Angus Martin: BLOGUE

Evil is not new in the world. But the perception of evil is ever changing, and is ever-new and always multiplicitous and varigated. One could say that evil itself is a failure of perception or consciousness. This failure leads to the actions and attitudes which we recognize as manifest in the world.

In our understanding of this problem, fire should inhabit where evil now takes its stand. This is the meaning of the tongues of fire emanating from the heads of the apostles at epiphany. Consciousness is a fire, when the fire goes out there is ignorance, followed soon-after by death.

SEASONAL NOTE

In the northern latitudes, home of santa clause, the sun doesn't rise above the horizon for 3 days this time of year. On the third day the sun is resurrected and the days get longer. But the connection between santa and jesus gets even stranger... The sun, which our ancestor's worshipped as god, had a son on earth, complete with crown of thorns, halo, loincloth, red suit dotted with white... In its full and open splendor, this son looked like its 'father' our star: a representation in flesh of an orange-golden burning orb.

Thus, our ancestors, those behind the great 'holy books' of the middle east, india, africa and the great tradition of eurasian shamanism, thought of the so-called 'Amanita Muscaria' mushroom.

Every important tradition related to the holiday of Christmas comes from the use and tradition of this mushroom.

Xmas tree and presents underneath: these mushrooms grow under pine and fir trees. The shaman would get children to find the beautiful red and white mushrooms under the trees, and reward them with gifts, candy, etc..

Santa coming through the chimney, hanging stockings, leaving food for santa and reindeer: the siberian shaman would visit people's houses with a bag full of mushrooms. he would come in through the smoke opening in the top of the yurt, either to avoid letting in cold air, or because it was the only entrance due to high snowfall blocking door.
He would explain to them that he dried his mushrooms in his own yurt, in stockings hanging on a string around his hearth. These were the gifts from God, the flesh of God. He would conduct healing ceremonies which involved the ingestion of these mushrooms, by himself, and where appropriate by those he was attempting to heal. The mushrooms were considered usefull for many things, and were traded for meat and soup, etc which the shaman ate with the families he visited. For one they served as a warming tonic which helped sustain the people through very cold and bitter weather.

Red, white and green: The mushrooms are bright red/orange and are speckled with white. They are commonly found in spring or autumn grass under conifer trees.

The cross, Jesus, crown of thorns, resurrection: The reason the shaman had the power that he had was due to one thing only: he had the balls to take large amounts of this mushroom, which induce a spiritual death and resurrection experience. Heaven and Hell are both vividly imagined/experienced as the soul 'seeks its worth'. Astral travel can be imagined/experienced, giving the shaman knowledge of the stars and universe. The cross, moreover, is shorthand for a mushroom, the crown of thorns describing the torn bits of universal veil left dotting the head of the emergent mushroom, Jesus' loincloth lines up with the ring or anulus on the stem. The mushroom shaped hats worn by orthodox and catholic bishops confirms this. So when the shaman visits the people at the winter solstice, he also brings his experience of his own death and resurrection.

What the gospels say, if we are to read it with an eye to its actual intention, based in the experiences of literate shamans, is that this experience should be available to all. This is in the shaman's interest, since in a sense he carries the burden of other people's ignorance around with him. Instead of everyone depending on him alone, 'Jesus' proposes that all should 'take and eat' and be illuminated and healed.

Reindeer: Real reindeer (as well as crows) love to eat this mushroom, and when they do they play around and take huge leaps. prancing and dancing about. In small to medium doses, this is not a hallucinagen, but a tonic and a energy giver.

There are many more 'coincidences' (as many detractors will call them), and parallels in other traditions, as mentioned above. But here we have basically drawn together and made one cohesive picture out of many elements: santa, jesus, shamanism, indian, middle-eastern, african, south american religions and cultural beliefs.

May the spores be spread far and wide and may the people eat of its fruiting body!

On these days we find ourselves crying out the name O-BA-MA out of sheer, joy, relief, celebration, for all that this can mean for America and the world. We are suddenly no longer ashamed to be Americans. Finally we can act as such with some degree of pride. After the darkness the dawn.

With this stunning victory, an early fruit (for there are much more and greater things to come) of a civil rights struggle which began really in Africa, and must return to Africa, because Africa is still the poorest, most fractured, and environmentally at risk continent of our world.

Who is Barack but the fruit of our collective dream: of people of color and of progressives of every hue. Why do they call us progressive? Because we have seen the future and are working our way back to pull up our brothers the conservatives. Civil rights will mean nothing on a dead earth. You will have the right to die like the rest. This is why I urge African-Americans in particular to educate themselves concerning the earth, which is our most common and least negotiable value. The study of the earth will lead invariably to the study of what you put in your body, which will positively effect your health (your ancestors as slaves were healthier than you are today). It is stressful on the body to be an embattled minority, so the proper understanding and use of herbs (including the embattled Cannabis) is of some importance. It is also a question of saving fat, fried and greasy foods for holidays and special occasions. McDonalds and its ilk makes this kind of change difficult to implement for many people. “The flesh is weak....”

Because Barack is, among other things, the son of a mumu wearing, black-man loving, peace-core activism, drug experimenting (probably), environmentalist hippie mama. There is a sense in which he is a ‘Messiah’, as McCain suggested in one of his ‘attack’ ads, because what is a messiah except the fruition of a collective dream which has been frustrated not by its own fantasy (as they would have us believe), but by a system of control which is unnatural, unnecessary, unwieldy and unhealthy. Earthy commonsense must replace spiritual knee-jerking: religion is dead. It is nothing more than the tool of politicians; it has in truth never been anything more than this. But if the ethical man, the man of Tao, the man ‘in the know’, the essential man, the philosopher king, is to rise to a position of power (from which ‘reality’ can be redefined positively, progressively, and with a degree of true humility) he must speak the language of American religion and patriotism. If he is black and his middle name is Hussein, he’s got to be all the more convincing.

But what of the civil rights of homosexual couples in California? Why is it allowed for out-of-state interests, like the Utah Mormons, to campaign and raise money for a proposition which is not at all thier business? It’s really a states-rights issue. Shouldn’t the polygamous and homosexual rights activists get together and push this civil rights issue on the national, federal level? Civil rights, once established, are enforceable by the government in Washington

I believe in monogamous, heterosexual marriages. Likewise, I believe in polyamorous or polygamous marriages. I also believe in monogamous, homosexual marriages. I believe that children should be free to fool around with each other, and discover sex on thier own terms. I believe that prostitution should be legal and well regulated for health. (It seems logical that if one is allowed to make a living massaging another person, plumbing thier soul or putting pins in them, one should also be allowed to make a living pleasuring them sexually.) I also believe that so-called masturbation is a healthy adaptive activity for combatting stress. I believe that the viewing of the graphic depiction of human bodies engaged in sexual acts (Om-mani-padme-hum) is educational, inspirational, contains inherently aesthetic value (what is more beautiful and awe inspiring than the human body? what is more physically pleasureable than sex?) and is of no scandal what-so-ever to ‘God’. I believe that feminism cuts both ways, and as women are gradually learning to own themselves, men should do likewise, and free themselves from the long-ingrained posessiveness of women, which has ruled over issues of sexual-morality for as long as men have taken women as chattel. I believe that the Bible has little to do about sex (apart from the sex which happens in it) and much to do about the use of resources, and yet ‘biblical’ people continue arguing about issues of sexual morality while they are collectively remaining ignorant and unconcerned about the current mismanagement of the earth towards decline, desertification, and death. GET YOUR MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTER EVANGELICALS! The Bible is really about who has the right to eat of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Ethics), and who has the power to keep this person from eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life. There was a time men did not take spiritual council from each other, but from the earth. This council was without equal, and could never be replaced by the council of ‘elders’ or ‘spiritual advisors’ or ‘gurus’ or the cool kid on the block. How much is it really worth, the council of those who do not take council with the earth, nor with the sun or the universe? Thier council is worth precisely nothing. And yet these so-called counselors, these ‘spritual advisors’, priests, rabbis, Immams (I spit on the lot of you! Pfffhhst!) have made it precisely thier business to be professional counselors. Dr. Phil comes to mind.... At least he has the brains to know that any shlub can do it. Problem is, they --the pope, the judge, and all thier damn dead-brained priests-- aren’t doing anything. Not anything good anyway. If it is just a void then that’s the best case scenario. They leave destruction in thier wake, they truncate life and its promises, they, if I may use one of thier own images, ‘crucify Christ’.

I have missed you little blogue... A week of playing with La Cumbiagra et al. in Nueva York. Good times all around. Discovered cure for a bad cold: Drink Guiness, smoke weed and dance all night. Guiness is basically a high vitamin liquid diet, which is significantly less diuretic than light, foppish beers, and hence keep you well hydrated (supplemented with water of course). The dancing makes you have a good sweat, and the marijuana takes the edge of the symptoms of the cold, and keeps your mind lively. Contrary to what one might believe, smoking ganj does not necessarily have a detrimental impact on a cough or sore throat. Although smoke is an irritant, cannabis is a muscle relaxant which also increases oxygen transfer and calms spasms, so it pretty much evens the game: you still cough, just not more. Maybe less. On a related subject, here is a good site about cannabis and asthma: http://www.geocities.com/medicalmarijuana2003/fact14.htm
Go to any industrial and/or polluted urban areas (I lived in the Bronx, a good example) and you will find high rates of both asthma and pot smoking. The people are medicating themselves (and we believe, quite wisely) to control asthma caused in great part by the pejorative quality of the air (as of this writing, there are still plenty of 'supers' burning trash in New York city, illegally but unenforced) but also to neutralize the stress of close quarter urban living. For some people marijuana is more stressfull than living ‘straight’, but this, one suspects is only because of it’s current status of illegality. Some people just don’t have the stomach to break the law. They freak out, it makes them irrational and funny-scared. But in actual reality (and not the adultery practiced by religion and state) it is the plant which exists as positive entity, not the law. The law is a fabrication, a collusion of ignorance between religion and the current oligarchy, between the old guards of ignorance and the new. This ‘law’ flaunts the true law, and does so out of the ignorance of greed and smallness. The threat of jail time (which in this country means, most probably violent sodomy/AIDS) keeps many people away from good herb. So basically, the guy’s fear of gay anal sex is being used to control him and keep him from being truly a free being (anarchist) Do you not see? Have you never read that book which you say you base your life upon? Is not your nailed-up savior flanked by criminals? Did not this savior apply oil of chrism to all freely, as needed? This oil, jealously guarded by the hebrew priesthood, contained Kaneh Bos’ (cannabis), and had joined Manna (‘Shrooms’) in thier panoplie of tightly guarded and controlled Holy Substances (‘flesh of God’). To imagine otherwise, my friends, would mean to perpetuate again and again the false notion of Jewish difference (which has not served anyone well, and threatens to divide the world tragically). What our Biblical theory says is that the Hebrews, like the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Celts and all other earthly people have a spiritual life based in the consumption of perception altering plants and mushrooms, and that these experiences are the central axis from which thier religious creativity (and madness) flows. The bible was not only made out of cannabis paper, it was inspired by cannabis, The story of Jesus is also about the open access to natural human medicine in general. There is a sense in which the human character of ‘Jesus’ represents the plant (including grape vine and in our belief, cannabis) and not, as it has been assumed by Christians, the plant which symbolizes the man. The bible and religion is being used against people, as a form of control and as a form of terror. Moreover many people are eagerly participating in this, thinking that if they perform perfectly in this ‘game’, by being model christians, model jews, they will ‘pass’ (go to heaven) and everything will be alright. In truth the perversions of religion and the greed of the oligarchy have colluded to create a false reality (‘Adultery’) which leads only to destruction and death. The American people have become the mirror image of the domesticated animals of which flesh they eat: easy to manipulate as a herd, polluting, unsuspecting of thier life purpose-=fate (meat/war) This is not just a ‘crank theory’, though it is sure to be characterized as one, since Christians and Jews are so damn sure they are chosen by God to be right about everything biblical. My friends, we are dealing with functionally illiterate ‘protestants’, ‘catholics’ who mostly don’t read the bible, and obsessive-compulsive conformers known collectively as ‘the jews’.

Other people who have read the bible will say: but what you say contradicts some of the things said in the Bible, and I can’t find all that stuff about Cannabis and shrooms. As for contradiction, my belief does not contradict the golden rule, nor ‘love the other as self, and god with all your heart’. I am happy to contradict the legalistic mumbo jumbo of the Bible with reason and logic, that is my pride and joy, and if you fault me for this you might as well crucify me too...

My thoughts and beliefs concerning the presence of ‘magical plants and mushrooms’ in the Bible are based on basic ‘anthropological’ study, on contextual and cultural analysis, and last but not least, actual practice. This latter should not be dismissed or laughed at, though it will be by some. As I have argued already in this blogue that, when it comes to textual analysis, a lack of experience can lead to a lack of understanding. The example was of a poem about riding a horse which never actually mentions a horse. Someone who has ridden a horse will recognize what it is about, but someone who is unfamiliar with horses may mistake it for something else. Because of experience, understanding is acheived. Lack of experience creates doubt or speculation. The same goes, I argued, for Soma in the Vedas: if you have partaken of perception altering substances, such as mushrooms or cannabis, you will recognize their presence in the Soma described. If you have never taken any of these psychoactive substances, you might doubt this analysis, and think (mistakenly) that it is about something else.

Upon the shoulders of this argument, we state that it is quite likely that those who have read the bible but missed the presence of cannabis and shrooms are suffering from the same lack of experience, which significantly impacts thier ability to understand.

Charcoal pyrolization offers several benefits, which, taken together, show the interconnectedness of all the major issues which plague humanity currently: climate crisis, poverty, agricultural output, nutritional deficiency, environmental and situational illnesses (cancer et al.)

1. Global warming and climate crisis. (I mention this issue first, because it is the one which effects all of us -rich or poor- collectively. If the earth is rendered uninhabitable, both the rich and the poor shall be dead, never mind their inequalities.) The sequestering of charcoal into soil is a proven way to keep carbon out of our atmosphere, potentially indefinitely. When organic matter is smoldered in a low or no air environment, a percentage of the carbon in the material is rendered into charcoal, while the energy created from the gasses emitted (methane et al.) can be considered 'cellulosic' or 'bio' fuel. If the charcoal is added to soil or simply buried this form of energy can be considered 'carbon negative', because less carbon is being returned to the atmosphere that would have if the plant was treated otherwise. (The percentage of carbon sequestered depends on the manner of pyrolysis, but may range from 20 to 80%.) At the present moment we are burning and releasing carbon into the air --in the form of oil and coal, notably-- which had previously been out of the loop, or 'sequestered' for millions of years. It doesn't take a genius (I am not one) to see that a carbon imbalance can easily be created if we continue to burn large amounts of these for fuel. Moreover, at the same time we are cutting down forests to grow soy and corn for cattle, so that not only are there less trees pumping oxygen, there are more and more cows pumping methane, another leading cause of global warming. Fortunately charcoal pyrolization methods can work not only with field waste or coppiced trees, but with dried cattle manure and bones.

A two-pronged situational approach is recommended: the implementation of a comprehensive, integrated pyrolization and agricultural carbon-sequestering program in the 'developed world', based on and retrofitted to the existing technical infrastructure where possible, and the cultural dissemination of small scale and mobile units in the 'developing world', where no such physical infrastructure exists.

2. Poverty. Poverty is ultimately a function of soil and land use. Where there is fertile land, and appropriate land use there is no poverty. Where wild land is allowed to flourish relatively undisturbed alongside agricultural land, there is no poverty. The poverty of the earth is humankind's own poverty. If the animals are sick, dying, disappearing, going extinct, then we are next. This is not natural cruelty, this is the law of the earth. If the people of Haiti destroyed their forests it is because they needed the wood to make charcoal to cook their food, and they needed the space to grow their crops. Small-scale farmers in the tropics and semi-tropics the world over use 'slash and burn' techniques which means that they can grow good crops for 3 years or so at which point they must move on and burn another section of forest. This is because ash is not charcoal, it does not have the persistence or qualities inherent in charcoal.

An indigenous people which inhabited Brazil thousands of years ago discovered -perhaps inadvertently- that 'slash and smolder', the process by which a basic charcoal can be made, creates an ideal structural environment for soil organisms, bacteria, nutrients and minerals to live. They fed this soil ecosystem with the refuse of daily life -food scraps, manure, pottery shards- and it created a highly stable, regenerative, fertile soil, known in portuguese as 'Terra Preta do Indio' --Indian Black Earth. Now imagine that the poor farmers of Haiti, of Africa, Asia and Central America had access to such knowledge and technology. Slash and burn agriculture would be a thing of the past, and forests could grow back, improving the quality of life for everyone. We start by pyrolizing field waste -bagasse from sugar cane production, the stems of grain plants, any field waste, including dried manure, etc..., and as the forests recover, and trees are planted, coppicing and pruning of those adjacent to the field are rendered into charcoal and sequestered. It must be noted that to assure the immediate improvement of crops the charcoal or 'biochar' should be soaked in urine, which may be of human or animal origin, or mixed and aged with compost or manure before addition to field. Where available, of course, liquid fertilizer could be used.

A portion of the charcoal or pressed composite briquets could be used for cooking, but it would be of greater benefit if the heat generated from the pyrolization process were harnessed for this purpose. This can be done in a very low tech way: by placing the cooking vessel directly on the kiln while it is smoldering, or in a more high-tech way, by capturing and then burning the flammable gases as need be, as with a propane stove. Of course, one reads that people in the third world have 'cultural reasons' for cooking with charcoal. One could argue that Americans have similar 'cultural reasons' for running their vehicles with fossil fuels. In both cases we must convince people that such a culture is ultimately a 'culture of death' because taken together --the destruction of forest ecosystems for making cooking charcoal and the releasing of huge amounts of previously sequestered fossil carbon into the atmosphere for mobility and energy-- they lead to the diminishment of us all, and ultimately an uninhabitable planet.

3. Agricultural output. Charcoal in the soil is: A.) persistent B) stable. It offers all of the other elements of soil -microorganisms, nutrients, minerals, etc- a kind of 'reef' in which to live. Because of its high porosity the surface area of charcoal is much larger than its observable size: it retains water and nutrients like a sponge. It is also relatively easy to make. It can be made crudely by just about anyone, suffice to have a barrel or even just a pit. Ideally, more sophisticated technology is used so that the benefits are greater and the pollution is minimal. If the farmer or group of farmers have a mobile pyrolization unit, then when their crops have been harvested and the stems and chaff have dried, all of this field waste, which was previously either burned or simply left to decompose, will be fed into the mobile kiln and turned into charcoal. After being soaked in urine, compost tea, fish emulsion or other liquid fertilizer, this charcoal will then be returned to the soil. Rinse and repeat. Each year that passes a little more of this persistent and stable structure is added to the field, and the top soil grows in thickness. The presence of fertilized charcoal in poor garden soil has clearly shown to improve the vigor, health, size, yield and even taste of food crops. A healthy soil ecosystem means a healthy plant, which means a healthy fruit, which means a healthy person. Poor soil which is artificially pumped with fertilizers --which leach out and poison waterways and must be replaced each year-- makes fruits which are recognizable as such, but which lack taste and nutritional benefit.

The gasses created by the process of making charcoal will be caught in tanks for later use, so that the farmer's wife has a ready source of cooking fuel. The planting of trees adjacent to the fields will supply a ready and potentially inexhaustible source of charcoal fodder, if these trees are coppiced, pruned and thinned instead of being cut to a stump.

Given these facts, Terra Preta do Indio (BIOCHAR) appears to be a technology for a living earth, as it ties together and addresses all of the major human dillemas of environment, agriculture, hunger and energy.

So here is the dillema the fundis are in: Abortion is a no no. But so is sex out of marriage, so when unwed teen gets pregnant, and mother is conservative evangelical politician seeking vice-presidency, a whole illusion must be set up to deal with the consequences of this silly position falsely named ‘pro-life’. It should really be called ‘anti-abortion’ because that is what it is. A truly pro-life stance would oppose war catagorically and not be so gung-ho about drilling for oil in wildlife refuges set up to protect life.

The truth is that no-one who proudly eats the flesh of other sentient and nerve-bearing animals is completely and perfectly ‘pro-life’, they may be ‘pro-I-me-mine’ or ‘pro-human’, but these are inherently untenable in the long-run because humans live within a ecological system which must be amplified, ameliorated, and wisely used if any form of valuable and meaningful human life is to continue on earth.

There is compelling evidence that peaceful civic life and the ethical understandings which underly it are dependant upon a stable eco-system, and when the ecosystem becomes destroyed -such as we have seen recently in parts of Africa and Haiti, for example- humans lose thier ability to live ethically with one another: malnutrition and dehydration lead to a form of panic which sends vulnerable people into committing gross acts of inhumanity to others and themselves: murder, rape, pillaging, etc...

And no, being staunchly ‘pro-family’ is no protection from this, in fact it is precisely the family and tribe which is the most vulnerable from attacks by other families and tribes in such cases. If you and your family are able to remain sane -and therefore relatively civil and ethical with one another- you will suffer the attacks of those who are less fortunate, a hatred born of fear, jealosy and grasping-terror.

Therefor, this is why we claim that the civil and ethical life are based and dependent upon the LIFE OF THE SOIL, the HEALTH OF THE FORESTS, and the PURITY OF OUR WATER. Any political party which is not moving agressively to ‘save the environment’ by funding energy technology other than oil drilling and coal is a ship of hypocrites and fools. 'Saving the environment' of course is also a misnomer, because we are not saving something stagnant which exists without us, we are ameliorating and amplifying what has been given to us in order to improve and ‘securitize’ human life, which we value.

Roughly speaking, conservative republican minds make everything about morality (i.e. sex and family) and the liberal democrats make it everything about ethics (health and the other). If moralities are the result of man’s attempt to deal with the uncertainty and insecurity relative to his ignorance regarding his true place within the scheme of the ‘total system’ --the earth and universe, for starters-- then we should not be bothered with moralities, since they are understood by us as the psychic self-elaborations of fearful ignorance. We are certain that these codalities, which are the Laws of Moses, are the result of the relationship between a controlling human mind (re: politician) and a mushroom and a plant. We do not need the law of Moses, we need what inspired it. Give the people mushrooms not bibles. Give them weed not theology. Let them understand for themselves what inspired Moses, the very FLESH OF GOD.

Instead of understanding the Aztec religion as synonymous with thier own, the european conquistadors ‘did not get it’, and in thier pride made enemies and corpses out of those who might have been thier friends and brothers. Both people had inherited a cult of blood sacrifice which they no longer understood but still practiced. A portion of each population understood the true meaning of sacrificing and eating the flesh of god, and this was made apparent by each religion’s true cultural and ethical meanings: For the Aztecs it was amaranth and corn which was the flesh of god, for the Middle easterner and subsequent western Christians, it was wheat and millet. The Aztec drank agave, the european grape, and those who were in the know knew that this was the firm base of a practical ethical culture, but those who led and controlled the people, the priests and political leaders did not understand the true meaning of thier own religion, and so the people were led astray, embracing the slaying of sentient flesh and the spilling of warm blood of human and animal.

There is nothing wrong with supplementing one’s diet, where there is a legitimate need becaus of poverty of opportunity to do otherwise, with the flesh of sentient beings such as goats, sheep or cattle. The ‘flesh of God’ the plant, mushroom and mineral kingdoms is still understood as the base, as the foundation of ones culture and consumption, and the killing of a creature is understood as a great gift, a great sacrifice (like Jesus on his cross) in which we take bodily sustenance but also understand and acknowledge our great poverty and ignorance. This is a world away however from creating a culture -as we have in the United States- which is based in meat, particularly the meat of large sentient mammals like ourselves; a culture which has systematically depleted its soil and created fruits and vegetables of pejorative taste and nutrition, if greater in size and availability.

So what?, you say: the people make up for this paucity by eating meat, which is cheap and easily obtainable. This is the best we can do, it is alright, and anyway it is what people want.

I’ll tell you what people will want if we continue in the direction of this culture, they will want a breath of air to breathe, and they will find it harder and harder to find one. Air will be expensive and it will all be because we wanted to make meat so cheap.

Meat should never be cheap, it should always remain a luxury or poverty food, but only in the sense that ALL PEOPLE would eat it rarely upon need or natural inclination. It is no more natural to gorge oneself on meat every day than it is to kill the people in the next country over, or one for that matter which is far away, like Iraq. You complain that Saddam slaughtered his own people, but didn’t you give him the idea that mammal flesh was cheap? Humans are just mammals aren’t they? Give them technology and they may act like real reptiles....

This is American mainstream culture at its base today: the ‘purification’ or rather ‘nutritional castration’ of the flesh of god, the grains on which true culture is based --wheat, maize, millet, etc... and the ‘glorification’ or ‘erotization’ of dead flesh. We are a nation of necro-gastronomists: meat is sold with sex, and wheat and corn are transformed into ‘non-players’ which cannot seriously challenge this true ‘culture of death’. Meat is the ‘old food’ it is conservative at its core, just as oil and coal are the ‘old fuel’: we simply do not want to change our culture, even if that culture is proven to be pejorative. This is pride, and not the good kind.

The good news is that authentic human culture has always existed alongside the follies of the ruling oligarchies and thier underlings or slaves. It does not need to be invented from scratch, it must only be discovered and elaborated upon by our own experience and circumstance. The truly ethical experience can be had on earth, an experience which is inherently and completely IMMORAL, in the sense that it thumbs its nose, spits and farts on every honor and fear based morality which cares to raise its head. The ethical cannot be moral, the truly ethical is inherently immoral, because it can only truly find its true expanding self within a moral vacuum. There are no moralities which bind us, and there is no element of ethics which we will ever be free of.

You have read the bible backwards, and so your culture is backwards: you think that it is all about sex, but it is really all about flesh and meat. Sex -whether it is with one’s wife, or with a prostitute or another man for that matter- is not inherently physical, it is a spiritual act between souls. Meat and war are about flesh, because one discovers the flesh by immobilizing it, and then consuming it -physically if it is an animal-- and psychically if it is a fellow human. Both of these acts of consumption will create ill-health, and eventually one’s own death.

Most people, including Socrates, consider that ‘man is mortal’ to be obvious and true. Less obvious but perhaps more true is the statement: ‘we are all potentially mortal and potentially eternal’. We live within a cultural framework of mortality, but we could just as well live within a cultural framework of immortality. Because of the gross way which humanity lives, death is always the eventuality which we accept as unavoidable: it is viewed as merely the natural result of life and its risks. Our culture is based in part on our assumptions, and we cannot assume immortality because the fact of death is so obvious, and is therefore assumed to be of universal character. The fact is, within the cultural framework which we are developing, and which I have expounded on above, we now enjoy spilled blood and dead flesh as a cultural birthright which we would defend, ultimately by spilling more blood, this time of humans. How could we even imagine what a truly ethical culture is, one which truly studies and pursues eternal potentials in ourselves, if we are drunk with pleasure on the death of common sentient beings such as ourselves? Death fascinates our taste-buds...

It can be said, in light of the John Edwards ‘scandal’ that Americans have thier priorities completely backwards. We have become very ‘good’ at organizing the ‘morality’ of sexual conduct but we are nearly blind (willfully so?) concerning the organizing of society and environment so that the ethics of universal justice can become a reality. Morality is the great lie which keeps us from fullfilling our ethical responsibility. As long as people’s emotions are wrapped up in the morality of other people’s personal interior needs (what do you know about John Edward’s needs?) and see themselves as a fit judge (as representatives of that great non-entity ‘society’) of other people’s ‘character’, there is very little emotional energy disposed for tackling the real causes of ACTUAL SUFFERING, such as that caused by WAR, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION and FALSE STEWARDSHIP. So-called ‘social diseases’ exist not because humans are inherently naughty and must be punished, they exist within the context of human ignorance of the ‘environment’. If our environment were optimal, were raised to its true potential, then society would cease to exist, it would no longer have a function. And those of us still alive to enjoy this true paradise would breathe a sigh of relief, and say: Thank god!

You are afraid of what would happen if all morality was thrown out the window. But if you were truly a rational being, you wouldn’t be, because Ethics would remain, and ethics concerns itself with the ACTUAL WELLBEING of ourselves and others, not the PERCEIVED SLIGHT caused by SOCIALLY DERIVED MORALITIES based in HONOR, POSESSION and STATUS-FEAR.

John Edward’s wife’s cancer is a cry for attention. So is his ‘mistresses’ interest in him. All of this is just theater, the theater of little children lost in the universe. We have effectively organized the world into two classes of women, the ‘good’ women and the ‘bad’ women, or, to put it another way, the ‘toucheables’ and the ‘untoucheables’. This is a false dichotomy, based not in reality, but in perception, but ultimately upheld and molded for use by society.

If we truly did what was efficacious at creating a world of balance, fluidity and justice, instead of practicing politics, there would be no need to create these feminine ‘pawns’ in the game of ‘men of power’ such as Edwards. If, instead of following actions which denudes and desertifies our earth, we followed actions which amplified and improved our earth, we would not be having the conversations we are now having about morality and power. Conversations about morality and power come up when humankind has gone down the wrong road, the road which leads to pejorative outcomes, and ultimately destruction of persons, whole races of persons, and species. Worldly power and social morality go hand in hand, they can be considered the ‘great distractors’ as they distract us from what is real and important, namely, finding the place we fit to benefit and enhance the WHOLE SYSTEM (‘GAIA’) and discovering the true meaning and potential of HUMAN ETHICS.

John Edward’s putting his penis inside Rielle Hunter’s vagina was the least twisted part of the whole story, it was the most natural and the most positive. The most twisted and negative part of this ‘affair’ is the essentially GOSSIPY nature of such a ‘story’. Gossip is far more damageing than sex. Sex is healthy, it is good for the human system. Gossip is bad, it creates false or inappropriate realities and perceptions which keep people stuck in an inauthentic mode of thought. But then gossip is the life-blood of politics, because politics is the MANIPULATION OF PERCEPTION in order to win a popularity contest and be allowed to ‘hold power’.

Here is a serious sin of modern American culture: instead of working with the ‘weeds’ which volunteer thier services to mankind, the american farm system uses tons and tons of herbecides to kill edible and often highly nutritious and complete plants in order to keep growing corn, wheat, soy and livestock. Amaranthus palmeri and purslane come to mind. If these were grown instead of, or alongside of corn and soy, they would provide us with sustainable and dependable (they are adaptable weeds) nutrition for many more people than do meat., wheat, corn and soy. Neither of these highly nutritious and complete plants will need synthetic fertilizer or herbicides. In fact, pigweed (amaranthus sp., calaloo, love-lies-bleeding) tends to take nitrates into its leaves, making it poisonous to eat, so the use of nitrogen fertilizers is out of the question anyway. With common pigweed (amaranthus palmeri) selective breeding will have to be undertaken, as the seeds of the ‘weed’ variety are grittier than the cultivated variety. This would not be a new undertaking, as all of the plants which we depend on have been selected to be what they are for us.

As for the nutritional value of amaranth, one has only to look here: http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/centeotlac/eng/pages/valor.htm to be convinced of its potential as a major American seed and leaf crop. This is the plant which the Aztecs considered the ‘flesh of God’ just as the people of the middle east considered wheat and grains as the flesh of God. This is one of the main meanings of the story of Jesus. High protein and complete grains and seeds are the ‘flesh of God’ because they make the ethical life possible, as the slaughtering of sentient and nerve-bearing animals for protein is mitigated and eventually made unnecessary.

Amaranth has 19 grams of protein compared to wheat’s 12.8 grams. A given amount supplies over 400 calories, while common grains score in the low to upper 300s for the same amount. The leaf beats spinach in quantities of Calcium, phosphorous, and iron. It is a good source of easily digestible and assimilatable fats and proteins.
Purslane has all of the known necessary amino acids, and is a good source of Thiamin, Niacin, Vitamin B6 and Folate, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Riboflavin, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Copper and Manganese. It is a cheap, clean and good source of Omega-3s, usually found in fish.

There are really only a few products which one needs to clean one’s house: Dr. Bronner’s soap and common distilled vinegar. You can add essential oils of lavender and tea-tree if you like. Collectively these will kill any unwanted lifeforms without harming the environment or your family. Tea-tree and lavendar should be used judiciously, in small amounts, as they are powerful, and both may have an effect (positive, neutral or negative, depending on the person) upon the hormones.

I cannot deny it: I hate catholicism. I also hate protestantism, evangelicalism, judaism and islam. Hinduism and buddhism have much to hate about them too, they have the virtue of being a little less globally pretentious perhaps. But then even that is debateable.

I do not however hate the people who inherit and sometimes choose these religions. How could I? I was one of them. But for the grace of God go I.... I suppose the common American evangelical saying ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ goes, in my bible, like this: ‘love the religious, hate thier religion’. You have no idea the amount of absolute hatred I feel for the notion, concept and attempted practice of religion. I hate it as much as you hate ‘sin’. And yet, dear Fallwell, I do not hate you. And so, paradoxically, you must accept me as a ‘good christian’ because I do not judge you. Just as you pity me for my percieved sinfullness, I pity you for your religiosity. Every time I make a loaf of bread I am molding the flesh of a God that you do not yet know, the God which you presume to worship in knowledge. It is my god and the god of the true bible, which I am here, for your enjoyment and benefit, practicing regularly, in good tradition and fashion. What is your tradition? The tradition of inspiring simple people to bigotry? Oh, bravo.

Each man and woman has a right to follow the culture of thier adoption, they have a solemn right to modify that culture for thier own benefit, they have a right to enter into a serious relationship with any mineral, plant, animal, human or other being, creature or heavenly body of thier choosing. No governing body or worldly status, such as a country, cult, religious head, or even world government shall interfere with this primary sacred relationship.

No culture shall be made to appear to have a specifically racial element to it. What has been developed for millenia by black africans shall be judged on the same merits with what has been developed for similar millenia by asians or europeans, for example. The reemergence of Native American culture into the consciousness of all Americans shall be, for obvious reasons of place, but also on the same merits of greatness, particularly important for those who live in the ‘New World’.

The real, or root meaning of the word Adultery is faithlessness to the supreme reality, otherwise known as ‘God’ or ‘The Most High God’ in the Biblical tradition. That mankind extrapolates this to the arrangement of sexuality is, to say the least, stretched. The religious make this assumption (one which they dare not seriously challenge, but which is sorely challenged by earthy reality, hence their mounting schizophrenia) based on the ravings of what we might call ‘controlling personalities under the influence of psychotropics’. This understanding -which is ours- recuses us from earnestly partaking in religion, and is the reason for the burning hatred which religious people feel in our presence, and which they confuse with our fiery damnation in hell for our sin. If it is not burning hatred they feel, then at the very least they believe that judgement would be metted out if we should get ill and die of AIDS or cancer. They project this upon us unknowingly, for they are dreaming, and then thier afterthought is 'oh well, he asked for it'.

The other meaning of Adultery -according to our thought- refers to what one might term ‘false culture’, a culture which fakes or sidesteps its involvement with creation. Homo sapiens has undertaken a relationship of trust and growth with its environment, the elements of creation, by which I mean the players of the natural world -minerals, plants, animals, other true human cultures, the sun, water, fire, the stars, and planets which make up the universe, etc... When we seek to avoid this world (which is God’s handiwork, no?) we enter into a fantasy world which is inherently unfaithfull to our true spouse, reality. Because it is a fantasy world, our faithlessness is for nought. But perhaps we are 30 years older, and we have missed out on a large chunk of reality.

Thus, we can safetly say, as Jesus did, that you are all adulterers in your hearts (you religious, you rabbis and priests) because you have misunderstood the meaning of purity.

Paradoxically, the sanctified recrimination which surrounds common adultery (that is, how the word is commonly understood to mean sex with a married person who is not your ‘legal spouse’) must sometimes be breached in order to discover the root and genuine meaning of the word.

We have said here that we disagree fundamentally with the traditional ‘people of the book’ (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) insofar as that at this point, thier assumptions and subsequent social and environmental strategies are based upon a reading of the bible which we do not believe and henceforth cannot condone, as it seeks to punish sinners for sin, and has created an atmosphere of confusion, fear and judgment under which people, beings and the earth, have suffered long enough.

If these religious personages base themselves on the book, and yet are frankly and unashamedly misrepresenting the book --through prideful ignorance, for they are but children playing with fire; I concern myself, because it may be my ass that gets burned!-- while wearing the acountrements of spiritual nobility (pope, baptist minister, Imam, Orthodox Jew) which give them a power to define the reality of thier respective ‘community of faith’ (euphemism for ‘sleeping cell’, see: Al Kaida), then they are truly guilty of what thier ancestors accused Jesus of, namely ‘blaspheming God’.

It is not wrong to add the Violent Islamic Zealot like Bin Laden to this list of ‘self-annointed’ boobs. He impersonates Christ by wearing a shroud and living in a cave, and uses fire -the ultimate ‘panoplie’ of purity, godly justice (think of Zeus) as a destructive force, indeed, as an anihilating force, as the bringer of the destruction eliminates himself as well. We do not deny that he has wide populist appeal among those who follow him. So did Mussolini, and so does Cheney’s bush apparently.

And yet some form of expression must be allowed to publicly register our feelings about injustice.... Can we think of something else besides blowing ourselves up, hmmm?

We are learning, with baby steps, how not to annihilate ourselves as a species. This is the good news. This is for the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich to hear and take to heart. The answer to your needs is found in the flesh of God, the flesh of God is multifarious and blameless, it blankets the earth, and even when man or nature makes a desert, the flesh of God survives: look at myrrh, cactus, and thier wide and life-giving applications by humans. It does not judge you; but the inside and the outside are one, and we are called to rise to this level known as ‘Messiah’. A communion is not a clique. It is reality, it is the unity of a community with the earth and the sun, and it has no replacement. It is not jealous, and it knows no religious or racial affiliation. Take it or go sleep with the dinosaur.

I am a man of peace. I just want to see the peaceful integration of the ‘witches’ and the ‘bitches’. I want to enjoy women the way they were meant to be enjoyed, sans the false-hysteria and malignant possessiveness. That’s alot of ssssss for you... In fact, think of me as a snake if you like.

Boys, want a good pick-up line? ‘You have the most beautiful spine’ (uttered while stroaking her dorsal fin.)

Most healthy women are always ready to have sex. They expect it, desire it and dream about it. Most women are naturally open-minded (there are painful exceptions) and do not naturally worry about thier ‘purity’ --this fear is instilled in them by society and most prominently, religion.

There are many sentimental blokes out there who also have the prejudicial habit of getting violent. This combination of sentimentality and violence, of course, is the definition of ‘National Socialism’ or ‘Fascism’. I assure you that this sentimental thuggishness is just below the surface in America today, and is at the root of all 'Hate crimes' and Domestic abuse. As it is in some parts of Europe, and indeed the world. This is what we fear, this is why you do not reassure us. We have made our own plans, based on our own spiritual assessment of the matter, but those who tell us not to worry and just get on with it (i.e. the banal business of worldly injustice) keep trying to GET OUR ATTENTION, so that we will lay low and shut up. They are worried for our safety no doubt; we can’t afford such fears. What was it that ‘Jesus’ said to ‘Peter’ when the latter tried to hold him back as truth teller? I think the phrase was: ‘Get thee behind me satan’ .

What we need is sentience, not sentimentality.

We accept and live by the dream of society because it is easier -in the face of society’s powers- than discovering our own dream and living by it.

There are those who dream to live, and those who live to dream. One day the two shall shake hands and be one.

‘Evil’ is a necessity of ‘Evolution’, and this is another reason why some Religious people are against it. The path of the sentient being’s evolution is the sloughing of ignorance, or ‘evil’, for knowledge. This evolution can happen seamlessly, but is always at the mercy of ‘society’ and what that entity (‘satan’) will do with it. For Hell is the dramatic playing out of a half-truth and a received idea, and society holds the actors.

And yet, this is what musicians must suffer: at some point in our career, we catch ourselves dramatically expressing the half-truths and received ideas of musical tradition and trend. To express your own dream in music is not the same thing as expressing the half-truths and received ideas which make up ‘society’, though certainly both have thier place, as long as society’s half is satirized.

I have begun mixing up my joints. A blend of cannabis, egyptian blue lotus, calamus powder and tobacco. Calamus and tobacco both are claimed to be ‘supportive’ of cannabis, in the sense that they counterbalance her weaknesses with thier strengths. Rastafarians believe that tobacco is the balancer of cannabis, and the same claim is made for calamus in Ayurveda. Blue Lotus is the sacred herb of the ancient egyptians. It is very mildly hallucinogenic, and from my experience, seems to take any unwanted ‘edge’ off of the ganja. It softens the potential for 'paranoiac thinking'.

It is important that when we are busy studying ‘the Dream’ that we do not fall into said dream. Our dream is another dream, which dreams up an altogether different reality. What we shall imagine and intend shall be: we ourselves shall undertake our own transformation, and in due time, after the death of the dinosaurs and the freeing of the people from the bonds of slavish ignorance (‘LET MY PEOPLE GO’) that transformation shall be the transformation of the world.

I have no plant enemies, no plant is an outright poison to me, they all have thier limits and it is our responsibility as denizens of the earth to be aware of these limits. The risk to benefit ratio is good when using plants for sustenance, pleasure and knowledge: they give much, do not judge us, and are supreme teachers.

There are men who would like to teach us, and they say that in order to teach us we will have to turn our backs on our natural teachers. We only accept such teaching from men who also understand the profoundly blessed relationship with the ETHICALLY CONSUMMABLE portion of the natural world, GOD’s FLESH as recounted in the Gospels, which you may or may not read and may or may not profess to believe.

This means ANY consumable plant and mushroom (because all of creation is infused with GODLINESS), and SOMETIMES, meat. There are situations in which meat is ethically acceptable, but these almost always depend on POVERTY, IGNORANCE, or HEDONISM. By hedonism I do not mean ‘having a good time’, which I am for, I mean having a good time at the expense of and over the body of the dead. To eat meat in a culture which destroys the natural environment (and effectively murders its inhabitants) in order to feed itself on more and more meat is unethical. The way in which meat is treated (not to mention the humans who treat the meat) is inherently ‘Unkosher’. While the ‘mainstream’ U.S. meat abuses the animals, the Parev-Kosherite’s abuses the worker. Or both are just all-around abusive, which is probably the case.

The rule of thumb for all relationships is be immediately generous immediately cautious. Respect, love and listen to your body, which is really the only thing that you possess, and is made in the ‘image of God’. Arguably the most intimate relationship we have is between ourselves and the elements which we eat. 'They' know, and in many ways define our insides like no other beings. A lapsed jew is close to his bacon... An ex-meat eater is simpatico with the almond...

We are being sold (‘marketed’) the flesh of dead animals, the milk taken (stolen?) from thier young (as if we were baby cows!) and the pesticidal and herbicidal poisons and medicines it takes to keep this profoundly destructive (in so many obvious ways!) model viable.

Instead, we could be a culture which reveres all sentient life, and accepts whole-heartedly the sacrifice of ‘Jesus’ who offers his blood and flesh for our ethical and sustainable sustenance.

(We don't do this because of our profound and universal LAZINESS and IGNORANCE. For lack of looking and lack of trying. Lack of GRATEFUL ACCEPTANCE of CREATION which is our GIFT from GOD. There is no blame for all were equally blind.)

Instead, we get White Castle commercials sexualizing a hamburger, when it is clear that the over-consumption of red meat and white flour creates health ‘complications’ (including death) which would more likely inhibit ‘performance’ than enhance it. Is the sexualizing of the hashed flesh of a young bull based on an ancient belief? The bull as force vital, virility and fertility? (and is it the pure white wheat flour impersonating the flesh of Christ that makes it alright? What Voodoo you do!) There may be an element of this magical thinking, something which Americans are certainly not immune to (on the contrary).

Personally, I think that Jesus makes it rather clear that healthy human fertility/vitality/beauty/virility are not based in the sacrifice of animals but in the consumption of ‘His’ flesh, typified and represented by grape and grain, and before that, by mushroom and ganja, before that by 'Soma'.

Perhaps meat-eaters have only partially sublimated cannibalism, and hence in order to have sex, they need to ‘get out of their system’ the oral consumption of the other’s flesh. Otherwise, the anxiety created by the physical, often oral, contact would distract them too much to enjoy the sexual moment. The partial sublimation of other crimes other than cannibalism, which involve the human body -such as rape, forced incest, physical torture, murder, etc...- no doubt can create anxiety around sex in anyone as well, and may express itself in other ways, such as self-cutting, visually violent or menacing tatoos, attempts at suicide and invading another country unprovoked.

Who is a fat, neurotic eunuch which confuses itself with Jesus, but actually lives in a limbo of half-truths and received ideas? America is.

What is treasonous to man is not necessarily treasonous to God. But man appropriates 'God' and confuses his own pride and strength with God's will. Morally based society depends on the bending -and if that fails breaking-- of the will of all 'non-belivers' towards its vision of 'Goodness'. Those who fail are no longer part of that society, are deemed essentially as 'untoucheables'. Either that or they are just quietly killed.

My particular reaction to this phenomenon (in which the authoritarian voice of protestant white male/priest/imam/rabbi/blameless mother, etc impersonates God in order to control others and assuage his/her fear of the unknown-unpredictable) is to recuse myself from all human-made and human-expressed moralities, and putting my faith (a faith which is essentially expressed by all spiritual texts beginning with the Rig Veda, through the Gospels, properly understood) in the flesh and blood of God (not man but vegetable and fungal) to show me the truth of my being. I am no more interested in morality than I am in anti-morality. Ethics suffice, and ethics have nothing to do with the jealous nature of sex/family on which all 'moralities' rest. That and the paranoia of 'impurity', 'pollution', illness...

If the cure for Aids is found in a simple African plant, then where is the 'sin which deserves death'? It is only in the minds of the ignorant thumpers of misunderstood Koran/Gospel/Torah. They will ridicule such a simple solution, spread doubt and uncertainty, and keep protecting those who would sell us synthetic inventions which 'control' the disease. In this way, the aids patient who is 'saved' -at least temporarily- by the antiviral made by the Pharmacompany, will owe his life to a corporation of men, a society, and not, as it should be, to God. His gratefullness (really moral slavery) to them will be all the more established when he is made to think of all the other 'poor unfortunates' who did not have access to such antivirals. Thus, he will be able to 'atone for his sins' before society, which only can accept him according to this form of moral slavery. Now he is dedicated to society and its plan. He no longer knows God.

Instead, the Biblical prophets down to John and Jesus taught that every 'sin' which separates us from society brings us closer to God, because God's flesh is the earth, and those who are far from society are forced to be closer to nature, and to the stillness of silence in which reality (and not social contrivance) manifests itself.

Jesus could say ‘Blessed are the sick’ because Illness is the path of true dynamic health: each illness introduces us to an element of God's flesh, every bit of it capable of transforming us. If we did not get ill, if we did not get put aside by society, we would never know ‘God’ except in the faces of those who had been in the wilderness. These then become 'saints' which are 'sacrificed' for the ignorance of 'healthy society'. It should be common knowledge that ‘healthy society’ is run by psychopathic schizophrenic maniacs.

The thesis is as follows: That all ‘world religions’ --and under this rubrick we place ‘Hinduism’, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have the same root, which is, essentially, the human relationship with a mushroom and/or a plant.

The oldest continually used religious text is the Rig Veda. The first and last hymn of these texts is dedicated to Agni ‘fire’, and therefore, by extension, the SUNSTAR. The second hymn, dedicated to Vayu (air/breath) mentions SOMA in its second line. The entire 9th hymn is dedicated to SOMA. a concoction which, given its mystical, cosmicly-unifying, and spiritually quickening nature (as described therein) likely includes the mushroom Amanita Muscaria (‘Fly Agaric’) and/or Cannabis Sativa (‘Marijuana’). The identity of SOMA as a ‘psychotropic’ substance is obvious to anyone who has partaken of cannabis and/or mushrooms. Those who have never partaken of these can only express uncertainty and doubt about this, but, because of thier lack of experience, they speak out of ignorance. (Imagine a piece of writing describing the experience of riding a horse, without mentioning the name ‘horse’, or which uses a name for horse which is no longer recognized. Someone who has ridden a horse will easily recognize it as such, but somoeone without such experience -and perhaps who doesn’t like horses- may suggest that it might be about a camel or a bull. So lack of experience = ignorance, which compromises a rational analysis of a text.) It is likely that the drink SOMA was a combination of plants and mushrooms (like Ayahuasca, which is named after the Ayahuasca vine, but contains other substances), and it may have derived its name from one of these plants. With Soma, also known as ‘Haoma’, this plant may or may not have been Ephedra (‘Ma Huang’), which in several Persian dialects is still known as ‘Hom’, and which grows in the Hindu Kush where the plants used for SOMA/HAOMA are reputed to grow. (Of course, Cannabis is also a native of that region.) The potential negative effects of purified or synthesized Ephedra are well known in this country, but the historic use of this plant tells another story. Properly utilized, it is a plant with many positive activities upon the human system.

So it is likely that Soma was a combination of plants which created a ‘complete medicine’, supporting the psychological, physical and spiritual needs of the ancient people of Northern India and Persia. Harmal (‘Syrian Rue’) may have been included, a plant which has many health benefits as well as some reputed (I have never eaten any) hallucinogenic qualities.

The fats in the milk mentioned in the Rig Veda with which Soma is made would have been an ideal base for the transferal of Cannabis, as THC is soluble and useable by the blood only with the presence of fats/oils or alcohol.

Amanita muscaria (which is also present in areas of the Hindu Kush) is likely to have been an element of Soma. This is a plausible hypothesis given the knowledge and use of these by the forefathers of ‘world religions’, the Shamans. Moreover, the importance of Amanita is still apparent today in our own religious traditions. One might say that while Easter is a celebration of the full rebirth of the Sun/Earth after the winter’s ‘death’, Christmas is a celebration of the red and white mushroom which brings the gift of universal-knowledge. The red and white panoplie of Santa Clause speaks of the mushroom, and his pipe speaks of cannabis.

We cannot, with the information we now posess, recreate SOMA as it was. We can infer, from the use of Manna (psilocybe) and Kaneh Bos (cannabis) by the ancient Hebrews, and the importance given to these substances (Manna was guarded in the Arc of the Covenant; the use of Holy Oil containing Kaneh Bos was jealously guarded by the Hebrew priesthood for sacramental purposes) that it included one or more ETHNOGENIC plants.

The real innovation of Jesus is the overt expression of opposition to the twin cultus of FERTILITY and DEATH. The human obsession, preoccupation and ‘subsequent cultic’ involvement with these led us far from reality: our actual situation in the universe, on the earth, under the sun. This twin cult is still alive and actively practiced, and exploited by those who stand to make a profit. Why are there wars if we do not worship death? Why is the world overpopulated if we do not worship fertility? The ‘ground zero’ of this cult (which Jesus came to OPPOSE and RECTIFY) is the bloated child of the 3rd world indigent poor who suffers and dies without really living. His mirror and twin is the aborted foetus in the bloated 1st world -- they are connected and tied by the same basic terrestrial circumstance: the perversion of KNOWLEDGE for PROFIT by those who LEAD, ORGANIZE, RULE and DISPENSE JUSTICE in the world.

Given the chronic human denuding, stripping and general destruction of the microcosmic environments of the earth, the notion of the ‘crucified savior’ within the pagan analysis of the Bible takes on an ‘environmental’ meaning: We are busy crucifying that which creates, sustains and saves us, the ‘flesh of God’ which surrounds us, and instead of respect, veneration and relationship, we have put our faith in the ‘thoughts of men’. We are the proverbial blind following the blind, in-so-much as we have accepted the manner in which those who rule and lead the ‘world’ without consulting the ‘flesh and blood of God’. Instead we are ‘following’ (into the abyss?) a gang of venal and self-decieving miscreants who vainly follow the illusion of profit. The slavish devotion to ‘the markets’ is an expression of the cultus of fertility and death, insofar as it shows an unhealthy obsession with GROWTH and STAGNATION.

If all ‘world religions’ (Islam,Christianity,Judaism,Hinduism,Buddhism), and by extension, the mediatic blur which hides such a complex, are based in a FERTILITY CULT mediated by a MUSHROOM, then homosexuality can be seen as a natural consequence of the submerged nature of our essential religious nature. It is no wonder it is such a sore point with ‘the traditionally religious’ (who, it turns out, are really the least traditional or conservative of all: they neither conserve the natural environment, nor do they follow the traditional ways of our ancestors who held relationships with the material of that environment sacred.)

Yes, it is really no surprise that the hapless ‘evangelicals’ both decry the evils of homosexuality while surreptitiously practicing it themselves. The ones caught on the news are but the tip of an iceberg. They have signed on the line of the Fertility cult, but they have not met the ‘God’ to which they are bound. They subconsciously know that they need something shaped like a mushroom inside themselves, and since they are even more terrified of the natural world (God’s flesh) than they are of other men, they take a glandular shaft stiffly up the butt or in the mouth, to great shame and consternation. If it is the glands of a fellow ‘Christian soldier’ (or better yet, the motherlode: a catholic deacon or dare one dream? a pope!) then thier ‘secret brotherhood’ takes on even greater numinous meaning. Thus, mankind discovers the prostatic orgasm, which, in turn, draws him closer to womankind, because her orgasms are now less of a mystery to him.