Reply #2: Book: Mushrooms & Mankind [View All]

The visionary James Arthur is the opposite of the careful and straightlaced Dan Merkur in the field of the entheogen theory of the origins of religion. This book is so wide-ranging, it's hard to form a clear mental picture of its scope. Arthur has innovative coverage speculating about entheogens in Egyptian and Asian as well as Christian religion.

This subject is just getting started so there are few books and what few there are are speculative. The entheogen theory of the origin of religions *makes sense*, particularly when focusing on the specifically religious aspect of religion rather than other aspects such as political, ethical, or sociological aspects.

Scholars, including esoteric and Literalist Christian scholars, agree that entheogenic plants are basically reliable triggers for religious experiencing. Historians of religion are trying to use "psychology", "anthropology", and "sociology" to explain the origin of religions. These explanatory threads point to entheogens at the fountainhead of religion, religious experiencing, and religious myth.



This book provides some evidence but most of all provides the all-important *perspective* from which we can see how well it makes good sense to look to entheogens for the origin of mystic experiencing at the root of religion. There's really no reasonable argument against the entheogen theory of the origin of religion -- it enables a full-spectrum, integral-theory explanation of religion to finally come together.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585091510