Customer Reviews

Strange Fruit: Alchemy, Religion and Magical Foods: A Speculative History

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When I read about eating bittersweet scrolls followed by seeing visions, in Ezekiel and Revelation, it was clear that Christianity included an essential entheogen tradition. However, it was unclear which entheogens might be allegorized in those scriptures. Heinrich presents a fine and sufficient candidate.

He also presents a brilliant hypothesis that the story of the Exodus is based around ergot poisoning of the yeast supply. Chris Bennett in Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible makes a case for cannabis especially in the Old Testament, and Dan Merkur in Mystery of Manna, and in Psychedelic Sacrament, makes a case for ergot in the Old Testament.

This is a model of a fine book. The prose is clear, artistic, and masterful. The photos are stunning and perfectly support his case, showing the shape-shifting Amanita in its various lifecycle stages, explaining how each stage is allegorized in Hindu, Christian, and alchemical traditions. Definitely worth the price. A must-have for entheogen scholars.

Bottom line: the fly Agaric mushroom is the basis for much of the world's religions and symbolism due to its hallucinatory effects. After reading this I found myself seeing the mushroom represented in works of art and in story illustrations I otherwise would not think twice about. Example: that red and white mushroom shown in fairy tales at the bottom of trees with a little gnome sitting on it. (Go check your old story books.)

Read this to be "in the know".

This book came to me at a time when I had been trying desperately to crack the alchemical code. Having read Artephius, I eventually concluded that the secret fire of the alchemists' was no fire at all, but rather an acid. But like most things in regards to alchemy, stripping away one veil only revealed another. It wasn't until I read Heinrich's work that I learned the acid was actually "stomach acid". This book will give you the key to most of the great religious mysteries of the ages. It's hard to believe so many mystery traditions (Gnosticism, Alchemy, Hermeticism, The Grail mythology... and yes, even Christianity if you strip away the silly superstitious nonsense) can all stem from a common stream, but Heinrich's case is air tight. I can't thank him enough for writing this book. It is priceless to any true seeker.

I now have a pretty good library of entheogenic literature, and I credit the authors with making a very good case for the existence and persistence of the entheogenic initiatory tradition. But I have also read a great many alchemical books, and I marvel at how entheogenic authors pick and choose the very few texts they quote; meanwhile they gloss over the mainstream alchemical works which only too clearly show that there is a literal laboratory work, wherein one applies the understanding of nature gained through gnosis, whether delivered by entheos or not.

Like Jung, they have a particular axe to grind; and, let's face it, it helps make their living. At least Jung would admit in his later years that he was wrong to contort alchemical texts so that they fit only his psychological theory.

But in talking with some of these authors, I find that they are still objectivists, and not mystics (to use the word in its best sense). On their trips they may well see that the order of the world is a projection of Mind, but then when writing, they hope to be looked upon favorably by the scholarly community, and so they prove not to have the conviction of their visions.

The essense of life can be perceived as a fire, or fiery moving water, a flow of consciousness, of Mind, ever coming into beingness and winking out again. This fire is the fountain of the alchemists. It is not to be reified as stomach acid, or muscimol, or any 5-HT-2A agonist. Those are agents that open our minds to SEE this fundamental fire.

This reductionist attitude that the secret coding means amanita or psilocybin, or iboga, etc, misses the point: the substance is the doorway, not the end.

And so, having had the vision themselves, what keeps these authors from understanding that classical alchemy as found in the works of Ripley, Philalethes, d'Espanget, Fulcanelli, etc, has very clearly a practical laboratory aspect?

When someone says that these authors have answered their questions as to what the alchemical tradition was all about, they reveal that they have not read very extensively in that tradition.

Frankly, I am impressed with the extensive research, processing, and interpretStrange Fruit: Alchemy, Religion and Magical Foods: A Speculative Historyation that produced this encyclopedic work. An interesting, engaging writing style makes for smooth reading. After this work, there is little or no reason to research the subject again--except for curiousity, pleasure of re-rereading, or possible re-interpretation of a detail or two--since the subject has already been covered in this volume. Thanks for the highly readable information.

Hate to be "that guy" but this book (and the favorable reviews it has received) is complete nonsense. I have been studying alchemist texts for years (rare editions found only in Ivy Tower libraries: Oxford, Yale, Cornell to name a few), and the idea that mushrooms played a part in alchemy is just plain wrong.

Alchemical texts (for those "favorable" reviewers that clearly have never read one) openly mention drugs of all kinds! Cannabis, opium, henbane, mandrake, and a host of others were certainly ingested for their "visions." Why leave out mushrooms then? Simple: alchemists were unaware of them. No "visionary" mushrooms mentioned. None. Not one. Not something that kinda, sorta, maybe could be a mushroom. No. Sorry. Try again.

In point of fact, the ONLY representation of a mushroom I have ever come across is the infamous picture of what probably is an Aminita reprinted in Bennet's "Green Gold." Now, those who cannot read Latin will look at the picture and say, "See! Mushrooms!" The picture (for those of us who can read the Latin description under it) warns AGAINST eating mushrooms, not because they are "entheogenic" or "visionary," but rather because they are poisonous.

But hey, we all make mistakes.

i agree with the review about how entheogenic aurthors choose the works they cite very specificly and am more inclined to take Laurence Gardners stance in his book Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark where he propose that the Philosophers stone of alchemcy and the Manna of the Israelites as monatomic gold which is "entheogenic" and much much more in its owen write. I would like to see to two opinions more closely examined but while I love entheogens I'm much more impressed by the work of David Hudson as revealed by Laurence Gardner in his book but also and I am very skeptical about this but David Icke one of the leading aurthors about the conspiracy says that Laurence Gardner is a shap shifting reptile alien which another aspect if you take all of Icke's views literally but the truth lies somewhere within. Anyone with comments on this please email me at remorb@bluebottle.com I'd like some other opinions. I tend to agree with Gardner but then again he may be a shapshifter spreading lies like Icke says.