The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible

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Summary: Bread of Heaven
Review: 'The Mystery of Manna. The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible' is groundbreaking in that Merkur is the first author with an academic background in religious history, since the ill-fated John Allegro, to tackle the issue of the possibility of a psychoactive sacrament existing in an Judaeo-Christian context. John Allegro's 'Sacred Mushroom and the Cross' has been largely dismissed as either a joke at the expense of the Dead Sea Scrolls fraternity with whom he had fallen out, or an a example of a once brilliant academic going profoundly off the rails due to a personal obsession. Allegro's book is such a conundrum that it is rarely referred to today, even by those with an enthusiasm for the possible role of mushrooms in religious history and it cost him his academic reputation, though little may he have cared. It takes a brave scholar to step into Allegro's shoes.

Merkur contends that the miraculous Manna of Exodus fed by Moses to the Israelites, was a psychoactive substance, namely a bread or biscuit made from ergotised grain. Ergot being a parasitic fungus of cereal plants from which the powerful hallucinogen LSD was derived. Unfortunately, no-one to-date has successfully bio-assayed a simple preparation of ergot, such as would be have been available to the ancients, demonstrating powerful psycho-activity without toxic side effects. The known toxicity of ergot would in fact make this a very dangerous exercise. Experiments to date with pure ergot derived alkaloids of limited toxicity have been inconclusive. Speculations about different ergot type fungi, infecting different grains and possible ancient methods of successfully isolating psychoactive components remain just that for the time being. This is in strict contrast to the other known naturally occurring psychoactives such as psilocybin and amanita mushrooms, cannabis, opium, datura with an ancient history of religious usage, still in use by shamans and thoroughly explored by modern investigators.

Despite Merkur's conviction that he has found unassailable evidence that the Manna of Exodus and elsewhere in the Bible was a psychedelic, the initial textual evidence is really only strongly suggestive, involving as it does a minor scriptural revision and an implicit rather than explicit relationship between eating Manna and seeing the 'Glory of God'. Thereafter, the bulk of his book rests significantly on the evidence of literary juxtapositions of references to Manna and journeys of ecstatic ascent, in a variety of mystical traditions from the New Testament to the Holy Grail, again without the connection being made explicit. These veiled references are taken as evidence of a secret tradition and there is actually little doubt that journeys of ecstatic ascent such as those of the Book of Enoch, Saint Paul and the Prophet Mohammed were sometimes accomplished through the use of psychoactives. Clear testimony to this exists in the Zoroastrian scripture 'Arda Wiraz Namag', where such a journey is accomplished by means of a narcotic, possibly cannabis, henbane or both. There is near universal scholarly recognition that later scriptural journeys of ecstatic ascent to the various levels of heaven, in the company of angelic guides, are in the ancient shamanistic tradition and psychoactives are the shaman's method par excellence of visiting the other world. However, moving from evidence that is the strongly suggestive to the cognoscenti and enthusiasts of the plant drug theory of the origins of religious ideas, to hard evidence that will convince a sceptical critic is an important jump that I don't think is made in Merkur's book. In addition, mushrooms would appear a more obvious contender for the original Manna as a psychoactive that appears overnight and is prone to rapid infestation with worms. One must bear in mind though that there may be a mixture of traditions here.

In the case of Merkur's thesis, as with the similar work of other authors before him, such as that of Gordon Wasson, John Allegro and Schwartz and Flattery, what matters most is the light thrown on the likely role played by psychoactives in the development of world religions and the examination of associated traditions, rather than whether the author's particular argument in respect of the role played by a particular psychoactive, in a specific tradition is right or wrong. A commonality of such scholarship is the conviction of each author has that his proposed psychoactive candidate for a particular religious tradition is the correct one. There is in fact strong evidence that a wide variety of psychoactive plants have been used since time immemorial to obtain states of religious ecstasy and communion and given the massive time scales and movements of people involved it is likely that people have mixed and matched according to what they knew and what was available. Most significantly, a respected scholar of the mystical tradition in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Merkur has revised his caution as expressed in his book 'Gnosis : An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions' regarding suggestive references to angel's bread and other heavenly foods.

Merkur applies a rigorous methodology which probably reflects his not only academic background and but also his own conviction that he is right even though he cannot produce really hard evidence, which is not surprising a concerning a tradition that was a secret. This book could easily have been written as a sensational pop-occult pot-boiler, uncritically drawing dramatic conclusions from sources that are really only suggestive. In fact, the rigour of the book's presentation requires close and careful reading to understand its arguments, even for those already interested by the subject matter and ready if not eager to be convinced. The literary references that Merkur has identified and other groundwork he has done will be of even greater value once other evidence for psychoactive drug use in the Judaeo-Christian tradition eventually emerges and when the toxicity versus psychoactivity problems of the ergot thesis are resolved. Dan Merkur's new book 'Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience' which elaborates on his original thesis has just been published.

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Summary: Merkur and the so-called Mystery of Manna
Review: After reading Dan Merkur's book The Mystery of Manna, it has become quite clear that the author has no comprehension of Mythology, Mycology, or Shamanism it self. Mr. Merkur in his notes of Chapter #1 footnote #5 states that "Neither is there evidence to support the cavalier allagation of John M. Allegro, The sacred Mushroom and the Cross...That manna was Amanita Muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom."

Mr. Merkur is clearly not a world leading Philologist/Mythologist, and has written an entire book backing John Allegro's theory, but does not even see it himself, and clearly had to ignore volumes of other's research in order to make his case.

Although Merkur makes a couple of good points about the bitter waters being ergot, his entire thesis backs Allegro, where he points out numerous statements about the Bread (In most cases, a term for the Amanita), the rock (A baby Amanita) and the staff (The stem of the Amanita) caused fire to come from the rock (the term for the undeveloped Amanita bursting forth its red cap), the miraculas fire (The red of the Amanita), The Oak (One of the few trees the Amanita grows under), the wilderness (The place where the Amanita grows), The Ark (Another name for Amanita, as well as the burning bush), and both Manna and water in the wilderness (The tea made from the Amanita), as well as the so-called 'Angels', which is a simple morphing of the words AAHKUT, AKKHUT, AAK HUT, ANGKHUT, and ANKH, which are simply ancient words for Hongo, or Hanggo, and Anggelos which are in and of themselves words for "Mushroom".

Mr. Merkur's lack of experience with these substances becomes painfully clear, as he just does not get it. He is by no means a Shaman who is writing about Shamanism, which he refers to as "Cults", which depicts a clear lack of understanding of what this is all about.

Mr. Merkur's book is excellent for finding the passages in the Bible that refer to entheogens, and he does make a few good points...But, for one with a firm understanding of mycology, and especially of that surrounding the Amanita, by changing the ergot references to Amanita, the book becomes somewhat readable. Regardless, Mr. Merkur is so far off base that it appears that his indoctrinated PH.D. has got the best of him. I would recommend reading his book only if you're doing your own research for writing purposes, etc. But for factual information on what Manna is, this guy doesn't even come close to the target.

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Summary: Much-needed valuable contribution to religion studies
Review: Anyone interested in the entheogen theory of religion should definitely read this book. It is well-written and scholarly. The field is inherently speculative at this early point. This is a much-needed valuable contribution to religion studies.

Today's situation is a perfect example of a paradigm shift: if you examine each hypothesis separately and each book on the subject separately, and assume the dominant paradigm or non-theory of "those crazy and primitive ancients are simply unfathomable and alien to our way of thinking," you'll be able to easily dismiss each hypothesis and each book.

But when you consider the still-small set of all books and articles about the entheogen theory of religion, a viable alternative paradigm is coming into view. This new paradigm, within which Merkur is only one of a growing number of researchers, is readily yielding specific plausible hypotheses, while the official dominant view has no hypotheses other than "the ancients' minds operated differently than ours, and we simple can't comprehend them, and they were remarkably excitable by wine -- lightweights, unlike us."

Therefore, any one book in this field cannot be reasonably evaluated in isolation; instead, read Merkur's book Psychedelic Sacrament, Clark Heinrich's 1995 book Strange Fruit, which also has coverage of ergot in the Old Testament, and several other books in the field of the entheogen theory of religion. Only then are you reasonably equipped to assess how much this book contributes to our understanding of the history of religion and the nature of religious experiencing.