesting that Satan had found out about God’s plans for his divine son, and “had plagiarized their most sacred rites by anticipation” instilling their own candidate and Eucharist rituals before Christ’s divine birth. “It is clear that Christianity when making its invasion of Indo-Germanic peoples would find itself not the first interpreter of mystic Sacraments” (Harris, 1927).

Mithra was a protector and supporter of man in this life; he watched over his soul in the next, defending it against the impure spirits, and transferring it into the realms of eternal bliss. He was represented as all-seeing and all-hearing. Armed with a club — his weapon against Ahriman and the Devas — he unceasingly ran his course between heaven and earth. He was represented as born on the 25th of December, on which an annual festival was held on his behalf. His worship extended into all the countries colonized by the Aryans, or which became subject to Persian power. It found its way to Rome at an early period, and the Mysteries of Mithra, which fell on the vernal equinox, was the most famous of the Roman festivals. Baptism and the partaking of a mystical liquid to be drank with utterance of sacred formulas, were among the inaugurate acts.

From Persia the worship of Mithra and the Mysteries, were carried into Syria, Lydia, Judea, Egypt, Greece, Northern, Central and Western Europe. His devotees were not suppressed in Rome until virtually superseded by the teachings of Jesus — really Mithras under a different name, — A.D. 378.

….a survival of the haoma worship… appearing as the ‘Lord’s Supper,’ the ‘body and blood’of the divine master, under another alias.”

Mithras was believed by his worshippers to have been put to death, and to have again risen from the dead. By his sufferings he was thought to have worked the salvation of those who trusted in him, for which reason he was known as their SAVIOR. His priests watched at his tomb, and at midnight, on the 25th of March, the third day after his death, with loud shouts they proclaimed :

‘Rejoice, O, brothers, your God is risen! His death, his pains, his sufferings, have worked our salvation!’

His sacred flambeau was then lighted, and his image anointed with chrism, ~oil. (Brown, 1890)

Indeed, even the typically thought Catholic rite of baptism seems to have a Mithraic origin. It has long been recognized that the water submersion, as practiced by John the Baptist, was not a Jewish rite, and the OLD TESTAMENT is void of references to it. As Geo Widengren noted:

...[W]ater rites took up an important place in the ancient Iranian religion. Yt. 10: 121 f. thus dictates that... one should also wash one’s body in order to drink the ‘the pure affusion offering’, zaovra. So here a kind of baptism emerges together with sacrifice and haoma potion, which we must evidently perceive as a ‘repentant baptism’. Given that this baptism is mentioned in the Mithra devoted Yast, it has been coupled together with the water purification that occurs in the much later disseminated Mithra mysteries. The water rites evidently played a role in the Mithra cult... and were then handed down later on in the Mithra mysteries. (Widengren, 1965)

Writing the end of the 19th century George W. Brown, also cited above, felt that the Mithraic cult continued on with the age old practice of drinking the hemp infused form of Haoma:

Mithra is presented in the Zoroastrian system as an intermediate between Ormazd and Ahriman, and was known as a mediator. He taught mankind to make vows and offerings, and introduced animal sacrifices. It was he who introduced the Haoma worship. This was an intoxicating beverage, prepared from the green stalks of the moon-plant, otherwise Cannabis Indica, or Indian hemp... It was tasted by the priests on sacrificial occasions, whilst hymns were sung in its praise. Its action was that of hashish. It produced intoxication and stimulation of the senses, which were taken for inspiration. (Brown, 1890)

Besides having the same birth date of Jesus, many scholars, such as Brown above, have noted the startlingly strong similarities between the Christian Eucharist and the Mithraic sacraments. “It is in the ancient religion of Persia-the religion of Mithra, the Mediator, the Redeemer, and the Savior-that we find the nearest resemblance to the sacrament of the Christians, and from which it was evidently borrowed” (Doane 1882). Commenting on the essay, Eucharistic Origins, by Dr. Rendel Harris, a 1928 edition of THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION noted that:

Everything that Dr. Rendel Harris writes is bound to be interesting even if unconvincing.... The main constructive suggestion [of Eucharistic Origins] is that the Greek word soma in the sentence ascribed to Christ “this is my soma (body)” has been misunderstood. It represents the term actually used by Jesus, but not in the Greek sense. In fact, it is the soma of the Rig Veda, viz. The intoxicating drink which the author describes as “the elixir of immortality”! On these lines Christian origins can be interpreted in a new and original way indeed. (Minsitry of Education, 1928)

In his intriguing essay, Dr. Harris disussed the similar Eucharistic elements found in such diverse rites as those of Old World apple tree cults to the New World’s peyote religion. Seeing a diffusion of the Aryan Soma cult coming into Christianity slightly altered through the Greek Dionysus, Harris explained:

...[T]he word which we have translated ‘body’ is the Greek... soma; suppose we write it with a capital letter and do not translate it. Since Soma is the great Aryan Sacrament, and has come down even to our own times, we can, by reading it in the text without the change of a single letter, get rid of the absurdity of the equation between the ‘cup’ and the ‘body’ for there is no difficulty in the cup being a Soma cup. This, then, was what Jesus said and did: He took a cup and said ‘This is my Soma.’

What He meant was that the end was come and immortality was at hand. It was a mystical expression, an occult saying, if we like to put it so: a figure of speech expressing exactly the situation in which He found Himself, but not expressing it clearly to His companions: He appears to have invited the disciples to drink Soma with Him, i.e. to die with Him, and with Him to enter upon an immortal life. They did drink, but, as in so many other cases, they only understood in part. From that partial misunderstanding sprang, in a little while, the... [Eucharist] and the Mass.

The restoration of the original form shows us clearly... that the doctrine of immortality was involved in the Eucharist from the start, for immortality is the characteristic accompaniment of the draught of the Soma... We can see now why, in the closing eucharistic prayer in the Teaching of the Apostles we have the expressions of thanksgiving for ‘the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy Servant . . . to us thou hast given spiritual food and drink and eternal life through thy Servant.”

....No doubt there are many points from which our hypothesis furnishes objective to an assailant, and we are far from thinking that a final statement can be made: but it is lawful to suggest that some of the possible objections result from our ignorance rather than from our knowledge. This ignorance is not merely a defect in the knowledge of historic cults, of this religion or of that; it extends to the knowledge of historic persons, and, in particular, it affects the person of the Founder of the Christian Faith. It is assumed that He was so wholly a Jew that He never looked outside the limits of Judaism in religion nor transgressed its limits territorially, except for a few days, perhaps, in which He was eluding capture, which was likely to occur within those limits. Yet it is not universally admitted that we know where He was born, and, if He was brought up in Galilee, whether He spent the whole of His first thirty years within those limits. One does not need to surrender to Dr. Paul Haupt’s challenge, when he claims Aryan ancestry for the Lord Jesus, but he has on his side good historical evidence that Galilee was not populated by a purely Semitic race. Tradition said that it had been occupied at one time in history by a deported population from Media, and in that case, the tenacity of religious practices might have planted the Soma ritual in Galilee itself. Apart from this possibility, the fact of the existence of Northern trade-routes makes it reasonably certain that India and Persia both found their way to the Mediterranean, and not necessarily by Antioch or by the Red Sea. The whole question of the points of contact of East and West in the first century of our era needs to be reconsidered.

....But suppose we say that traffic and traders never came this way, or if they came, gave no hint of the religion to which they belonged, there is always the possibility that, if Soma did not come to Jesus, Jesus went to Soma; the possibility, that is to say, of His having been a traveller, a religious pilgrim, an inquisitive visitant to shrines or to peoples. This does not commit Him to a journey to Tibet, nor to intercourse with imaginary Mahatmas; it only means that we have an almost complete blank for the first thirty years of his life; half of this period might belong to history if we could pick up the missing threads and find the missing links. One such Eastern journey would explain the allusion to the Soma.

.... It will, perhaps, be said that there is no need to send Jesus to India in search of the Soma draught... in the Syrian Church the Eucharist was known as the ‘Sama’ or medicine... of life; and... Ignatius of Antioch... described [the Eucharist] in Greek language as medicine of immortality. The coincidence in the terms is so striking, that it is natural to suggest that there is something primitive about it. .... The word Sama is not genuine Semitic ; it has been borrowed from some other language...It is very common in Syriac and Aramaic and might easily have been used by our Lord. It would not, however, call up the Greek word for ‘body’ [soma] quite as readily as the Indian word would do.

.... Jesus was speaking of the Indian, Avestan, Indo-Germanic Soma, when His
disciples thought He was speaking of His body. That single conjecture explains the mystery and shows us how the parallel with the pagan Mysteries was invited from the start. It is not necessary to assume, though it seems probable, that Jesus had travelled Eastward at some time in His early life. The conjecture may find support without the added speculation. Let us leave that for further enquiry. (Harris, 1927)

Problems arise with Harris’ theory, when one considers that it requires the ‘saviour’ to have conversed in Greek, rather than the more accepted idea that he spoke Aramaic, and Harris does try to justify this, although somewhat unsatisfactorily. A more powerful case is made through his comparisons with the medicinal and immortal aspects associated with both the Eucharist and the Soma from which it was borrowed. As well, although Harris notes the role of similar sacraments in such contemporary cults as those of Dionysus and Isis, and discusses the Vedic Soma at some lengths, he mentions the obviously more prominent Avestan connection only in passing and failed to note clearly the more likely source of Haoma and the Mithraic Mysteries on the development of the Christian Eucharist, and from which so much of Christian mythology is already known to have been taken.

At the Last Supper, Christ communicated his “spirit” to his disciples through the Eucharist or Christian sacrament. Christ said in describing the sacrament, “Take, eat, this is my body, this is my blood. Do this as often as you will in remembrance of me” (I Corinthians 11:24-25). “Before returning to heaven, Mithra celebrated a last supper with his twelve disciples......In memory of this, his worshippers partook of a sacramental meal marked with a cross. This was one of seven Mithraic sacraments, the models for the Christian seven sacraments” (Walker 1983). In a voice almost indistinguishable from that of the later Jesus, Mithras is said to have told his followers: “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation” [As quoted in (Goodwin 1981)]. The rites which Christianity and Mithraism “practiced offered numerous analogies”;

The sectaries of the Persian god, like the Christians, purified themselves by baptism; received a species of confirmation, the power necessary to combat the spirits of evil; and expected from a Lord’s supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December, the same day on which Christmas has been celebrated, since the fourth century at least. They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritous, and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conception of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situate in the upper regions, and of a Hell peopled by demons, situate in the bowels of earth. They both placed a Flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their traditions a primitive revelation; they both finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe. (Cumont 1956)

Rather than being a diabolical pre-imitation of the Christian sacraments, as Justin Martyr and other Church fathers tried to suggest, the Mithraic sacraments were a remnant of the even earlier Persian Haoma ceremony, an ancient rite tied with the Vedic Soma of the Indian religion. The Haoma, or Soma was considered “a god as well as a plant, just as the wine of the Christian sacrament is considered both the juice of the grape, and the blood of the redeemer” (Doane 1882).

Gnostic scriptures also give evidence that a similar relationship to that of the Eucharist Haoma being considered both a god and a plant (attributes which to some extent were passed on to Mithra), and Shiva being bhang in India; existed to some extent between the spirit of Christ (whom they saw as distinct from the mortal Jesus, descending on him at his anointing) and the image of the Tree of Life, as can be seen in the Teachings of Silvanus. “For the Tree of Life is Christ. He is Wisdom...the Word...the Life, the Power, and the Door. He is the Light, the Angel, and the Good Shepherd.” As was mentioned, the Ophite Christians referred to being anointed from the Tree of Life, in an obvious reference to an entheogenic anointing oil analogous to the one used by the ancient Hebrews. And another Gnostic initiate, the Seth of The Gospel of the Egyptians, refers to receiving inspiration from “the incense of life”, which again brings to mind the image of the Tree of Life being utilized as an entheogen.

The Teachings of Silvanus may give indications (as does the Zostrianos tractate) that the Gnostics made a drinkable potion from the plant as well: “Give yourself gladness from the true vine of Christ. Satisfy yourself with the true wine in which there is no drunkenness nor error. For it (the true wine) marks the end of drinking since there is usually in it what gives joy to the soul and mind through the Spirit of God. But first, nurture your reasoning powers before you drink of it (the true wine).” i.e. - as opposed to the ‘false wine’ and ‘false vine’. Perhaps like many proponents of the modern entheogenic revival, some Gnostic sects opposed the drinking of alcohol? The Acts of Thomas, which makes reference to the ‘plant of kindness”, also refers to the ‘true vine’, and in connection with what is likely another entheogenic preparation as well; “...we speak of the world which is above, of God and angels, of watchers and holy ones of the immortal (ambrosial) food and the drink of the true vine.”

In relation to Jesus’ use of cannabis based Haoma like sacraments, it should also be noted that the use of such a substance may account for what can be seen as the most fundamental element of the Christian mythos, the Resurrection. “...[T]he Persians say ... the Haoma plant,... is the first of the trees, planted by Ahura Mazda in the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice never dies....Haoma... gives health and generative power, and imparts life at the resurrection” (Windischmann, 1846).

DEATH ON THE CROSS?

Three decades ago Dr. Hugh Schonfield shocked the theological world with his sensational book THE PASSOVER PLOT, which suggested that Jesus may have feigned death on the cross through a soporific potion - a hypothesis which if suggested only a few centuries earlier, would have seen the author burned at the stake, or worse. Suggesting that Jesus’ cry from the cross, ‘I am thirsty,” could have been a signal to receive a specially prepared potion, Schonfield speculated that the “plan may... have been suggested to Jesus by the prophetic words, ‘They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’” With precision scholarship, Dr. Schonfield noted that if what Jesus “received had been the normal wine diluted with water the effect would have been stimulating. In this case it was exactly the opposite. Jesus lapsed quickly into complete unconsciousness. His body sagged. His head lolled on his breast, and to all intents and purposes he was a dead man.... Directly it was seen that the drug had worked...” (Schonfield 1965).

Deeply influenced by Schonfield’s research, the authors of the sensational international best-seller, THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, expanded more fully on this theme in the early 1980s.

In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts. In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in vinegar - an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was it really? Vinegar - or soured wine - is a temporary stimulant, with effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus' case the effect is just the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he pronounces his final words and ‘gives up the ghost’. Such a reaction to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug - a compound of opium and or belladonna, for instance, commonly employed in the Middle East at the time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so, along with all the other components of the Crucifixion, were elements of a complex and ingenious stratagem - a stratagem designed to produce a semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a stratagem would not only have saved Jesus’ life, but also have realized the Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah. (Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, 1982)

Besides opium and belladonna, a preparation of mandrake, which was in use during this time period, may have helped to induce the deathlike stupor needed to fool the Roman soldiers and Jewish populace. Thomas Cisteriensis (d. 1190 A.D.) wrote of the mandrake “The mandragora is a plant which effects such a deep sleep that one can cut a person and he feels not the pain. For the mandragora symbolizes striving in contemplation. Its reverie allows a person to fall into a sleep of such delicious sweetness that he no longer feels any of the cutting which his earthly enemies inflict upon him, and he no longer cares about any earthly thing. For his soul has now closed off its senses from all that is external - it lies in the benevolent sleep of the eternal.”

More recently, Dana Beal and Paul De Rienzo have hypothesized that the substance which put Jesus into his deathlike stupor on the cross was a preparation of the drug plant Peganum harmala, or Syrian rue, which they also suggest was a Gnostic sacrament, referring to its continued use by the Gnostic Mandeans, as well as joining the speculations of Flattery and Schwartz (1989), that Syrian rue was the main ingredient in the Persian Haoma (Beal & De Rienzo 1997). As Dana Beal explains his line of reasoning (which does not exclude cannabis):

...the key ingredient of the lost soma of the Vedas was the very same “vinegar and gall” administered to Jesus on a sponge at the moment of his crucifixion, according to the Book of John. We know this because of the telltale action of harmaline at the antistroke (NMDA) receptor, and because the body’s own version of harmaline is implicated in the mechanism of a kind of naturally occurring deathlike suspended animation, discovered at the coronary unit of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. This is big news for the Jesus Seminar. Not only does it go a long way in explaining the takeover of Mithras, the orthodox religions of late Roman times, by the Christ cult (whence comes the wine and wafer), it explains the actual relationship of cannabis to the Zaotar cup (Grail), since the preparation of an active soma mixture involved cannabis in virtually every recipe, according to [German researcher] Hans-Georg Behr. (Beal 1997)

Clearly some of the above substances, considered magical sacraments in the ancient world,, are so powerful that they can put the people who ingest them in requisite amounts into a deathlike coma that could conceivably have made other ancient onlookers think that they had actually died.

As well, as discussed in Chapter 15 in relation to the death-like coma state known as “stard” induced by mang in Zoroastrian accounts, in extremely high doses, and through powerful extracts, cannabis has been reported also to put its imbibers into a state similar to animal “hibernation” which is combined with a rigormortis like physical condition of catalepsy. “Catalepsy is a mysterious condition, characterized by immobility of the muscles which can sometimes be mistaken for death. The limbs have a ‘waxy flexibility’ and can be molded into bizarre positions where they remain indefinitely” (Wilkins 1992).

As noted in Chapter 15, the 19th century researcher Dr. James Braid wrote a monograph entitled TRANCE AND HUMAN HIBERNATIONS, which suggested that in India cannabis was used by Fakir’s in order to induce just such a state.

Some excerpts of Braid’s research appeared in the 1855 classic PLANT INTOXICANTS, by Baron Ernst Von Bibra in a chapter on hashish. Braid discussed a number of eye-witness accounts of Indian Fakirs who had allowed themselves to be buried alive, and were later disinterred and found still alive. Amongst these accounts are recorded the words of Sir Claude Wade who was present at the court of Runjeet Singh when one such Fakir was buried in a specially prepared room that was “completely sealed off from the access of atmospheric air” and then disinterred weeks later! Wade described the end of the allotted time period when he joined Runjeet Singh and the Fakir’s servant and broke the seal of the specially prepared room:

Provided with light, we descended about three feet below the floor of the room, into a sort of cell. This cell too, was locked and sealed, and it contained a wooden box, about four feet long by three feet broad, with a sloping cover, placed upright.

Opening the box we saw a figure enclosed in a white bag. The Fakeer’s servant took this figure out of the box and placed it upright against the door. When he took off the bag, the legs and arms of the body were shrivelled and stiff, and the head reclined, corpse-like, on the shoulders. No pulse in the heart, the temples, or the arms could be discovered.

The servant then sprinkled warm water on the body, while we forcefully rubbed its arms and legs. During this time the servant placed a hot wheat cake on the head, a process which he twice or thrice renewed. He then pulled out of the nostrils and ears the cotton and wax contained in them; and after great exertion opened the Fakeer’s mouth by inserting the point of a knife between his teeth and drew his tongue forward, which, however, flew back several times to its former position. He then rubbed the Fakeer’s eyelid with ghee, or clarified butter, for some seconds, until he succeeded in opening them, when the eyes appeared quite motionless and glazed. After he applied the cake for a third time to the head, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became inflated, and the limbs became pliable and began to assume a natural fullness. The servant then put some of the ghee on the Fakeer's tongue and made him swallow it. A few minutes later, the pupils became dilated and the eyes recovered their natural appearance, and the Fakeer said, in a low, sepulchral tone, scarcely audible, “Do you believe me now?” From the opening of the box to the recovery of the Fakeer's voice, not more than half an hour could have elapsed, and in another half hour the Fakeer talked with us, although with a feeble voice. (Sir Claude Wade)

Other such cases were reported by reliable eyewitnesses and like Wade’s description, when the Fakir’s bodies were disinterred they “were found stiff and rigid like a corpse, but on application of the aforesaid treatment they were restored to life.... It is possible that some of the fakirs possess a hemp preparation that enables them to undergo the described experiments. This is especially supported by the catalepsy that sets in after hemp resin has been taken” (Von Bibra 1855). In reference to “catalepsy”, Von Bibra is referring to the research on the effects of hashish that had been conducted in India during the first half of the 19th century by a Dr. W.B. O’Shaughnessy, who reported the following account of a patient that had been given “one grain of the resin of hemp... administered in a solution.” Worried by the effects the drug was apparently having on the patient some hours after it had been administered, a nurse summoned Dr. O’Shaughnessy to the hospital, where he was alarmed to find the patient “lying on his cot quite insensible”;

...I chanced to lift up the patient’s arm. The professional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found that it remained in the posture in which I placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find that the patient had, by the influence of this narcotic, been thrown into that strange and most extraordinary of all nervous conditions, into that state what so few have seen and the existence of which so many still discredit - the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist.... We raised [the patient]... to a sitting position, and placed his arms and limbs in every imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could not be more pliant, or more stationery in each position, no matter how contrary to the natural influence of gravity on the part. (O’Shaughnessy 1839)

Although it doesn’t happen often, there have been accounts of people being presumed dead, while in just such a state of extreme cannabis intoxication. The turn of the century author L. W. De Laurence reported the following tragic case of a cannabis overdose:

A case of living internment which came under this author’s notice in India was that of a young Hindu of low caste, about thirty years of age, who took an Indian drug called Cannabis Indica or Indian Cannabis (made from the plant Cannabis Sativa), with suicidal intent. He was to all appearances dead when found by relatives. An English physician was called and after making the usual examination and tests in such cases, pronounced the young man dead. His funeral services were held three days later; the coffin containing the supposed corpse being placed in a receiving cave. At the expiration of the ten days, the time set for burial, the coffin was opened by the attendant in order that the relatives might have a look at their dead. A horrible site met their gaze—a sight that filled their hearts with horror and unutterable grief. The young man had turned half over on his left side, while in his right hand, clenched in death’s agony, was found fragments of hair which had been torn from his head. The cloth around his neck also showed evidence of his attempt to tear it during the struggle he had made against death. (De Laurence, 1905)

In the 19th century, James Simpson and co-authors, likely referring to the work of Dr. Braid and other sources regarding the Fakirs apparent ability for extended periods of “hibernation”, noted that the “wonderful power of endurance of the Hindu Suttee appears to have been sometimes procured by the influence of this powerful drug [i.e. cannabis]”:

Some high Biblical commentaries maintain that the gall and vinegar or myrrhed wine offered to our Saviour immediately before his crucifixion was a preparation, in all probability, of hemp, which was in these, as well as in later times, occasionally given to criminals before punishment or execution—while 700 years previously it is possibly spoken of, according to the same authorities, by the prophet Amos as the “wine of the condemned.” (Simpson, et al., 1856)

Shortly after the above was written in an 1860 meeting between the Ohio State Medical Society and a group of Biblical Scholars, the group concurred that “the gall and vinegar or myrrhed wine... was a preparation of Indian Hemp.” Talmudic reference indicate this use as well: “The one on his way to execution was given a piece of incense in a cup of wine, to help him fall asleep” (Sanh. 43a). As Jesus’ crucifixion is said to have taken place during the Passover, it is interesting to note that such a hemp preparation may have been widely available at this time. According to Immanuel Low in his German ethno-botanical text, DIE FLORA DER JUDEN the Passover incense contained cannabis resins (Low 1926\1967). Closer to our own time and independently, the German researcher Holger Kersten has also suggested that cannabis may have been amongst the ingredients in the drink which put Jesus into a deathlike stupor, hereconnecting it with the traditions of Soma and Haoma (Kertsen 1986).

How did Jesus come (apparently) to die immediately after he had taken the bitter drink? Was it really vinegar that he was given?.... Perhaps the supposed drink of vinegar instead contained the active ingredients of the sacred drink of the Indians and Persians, Soma and Haoma (respectively)....

Soma, the sacred drink of India, enabled an adept to enter a deathlike state for several days, and to awaken afterwards in an elated state that lasted a few days more. In this state of ecstasy, a ‘higher consciousness’ spoke through the adept and he had visionary powers. In addition to Asclepias acida, the Soma might also have contained Indian hemp (Cannabis indica) - tradition has it that it featured in the drink of Zarathustra. (Kersten 1986)

Although Kersten seems to be confusing Zoroastrian accounts of the effects of mang, with those of the Vedic Soma (as we have commented there are some marked differences between the two) it is still of interest that an independent researcher has commented on this identical effect of a cannabis extract. As well, in later Persian Islamic times hashish preparations were used for similar effects by the Gnostic influenced Hashishin for their own romanticized near death experience initiations, as shall be discussed in Chapter 19. In relation to the other Biblical resurrection, that of Lazarus, it is important to note that Professor Morton Smith has suggested that Lazarus did not suffer death, but went through an intense initiation into the “mystery of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11) (Smith, 1978). Indications of such shamanic initiations can be found throughout the ancient Gnostic texts, as well as in the Catholic Church’s condemnations of the Gnostics (Bennett & McQueen, 2001). Thus the idea that the Jesus and his early followers may have had access to powerful cannabis extracts used in death and rebirth ceremonies, such as those used by the earlier Zoroastrians and later Hashishins, is not at all farfetched.

If Christ arranged to receive such a cannabis extract on the day of the Crucifixion, the resulting cataleptic state of hibernation induced by cannabis taken in its most condensed and powerful form could easily have been mistaken for death by the Romans who stood guard over him, and the Jewish crowd who had come out to watch another claimant to the title of “Messiah” meet their typical fate. As the powerful preparation took effect, the limbs would begin stiffening, the heartbeat slowing down to an occasional thud, the breath dropping off to a faint whisper of a still body that more and more resembled a corpse....... John 19 tells of the night of the crucifiction in detail that fits in completely with this hypothesis:

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled, Jesus said “I am thirsty.” A Jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Now... the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man that was crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. (John19:33)

Death, in the case of a crucifixion, came through suffocation; as the arms and legs gave out from exhaustion and stress, the lung cavity contracted, and in some cases this took days. By lessening these supports considerably, the breaking of the legs hastened this process. John has it that because Jesus was already dead, the soldiers do not break his legs, but instead pierce Christ’s side with a spear. There is even a witness to this, one unnamed bystander: “The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe” (John 19:35). (The man doth protest too much!) Schonefield suggested that the story of the spear thrust into Jesus’ side “may have been introduced to historicise certain Old Testament testimonies” (Schonfield 1965).

This brings us to the pivotal point of the Biblical narrative, where, to all outsiders, including Jesus’ own apostles, all seems to be over for the charismatic leader that they had believed was going to lead them into a new age of glory.

It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two - the thieves - are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion to put him into a deathlike trance. Now Joseph of Arimathea, bearing clean linen and spices, approaches and recovers the still form of Jesus. All seems to be proceeding according to plan. (Schonfield 1965)

The aloes and spices brought by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to Jesus’s tomb to supposedly embalm their now dead leader pose a particularly curious question, as embalming was not a practice of the Jews of the time. Perhaps these lotions served some other purpose? The account in John regarding Jesus removal from the cross, and the role of Joseph of Arimathea and also Nicodemus, bears an uncanny resemblance to the tale which was discussed earlier of the Fakir and the assistant who helped to revive him after his deathlike entombment. “[I]n reality there were efforts behind the scenes to ‘bring Jesus back to life’ in the privacy of the tomb cavern, under the direction of Joseph and Nicodemus” (Kersten 1986).

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who had earlier visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with the Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no-one had ever been laid. (John 19:38-41)

It does not take an overly active imagination to picture Joseph and Nicodemus rubbing the stiffened joints of Jesus’ bodies with large quantities of healing herbs and spices which they had brought in preparation, and slowly waking their master from his death-like cataleptic state which had been induced by the substance delivered to him on the cross. A scenario that is reminiscent of the role played by the fakir’s helper in the account discussed earlier. Such a scenario, although sounding somewhat fanciful, is far more believable than that of the alternative, held to be true by literally millions of Christians - That a man died, decomposed for three days and three nights, then arose from the Dead!

The subject of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus would later become one of the main points of contention between Gnostic Christians and the Roman Catholic Church. The Gnostic text, The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, has Jesus himself disclaim the doctrine of the literal resurrection. Referring to the increasingly popular concept of the resurrection, Jesus speaks of those who “think that they are advancing the name of Christ,” but are instead “unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals. They persecuted those who have been liberated by me, since they hate them.” He describes their theology as “ludicrous.... an imitation... a doctrine of a dead man.” A theme that the figure of Jesus clearly returns to in other Gnostic tractates;

They will cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking that they will become pure. But they will become greatly defiled and they will fall into the name of error and into the hand of an evil, cunning man and a manifold dogma......there shall be others of those who are outside our number who name themselves bishop and also deacons, as if they have received their authority from God. They bend themselves under the judgment of the leaders. These people are dry canals. (The Apocalypse of Peter)

Jesus’ reference to “bishop and also deacons,” who didn’t exist in the early Christian period and came into existence some time later, shows that the Gnostic tractate was the work of an eager, later writer, who like the NEW TESTAMENT and OLD TESTAMENT editors and compilers, was given to adding to existing traditions and putting new words into the mouths of long dead figures. But clearly amongst the Gnostics, since earliest Christian times, there was a long tradition in which could be found a repudiation of the physical resurrection of the dead Jesus, which they termed the “faith of the fools.”

I agree. No strange side effects other then, well, you know....

In the immortal words of freewheeling Franklin

Dope will get you through times of no money better then money will get you through times of no dope.

well regardless of any religous or medical arguements, the bottom line is plants are a natural right.

Most activists who refuse to work from within the laws usually end up copping a plea. That usually scatters the flock rather effectively eh? Those who legally vote for med pot and win a simple majority get to smoke sacrament in peace.

One thing always bothers me about your style, Chris; you resort to baseless name calling when confronted with truthfulness. So a man who`s content to live in peace in a peaceful community is a narc because he doesn`t blow marijuana smoke in an Oregon State PIG`s face? Or do you think I am on the other side because I do not sell weed, magic mushrooms and morphine to IV drug abusers? I`d really like to hear more about this activism shit; there might not be enough of you assholes out on bail to tell the story by the time you read this. I`d rather talk to my city manager and my dentist about easing up on potheads. They both agree that pot`s not the monster the Feds make it out to be. And Uncle Sam? That fuckers offices are 52 miles away!

You don't talk to anybody about pot, you shut up and tow the line. You are not even out of the closet enough to talk to dentists, let alone city manager's. You are full of shit.

That chip on yer shoulder is pretty big chris. You lose control very fast, and it is true that you resort to name calling rather quickly. If you are to be a leader in the movement you should act like one. How can you hope to be taken seriously if you act this way to others? If you get attacked and called names, and the attacker spews a bunch of BS at you, do you listen to that person that is spewing at you? BS doesn't help your cause, and neither does name calling. It might help your ego, but it will never help the movement. If you were true to the cause you would not act the way you do to others as it helps nothing, and may even hurt said cause.

Warlord