Shroom covers topics including refutation of the mushroom theory of the origin of religion, the recent U.K. psilocybin mushroom scene, a critical treatment of Wasson's research methodology and mushroom theory of Vedic religion, and Tim Leary as backdrop leading up to the later popular use of psilocybin mushrooms. This is a valuable book that contributes some new perspectives and new coverage of entheogens in Western culture; this book is a must-have for entheogen researchers. The present review focuses exclusively on his critique of the mushroom theory of religious origins, which he sometimes treats as though it is a critical refutation of the overall entheogen theory of religion.
Letcher has not disproved the entheogen theory of religion, or even fully engaged with that hypothesis. At most, he has made a partial effort to call into question the mushroom theory of the pre-historical origin of religion, in the form of a secret cult spreading from a single origin over time and across regions. Letcher often comes across triumphally as having disproved the entheogen theory of the origin of religion, but a careful reading of his treatment of that particular topic shows that he has actually only shown something far narrower ; he has only refuted a highly specific point.
At most, Letcher's treatment of the entheogen theory of religious origins shows that we have no compelling archaeological evidence for a prehistorical mushroom cult that was secret and unbroken. When his rhetorical verbiage and his general discussions of history are put aside, the substance of his argumentation that remains does not amount to a compelling argument against the frequent use of mushrooms (or other visionary plants) throughout religious history.
Letcher's writing style is rhetorical, so that he tells the story of recent mushroom scholarship and culture well, presenting much of interest to the audience, including valuable new material. He uses a biased rhetorical style; for example, "lunatic fringe", "conspiracy theories", "unfounded speculations", "the myth" of the entheogen origin of religion. This charged rhetorical style obscures that fact that his argument for his refutation of the entheogen theory of the origin of religion rests on only a few, fleetingly discussed points of argument.
Letcher does not engage the bulk of the literary and artistic evidence that provide sufficient grounds to support the general entheogen theory of religious origins. He merely puts forth brief and rather arbitrary arguments dismissing a couple of the many depictions of mushrooms in Christian art.
Letcher's inadequate selection of cases to refute, and his brief, perfunctory treatment of these cases, is not sufficient in breadth or depth to compell adherents of various variants of the entheogen theory of the origins of religion to change their position, no matter how many times or how confidently he rhetorically dubs the theory as a "myth". For example, he would need to engage the range of art that is presented in the first three issues of Entheos magazine, and the range of arguments such as those presented in Giorgio Samorini's articles about Christian mushroom trees.
It's admirable to see an independent critical thinker comment on selected aspects of Allegro and Wasson, but only a few of those comments actually amount to engaging with the evidence for the general entheogen theory of the origin of religion. Letcher makes the risky move of overextending his specific focus on psychoactive mushrooms, at the expense of being under-informed on the general entheogen theory and the full range of arguments, interpretive frameworks, systems of assumptions, and evidence of various types in support of that broad-ranging theory.
As a thought-experiment with the hypothesis that normalized religious cultic use of mushrooms is only a few decades old, this aspect of the book is a valuable contribution to the field; however, Letcher switches inconsistently between that bold but narrow hypothesis and a broader, firm conclusion that the entheogen theory of religion altogether is merely a recent fabrication of popular scholarship and merely wishful thinking.
Letcher leaps from what he narrowly demonstrates, to a stance and a claim to have shown convincingly that the entheogen theory of religious origins (and fairly frequent entheogen use throughout religious history) is nothing but recent wishful thinking, a fabrication by a group that is a historical novelty: late 20th Century psychedelics enthusiasts, including mushroom enthusiasts in the U.K. from 1976-2006.
All theories involve a framework of assumptions. The fact that a scholarly theory uses a set of unproved assumptions does not instantly do away with (or "demolish") the theory. Letcher handles the evidence by the common strategy of dividing, isolating, and diminishing each piece of evidence in isolation, operating under the arbitrary silent assumption that entheogen use was rare, secretive ("conspiracy"), and deviant. But such a methodology is problematic and is controverted by the maximal entheogen theory of religion, which holds that Western history and Western culture have always been inspired to some extent by the ongoing practice of using visionary plants. The unavoidable question remains, "How are we to judge what is plausible and what was normal for that culture?"
Should we assume that the use of visionary plants was normal and significantly present throughout mainstream religion and culture, or that it was rare, a secretive conspiracy, and deviant (exceptional)? Selecting our assumptions about the backdrop, of what was normal in a culture, affects the validity of completely isolating each piece of potential evidence and then attempting to judge the plausibility of reading that piece of evidence as supporting the entheogen theory of religion. What seems plausible to a critical scholar depends on the backdrop of what we assume was normal in the culture.
For example, Letcher affirms that the cathedral door at Hildesheim, Germany depicts the tree of knowledge in the shape that "looks extremely like a giant Liberty Cap", but he argues that it cannot have meant a Liberty Cap, because the doors were carefully designed and the depiction cannot have been secret in that case, so the image cannot represent anything other than, or in addition to, a "stylized fig tree".
It doesn't occur to Letcher to imagine and address the obvious critical arguments and questions against his hasty discussion, such as: why assume that a mushroom allusion had to be secret? why is an officially designed depiction of a mushroom automatically ruled out as unthinkable? why was the fig tree stylized in the specific form of a Liberty Cap mushroom? what about the hundreds of other specifically psilocybin mushroom-shaped trees in Christian art?
Letcher has much homework to do if he wants to try to retain his hypothesis that psychoactive mushrooms were absent from Western religious history until the late 20th Century, and if he intends to convince critical entheogen scholars of that hypothesis -- a hypothesis that will be hard to maintain after seriously addressing, with responses to at least the most obvious counter-criticisms, the current full range of artistic evidence (post-Wasson and post-Allegro), which Letcher has barely engaged.
