High on Mount Sinai?

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an "altered state of awareness," Shanon hypothesized.

"In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings," Shanon wrote.

"On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is encountering the ground of all Being ... many identify this power as God."

Shanon wrote that he was very familiar with the affects of the ayahuasca plant, having "partaken of the ... brew about 160 times in various locales and contexts."

He said one of the psychoactive plants, harmal, found in the Sinai and elsewhere in the Middle East, has long been regarded by Jews in the region as having magical and curative powers.

Some biblical scholars were unimpressed. Orthodox rabbi Yuval Sherlow told Israel Radio: "The Bible is trying to convey a very profound event. We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of science."

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0444950920080304?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

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So what plants are these? And how would they be used historically?

Personally, I like the bit about Moses going up on the mountain, disappearing in a pillar of smoke and coming down with the Ten Commandments ;)

There's a book by John Allegro called the Mushroom and the Cross. It goes into great detail about how Christianity was a Jewish mushroom cult. According to Allegro it all stems from the worship of the phallus and fertility god.

Based on his assumption that the Greek and Semetic languages were derivative of Sumerian the names Jesus and Dionysus(identical story of jesus in greek mythology) translate to "seed of god" or "semen of god." The mushroom confused the ancients because it grew without any seeds. They noticed mushrooms grow after rainstorms so they figured god was ejaculating and fertilizing the earth. The next day tiny phallus would become erect out of the ground and the ancients ate the mushrooms as a sacrament to god.

Many of the stories of the bible are a play on words. The mushroom being Jesus sacrifices itself to enlighten man. The serpent(phallus) gets adam and eve to eat of the fruit of knowledge, which is depicted in ancient paintings as an amanita muscaria mushroom.

Seriously, its a good read. Churches are vaginas and preists dress up like uncircumcised penises.

"may have"

Lol......