Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Assaya

The New Testament is a study in imperial cooptation. Since the Roman religio-political philosophy it espouses is the chief engine of industrial conformity in contemporary Euroamerica, my real subject, it is necessary to understand this seminal manipulation of human mythology in order to understand the Drug War. Psychologically, the archetypal shaman, the gateway to the eternal, the Son of the Mother, is Jesus (Dionysos), and his Twin, his Pharmakos, his official industrial scapegoat, is Judas (Pentheus). But it's not the ethnicity or the philosophy of Judas that's important in the Drug War. It is the implicit demonization of non-conformity per se, and of shamanism in particular, that sticks psychologically, politically, in contemporary EuroAmerica, as in Augustan Rome or medieval Europe.

The originary Inquisition, the archetypes of industrial conformity, descend to the unconscious level, since the archetypal frame of reference has been carefully manipulated, through succeeding historical stages, to destroy conscious, cultural, knowledge of the ancient shamanism. When conscious memory (mnemosyne) is destroyed, what is left is emotion, irrational attitudes dictated by 'parentally' inculcated compulsions: God-the-Father as Pavlov. It's not for nothing that the great shaman Plato said that all learning is remembering. The greatest crime of the nonconforming shaman is that she or he struggles to bring to conciousness that which the authorities, and their compulsive sheep, want forgotten.

Jesus was such a shaman. The historical Jesus has about as much in common with the Pauline Jesus as a horse has with a unicorn. The Roman Empire's most prestigious and effective non-Hellenic theology, de facto religio licita to the Romans for centuries, was coopted by some of the Empire's most talented syncretists and turned into a dogma capable of filling the void left by the bankrupt post-tribal pseudo-shamanism that Imperial Graeco-Roman religion had become. The syncretists understood organization better than the Imperial government itself, because they understood the people better, and so were able to evolve a credible Graeco-Roman salvationism capable of appealing to the vast majority in the Empire, using, as their foundation, the subtle and cohesive mythology of a still-tribal Israel.

From the outset Israeli culture was inherently multi-ethnic, containing former Egyptian slaves of all colors and backgrounds. The great genius of the Israelite approach to religio-social organization was to do what native cultures of the great slave states were incapable of doing. Israel rejected the unconscious worship of the ancient tribal totems, with which Pharaoh now identified himself for purposes of enslavement. Warrior Israel substituted a patriarchal monotheism that stressed conscious mysticism and democratic social organization, rather than a coopted communal shamanism, a 'mystery' religion. The mystery, to the Israelites, was how anyone could take Pharoah and his Queen seriously as Amon and Mut. SHE, after all, for the Israelis, wasn't a loving village Great Mother, but She Who Must Be Obeyed, matriarch of Ramses' murderous clan. Below is Ramses' beautiful depiction of his confrontation with Fate under the Tree of Life.

Israel freed itself from the thrall of totemic magic, losing, of course, important points of contact with its shamanic roots, but gaining an athanatos God Almighty that stressed compassion, conscious mysticism, empiricism, group cohesion and personal responsibility. Israel's conception of social organization was centuries ahead of its time. The books Israel produced, Torah ('Outpouring'), Nevi'im ('Prophets') and Ketuvim ('Writings'), the Holy Bible, though varied, are so powerful, self-confident and brilliant, such a consistent and effective combination of cosmology, historiography and morality, that they became the most influential writings of the ancient world, eventually supplanting Homer and Hesiod as the basic texts.

Gnosticism combined Israeli mysticism with Greek. Gnosticism dates to the century before Christ, as do the Essenes. Christianity didn't invent Gnosticism, Gnosticism invented Christianity. Alexandrian Gnosticism was heavily influenced by Alexandria's enormous and powerful Greek-speaking Jewish community, the authors of Paul's Greek Bible, The Septuagint, legendarily written by 'The Seventy' representatives of Israel's twelve tribes. Paul's writings are full of Alexandrian Gnostic terminology, and the most influential of Paul's early constituents were the Greek-speaking Jews of the greater Empire, among whom Judeo-Hellenic Gnosticism was very popular. The whole issue, as Jesus said, hinges on sacramentalism, actual or symbolic entheogenic ingestion. As we shall see, many Gnostics practiced actual entheogenic ingestion, and came to identify the entheogen with Iasius, 'the Healer,' Jesus. The canonical fascists, bent on political conquest of the Empire, insisted on symbolic entheogenic ingestion, murdered both the original Nazarenes and their early Gnostic followers, and burned their writings.

As with the Essenes and many other less famous religious dissenters, such as the Melchizedekians, Jesus' sacramentalism would in no way have prevented him from regarding himself as a practicing Jew, although many of the more orthodox, as recorded, would have rejected such 'Hellenism.' Israel, of course, since its conquest by Alexander in 332 BC, had lived in a Hellenistic world. Although sometimes disruptive, well developed religious dissent was, and is, regarded as a form of ecstacy in Hebrew tradition, not treason or heresy. The Melchizedekians, mentioned in The Talmud, communed with Adam, 'the red man' who was the oracle of the cave at Machpelah. Their originary sincerity garnered respect, not hostility.

The Essenes, whose Dead Sea Scrolls we have, were Gnostic theological dissenters who celebrated Sunday as the Sabbath, and were quite 'Pythagorean' in their soul-body dualism. Nonetheless, their surviving writings show that, aside from creating their own original literature, they immersed themselves in traditional Hebrew scripture and the writings of the Pharisee sages. They were regarded as sincere Jews, and their communities and prophets were accorded profound respect, especially since they were fierce nationalists. They were never murdered by their own; it took Romans, or their reservation police, to do that.

The Essene Qumran community, in which John may have been raised, gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls, the greatest manuscript find of the twentieth century. They comprise fragments of almost 1000 compositions, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, dating from about 250 BC to 68 CE. Much of the Hebrew is an extinct form of paleo-Hebrew that evolved into both modern Hebrew and Samaritan script. Part of the reason for their survival is that the scrolls were penned on sheep or calf skins, rather than the usual papyrus linen. This indicates their canonical character, as does the superb penmanship of these accomplished scribes.

'The Sect' also called itself the 'New Testament' or the 'New Covenant,' claiming themselves to be the true Sons of Zadok, the genuine Keepers of the Covenant. The Essenes reserved their bitterest apocalyptic denunciations for the politicized Sadducee collaborators: "Cities and families will perish through their counsel, nobles and rulers will fall because of what they say." They looked forward to when "the Messiah of Righteousness comes, the Branch of David." He was associated with the resurrected founder of The Sect. Whether he was to be identified with the Priest-Messiah, the King-Messiah, or the Prophet-Messiah is not clear; the Messiahs would divide the temporal and spiritual powers between them, as was traditional in Israel.

The Qumran Manual of Discipline, c.100 BC, says that the Messiah "will renew for Him the Covenant of the Community to establish the kingdom of His people for ever....May the Lord lift thee up to an everlasting height like a fortified tower on a high wall, that thou mightest smite the peoples with the might of thy mouth, with thy sceptre devastate the land, and with the breath of thy lips kill the wicked...And righteousness shall be the girdle of thy loins, and faith the belt of thy reins. And may He make thy horns of iron and thy hooves of brass to gore like a young bull...and tread down the peoples like the mire in the streets. For God has established thee as a sceptre over rulers." It is this Bull of Righteousness that was the Essene pharmakos. As with the sacred Bull of El, Moshe, the Moshiy'a here is a war shaman, a bull "with horns of iron and hooves of brass," no lamb. Jesus also "kills the wicked with the breath of his lips."

The Essenes, says The Manual, were "those who choose the Way." Says Paul, "according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the god of our fathers..." "The New Covenant" and "the New Testament" are oft-repeated Essene phrases lifted by Paul, as he says, from the Nazarenes. John's First Epistle refers constantly to Light and Darkness, Truth and Error, all standard Essene phrases, as is Peter's "cornerstone, elect, and precious."

We have only a miniscule fraction of the Essene writings, almost all predating Jesus, preserved by an archeological miracle. But even the small sample we have gives us dozens of direct quotes lifted from their writings to the canonical Greek 'New Testament,' obviously by way of the Hebrew and Aramaic speaking Nazarenes. The early Church's baptism, communal meals, communal property and organizational structure, with the Twelve Apostles leading the twelve tribes, were almost identical to Essene ritual and structure.

One of the Qumran Thanksgiving Hymns, c.50 BC, is overtly pharmaco-shamanic: "For Thou didst set a plantation of cypress, pine and cedar for Thy glory, trees of life beside a mysterious fountain hidden among the trees by the water, and they put out a shoot of the everlasting Plant. But before they did so, they took root and sent out their shoots to the watercourse that its stem might be open to the living waters and be one with the everlasting spring....And the bud of the shoot of holiness for the Plant of Truth was hidden and was not esteemed; and being unperceived, its mystery was sealed. Thou didst hedge its fruit, O God, with the mystery of mighty Heroes and of spirits and holiness and of the whirling flame of fire. No man shall approach the well-spring of life or drink the waters of holiness with the everlasting trees, or bear fruit with the Plant of heaven, who seeing has not discerned, and considering has not believed in the fountain of life, who has turned his hand against the everlasting bud."

As the pharmakos himself said, he was the pharmakon: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit…" The "Plants of Truth" became a Christian Gnostic expression, repeatedly used in the Nag Hammadi manuscripts and the early heresiologists.

In The Talmud, Jesus is sometimes called Bar Pandera, 'Son of the Panther,' a reference to his fierce nationalism and/or his relationship to the spotted red mushroom, called 'the panther' both for its looks and the state it induces, just as in the Amazon with other entheogens. The word comes from the Sumerian, BAR-DARA, 'spotted, variegated skin,' into Greek as panther. Panthers are shown, in association with giant flowers, obviously entheogens, leading ecstatic Maenads and Satyrs in Dionysiac processions on numerous Greek and Italian vases. In fact panthers first appear as psychopomps at Catal Huyuk, and were prominently worn on the head of the Queen of Knossos. As the Gnostics, who claimed to be Jesus' true disciples, said, "the Beast is the teacher." Below Dionysos, dressed in his panther skin, celebrates Passover the old fashioned way.

'Dionysos,' 'Joshua' and 'Jesus' were understood by the ancients to be the same name. Joshua, Yehoshua in Hebrew, understood as 'Jah-saves,' is, ultimately, Sumerian, IA-U-ShU-A, a combination of the name of the Exalted Dove, Iahu, meaning 'juice of fertility' and ShU-A, meaning 'fulfilment,' 'restoration,' 'healing' or 'life.' Dionysos, in Sumerian, is virtually the same name: IA-U-NU-SHUSH, the NU meaning 'seed,' and the SHUSH being a synonym of SHU. Iasius, Jesus, has the same Sumerian etymology as Yehoshua. 'Healer' in Greek is iatros, 'drugger.' Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, c.375 CE, says that Christians were first called Iassai, 'healers,' 'Essenes,' 'Jesuses.' Iasius, 'Shaman-Healer,' literally means 'the man of the drug' - not in our sense of 'refined alkaloid,'  but in the ancient sense of 'medicinal sacrament.'

Iasius, Joshua, 'Jesus' to the Romans, and five of his twelve disciples had recorded war shaman names, and he and his brothers were all named after Israel's great nationalist warriors. Joshua himself was named after Israel's most legendary warrior, and his brother, Judah, was named after a long line of warriors, including Judah Maccabee and Judah of Galilee, who stubbornly continued the revolt throughout Joshua's childhood. The other brothers were James, Joseph (John) and Simon Peter. Joseph is a father of Israel. Simon is the name of the great Maccabee war leader, Judah's brother, and James is a Romanization of either Jacob or 'Yanni,' Jonathan, the other great Maccabee brother. Mary is a Romanization of Miriam. Jesus' sisters, apparently at least three, aren't named by the Greeks.

Just as Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, and Quanah combined their fierce warlike nationalism with very active pharmaco-shamanism, so too, apparently, did Joshua and his Zealots. Simon Peter, known as 'Barjonah,' more correctly bariona in Aramaic, 'Outlaw,' 'Freedom Fighter,' comes, as Allegro points out, from the Sumerian, BAR-IA-U-NA. That evolved not only into the Aramaic word for liberator, but also into the Greek words Paionia, plant of the epiphany, literally 'capsule of fecundity, womb' and Paian, our paeon. The name can also mean 'son of a dove,' that is, son of Iahu, the Exalted Dove.

'Peter,' it is a commonplace to say, means 'the rock,' petra in Greek, but Jesus didn't speak Greek, he spoke Hebrew, as all rabbis do, and Galilean Aramaic, according to both contemporary sources and the Aramaic preserved in the New Testament. 'Peter' is cognate with Hebrew kotereth and Akkadian katarru, coming from the Sumerian GU-TAR, 'mushroom' - in Arabic phutr, in Aramaic, pitra, Peter. Simon Peter's other title, Cephas, is cognate with Latin cepa, onion, and French cépe or ceps, 'mushroom,' as well as the related Aramaic word for stone, kepha.

Jesus' name for Jonathan ('James') and Joseph ('John'- Jesus didn't speak Latin either), 'Boanerges,' can be derived, as Professor Allegro shows, from the Sumerian PU-AN-UR-GESh, 'mighty man (holding up) the arch of heaven.' Mark translates this as 'sons of thunder.' Although that is spurious Aramaic, it is a direct reference to, and cognate with, the Greek keraunion, 'thunder-fungus,' an epithet of the 'lightning-born' Bakkhos, called Yawe by the Canaanites.

In Psalms, Yahweh rides on a fierce, bestial cherub, originally an Egyptian transformation beast, a winged hawk-headed lion, a Seref, 'swiftly upon the wings of the wind.' The word 'carob' has the same Sumerian root as 'cherub,' used to describe the 'seed of life' plant, Yahweh's vehicle. This is 'St. John's bread.'  The tail of the female transformation beast, the Saha, a guardian of Twelfth Dynasty tombs (c.2300 BC), often ends in a full-blown lotus, the symbolic entheogen and symbol of the kingdom.

The blood of the original Passover lamb, spread on the lintels of Israelite houses as a sign to the Angel of Death, is an entheogenic memory of the ancient Spring rite. Pesach means 'to appease, quieten,' and is a reference to the peace that comes after parturition, after the Goddess gives birth to the new year, the new pharmakos. The pesach lamb was traditionally spitted on the wood of the pomegranate, Persephone's guarantee of Death and Resurrection. Pomegranate was the only fruit allowed within the Holy of Holies, and its image was sewn into the ceremonial robe of the High Priest as he made his yearly entrance on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, prior to the joyous feasting of Succoth, Tabernacles, the fall harvest.

Like Balder and Loki, Romulus and Remus, Jesus and Judas, Cain and Abel are King and Twin, Pharmakon and Pharmakos. Far from killing Cain for his sacrifice, God tells him almost exactly what he told Adam and Eve on their expulsion from Eden: "When thou tillest the ground, she shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength." Cain "dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden," which is precisely where the cherubim and the flaming sword "guard the way to the tree of life."

The dispute, it should be remembered, was sacramental: Cain brought a vegetable offering for the Lord whereas Abel brought "the firstlings of his flock," whereupon Cain topped Abel by offering him. Cain, despite the murder, then went on, with God's protection, to found civilization, which, of course, makes Abel a Passover lamb, only apparently a human sacrifice. Another lamb-eater, below, suckles the founders of Roman civilization. The Capitoline She-Wolf dates to the sixth century BC and is the canonical Roman image.

The post-exilic Pharisee redactors, anti-sacramental and anti-shamanic, carefully edited the ancient texts, but intentionally preserved much of the original Hebrew. The Greek Septuagint humanized, Euhemerized, the already disguised pharmaco-shamanic language completely, thus cutting all connection to the ancient meaning. The amnesiac Sicilian Euhemerus of Messene (fl.315 BC) had the likes of Demeter and Zeus as originally just plain folks: "Euhemerus lists those who have been treated as gods in recompense for benefaction or valor; he enumerates...Jupiter of Dicte, Apollo of Delphi, Isis of Pharos, Ceres of Eleusis."(Minucius)

The Greek Septuagint has 'Cain,' but the ancient original Hebrew has Qayin, which means 'smith.' He was the eponymous Kenite shaman, what the Greeks called a Telchine, a magical metalsmith who transformed matter. Qayin fathered "Jubal; he was the ancestor of those who played the harp and pipe. Zillah, the other wife, bore Tubal-cain, the master of all coppersmiths and blacksmiths..." Tubal-qayin, the son of Zillah, is Bar-Zillah in Aramaic, the language of the Kenite community. Barzela means 'axe-head,' a reference to the ubiquitous ancient symbol of the power of the Goddess.

The Septuagint, Euhemeristically, has 'Abel,' but the original Hebrew has Hevel, and this means, remarkably enough, 'vapor,' 'smoke.' The Telchine sacrificed smoke to join the Angel of Death for the Spring Resurrection. That would make perfect sense to any Greek or Essene, as would the equation of the blood of Christ with the blood of the lamb: "A jar stood there full of sour wine; so they soaked a sponge with the wine, fixed it on hyssop, and held it up to his lips. Having received the wine, he said, 'It is accomplished!'   Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." "Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed."

"Any animal in close relation to man, whether as food or foe, may rise to be a god, but he must first become sacred, sanctified, must first be sacrificed....the dedication (anadeixis) of the bull takes place at the beginning of the agricultural year; the bull's sanctified, though not his actual, life and that of the new year begin together." As the pharmakos himself said, he was the pharmakon.