| During one of Isaiah’s visions, the Lord is speaking to him, and the occulted verbiage is most revealing: (18) “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (19) If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; (20) but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (29) “You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be disgraced because of the gardens that you have chosen. (30) You will be like an oak with fading leaves, like a garden without water. (31) The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire.” (1 Isaiah 18-20:29-31) This relates to the following passage about “fire from the altar.” The Hebrew Book of Maccabees 1-4 (sometimes referred to as the Apocrypha) are found in the Catholic, but not the Protestant bibles and contain writings preserving the life of Judah in the Persian and Hellenistic Greek periods of the 6th through 1st century BC. During this time, some of the Hebrew priests and upper classes had come to accept the Greek religious beliefs and actively promoted them by introducing them into the temple and the Jewish population. In the first book of Maccabees, the Seleucid Greeks of Antioch, Syria sought to replace Judaism with the Greek religion and some of the priests were alright with this. This led to the revolt of the Maccabees. (103) In the next extract, we read about the “fire” which is preserved: (1) We know from the records that Jeremiah the prophet instructed the people who were being taken into exile to hide some of the fire from the altar, as we have just mentioned. (2) We also know that he taught them God's Law and warned them not to be deceived by the ornamented gold and silver idols which they would see in the land of their exile. (3) And then he urged them never to abandon the Law. (2 Maccabees 2 1:3) One of the references we hear a lot of in the Old Testament is the “Land of Milk and Honey.” When Moses was instructed from the Burning Bush: (2) There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. (3) So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” (Exodus 3:2) In the next passage, Moses is warned to be careful, he is standing on “holy ground”: (5) “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (6) Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. (7) The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. (8) So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.” (Exodus 3:5-9) |
In Numbers we get the following passage related to “milk and honey” as well: (8) “If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey.” (Numbers 14:8) From Deuteronomy we have the following passage: (20) “For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant.” (Deuteronomy 31:20) From Ezekiel, we have this one: (15) “Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land that I had given them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands.” (Ezekiel 20:15) The reason the “Promised Land” is a “Land of Milk and Honey,” I believe, is because the cows give us the milk from heaven, mushrooms, and the bees give us honey, to preserve it in. The mushrooms preserved in honey would allow the desert travelers to eat when there was no food. It would allow people to then mix the honey, possibly with milk. Thereby making some kind of “soma beverage.” I speculate the “meath” was the mushroom infused honey. From the Rig Veda we read: (5) And now let Maghavan accept the beaker, white, filled with milk, filled with the shining liquid; The best of sweet meath which the priests have offered: that Indra to his joy may drink, the Hero, that he may take and drink it to his rapture. (Rig Veda Book IV, XXVII, 5) One of the points I think that has led to confusion among mushroom researchers, is the mixing of the myths. We have two distinctly different mushrooms, the A. muscaria and the psilocybin, which has hundreds of varieties, all of which turn blue when you pinch the stem. The psilocybin mushrooms have vast differences in their appearance, and some mushrooms will actually kill you because they aren’t psilocybin at all, but true poison. The research of R. Gordon Wasson focused on the ancient Hindu Rig Veda myth but focused in on the Siberian shaman tribes. John Allegro never considered psilocybin much, but, was focused on the A. muscaria, fixing its origin to the Middle East Hebrew myths. In both of these cases, easy mistakes were made and all that was required was to look at the greater picture of both mushrooms being immortalized. The origin myths of the Middle East all focus around heavenly cows and bulls in the sky giving milk which was mixed with honey to preserve it. Only slight references appear to have been made to the pinecone. Imagery of the pinecone was prominent though, but the stories did not reflect this very much. (103) Eden’s Serpents, p. 145 |