John M. Allegro

Publisher: Paperjacks (1971)

162-164

Few parts of the Lord's Prayer have given more trouble to the praying Christian and more scope for the exegete than the verse: \r\n\r\n>And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13) \r\n\r\nThe Greek word for 'temptation', peirasmos, came in for special attention at the time of the decipherment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was realized correctly by scholars that behind this New Testament phrase lay the Semitic word for a place for 'testing' metals, that is, the refiner's crucible. The Essenes in the Scrolls talk of the 'time of testing that is coming' using the technical word. So, here, in the Prayer, the word-jugglers have taken its Aramaic equivalent, kur bukhana', 'crucible of testing', out of LI-KUR-BA (LA)G-ANTA, the mushroom name. The resultant phrase is particularly interesting because it is almost exactly the Aramaic name of the fungus as it has come down in literature, khurbakhna' or khurbekhana' (Arabic kharbaq), attached, like so many mushroom words, to the plant Hellebore. \r\n\r\nTaking the sacred fungus, or, in New Testament parlance, 'eating the body' of the Christ, must have been a very real peirasmos, 'trial', of the body and spirit. It would have seemed no accident to the cultic celebrant that the name of the mushroom and the phrase for 'fiery furnace of testing' appeared the same. The customary translations of the powerful concept as 'temptation' is almost ridiculous, recalling youthful experiences in the jam-cupboard or behind the woodshed with the girl next door. Well might the writer of Corinthians issue the warning: \r\n\r\n>Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without critically treating his body, eats and drinks a 'crisis' upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died... (1 Cor 11:27-30). \r\n\r\nThe Amanita muscaria is, after all, a poisonous fungus. Whist not the most dangerous, its drugs have a serious affect on the nervous system, and taken regularly over a long period would in the end kill the addict. Among its drugs so far isolated are Muscarine, Atropine, and Bufotenin. The first causes vomiting and diarrhoea, and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system so that the partaker is capable of great feats of muscular exertion and endurance. The stories which came down of the fantastic strength exhibited by cultic heroes, however mythical the events described, have probably that element of real fact. So, too, the idea that the Maenads in their wild raving through the conifer forests were capable of tearing animals limb from limb, was not entirely devoid of truth. \r\n\r\nAtropine first stimulates the nervous system and then paralyzes it. It is this poison that is primarily responsible for the hallucinatory effects of the sacred fungus, but also for the muscular convulsions that must have seemed to bystanders like the demons within, wresting with the newly imbibed power of the god. \r\n\r\nBufotenin, a secretion otherwise found in the sweat glands of the African toad, lowers the pulse rate and temperature. As a result, the mushroom eater has the strange sensation of feeling his skin hot and cold simultaneously: hot in some places, cold in others. He finds himself hypersensitive to touch, light, and sound. The day following his 'trip' he will find all smells seem foul and a bad taste persists in his mouth. He feels an urgent need to urinate but is unable to do so.