Theogony Botanica
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 religious sects. Big names like Cadmus, Pythagoras, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Odin are involved in these religious reforms. If we take the calendar of trees that Graves presents us, thirteen (or fifteen) consonants, plus five sacred vowels (the secret name of Dionysus/Jehovah) which can also be condensed to the seven days of the week, we can attempt to decode the religious, i.e. psychopharmacological meaning of the individual trees and/or letters, planets or days...
Several of these trees, especially the first vowel and consonant of the Beth-Luis-Nion alphabet, Ailm (Silver Fir) and Beth (Birch) are prime hosts to amanita muscaria, preceding their reputation as avatars of the White Goddess, as mother, giving birth to the Divine Mushroom. Many of them are potential sites for finding species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Some are likely stand-ins for or mistranslations of other trees, shrubs or flowers that directly contain psychoactive alkaloids, such as acacia (some species of which contain DMT, whether or not Graves knew this) to which he attaches great importance in the mysteries of Moses and the later Essene sect which Graves seems to see as a link between the Pythagoreans and early Christians; Syrian Rue (which can be somewhat psychoactive on its own, but can also allow DMT to be orally active, and potentially increase the effects of ergot or psilocybin) cannabis, deliriants such as henbane and mandrake, lotus and lilies (which are mildly sedative and euphoric) and of course opium. The vine is itself an intoxicant after fermentation. Although it is not a tree, one of the most sacred plants in Graves' theory is barley, and its cultivation he seems to connect to the Alder, Fearn, alias Bran, Vran, Kronos, Saturn, who as the Harvest God is eternally at war with his brother Beli. The importance of the location of the sacred and taboo letter F in the alphabet/calendar is linked to the Ancient Israelite calendar starting in the Spring with the Barley Festival of the Passover. While I think this is the correct primary association for the Alder, the matter is complicated because psilocybin mushrooms may be found beneath alders, and on the other hand the ritual use of red dye obtained from the alder on the faces of sacred kings strongly connotes amanita by the sympathetic magic of colour alone. In any case it has come, by its three colors of dye, as the Rasta say, Ites Green and Gold, to represent the Holy Trinity or Triple Goddess.
I hope this discussion raises more questions than it answers. The idea that "God is a Mushroom" may sound as deranged and unbelievable today as once did Nietzsche's proclamation "God is dead" but rather than one day the cookie-cutter shape, Man, will take this for granted as a truism, I wish that we could expand the focus and try to discover: which God or Goddess, which planetary influence/day of the week, which animal or heavenly light represents which plant and especially mushroom, growing during which season under which tree?
Well then, here goes!
My attempt to identify the possible botanical or mycological identity of the various Gods & Goddesses:
(all apologies---please feel free to debate these correspondences in the comments...)
Zeus/Jupiter/Thor: First, is it right to conflate all these Gods of different Nations and cultures? On first glance all three do seem the prototypical European Sky-God. Now, most people proposing anything like my theological manifesto tend to link this Thunder-God with the Amanita mushroom, and lightning in general is associated with that mushroom. As I have outlined in The Two Trees, I believe that really the Lightning God & the Oak God (Hercules, Janus...) refer to the lightning-blasted tree stump on which primitive proto-European hunters in the thick forests (who may have already been worshipping a Sky-God(dess) associated with the red Amanita toadstool) first encountered the Divine Prince, psilocybin. But around the Mediterranean, from North Africa and Spain to Turkey and Syria, the Golden Teacher grew on cowdung and likely catalyzed our domestication of cattle. I think many scholars of this subject would agree with that last statement---but I also propose that another, Eurasian population, first found 'shrooms growing on horse dung, a different genus perhaps but containing the same alkaloids nontheless, and learned to ride the horse, and developed all sorts of weird sacrifices and rituals and bestial copulations but the craziest one is still really popular: horse races.
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