God is a Mushroom

       Chapter VII    In The White Goddess, one of Robert Graves' main arguments is based upon an ingenious interpretation of a Medieval Welsh poem, Cad Goddeu, 'The Battle of the Trees.' As we have mentioned, the trees refer to a thirteen-month calendar dramatized at the solstices, representing dual phases of growth and decay, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, which I have connected to the story of the two trees in Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, and shown how originally these two trees may have represented the two sacred toadstools, Amanita and Psilocybin, later the division between the agricultural seasons and the times of wild growth and winter: the Spring of the Barley God and the post-Harvest festival of autumnal mushrooms and the Thunder God.     But this calendar is also a secret alphabet containing a religious mystery; or rather, multiple competing systems of thought, as much schools of philosophy as ...

         APPENDIX D      Happy Saint Patrick's Day from God is a Mushroom!     Remember to consume responsibly, whether it's a pint of stout, a glass o' whiskey, or the nectar of the Gods itself...     When last we spoke it was Epiphany! now the Carnival is over, some of us have run on lean times: with the economy in flux, we take a break from eating flesh like our ancestors who tended their flocks millennia before the Bishop of Rome established guidelines for all good Catholics to live by. Before even Dionysus or John Barleycorn or Joseph the Patriarch  invented agriculture, beer and acid trips, when we were following around Moo-Cows and Shetland ponies picking white and golden mushrooms from their dung, riding the Fabulous Beasts flying through the air and over the moon, full and white in the vast empty sky.      Patrick was one of the three Patron Saints of Ireland. As all know, he eradicated the brood of...

APPENDIX C      Happy New Year, Faithful Friends in Fungus! I suppose in any appendix of a work of this, erm, character  a basic introduction to Robert Graves' Tree Calendar is in order: We begin (and are now in) the month of the Birch, Beth (interestingly, the 2nd letter of Hebrew and other Semitic scripts/alphabets/syllabaries earlier (not according to Graves) than Minoan - and meaning house  in Hebrew. What trees did the Phoenicians fell to build their houses with? ) This month of inception and new beginnings, fertility and frozen surfaces begins on 12/24, Christmas Eve, Cosima Wagner's birthday for any philosopher who still gives a damn! and concludes on January 20th, the day America convenes annually to replace Tweedle Dee with Tweedle Dumber. Now---we are on the Eve of the Epiphany of Christ, the Divine Child Harpocrates who was Reborn on Christmas Day (or the 23rd in Graves' make-believe) seen by the Three Magi who followed the Star to Bethlehem ( house ...

  APPENDIX B     It's the most wonderful time of the year...when the world falls in love...and all that jazz! You may have noticed, depending on where you live, that the days are getting much colder, the nights darken early (even more so thanks to Daylight Savings --- and please don't tell me you're one of those morons who calls for the abolition of Daylight Savings Time, in the same breath along with the Electoral College, gas stoves and the patriarchy! Learn to appreciate tradition, and its superiority to all these modern ideas...on the other hand, if you're one of these 'Put Christ back in Christmas' folks, well, let me tell you, unless you've read this whole book --- and I ain't even done writing it --- and understand the true identity of the Blessed Sacrament, then know that Yule, the festival which falls on December 25th, is far older than Christianity, celebrated in so-called Pagan times from Egypt (where the birth of Osiris/Horus was celebrated) ...

  APPENDIX A     Darkness preceded the light of Creation and night begins the day. Likewise the Jewish calendar begins in the Fall, although things were different before the Exile, when barley cakes were still offered to Astarte, the Queen of Heaven. James Ussher, the seventeenth century Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland, dated the Creation to October 22, 4004 BC. This late harvest period has always been celebrated throughout the northern hemisphere as a time of magic and ritual, when the souls of the deceased returned to us for one night and day, to eat and drink together and share the never-ending story that is life. Many of the customs are similar to earlier (in the year, that is) harvest celebrations and also share many elements with modern Christmas---this is all related to the symbolism of the harvest, fertility and marriage, averting death and disease and bringing prosperity in to the new year. The Celts in particular celebrated four annual fire festiva...

  Chapter VI     The cow is central in mythology and folklore the world over. Robert Graves connects the White Goddess of Old Europe and the Mediterranean with the cow, with Io, Isis, and ultimately with a Libyan origin, while Terrence McKenna later proposed that human consciousness and religious ecstasy began in Northern Africa, around the same place and time as Isis' birth at Lake Triton in Libya, after consuming psilocybe cubensis growing from cow dung.     Even before reading McKenna, back in high school during a two-week binge on cubensis myself I felt a strong certainty this was the reason the cow was sacred in Hinduism. In the Gathas of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) the Cow, lamenting its lot at being slaughtered by Man, asks the cosmic spirit of wisdom and righteousness for a protector. None are found among mankind, until Wisdom manifests itself to Zarathustra, to intercede on behalf of the Cow, and all the lowly, afflicted and oppressed, the innocent devot...