Carved Doors of Santa Sabina, Rome

The doors of Santa Sabina in Rome are conventionally said to have been carved in the early 5th century.

The scenes carved on it are mostly drawn from the Old Testament and the Gospel story.

The carved scenes are bordered by grape vines, a symbol for entheogenic wine mixture and for the vine-shaped deterministic world line.

Here’s Elijah pulled up to heaven on the chariot, pulled or guided by an angel (themes of ascent, being pulled up, steersmanship). Note the mushroom tree:

Here’s the abduction of Habbekuk. He’s carrying loaves of bread/entheogens. This myth is typologically similar to the abduction of Ganymede by Zeus’ eagle. Ganymede is typically portrayed wearing the same sort of cap as Habbekuk is here. He was abducted while tending his flocks. Note the freewillist goat eating the wavy stalk topped by a mushroom head on the right.

Here’s Jesus with a wand (the magician) multiplying and creating the entheogens (bread, fish, wine), and restoring sight to the blind (experiential enlightenment, switch of mental world model):

Here’s Jesus appearing to two women, surrounded by waving, fruiting, mushroom trees:

From bottom to top: Moses confronts Pharaoh (king ego) with heimarmene snakes (fixedness of thoughts and actions); The horses (ego) drawing the chariot (control themes) are overwhelmed by the undulating waters (perceptual distortion in loose cognition); the people are led to the promised land and greeted by an angel (messenger of transcendent rationality).

Conventional scholarship says this is the earliest surviving depiction of Christ’s crucifixion:

There are more panels. Check them out and spot the altered state metaphor: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=santa+sabina+doors&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1030&bih=575

 

 

 

 

Cupids performing tauroctony

Relief sculptures of this sort adorned the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar in Rome.

I’ve seen Mithras slaying the bull hundreds of times, but never Cupids. These sculptures date from the 2nd century AD and adorned the temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar. Caesar began work on this forum and Augustus completed it after his assassination. Archaeologists think these sculptures came from a later embellishment and repair of the forum by the emperor Trajan c. 113 AD. It’s unclear whether this was the original decoration or not.

In literature and myth Cupid can control the desires of men and gods. Cupid implants a desire in his targets. His victims are unable to rule themselves, as Apollo in the story of Apollo and Daphne. His victims are drawn toward the implanted object of desire irresistibly, as if to a beacon.

During egodeath, the mind senses that its thoughts and desires are implanted in it from outside its normal source of control. Egodeath proves that the ego cannot rule itself. The ego is drawn toward egodeath irresistibly.

In this relief decoration, Cupid masters and slays the self-command bull, the egoic mental world model, just as Mithras does. The wings represent the sensation often encountered in the altered state that the mind is in flight.

The Cupids pictured here also stand with one leg on the ground and the other in the air. This represents the enlightened mind with one foot rooted to the ground, the determined world, and one foot floating free in the transcendent world. This image also suggests the one ‘footed’ mushroom.

This image shows the higher self in winged ecstatic flight subduing the animalistic lower self, which kneels in submission.

The similarities to the common Mithras tauroctony show the fluidity of ancient metaphorical art and thought. Different characters were plugged into standard themes drawn from altered state experiencing.

(Picture source: http://en.mercatiditraiano.it/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/sezione_del_foro_di_cesare/decorazione_esterna_del_tempio_di_venere_genitrice)

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Now that Hoffman has cracked the imagery of the mystery religions, we can see the same altered state themes expressed in metaphor in other religious contexts. This is another piece of evidence that altered state metaphor was found in the center of Rome among the ruling class, attached to a temple sponsored by the emperors. Altered state metaphor was not confined to the mystery cults of Eleusis, Isis, Mithras, or Christ.

Here the altered state metaphor of Cupid’s tauroctony is used in support of the imperial ruler system. The temple of Venus Genetrix is a temple to Venus the Creator. This term has a few meanings in this context. Venus could be described as Genetrix because through her influence living things procreate, i.e. the lower self and the higher self join in union and produce the new control system. Venus was also said to be the ancestor of Caesar and Augustus, so through this temple her power is put to the service of the imperial system of Caesar and Augustus. Later emperors took the names of Caesar and/or Augustus to link themselves with the system begun by them. Trajan’s restoration or embellishment of the temple of Venus Genetrix is a sign of that deliberate homage and connecting to Caesar and Augustus.

Pharmakon, Michael Rinella

Featured prominently in the window of a well-known academic bookstore in Rome.

Contemporary Classical Studies out of touch with religious experiencing

I have found that my projects for grad school have to command most of my attention, and that I simply cannot cover the topics I cover here in those projects with anything like the explicitness and openness I would like. I realized long ago that covering entheogens openly would not work while still at a young stage of the career.

I have been disappointed to learn that even concepts like mystic experiencing, gnosticism, or transcendent knowledge rarely make their way into mainstream interpretations of Classical religion these days. How out of touch they are! Most mainstream scholars today would be surprised when Freke and Gandy write that the initiates into the mystery religious learned to view the myths of the cult as an allegorical representation of religious experiencing. Most mainstream Classical scholarship I have read does not seem to understand religious experiencing and allegory.

There seems to have been more respect for allegory and mysticism in Classical scholarship in the early 20th century. Scholars like James Frazer, Jane Harrison, Francis Cornford, and Franz Cumont were informed at least in some way by mysticism and allegory, even if their conception of these ideas was unfocused, vague, or off-base, lacking a real grasp for the dynamics of mystic experiencing and the workings of allegory. Later scholars have perhaps understandably dropped this vague conception and sought other explanations and interpretations of religious text and ritual. Over time Classical scholarship, like other fields, has become more and more disconnected from the findings of other fields as scholarship in all fields has become more and more specialized. Young researchers are regularly taught only the techniques and findings of their own field and are taught to find solutions to puzzles within the bounded system that has developed as their own field. Techniques and findings from other fields are often regarded with suspicion. Look at the cool reception that Ustinova’s book received in the two scholarly reviews I found, simply because she used studies from cognitive neuroscience on altered states to explain certain types of religious evidence from ancient Greece.

The Egodeath Theory was created outside of the standard academic environment. Hoffman did not have to worry about publishing highly specific, peer-reviewed case studies in order to pursue a scholarly career. Nor did he have to rely only on accepted scholarly books, but was free to theorize and try out ideas until he had worked out the theory. I’ve felt for years that researchers must confront the Egodeath Theory, its particular combination of entheogens, determinism, allegory, and cybernetic self-control transcendence. These topics are not generally considered in conventional scholarship, let alone the combination of these ideas. Entheogens and the altered state in particular have been neglected. They are the key taboo subject/s. Research that fully takes account of entheogens/altered state will be inevitably drawn towards the other topics.