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Any evidence of psilocybin mushroom use among ancient peoples of the British Isles?

rangrz said:
Your argument on the Big Bang is either due to ignorance of the theory and evidence, or a deliberate straw-man. Quickly, Bang Bang Cosmology says that at some point in the past, the mass/energy content of the Universe was compacted down to an EXTREMELY, hot, dense, small point. Then it began expanding out very rapidly. It does not claim it came from nothing, just that it was hella compact before. It does not address where the stuff came from. (And therefore the claim that the theory states it came from nothing is false. )

Dark matter has evidence for it. It's gravitational effects are readily apparent in the motion of galaxies. Uranus was discovered by the way it perturbed the orbits of other planets, binary stars have been discovered that way, exoplanets, etc. They where all a kind of "Dark matter" until sufficiently advanced imaging technology came along. (Or it might be matter that only interacts via gravity and the weak nuclear force, in which case you can't "see" it with photons.) Just take the term dark matter as "We can detect it's gravitational effects, but we can't see with electromagnetic radiation"

Not that unsolved problems involving the sparse environment of intergalactic space, and the issue with not being able to get there and look up close bear any relevance on assessing historical artifacts here on Earth from 1500 years ago.

I've never read any mention of any sort of psychedelic mushroom (or Psychedelic period) in any European mythology, nor seen any mushrooms in religious artwork, or otherwise heard of pre-christian Britain having any cultural use of mushrooms.
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You may be interested in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix2PX7KKSG4
 
i did, i have a copy in a box somewhere around here... it's a nice little globe-trotting study that addresses, basically, all of the evidence that we have, in any way, that can be attributed to entheogenic practices of pre-historical man. personally, my favorite part was about north america/the american west, as i feel that area tends to get passed over when discussing the larger picture of ancient psychedelic use.
 
^

There wasn't any psychedelic use in North america was there? Not until peyote was carried North about 100 years ago by tribes like the Tarahumara.
 
from what i can remember (and i'll have to dig it out now, i'm getting curious myself) it talks about mezcal, (the differences in the bean, the drink, etc), jimsonweed/scopolamine alkoloids, nicotene, peyote, and others i'm sure... it's probably more accurate to say that it discusses north american shamanistic practices containing plants/items that have known active compounds, as opposed to being a review of ancient psychedelics use in north america. again, it's all pre-historic so everything is open for question. he just uses some of the same logic applied to other ritual sites/parts of the world where practices were known to occur. i do remember a couple of excerpts (from this particular chapter) as being fairly far-reaching, but still very dreamy and beautiful in idea anyway, and not completely out of the realm of possibility.
 
I don't doubt for a moment that ancient peoples from all over the globe experienced some sort of psychedelics, intentional or not. Heaven only knows what kind of shroom spores exist in the Sahara Desert. I don't think it was always a desert. But that is another discussion for another thread.

I have not yet seen an example in a church from the UK, but a Medieval church in Plaincourault, France PLAINLY has mushroom symbolism in it. And its location is not terribly far away from Britain. Basically a relatively short horseback or carriage ride to the coast and a boat ride across the channel. The same shroom spores could easily travel that distance also. Just because ''proof'' isn't found, doesn't mean it does not exist.

But, if someone lived near Rosslyn Chapel in Edinborough Scotland, that might be a good place to start, at least according to a book excerpt I found on Google Books. ''Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe."
 
BUMP...

Just a follow up to this thread, we were discussing whether or not mushrooms in a tradional context were taken by just the shaman or by the group, and there was some ambiguity about Maria Sabina's use.

Well in a general follow up I was just re reading Henry Munn's paper "The Mushrooms of Language" were he says that group taking was indeed happening....

quote - Usually several members of a family eat the mushrooms together: it is not uncommon for a father, mother, children, uncles, and aunts to all participate in these transformations of the mind that elevate consciousness onto a higher plan. The kinship relation is thus the basis of the transcendental subjectivity that Husserl said is intersubjectivity. The mushrooms themselves are eaten in pairs, a couple representing man and woman that symbolizes the dual principle of procreation and creation. Then they sit together in their inner light, dream and realize and converse with each other, presences seated there together, their bodies immaterialized by the blackness, voices from without their communality.

Full article is here...

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/munn.htm
 
webbykevin said:
You may be interested in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix2PX7KKSG4
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Explain the just of the video to me, It's an hour and thirty minutes of what looks like patent nonsense and I'm not going to sit here and watch it unless you can give me something akin to an journal articles abstract (i.e. a condensed outline of what it's about, the conclusion, and the evidence and methodology used to reach that conclusion.)
 
rangrz said:
Explain the just of the video to me, It's an hour and thirty minutes of what looks like patent nonsense and I'm not going to sit here and watch it unless you can give me something akin to an journal articles abstract (i.e. a condensed outline of what it's about, the conclusion, and the evidence and methodology used to reach that conclusion.)
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Sorry, I can't do your analytical thinking for you, that's why you need to do your own research and not just buy someone elses concepts, working things out for yourself is very rewarding, so the sheldrake video raises some very profound and interesting observations about the doctrines and beliefs of modern science, It won't provide answers or offer conclusions for you, that's the whole point, it is meant to inspire you to think for yourself, if that is too much of a challenge for you then go back to watching the history channel and let them lay it all out for you.
 
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A: Whatever idea he is putting forth, must in some sense, have a conclusion, even if that conclusion is "inconclusive" and he must be treating some idea or set of ideas.

Working things out is rewarding! And every time I work out a bunch of equations based on data compiled by people before me (Which I read and concluded the same thing they did) and then do an experiment and the experimental results fall perfectly inline with what my equations predicted, I've worked out that these equations model reality VERY well.
 
rangrz said:
Working things out is rewarding! And every time I work out a bunch of equations based on data compiled by people before me (Which I read and concluded the same thing they did) and then do an experiment and the experimental results fall perfectly inline with what my equations predicted, I've worked out that these equations model reality VERY well.
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One thing I've learned after a 30 year relationship with psychedelics is that reality is a very slippery thing to try and reach any conclusions about.
 
Wanna bet that if we pick something a given mass, say, a sledgehammer. Then we accelerate it up to some given velocity. Then we rapidly (In the space of about ~2~ inches) slow it to a stop, perhaps on top of your foot, that if we solve a few equations for it, and we look at the established data on the material properties of bone and muscle, that the currently accepted models of reality will predict with very high precision, just how mashed up your foot will be, and for the subjectivist psychedelic user in you, you can evaluate the reality of this statement by how much pain you feel as a result. If these equations are of no bearing on "reality" this act should be more or less of no consequence, right?
 
So, he projected a stream of ions eh? Cool! You just gave me an empirically testable, verifiable/falsifiable prediction! Find me one of the chi masters, I wish to asses this ion beam. I don't claim to be an expert on ion beams, but I am doing research on heavy ion beams and feel competent enough that I should be able to detect an ion beam so powerful (in order to deflect a sledgehammer) that it should be able to more or less instantly deliver a lethal dose of radiation to an elephant.

In any event, I'd like to see it demonstrated under controlled conditions. If you're confident in your abilities, why not let me try?
 
How about the red mushroom as a standard feature at the front of fairy tale illustrations? Since I've realised what it was I've always felt it was trying to tell us something. From what I've seen, things like that aren't usually an accident but more like a small hint that's open to interpretation and can alway be explained away somehow.

Though not as easily when you've seen many examples of it being the case, plus coincidences like that don't really happen. By "trying to tell us something" I mean 1. How to get a glimpse of that invisible, magical world that seems amazing to most. 2. How to get the inspiration to make up a wondrous tale like that.

In fact, just the existence and use of psychedelics have made me lose much respect for those known for having spiritual experiences, like imaginative artists, as I feel there are few who has achieved them naturally. Or are we to believe that some of those living in past centuries, with no TV or magazines or all those forms of entertainment, bored as fuck, and inclined towards the magical world with their heads in the clouds, didn't indulge in such experiences when they had the chance?
 
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rangrz said:
So, he projected a stream of ions eh? Cool! You just gave me an empirically testable, verifiable/falsifiable prediction! Find me one of the chi masters, I wish to asses this ion beam. I don't claim to be an expert on ion beams, but I am doing research on heavy ion beams and feel competent enough that I should be able to detect an ion beam so powerful (in order to deflect a sledgehammer) that it should be able to more or less instantly deliver a lethal dose of radiation to an elephant.

In any event, I'd like to see it demonstrated under controlled conditions. If you're confident in your abilities, why not let me try?
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obviously i am not a chi master or i wouldn't be bothering to even engage in this debate with you, however I believe that if you were to travel and explore this planet, its peoples and its mysteries you would very soon find your newtonian views challenged at their deepest levels.
 
That needn't be true. Science doesn't displace the unnatural, it only describes a phenomenon and proves that description. It's obviously true that our current picture isn't complete, string theory and quantum mechanics are great proofs of that. However, is science consistently accurate in describing the phenomena as they occur in our physical realities, yeah. If physical reality was as slippery as many here say it is, then the experiments wouldn't be as consistent as they are. Is there a whole lot going on OUTSIDE of our physical reality? Could certainly be true. String/M-Theory describes that there are 11 dimensions, we have no idea what is in there. The unnatural is undisputedly linked to that IMO
 
But science's dirty little secrets are things like the measurements that are preached as constants actually change, so there is no such thing as a constant anything, the speed of light, the atomic weights of atoms etc, if you go and look at the published scientific lists of constants over the last 100 years they are all different.

And the clue is in the language - the string "THEORY" that's all it is, a theory, theorys are not facts, and theorys are being outdated and dis proven and abandoned all the time as technology improves, as new understandings and discoveries are made.

As demonstrated in this article....

http://www.sheldrake.org/Onlineexp/offline/constants/index.html

And what the heck any of this has to do with mushroom use in ancient Britain god only knows, lol. great debate though, much better than watching everybody loves raymond or mindless sporting neanderthals on the idiot box.
 
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Yes obviously that's because every scientist in the world is part of a conspiracy to hide us from the Other, and not because modern technology has made us more accurate and the numbers in those constants are revised. I can remember that there are some theories on the changing of constants as well, though I don't remember exactly what they are. Either way, if one can fundamentally undermine one theory or law or whatever, then it will be revised. Most of the metaphysical theories so far have been just philosophy.

Also, you should know that Sheldrake is probably just really bitter (he does indeed raise some points though) because the scientific community hasn't received his theories that well. And that's exactly what is so wrong about the scientific community at this point. They pay no attention to the unnatural and they label it as New Age, hippy bs. But if what a lot of us think is true, then it will eventually be described by science.

There is nothing wrong with science or the scientific method. It's the only way to describe what is real, and what is not. Your gripes are with the scientific community, but why blame them? Most of these theories on consciousness and reality are based on drug experiences, which in no way is more accurate than measurement and calculation.

EDIT: Haha absolutely nothing, just wanted to butt-in to what has been said.
 
They're called magic mushrooms and liberty caps 'round here - Wales. They shoot up in autumn. Britain has shitloads of mushrooms and it's almost laughable that previous generations wouldn't have indulged in this wondertful escape.
 
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