Allegro in 1970 UK Christendom context
To understand John Allegro's half-baked "secret illicit deviant sex-Amanita cryptic fictional-Jesus" theory, don't read his book The Sacred Mushroom & the Cross; read John King's book:
A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth
John King
King's book is a messed-up book about Allegro's messed up theory, both books written by confused rigid thinkers in the strange 1970 mainstream culture of UK Christendom, requiring a study in itself, including the late-1960s generation gap, free love, and that the 1950 expected demise of Christianity didn't happen.
King mentally projects his cultural moment as mainstream seemingly monolithic uniform Christianity throughout history, as if there were 2000 years of 1970 mainstream unanimous Protestant Christianity and no other version is part of tradition.
You'd never know that there was INNOVATION and revolutionary criticism within mainstream Christian history: King pretends as if Protestants never rejected and deviated from paganism-absorbing Roman Catholicism.
John King pretends that Allegro is the first person ever to question "the mainstream traditional understanding of Christianity" in 2000 years, which has always had peaceful unanimous agreement — until Allegro in 1970.
For John King, "traditionally understood Christianity" means 2000 years of uniformly 1970-type mainstream protestantism (exoteric of course).
King has a 1 dimensional view of Christianity and is equally narrow and anti-imaginative regarding potential variant theories.
According to King and Allegro and UK Christendom in 1970, we must either:
o Wholesale accept Allegro's particular theory of {encrypted sex-Amanita Christianity}, as-is.
– or –
o Entirely reject Allegro's theory in all aspects, and adhere — wholesale, as-is — to the single uniform monolithic standard version of Christianity that everyone has held for 2000 years without ever any novelty, change, or variants: 1970-type, mainstream Protestant or Catholic "tradition" as seen through a uniformity-lens of 1970 England.
Those are the two candidates; there are no potential variants. 2 options, winner take all, one position is all true and the other is all false.
Letcher Hatsis soaked himself in this bizarrely narrowing mindset by reading too much Allegro's 1-dimensional writings and the 1970 England monoculture's 1-dimensional reaction: all parties obsessed with reducing Christianity to social sex control.
For Letcher Hatsis just as for Allegro and his 1970 audience, there are only two options, two option-packages, two assumption-sets: either:
o Christianity is true (per normal, traditional, uniform, mainstream Christianity)
– or –
o Christianity is a lie based on encrypted aphrodisiac-Amanita posing as the Jesus figure precisely per Allegro's particular conception in his singular elaborated model.
Who is right? Allegro's theory, or the traditional view? Is Christianity true, or a deception based on misunderstanding of encrypted sex-Amanita?
These aren't people wiggling and finessing explanatory theory-variants into place to gain understanding; this is a matter of staking out two positions and fighting between them like crass internet fanboi flaming. One side is all good, one all bad.
King's language — just like Allegro's — is charged, loaded, extremist, sensationalist, brittle.
Where King (or Allegro) talks about "mainstream traditional Christianity", he ought to instead talk in terms of *exoteric* Christianity; the usual normal exoteric misunderstanding of religion and failure to grasp esoteric religion, which is Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.
Allegro is nowhere near psilocybin Eternalism, the intense mythic altered state, the Eternalism state of consciousness.
Allegro and his 1970 England audience and the 1970 writings of Letcher Hatsis are all stuck at encrypted sex-Amanita, trapped in their dead end, not headed toward transformation of the mental worldmodel from Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism to Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism.
John Allegro was right about:
mushrooms in Christianity
no historical Jesus
Allegro was wrong about:
o Ignoring psilocybin mushrooms.
o Treating Amanita as aphrodisiac.
o The Jesus figure and the New Testament were written for the purpose of encrypting knowledge of the Amanita aphrodisiac.
o Only the very first Christians understood Eucharist as Amanita. There is no evidence of later continuation of the Amanita Eucharist — such as, a painting of a mushroom tree… like shown in Allegro's book.
There is a tangled knot of fallacies in Allegro, that is a product of his brief cultural moment 1968-1970.
You can't discuss Allegro's notion of ahistoricity of Jesus without also criticizing his notion of the *purpose* for creating the fictional Jesus figure, which is tangled together with Allegro's notion of "the" mushroom being Amanita (vs. Psilocybin, vs. "mixed wine" as lotus and opium and cannabis and henbane and psilocybin).
Allegro and his audience work hard to keep these as two, competing knots — rejecting the possibility of thinking in terms of variants.
Either Allegro's 10 interlocked notions are the case, or, "mainstream Christianity's" 10 interlocked notions are the case.
There is no possibility of any combinations other than these two monolithic knotted clusters, including motivations for hiding sex-Amanita use behind the fictional Jesus figure.
The entire 1970 (1960s) culture is to blame for creating this misconception/fixation on Sexianity.
The whole mainstream was degenerate in reducing Christianity to merely {social sex control}, as Alan Watts noted.
Allegro and the 1970 culture into which his book was received, he was a product of his time.
Freud = Victorian sex-fixation backlash
Allegro = the 1970 Sexianity backlash
Sexianity = Christianity reduced to only sex. That was the culture of 1970.
All those 1970 people — Allegro, priests, lay consumers, journalists, literateurs– all were astoundingly rigid in their thinking: either there was a monolithic uniform Traditional Christianity consensus, or, Allegro's *particular* theory emphasizing mushrooms-as-sex trying to hide from the authorities; as if the ultimate mystic revelation is of Amanita *as aphrodisiac*.
Allegro is severely reductionist, in keeping with the 1970 UK mainstream Christendom monoculture which produced his half-baked, over-elaborated, sex-fixated model of what "Amanita in Christianity" is about.
To Allegro, psychedelics are… no, Alllegro has no concept of 'psychedelics', in practice, or he sees no benefit in leveraging other plants for his purpose of discrediting (wholesale) Christianity.
Allegro's strategy: How to leverage Amanita to bring down Christianity?
Connect Amanita with covert illicit 1968-style drug Prohibition (governor Reagan & president Nixon projected back in time to 30 CE) together with the Free Love sexual revolution of 1970, projected back onto primitive Christians.
We in 1970 hide drug use; so the apostles had to hide their drug use.
Allegro's book and King's response book tell us little about Christian origins and alot about late 60s popcult.
Allegro and his audience within 1970 UK Christendom fully agree that there is a single monolithic entity, "traditional mainstream Christianity", which has always thought just like the 1970 UK audience.
This 1970 UK Christendom culture, including Allegro and King, is completely weird and alien now, operating from within a peculiar 1970 cultural moment.
John King often grossly mischaracterizes Amanita, as "the" Christian mushroom, and as "addictive", and as "toxic".
Malapropisms abound, in a dense knot.
Actually, Amanita is not "the" Christian mushroom; Amanita is not addictive, and Amanita is not toxic except in a weak sense.
Amanita is notable because of its lurid sex potential.
Letcher Hatsis conflates the overall general {psychedelic theory of religion} with the particular Allegro theory of "stealth Amanita sex cult" as if there can be no variant theory of mushrooms in Christianity other than this particular theory that puts total emphasis on the illicit-secrecy motive and Amanita sex cult.
Allegro = Freud in 1970 and his audience.
Allegro = 1970 Victorian titillation.
Allegro copies Freud's move.
Allegro misled people away from proper psychedelic religious history and Metaphorical Psychedelic Eternalism.
Allegro and his culture remained firmly within Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism, because of their reduction of psychedelics to sex in the 1970 version of Christendom, which reads as an alien culture now.
Allegro was embedded in the limited thinking of his time. Letcher Hatsis follows that rigid thinking, 1970 style.
— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com
Egodeath Yahoo Group 