Religion Sprang from Divine Fertility?

origin of religionIntroduction

As is my mantra: In order to understand the ancient past, I feel it’s critical to do our absolute best to put ourselves in the mind of ancient humans and the world around them when engaging in these topics. It’s truly not easy to comprehend a world where nature itself was the only supermarket, the only pharmacy, the only armory, as well as a giver and taker of life at will.  It’s difficult to imagine what it must have been like to see a plant sprout up from the ground and bear beautiful flowers or delicious fruit, to eventually see it decay and slowly melt back into the ground.

In our mutual distant past, religion wasn’t a choice of different systems; it was as intrinsic to live and survival as was eating and breathing.  There was no science to explain the world around our early ancestors; for that, they looked to clues and explanations that the world around them provided.  This could have come in any form; from a thunderstorm, to a trek into a deep cave, to a plant that may have induced an otherworldly experience lush with otherworldly beings.

Instead of weighing down the narrative with mountains of interspersed references, I’ve provided an Endnotes section instead to allow it to read like a story rather than a research document. 

I also want to only include the pieces of the story that are generally agreed-upon in an effort to provide incontrovertible common ground upon which to build from.  There’s far more than enough evidence in common ground alone to draw incontrovertible conclusions from if one removes their blinders, bias, indoctrination, and agenda.  When this material and this common ground is taken for what it’s truly telling us, the realm of possible conclusions contracts considerably.

Knowing the environment was truly key to one’s survival.  Having intimate knowledge of the plants, fauna, and other humans in that environment was not only a means of survival, it could also be a source of immense power. (We’ll get into those reasons shortly.) There would have been no plant untouched, untasted, or untested, even at the risk of death.  Detailed cataloging of many of these plants have been found on ancient Sumerian tablets, many of which have since been decoded by respected theologians.

Humans are programmed conquerors and explorers; we seek answers to what is unknown, and if answers aren’t available, we develop stories and mythologies to explain it.  We try to assign stories and meaning to things like the sun rising or the wind blowing, we take “signs” from all around us to help explain or justify what we believe to be true.  In the ancient past, we couldn’t be sure that the plants that seemed to dance and sway in the wind, opening and closing their flowers weren’t as equally as alive as we were.  We saw them grow just as humans and animals did, we saw them take nourishment from the rain and the sun.  We couldn’t see the whole of the earth or the heavens; for all we knew, both could be as alive as we were.

Before we go any further, I want to mention the bravery of two authors: Walter Harrelson, Th.D and John M. Allegro who put many pieces of this specific narrative together in a very readable and lucid way.  On that topic, my article entitled “Why John Allegro is a Hero” explains why there is so much disinformation regarding this leading theologian seemingly everywhere one turns.  I highly suggest reading that article before looking anywhere else in order to get a sense of what he discovered while researching the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Although we all may not agree with his conclusions, it doesn’t invalidate the whole of his research.  The Roman Catholic Church has done everything in their power to make us believe that’s what’s true.

Why Worship At All?

Despite what many of us have been taught, there is a verifiable history of early humans’ monotheistic belief in a single, all-powerful live-giving god.  In “Philosophy of Religion”, Edwards confirms that that usually took the the form of a belief in a primeval monotheism of divine origin. Any other gods in early religious systems, were typically of the same category as other monotheistic religions’ lower deities such as angels, saints, demons, and devils.  And that’s something that is quite amazing to me:  For any other belief system, lower deities such as demons gets that belief system labeled as polytheistic by the Catholic Church, yet the Catholic Church can have all kinds of lower deities that it’s followers worship including saints and angels.  In fact, King Solomon called upon a demon to help him build the Temple of Jerusalem.  The early idea that demons were both good AND bad is something I discuss in detail in an upcoming article on “How Christianity Invented Satan” next month.

Back to the spiritual beliefs of early humans:  Their beliefs, not unexpectedly, had a direct relation to the observable world around them, as seen in plants, animals, storms, the sun, stars, and moon, deep inside caves beneath the oceans, all the way to the tops of mountains and on into the heavens.  Ancient theologians were the first to articulate early spiritual beliefs in writing, writing which occurred long before Yahweh was even a glimmer in any man’s eye.

Their simple belief:  Since rain makes plants grow, within that rain must be the seed of life.

In humans, this “seed of life” is in semen.  Early humans could vividly see they, too, had the power to bring forth life.  To them, there was little difference between the two things; the rain was simply “heavenly semen” from a powerful god somewhere in the sky, perhaps living inside the clouds that the rain seemed to fall from, as well as the place where the thunder, winds and lightning also often appeared to emanate from.

In fact, the skies often speak loudly when releasing its live-giving seed to the Earth; the winds often howl, the thunder often shakes the Earth, and the lightning zaps and flashes across the whole of the sky.  Apply this “display” to describing a human orgasm and surely one could see how thunderstorms could be seen both as the “Word of God” and the “Voice of God” having a Divine Orgasm, resulting in the spreading of his life-giving seed across the land, being absorbed into the womb of the Earth to then bring forth life.

It then makes sense why god may have originally been thought of as a male, and the Earth; female.

So, knowing those few basic facts, let’s re-read the opening of a popular Christian story found in the Gospel of John.  The entire passage takes an an entirely new meaning that far more closely follows with early beliefs that had evolved long before there was the Christian Bible, back to the Paleolithic caves in France, Spain, and Italy if we arm ourselves with the truth:

Chapter 1: [1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was in the beginning with God. [3] All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being [4] in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. [5] The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Word of God wasn’t some abstract idea to early humans; it easy to see in the rain on one’s face, the wind blowing through the trees, the lighting creating fires and explosions, and eventually; the sun warming, nourishing, and lighting the land.  The idea of god and the power this god must possess was all around early humans; it was impossible to ignore.

And these simple, logical ideas, according to the literature, formed the basis of virtually every discovered early religious system throughout the world (and especially in places where there was an abundance of entheogens).  They are known today under a few names such as fertility cults or earth religions.  And, as more and more scholars are discovering, Judaism and Christianity didn’t spring forth from a completely new type of religion as the Roman Catholic Church has fought to keep us all believing, it’s becoming clearer that refinements of earlier belief systems as well as early fertility cults and religions are more deeply intertwined in the roots of Judaism and Christianity than any scholar has ever admitted.

In fact, in one of my favorite books on the topic of early humanity and belief systems, Riane Riesler speaks to the “partnership” societies that existed long before Sumer (which, for many years, was considered the cradel of civilization), back into the Neolithic period in places like Minoa, Catal Huyuk, and Hacilar.  In fact, since Riane wrote her book, another, even more ancient site has been discovered, but one that’s received very little press; the temple at Göbekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-peh).  It’s now believed that civilization not only started earlier than has been thought, but that agriculture may have arisen in response to the need to feed crowds of worshipers at Göbekli Tepe.  (But that’s for another article entirely.)

So, let’s first continue down this path, quoting first from John Allegro’s extremely articulate explanations:

“Within [the Earth] burns an eternal fire which every now and then demonstrates its presence dramatically, by bursting to the surface in a volcano, or by heating spring water to boiling point where the Earth’s crust is thinnest. It was this computer and heat which made generation possible, and which later theologians identify with the place and means of eternal punishment.

Also beneath the Earth’s surface they a great ocean whose waters, like those of the seas around and above the firmament (Gen 1:7) were the primeval reservoirs of the gods sperm, the word. They were therefore seas of knowledge as the Sumerians called them. Those seas of knowledge could be tapped by seekers of truth, whether they looked to the heavens for to the earth beneath (Isaiah 51:6).”

And it is here where humans believed that they could discover the secrets of the past, present, and future by finding a way to project themselves into the heavens or down into the underworld. It is the practices, beliefs, and rituals that arose in efforts to reach either of these places, where religion was perhaps truly born. These efforts to connect and communicate with god, the life-giver, that began to give rise to much mythology and many curious magical practices for many thousands of years to come.

Furthermore, when it came to death, it was easily observed in both plants and animals; that dead and decaying matter melted back into the earth or even evaporated or floated into the sky as happens with fire and smoke and the wood it burns. And often it’s in this part that melted back into the earth or floated off into the sky is where it is believed man’s soul must exist.

Few seem to disagree with these few simple facts and the application of these facts to verify the origin and structure of early belief systems.  In fact, from my research, I’ve been unable to find any respected researcher or scholar, especially of the history of Sumeria and Mesopotamia, who disagrees that the evidence that supports these kinds of conclusions and explanations for the origin of belief.

David Lewis-Williams brought up a key point directly related to these early beliefs, and has discovered a common thread within religions worldwide:  The Cosmos are divided into three main levels:

  • The realm above, inhabited by beings and spirit animals.
  • The daily world, in which people live in amity and strife.
  • The underworld, in which other beings and spirit animals dwell.

And it’s in that place where I wish to further build upon the common foundation that’s not disputed; the one that shows early spiritual belief was, as would be expected, based upon observations of the physical world around early humans, often as it applied to their perspective as well as their own bodily functions. Those initial beliefs are what eventually led to more complex systems with rituals and rules continually being built-up around them.  One of the many examples of this can be see in Totemism.  It’s not universal to all ancient peoples, but it’s an extremely common form of early religious belief.  Totemism, as defined by Britannica, states that “it’s a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The entity, or totem, is thought to interact with a given kin group or an individual and to serve as their emblem or symbol.”

It’s no surprise that there’s a mountain of phalluses that have been discovered.

The Story Never Discussed

Where it gets interesting for me, though, is the next part of the story; the one that we usually never hear about, and the part that John Allegro found incontrovertible evidence of in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It was that very discovery that got his many years of respected research dismissed, his reputation ruined, and got him labeled as “having gone mad” by his peers.

Before we continue down this path, those, there are again, a few key points that are absolutely essential to remember while having this discussion: Unlike modern humans, as a means of their own survival, people had no choice but to possess an intimate knowledge of the plant and animal kingdom around them or they would die. Few of us know what plants are around our own house, much less our surrounding neighborhood, but early humans had to know every plant and animal that existed in their environment.

Logically, this follows that early humans would not only have been vividly aware of what was edible around them, they were vividly aware of the poisons as well as the entheogens that were often abundant in nature, depending on which part of the world one existed in.  The Early Church and modern society call these “poisons” or “drugs” but these plants are neither.  We’ve been taught that “hallucinogens” are dangerous, that they make you think you can fly, forcing innocent children to jump out of windows to their death.

But that’s the media’s version, not the real version.  It’s the power of these kinds of plants posses as well as human’s innate fear of the unknown, that’s lead to such fanatical and fantastical statements regarding them.  Couple that with forcing a large portion of the human population to reassess their religious beliefs if these claims about fertility cults and their use of entheogens is true, and forcing governments to reassess their laws regarding them…it’s truly much easier to continue to perpetuate the lies.

Entheogens go by many names, including hallucinogens and Plant Teachers, and the word entheogens translates into “discovering the Divine within.” This couldn’t have been a more apt name to explain both the purpose and the nature of a plant that brought such amazing visions, those who imbibed in them are often convinced, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they have the ability to directly communicate with God.  (Talk about a threat to the power of an organized religious system!)  It is these entheogens and other altered states of consciousness that provide the “missing link” to the origins of spiritual belief I’ve devoted many years of my life researching.

Let’s now see how they fit into the documented structures of early spiritual belief.

The Extensions of God

Since most humans do not possess the power to visit the heavens above or the underworld below, the idea of “messengers” arose. These angels, demigods, heroes, these workers of miracles play an important role in most ancient mythologies. And these messengers weren’t limited to human-like messengers or heroes.  Plants actually had their roots in the ground; they were directly connected to the source of life in the womb of Mother Earth, and their nourishment also came from the Seed of God (rain), the Word of God (wind), as well as the sunshine.  In fact, plants themselves had the power to give humans life, they had the power to heal wounds, they could be made into clothing, weapons, and even shelter, and they also had the power to take life away, just as god did through fires, earthquakes, floods, and storms.

Illnesses of the body were given names known as demons.  It was thought that to know the name of the demon would allow the healer to harness some of its power on behalf of the patient.  According to Allegro, the likely origin of the word demon derives from a Sumerian word that means “to have power over fertility.”  Once again, we see this theme of fertility in relation to the healing arts that utilized various plants to treat and hopefully heal patients.

Allegro takes this a step further and explains how the name of Jesus in the original Hebrew “yeshoshua” comes from the Sumerian “IA-U-ShU-A (ShUSh)”, which translates into “semen, which saves, restores, and heals.”  If that’s not enough, Allegro then explains how the fertility god Dionysus, also a god of healing, in Sumerian is spelled “IA-U-NU-ShUSh” which is obviously almost identical to the name of Jesus.  These kinds of parallels are just the beginning, and I address these parallels in my “Entheogens in Scripture” article.  In there, I categorize findings from a number of different sources that relate to entheogens in Scripture.

Anyway, the importance of plants to early humans is continuously downplayed by religious historians, but historical records show, incontrovertibly, that plants were considered to extensions of god, and that some plants possessed so much power of god within them, that they had the power to transport humans to the realm of the gods.  These plants are known today as plant hallucinogens, but are more accurately called entheogens.  Entheogens have absolutely no relation to what most think of a “drugs,” but not only has the government, church, and the media force-fed the masses into believing otherwise, drugs are now linked with being terrorism as well!

Regardless, it was thought that the consumption of plants had the power to grant the consumer of these plants access to the wisdom of God.  Imagine if some of these plants made themselves vividly known by literally causing the layers of reality get “peeled” back as geometric patterns of vortexes, whirlwinds, and powerful, often-consuming flashes of light often emerge.  Vividly tangible beings would often appear from nothingness, sounds erupt from nowhere, those who ingested the plants felt that they were transforming into the plant, or into a powerful creature, as the layer between our waking world and a realm of strange visions and fantastical creatures can fall completely away.

All it takes is a logical conclusion as to what early humans must have thought and what conclusions they may have drawn from these early experiences with plant teachers.  And it’s those conclusions that are being substantiated by a growing body of evidence which clearly indicates that they felt that these plants were messengers of God, portals to the Divine, and a chance to communicate directly with that which gave life.

The question then becomes:  Is there evidence to substantiate this alleged knowledge of, belief in, and use of entheogens for purposes of communicating with god?  The answer, to a quickly-growing number of unbiased researchers, scholars, and experts is a resounding; “Yes!”  And now, with the advent of easy world travel and the internet, evidence is appearing from the most unlikely of places, as explorers gather and share their photos of early entheogens mixed with religious paintings in Churches, in Books, on artifacts, and in re-examinations and re-translations of ancient texts as well as the translation of newly-discovered texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and important books such as “The Holy Mushroom” by J.R. Irvin.

The simple fact is this:  There are so many varieties of hallucinogenic plants on this planet, that there isn’t a known place in the world where one variety or another doesn’t exist.  To me, that is an important and incredible statistic!  There is only one plant we can get aspirin from, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) scattered throughout the world that have the power to induce visions and religious experiences, and have been shown to have been known since the first historical evidence or the first history that was ever recorded.

Not even being aware of the existence of so many entheogens, theologians often try to argue that “primitive” humans may not have known about these plants, that they had simply tried the plants once and labeled them as “poisons,” never touching them again.  That argument is easily dismissed with the smallest  amount of research.  Even in my personal collection of Olmec and Mayan artifacts, I have several “poison bottles” that belonged to Shamans, as well as a number of vessels that were obviously “dosing cups” and “dosing vessels” that held their sacred hallucinogenic brews to communicate with god or the gods.

Even one of the oldest entheogens known to humans; plants such as Datura and Brugmansia, are commonly called “poisonous,” when in fact, they’re not poisonous, they’re hallucinogenic.  Incredibly, after moving to Southern California, I literally can’t go more than a block without seeing this powerful hallucinogen on people’s property, in fields, or as decoration for businesses and even a church.  In fact, other powerful hallucinogenic plants such as Morning Glory and various species of cacti are in such abundance here in Southern California, it’s difficult to have a day go by without noticing them.  And these are the same plants that I saw way up the mountain in Maccu Piccu.  To this day I haven’t been able to find any mention of them anywhere, but one of the first incredible sights when I made my way up the mountain, was a Brugmansia in full bloom.

To make a blanket claim that “primitive man” didn’t know of these plants is grasping at straws in an attempt to cast doubt on yet another verifiable truth.  This is the tactic that organized religious systems have used since their inception; they count on the fact that most won’t do their own research into seeking out the truth, then just repeating what they heard as fact.  Knowing the role that entheogens and trance states played in the development of spirituality as well as our mutual human evolution is denying and demonizing the very god that Christianity claims to exult.  But that’s truly nothing new.

Shaman, Medicine Men, Priests, Mystics

With knowledge comes power, and with power comes corruption.  Despite our ability to communicate directly with god, humans can’t seem to escape being human, no matter how evolved or enlightened we may think we’ve become.  I know, it’s a blanket statement, but bear with me for a minute as I explain this critical detail; the one that I feel is at the root of where spirituality partially went awry many thousands of years ago:

Knowing the immense power that plants possessed, this also brought immense power to those who understood how to make use of those plants.

In our world of popping pills, it’s difficult for any of us to understand that more than 80% of our medicines are plant-based.  Pharmaceutical companies have done a thorough job of isolating active alkaloids in plants and processing them into little white pills.  Think of the wide variety of purposes these pills and medications serve, and you will begin to understand how important the plant kingdom was to early humans.

Imagine having the knowledge of a plant that could dull pain, or stop bleeding, make someone fall into a deep sleep, or even one that could kill another human.  Since most of us have isolated ourselves in large part from the natural world around us, we lose sight of how vast it is, how many varieties of plants with such a wide variety of purposes exist all around us.  But imagine the power that kind of knowledge might hold, especially if it was held by just a few.

And therein lies the key:  Those who had power over the plants, literally often also had power over who lived and who died, and that kind of power is carefully transmitted and passed down to only a select few.

Imagine if, in that pharmacopeia of plants, there were ones that gave direct access to the very god that created the very people and plants and animals that exist?  The ramifications are staggering, and history has shown countless ways how that knowledge and power has been used for both good and how it’s also been abused and as a means of control over entire populations.  It only takes the smallest of imagining to understand why Shamans, Priests, Medicine Men, Mystics were the most powerful members of communities, and it’s easy to see how a power struggle between these “Masters of Nature” and political systems could be deeply interwoven or at extreme odds with each other in the quest for power and control.

It’s also easy to see how fearful those with a lust for power and control, willing to stop at nothing, including murder and the destruction of entire “heathen” cultures and libraries of knowledge, might be of anyone who had mastery over plants, and claimed to have the power to communicate directly with god.

Again, I am completely oversimplifying and leaving out large tracts of the overall picture, but this is meant to serve as nothing more than a way to connect the dots in order to inspire research, to provide an easily-followed thread regarding the origin of religion, a way of making sense of how spiritual belief likely first arose within humans, and how it not only evolved into complex systems, but became the single-most powerful force in the world.  As I’ve stated in other articles, the most powerful and wealthy entity on the entire planet isn’t any government; it’s the Vatican.

And what the Vatican fears most is the truth.  The more research we all do, the more articles we get online like this one, the more books we write; we’re helping to further the evolution of humanity on this planet.  At the end of 2010, there are now over 1,000,000 books published a year, 500,000 blog posts a day, and over 2,000,000,000 internet users.  Combined, we are a powerful voice, and despite an equal opportunity for disinformation to circulate, I have faith in the power of the truth.

More more drops of truth we add to a bucket that’s far too large to comprehend (Just look to Worldometer for an idea), the more the truth gets out there, the more we empower ourselves, and honestly; the more Christians empower themselves to take back a deeply spiritual, mystical religious system that was hijacked from them a couple of thousand years ago.

Evidence in Organized Religions

As is universally agreed, a common feature arose in religious systems as far back as religious systems can be traced, and this is the belief that the universe has three tightly interwoven, but distinctly different, levels or regions.  Even in the cave paintings of the Paleolithic caves of France, Spain, and Italy, there is evidence of an Upper world where the gods lived, the Earth plane where the world of waking reality was, and then the Under world, where gods also lived. This belief carried through even to the Mesopotamians as far back as 3000 BCE.

This is easily verified in even one of the oldest known stories of creation, a flood, and the battle between good and evil in the Babylonian Creation Myth called the Enuma Elish.  In fact, George Smith authored “The Chaldean Genesis” in 1876, shortly after the tablets with this incredible mythological story was unearthed. Many historians, from the obvious parallels, immediately concluded that the Genesis account of the Bible was nothing more than a rewrite of the ancient Babylonian story.  The Catholic Church of course kicked its propaganda machine into overdrive and claimed that Genesis was vastly different, that Genesis was written first, and so on.  This isn’t the first time history has revealed the Catholic Church for covering up the truth about their own history, and they have rewritten it time and time again. All it takes is a reading of a translation of the Enuma Elish to settle that debate without much difficulty, I’m not here to debate that at the moment.

The main point to gather from these few facts is that here is that the point of worship for early humans was an deeply active participation in heavenly events.  The lives of humans literally depended in knowing and pleasing the gods. But, a key line in the Enuma Elish states that earth existed to provide a “likeness of what [god] has wrought in heaven.”  A great deal of mythological literature deals with this interplay between human activities and the activities of these gods.  The gods built the temple of Esagila for Marduk in the heavens, and there was a counterpart in Babylon that serves as the connecting point between earth and the heavens.  Even kings were considered to have been lowered from heaven, and ruled over their people just as high gods ruled over lower gods in the heavens.  And the list goes on.

As discussed earlier, this personal aspect of spirituality was essential in ancient times.  The traceable string of events in just about every piece of evidence points to the same cohesive narrative across ALL religious systems.  Worship of the Divine is built into our deepest coding as humans, and spirituality arose simply by existing. Humans are doomed to mortality, and despite any of our best efforts, it’s impossible to know the desires or intentions of any divine being. Sometimes it seemed that jumping up and down caused the rains, but sometimes it didn’t.  So it’s no surprise that all kinds of rituals, signs, magical rites, mythological stories and divine battles between good and evil would have developed.  Humans lives were literally at stake, and if one thing didn’t work, something else needed to be tried.

And it’s in that primeval desire that the Roman Catholic Church was able to step in, take religion and spirituality away from humans, and turn it into an instrument of power, politics, money, and control. If I’ve learned nothing else from my years of research, it’s that organized religion, especially in the case of the Roman Catholic Church has absolutely nothing to do with continuing, expanding, and enriching humans’ connection to god.

We, as humans yearn to understand and connect with the supernatural since before there was recorded history.  We have tried to make those connections in almost every conceivable way.  Whether it was through travels deep into Paleolithic caves, by building pyramids to the skies, through altered states of consciousness, in dreams, through visions, by looking to the stars to apply their shapes and movements to gods and how those movements can inform and instruct our lives, to quiet lives of contemplation, one fact will always remain:  Our connection to the divine couldn’t be more personal.

It defined the lives of the earliest humans and continues to define our lives today whether we’re atheist evangelical or anywhere in-between.  There simply couldn’t be a more natural and beautiful idea that our earliest spiritual beliefs sprang from the idea that the gods were copulating and spreading their life-giving seed of life across the earth.  We could tangibly touch god; we could hear it in the winds, feel it on our faces, and see the divine in every plant, person, and thing on this planet.

To think that over 2 billion us of gave that beautiful connection away to an institution with a vividly clear history of murder, incessant greed, rape, molestation, denial of the truth, genocide of entire cultures in the name of the god that belongs to each one of is is a mystery I’m not sure I will ever understand.  As with all of my writing, I only hope to empower those who’ve given their spirituality away, to take it back, to honor our mutual past, and to understand that religion comes in many forms, and there are many equally as valid pathways to god.  Finding out that one of the most direct and ancient ways to connect with god was and still is through the use of entheogens is not a truth that will ever be accepted easily.  But denying it and demonizing it will never make it less true.

———————–

REFERENCES:

Fertility Cults

01. “Theology Of The Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy” by Walter Brueggemann

02. “From Fertility Cult To Worship” by Walter Harrelson

03. “Mushrooms and Mankind” by James Arthur

04. “The Holy Mushroom” by J.R. Irvin

05. “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” by John M. Allegro

06. “Ancient Christian Magic” by Marvin W. Meyer

Origins of Religion

01. “Introduction to the History of Religion” by B. Jevons

02. “Religion of the Semites” by W. Robertson Smith

03. “Elemental Forms of the Religious Life” by Emile Durkheim

04. “Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics”, “Totemism in Hastings” by E.S. Harltland

05. “Origin and Evolution of Religion” by F.W. Hopkins

05. “Discovering God” by Rodney Stark

06. “Conceiving God” by David Lewis-Williams

07. “The Philosophy of Religion” by D. Miall Edwards

08. “Primitive Culture” by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor

Entheogens and Religion

01. “The Apples of Apollo” by Carl A.P. Ruck

02. “Strange Fruit: Alchemy, Religion, and Magical Foods” by Clark Heinrich

03. “In the Dark Places of Wisdom” by Peter Kingsley

04. “The Mystery of Mann” by Dan Mercur

05. “Jesus, the Magician” by Morton Smith

06. “Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality” by Gordon Wasson

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