Tag: Potions

[The distinction between magical and religious practices is in the context. A big difference between traditional Catholicism and fundamental Protestantism is that Catholicism comfortably embraced the magical traditions of the people while Protestantism advocated a return to original Christianity (by the Book) and strictly rejected the magical elements of Catholicism. Of course, Faust’s embrace of magic was sinful by either standard. In England, Anglicanism was designed as a “middle way” between Catholicism and fundamentalist Protestantism to keep everybody equally happy and unhappy.

Used in magic, apart from protecting the magician and punishing the demon, holy water superficially sanctifies the act and compels the lower spirits. On the other hand, attempting to compel God to do anything is sinful. That would include charms and prayers. After all, if He wanted something to be a certain way, that’s the way it would be. He knows everything—you think He needs people wheedling favours all the time?

Charms and blessings were often a sop to the ignorant peasant folk who didn’t understand Christianity and wanted to keep with the old pre-Christian and superstitious ways. When a field was sowed, they wanted the traditional pagan blessing. The priest would go along with it, but with Christian touches. Fortunately, if you were just an ignorant peasant, nobody expected much of you. Without being able to read, and having no Bibles, regular folk were pretty much ignorant of the fine details of Christianity and all they knew was what the priest said, and that was in Latin which they didn’t understand. They just pretty much did what the priest told them to do. If your opinion actually mattered, or you stuck your head out, and they wanted that head, once the interrogations started, Christianity could be a maze in a minefield.

Then around the time of Faust, with the printing press and affordable translations of the Bible into common language, people learned how to read and read the Bible. They were surprised at what was and wasn’t in it. Even today, that’s common. Who’s the Devil? What about Mary? Where’s the Pope in the Bible? Why’s he so rich? They got pretty upset, because they felt they’d been misled by the Church. Hence, Protestantism. That’s when the heads really started to roll. Anyway, this is about holy water….]

From Wikipedia:

“Holy water is water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy or a religious figure. The use for cleansing prior to a baptism and spiritual cleansing is common in several religions, from Christianity to Sikhism. The use of holy water as a sacramental for protection against evil is common among Anglicans and Roman Catholics.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_water>

Protection against evil
Saint Teresa of Avila, by Rubens, 1615

‘Catholic saints have written about the power of holy water as a force that repels evil. Saint Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church who reported visions of Jesus and Mary, was a strong believer in the power of holy water and wrote that she used it with success to repel evil and temptations. She wrote:

“I know by frequent experience that there is nothing which puts the devils to flight like Holy water.”

In Holy Water and Its Significance for Catholics Henry Theiler states that in addition to being a strong force in repelling evil, holy water has the twofold benefit of providing grace for both body and soul.’

[…]

“In Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and some other churches, holy water is water that has been sanctified by a priest for the purpose of baptism, the blessing of persons, places, and objects, or as a means of repelling evil.”

[…]

“The use of holy water in the earliest days of Christianity is attested to only in somewhat later documents. The Apostolic constitutions, which go back to about the year 400, attribute the precept of using holy water to the Apostle Matthew. It is plausible that in earliest Christian times water was used for expiatory and purificatory purposes in a way analogous to its employment in Jewish Law. Yet, in many cases, the water used for the Sacrament of Baptism was flowing water, sea or river water, and it could not receive the same blessing as that contained in the baptisteries in the view of the Roman Catholic church.”

[…]

“Sprinkling with holy water is used as a sacramental that recalls baptism. Holy water is kept in the holy water font, which is typically located at the entrance to the church (or sometimes in a separate room or building called a baptistery). Smaller vessels, called stoups, are usually placed at the entrances of the church, to enable people to sprinkle themselves with it on entering. In recent years, with the concerns over influenza, new holy water machines that work like an automatic soap dispenser have become popular.

In the Middle Ages the power of holy water was considered so great that in some places fonts had locked covers to prevent the theft of holy water for unauthorized magic practices. The Constitutions of Archbishop Edmund Rich (1236) prescribe that “Fonts are to be kept under lock and key, because of witchcraft (sortilegia). Similarly the chrism and sacred oil are kept locked up.”

In Catholicism, holy water, as well as water used during the washing of the priest’s hands at mass, is not allowed to be disposed of in regular plumbing. Roman Catholic churches will usually have a special basin (a Sacrarium) that leads directly into the ground for the purpose of proper disposal. A hinged lid is kept over the holy water basin to distinguish it from a regular sink basin, which is often just beside it. Items that contained holy water are separated, drained of the holy water, and then washed in a regular manner in the adjacent sink.”

[Twentieth century psychedelic adventurer Terence McKenna suggested that the Biblical manna which sustained the Jews during their migration from Egypt to the promised land had characteristics of the Psilocybin mushroom. That’s different from claiming it was the biblical manna, but the broader point is that entheogens could have had a role in Biblical events, as entheogens have prominent roles in other religions. While Psilocybin may have some characteristics of manna, it doesn’t have many.]

“A number of ethnomycologists, including Terence McKenna, have suggested that most characteristics of manna are similar to that of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, notorious breeding grounds for insects, which decompose rapidly. These peculiar fungi naturally produce a number of molecules that resemble human neurochemicals, and first appear as small fibres (mycelia) that resemble hoarfrost. Psilocybin, the primary psychoactive molecule in the “Psilocybe cubensis” mushroom, has shown to produce spiritual experiences, with “personal meaning and spiritual significance” when test subjects were evaluated 14 months later. In a psilocybin study from 2006 one-third of the participants reported that the experience was the single most spiritually significant moment of their lives and more than two-thirds reported it was among the top five most spiritually significant experiences. A side-effect from psilocybin consumption is the loss of appetite. The speculation that manna was an entheogen, also paralleled in Philip K. Dick’s posthumously published The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, is supported in a wider cultural context when compared with the praise of soma in the Rigveda, Mexican praise of teonanácatl, the peyote sacrament of the Native American Church, and the holy ayahuasca used in the ritual of the União do Vegetal and Santo Daime churches.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna>

[Humans have forever speculated about the powers of the gods. In the Biblical Garden of Eden there were trees of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and of immortality. In the Greek myths the foods of the gods conferred immortality. Even today some think there is some basis in reality for those foods. Is it simply driven by a subconscious desire for them—wishful thinking? The desire to avoid death and suffering, to be reassured that everything can be made good, underlies Faust’s ambitions and our own. In that, we are all the same, but what price will we pay?

When faith is not enough, in desperation, what will we do? Faust rejects God, but he is shown to be a fool. Faith is all there is. But must we really content ourselves with that, or can we become gods ourselves? Like the ancient Greeks, and the alchemists of Faust’s age, we look for the substance which will transform us. Are we finally on the cusp of that transformation, or are we eternally deceived? Is attempting to identify the ambrosia of the Greek gods really just an academic exercise or another go round wherein we confuse nourishment and poison?]

From Wikipedia on Ambrosia:

“In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (Greek: “immortality”) is sometimes the food or drink of the Greek gods, often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it. It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves, so it may have been thought of in the Homeric tradition as a kind of divine exhalation of the Earth.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia>

“Ambrosia is very closely related to the gods’ other form of sustenance, nectar. The two terms may not have originally been distinguished; though in Homer’s poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods; it was with ambrosia Hera “cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh”, and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away, and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her. On the other hand, in Alcman, nectar is the food, and in Sappho and Anaxandrides, ambrosia is the drink. When a character in Aristophanes’ Knights says, “I dreamed the goddess poured ambrosia over your head—out of a ladle,” the homely and realistic ladle brings the ineffable moment to ground with a thump. Both descriptions, however, could be correct as Ambrosia could be a liquid that is considered a meal (much like how soup is labeled the same).

The consumption of ambrosia was typically reserved for divine beings. Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains. In one version of the myth of Tantalus, part of Tantalus’ crime is that after tasting ambrosia himself, he attempts to steal some away to give to other mortals. Those who consume ambrosia typically had not blood in their veins, but ichor.

Both nectar and ambrosia are fragrant, and may be used as perfume: in the Odyssey Menelaus and his men are disguised as seals in untanned seal skins, “and the deadly smell of the seal skins vexed us sore; but the goddess saved us; she brought ambrosia and put it under our nostrils.” Homer speaks of ambrosial raiment, ambrosial locks of hair, even the gods’ ambrosial sandals.

Among later writers, ambrosia has been so often used with generic meanings of “delightful liquid” that such late writers as Athenaeus, Paulus and Dioscurides employ it as a technical terms in contexts of cookery, medicine, and botany. Pliny used the term in connection with different plants, as did early herbalists.

Additionally, some modern ethnomycologists, such as Danny Staples, identify ambrosia with the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria: “it was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and nectar was the pressed sap of its juices”, Staples asserts.

W. H. Roscher thinks that both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing powers of honey, which is in fact anti-septic, and because fermented honey (mead) preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world; on some Minoan seals, goddesses were represented with bee faces (compare Merope and Melissa). There are many modern proprietary medicines which use honey as an ingredient.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia>


[On Ichor (the blood of the gods):]

“In Greek mythology, Ichor is the ethereal golden fluid that is the blood of the gods and/or immortals.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichor>

[Well, perhaps if we kill a god and drink its blood we can become like them…. Or, perhaps not…. If God were to appear tomorrow, would we kill Him to have His powers? How long would it take us to go from faith and adoration to envy and lust? We think we are too far gone already, and God is wise to keep His distance. Perhaps that’s why when the Renaissance astronomers turned their new telescopes to the firmament, it suddenly wasn’t there. It wasn’t that the ancients were wrong to conceive of the heavens as a fixed dome, but that the act of observation caused a supernal collapse. We are chasing God away!]

“Ichor originates in Greek mythology, where it is the ethereal fluid that is the Greek gods’ blood, sometimes said to retain the qualities of the immortal’s food and drink, ambrosia or nectar. It was considered to be golden in color, as well as lethally toxic to mortals.

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichor>

[Hemp was a critically important product – it provided the maritime fleet’s sails and ropes, among other things, but hemp was useless for getting stoned. Despite a desire to think that the history of entheogen use in England and northern & western Europe has been suppressed or was underground, any significant use appears unlikely. Social, religious and natural conditions precluded it.]

“Hemp (from Old English hænep) is a commonly used term for high-growing industrial varieties of the Cannabis plant and its products, which include fiber, oil, and seed. Hemp is refined into products such as hemp seed foods, hemp oil, wax, resin, rope, cloth, pulp, paper, and fuel.

Hemp is not to be confused with the close relative of the herb Cannabis which is widely used as a drug, commonly known as marijuana. These variants are typically low-growing and have higher content of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), and other cannabinoids.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp>

[While some speculate that religion evolved out of the use of psychoactive drugs, others argue that religion is the drug itself.]

“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Pasted from <http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1938.Friedrich_Nietzsche?page=5>

“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people>

[While the use of cannabis in early Judaism remains up for debate, it would have been used in ancient Israel as a medicine at least. It is also known to have been used in parts of ancient Europe, toward the south and east – closer to the regions where it was cultivated and used traditionally. It surely would have been a trade good.]

From Wikipedia on the enthogenic use of cannabis:

Ancient Europe

“In ancient Germanic paganism, cannabis was associated with the Norse love goddess, Freya. The harvesting of the plant was connected with an erotic high festival. It was believed that Freya lived as a fertile force in the plant’s feminine flowers and by ingesting them one became influenced by this divine force. Linguistics offers further evidence of prehistoric use of cannabis by Germanic peoples: The word hemp derives from Old English hænep, from Proto-Germanic *hanapiz, from the same Scythian word that cannabis derives from. The etymology of this word follows Grimm’s Law by which Proto-Indo-European initial *k- becomes *h- in Germanic. The shift of *k→h indicates it was a loanword into the Germanic parent language at a time depth no later than the separation of Common Germanic from Proto-Indo-European, about 500 BC.

The Celts may have also used cannabis, as evidence of hashish traces were found in Hallstatt, birthplace of Celtic culture. Also, the Dacians and the Scythians had a tradition where a fire was made in an inclosed space and cannabis seeds were burnt and the resulting smoke ingested.”

Ancient Israel

“It is generally held by academics specializing in the archaeology and paleobotany of Ancient Israel, and those specializing in the lexicography of the Hebrew Bible that cannabis is not documented or mentioned in early Judaism. Against this some popular writers have argued that there is evidence for religious use of cannabis in the Hebrew Bible, although this hypothesis and some of the specific case studies (e.g., John Allegro in relation to Qumran, 1970) have been “widely dismissed as erroneous” (Merlin, 2003).

The primary advocate of a religious use of cannabis plant in early Judaism was Sula Benet (1967), who claimed that the plant kaneh bosm קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם mentioned five times in the Hebrew Bible, and used in the holy anointing oil of the Book of Exodus, was in fact cannabis, although lexicons of Hebrew and dictionaries of plants of the Bible such as by Michael Zohary (1985), Hans Arne Jensen (2004) and James A. Duke (2010) and others identify the plant in question as either Acorus calamus or Cymbopogon citratus.

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis>

[Drugs which create a sensation of being closer to divinity (“entheogens”) figure in many religions, and naturally bring one to wonder what the place of such entheogens might be in the formation of Judaism and Christianity – a use that was forgotten or suppressed. While many Christian denominations disapprove of the use of most psychoactive drugs, people still study the Bible trying to see if other interpretations and translations might reveal such a use.

This is just one symptom of many people’s intuition that secrets are hidden in the Bible, waiting to be recognized, and that a true Christian faith has been lost. Some study the Bible looking for coded secrets, and it doesn’t help that the Gospel suggests that the true religion was known only to the closest confidants of Jesus, and that what Jesus taught to the masses was simple and limited.¹

Protestantism itself was an effort to shake off centuries of accretions of religious tradition to return to the “fundamental” religion practiced by the early Christians. As a ritual done incorrectly can hardly be expected to have its proper effect, a religion done improperly can hardly be expected to work. The failure of Jesus to return as expected suggests that traditional Christianity has deviated from the true path.]

From Wikipedia on Religion and Drugs:

“The primary advocate of a religious use of cannabis plant in early Judaism was Sula Benet also called Sara Benetowa a Polish anthropologist, (1903–1982), who claimed (1967) that the plant kaneh bosm קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם mentioned five times in the Hebrew Bible, and used in the holy anointing oil of the Book of Exodus, was in fact cannabis. The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church confirmed it as a possible valid interpretation. The lexicons of Hebrew and dictionaries of plants of the Bible such as by Michael Zohary (1985), Hans Arne Jensen (2004) and James A. Duke (2010) and others identify the plant in question as either Acorus calamus or Cymbopogon citratus. Kaneh-bosm is listed as an incense in the Old Testament.

It is generally held by academics specializing in the archaeology and paleobotany of Ancient Israel, and those specializing in the lexicography of the Hebrew Bible that cannabis is not documented or mentioned in early Judaism. Against this some popular writers have argued that there is evidence for religious use of cannabis in the Hebrew Bible, although this hypothesis and some of the specific case studies (e.g., John Allegro in relation to Qumran, 1970) have been “widely dismissed as erroneous” (Merlin, 2003).

Many Christian denominations permit the moderate use of socially and legally acceptable drugs like alcohol, caffeine and tobacco. Some Christian denominations permit smoking tobacco, while others disapprove of it. Many denominations do not have any official stance on drug use, some more-recent Christian denominations (e.g. Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses) discourage or prohibit the use of any of these substances.

Because Jesus and many Biblical figures drank wine, most Christian denominations do not require teetotalism. In the Eucharist, wine represents (or among Christians who believe in some form of Real Presence, like the Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches, actually is) the blood of Christ. Lutherans believe in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, that the body and blood of Christ are “truly and substantially present in, with and under the forms” of the consecrated bread and wine (the elements), so that communicants orally eat and drink the holy body and blood of Christ Himself as well as the bread and wine (cf. Augsburg Confession, Article 10) in this Sacrament. The Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence is more accurately and formally known as “the Sacramental Union.” It has been inaccurately called “consubstantiation”, a term which is specifically rejected by most Lutheran churches and theologians.

On the other hand, some Protestant Christian denominations, such as Baptists and Methodists associated with the temperance movement, encourage or require teetotalism. In some Protestant denomination, grape juice or non-alcoholic wine is used in place of wine to represent the blood of Christ.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_drugs>

1. for example, see Mark 4:10-11 (‘When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables’), but also see John 18:1920 (‘ “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus replied. “I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.”‘) [↩]