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of reasons, including medicinal and religious purposes. In fact, countless cultures have possessed sacred plants, herbs, fungi or other entheogenic "drugs" that allowed for divination and communion. Such sacred plant-drugs included the mysterious "Soma," which was personified as a teaching-god in the Indian text the Rig Vega, as well as Haoma, the Persian version of the teacher-plant. Opium, hashish and cannabis also have a long history of use within religious worship and spiritual practices. For example, on Sumerian tablets dating from about 5000 BCE are references to a "joy plant," believed to be the poppy, from which opium is derived.45 The Chinese recorded the use of cannabis, hemp or marijuana as early as the 3rd millennium BCE, and cannabis use in India began at least 4,000 years ago. Furthermore, the magi and spiritual "physicians," or "Therapeuts," were wandering drug-peddlers and members of the fraternity network, in which drugs were used for initiation and divination. Indeed, there has been plenty of drug use in the Levant and Middle East, including by biblical peoples:

Although some historians are reluctant to attribute drug use to Semitic peoples, the Old Testament abounds with references to the cultivation and administration of medicinal herbs. There is, for example, a provocative inventory of favored plants in the Old Testament Song of Solomon (4:13-14). . . . While many of the apparent references to drugs in the Old Testament remain open to question, there is little doubt that an incident recorded in Genesis refers to Noah's drunkenness from alcohol.46

Alcohol, of course, is a potent drug, but is not frowned upon in Christianity because it is truly drugging and stupefying, whereas entheogens, including the "magic mushroom," have the ability to increase awareness and acuity. In fact, there have been many mushroom cults, going back at least as far as Sumeria, and, according to Allegro, et al., much of the world's sacred literature incorporated the mushroom in an esoteric manner. Indeed, it has been posited that the biblical "manna from heaven" actually refers to a psychedelic mushroom, a notion implying that Moses and his crew were on one very long, strange trip in their 40 years of wandering in the desert and living off manna. Regardless of whether or not manna is the magic mushroom, the mushroom cults have been real and influential in history. Moreover, Maxwell claims that the priests of Israel were known to use mushrooms:

Many people are unaware that this kind of hallucinogenic mushroom-taking by the high priest of Israel was, in point of fact, a very integral part of the old Hebrew theology and the old Hebrew tradition ... [it[ still is used in the Middle East today.47

In fact, the high priest of Israel wore a mushroom headdress, as do officials of the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day, reflecting the esoteric veneration of this sacred fungus.48 Thus, drug use did not end with the advent of Christianity. Like the Eastern Orthodox headdress, the ubiquitous architectural dome is also a reflection of the mushroom cult. In addition, in a ruined church in Plaincourault, France, is a Christian fresco dating to the 13th century that depicts the Edenic tree of knowledge as a stem with amanita muscaria mushrooms branching off it. Furthermore, drug use was rampant all over Christian Europe, and even Pope Leo XIII used a "coca leaf and red wine concoction. "49

As Baigent and Leigh say:

. . . there is little dispute today that drugs-psychedelic and of other kinds-were used to at least some extent among the religions, cults, sects and mysteries schools of the ancient Middle East-as indeed they were, and continue to be, across the world. It is certainly not inconceivable that such substances were known to, and perhaps employed by, lst-century Judaism and early Christianity.50

In fact, Allegro's suggestion that "Jesus" was a mushroom god is not implausible, considering how widespread was the preChristian Jesus/Salvation cult and how other cultures depict their particular entheogens as "teachers" and "gods."