Tuesday, March 4, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai

by Haaretz

Thanks to bouke for the link.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960403.html

Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent

"And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The "perceiving of the voices" has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.

"One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds," he says. Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says.

"I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden."

Shanon, former head of the Hebrew University psychology department, said his first experience with ayahuasca was in 1991 when he was invited to a religious ceremony in the northern Amazon in 1991 in Brazil.

"I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," he says.

Since that time, he has used it hundreds of times, and has published a book about the plant.

"Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials," Shanon says. He believes the Israelites used two plants in Sinai and the Negev: one of them is wild rue, a hallucinogen used by the Bedoin to this day. However this plant is not identified with any plant mentioned in the Bible.

The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says, which the Israelites could have used. The acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and was the type of wood of which the Ark of the Covenant was made. According to Shanon, he drank a potion prepared from a species of acacia while he was in South America, which caused similar experiences to those produced by the ayahuasca.

Shanon also sees signs of a hallucinogenic vision in the story of the burning bush. "Moses 'looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed,'" Shanon quotes from Exodus 3:2. Time passes differently when under the influence of the plant, he notes. "That's why Moses thought the bush was not consumed. It should have been burned in the time he thought had passed. And in that time, he heard God speaking to him."

"But not everyone who uses a plant like this brings the Torah," Shanon concedes. "For that, you have to be Moses."

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1. Comment #138383 by Liveliest Crib on March 4, 2008 at 8:55 am

Heh....I don't know about the characters in the Bible themselves, but I have no problem believing that the people who wrote the stories were under the influence of one drug or another.

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2. Comment #138388 by Darwin's badger on March 4, 2008 at 8:59 am

Also, the resemblance between Jesus and the stereotypical hippie folk singer is probably no coincidence.

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3. Comment #138391 by Prankster on March 4, 2008 at 9:02 am

So Moses was off his tits on hallucinogenics......always said religion was drug induced

Just picturing him now at a rave with his glowsticks in hand smashed on E's ha ha ha

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4. Comment #138392 by bentleyd on March 4, 2008 at 9:02 am

Is the author trying to prove the story of Moses by offering a possible scientific explanation, or to demonstrate that the story of Moses was untrue? Either way, he's assuming that the character ever existed in the first place.

I've read many other examples of science explaining how some seemingly miraculous biblical event may have actually happened by natural means. Rising sea levels rushing in to flood the Black Sea. Lowered sea levels, extremely low Spring tides, and a strong wind combine to part the Red Sea at it's shallowest depths.

The rational atheist looks at these as possible historical explanations of how biblical myths got started. It's funny to see religionists latch onto these as "proof" that a particular biblical miracle occurred.

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5. Comment #138394 by al-rawandi on March 4, 2008 at 9:03 am

Badger,

I always view Jesus as a cross between Art Garfunkel and Wille Nelson. With a daker tan.

Other Comments by al-rawandi

6. Comment #138396 by DamnDirtyApe on March 4, 2008 at 9:05 am

There's certainly a correlation between schizophrenia, alleged 'religious experiences', and drug use...

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7. Comment #138400 by rod-the-farmer on March 4, 2008 at 9:08 am

When one enters a jewish home, one is sometimes invited to "Have a nagela". This is the original name for a HHHHash brownie. Note the guttural HHHHH.

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8. Comment #138403 by Ygern on March 4, 2008 at 9:11 am

Well, I always thought Revelations read like a mushroom-tripper's ravings. It would make sense if Moses was a bit of a substance abuser too. I mean, 40 years in a desert has to be a little on the dull side.

Check out this site on the medicinal properties of rue http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/r/rue---20.html
Note, it mentions that it is an acro-narcotic in large doses .

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9. Comment #138410 by Ygern on March 4, 2008 at 9:22 am

@ Bentleyd

I've read an interesting article somewhere that argues that Moses was none other than the Egyptian Akhenaten (book by Ahmed Osman, but I think Freud first came up with the idea).

Needless to say, Akhenaten's motivations had little to do with the Judeo-Christian god.

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10. Comment #138411 by Adam Morrison on March 4, 2008 at 9:24 am

Reminds me of a comic from an episode of 'Just for Laughs' where he was talking about how Jesus was really a chiropractor and his ability just got exaggerated.

'Man my back is killing me, I can't even walk'
'Go see that guy Jesus, he works miracles'
Can't remember the comics' name though.

No one's should really be surprised that Moses might have been a stoner. I mean no one in their right mind would start wandering the desert for 40 years because a bush said his people were the chosen of god. It's almost as bad as the people that believed him ;D

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11. Comment #138412 by RickM on March 4, 2008 at 9:24 am

Whoooooooo! All the pretty colors!

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12. Comment #138413 by the izz on March 4, 2008 at 9:25 am

Hallucinogenic substances seems a plausible explanation for biblical "miracles" but Shanon offers no real proof. Of course the stories in the bible are really folk tails so they are hardly authentic enough to provide concrete facts. But regardless, we must maintain a standard of evidence if we are to call ourselves science based.

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13. Comment #138418 by irate_atheist on March 4, 2008 at 9:30 am

One could hypothesise that a large part of the world's current troubles are due to a lack of properly qualified and experienced psychiatric practitioners in the Middle East a few thousand years ago.

A Pythonesque 'spot the loony contest' would have served just as well.

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14. Comment #138419 by joe brummer on March 4, 2008 at 9:32 am

The article states: "And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Does anyone besides me think it strange that a book called the torah tells the story of someone getting the book called the torah?

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15. Comment #138422 by irate_atheist on March 4, 2008 at 9:33 am

10. Comment #138411 by Adam Morrison -

I mean no one in their right mind would start wandering the desert for 40 years because a bush said his people were the chosen of god.

You know, I said exactly that to George W., but he said, 'I'll prove you all wrong, I will.' And look what happened.

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16. Comment #138425 by JemyM on March 4, 2008 at 9:43 am

Funny, but I would probably go with the theory that Moses never existed.

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17. Comment #138426 by cowalker on March 4, 2008 at 9:44 am

Professor Shanon is a piker. Here's the real story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/africa/03exodus.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1176004800&en=b2ca3fabefdec328&ei=5087&oref=slogin

In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses.

But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. Books have been written on the topic, but the discussion has, for the most part, remained low-key as the empirically minded have tried not to incite the spiritually minded.

"Sometimes as archaeologists we have to say that never happened because there is no historical evidence," Dr. Hawass said, as he led the journalists across a rutted field of stiff and rocky sand.

Whatever you do, don't incide the spiritually minded. They might kill you.

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18. Comment #138428 by al-rawandi on March 4, 2008 at 9:51 am

I liked this part the best:

"Really, it's a myth," Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.

"If they get upset, I don't care," Dr. Hawass said. "This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem."

Is that the job of archaeologists? To find out what was really true? Good to know. Keep digging until we find out its all bullshit.

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19. Comment #138436 by DamnDirtyApe on March 4, 2008 at 10:13 am

At the very least, this answer the question 'what were these guys smoking when they came up with this crap?'

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20. Comment #138438 by Glen Davidson on March 4, 2008 at 10:14 am

That's awfully thin gruel, even for an untestable (but supposedly explanatory) hypothesis. Still trying to make your drug trips into a revelatory experience, Shanon?

When was the Exodus account written, anyway? Do we need to explain every "supernatural" story written by the ancients? How should we account for God's spirit moving over the face of the waters in Genesis, or Noah's flood? Were they tripping all of the time, that they believed all of this nonsense?

Look, more to the point, El was originally a storm God. All you really have to have for a "religious experience" of El on Mount Sinai, is, unsurprisinglly, a damn thunderstorm. It might start a fire, producing smoke. "Hearing the voice" of El might simply be hearing the thunder, the "voice of God," which Moses goes up to investigate and see if he can understand it.

I don't know if the most relevant texts mention El or Yahweh, but I don't think that conflation of El with Yahweh would be unexpected even if "Yahweh" is mentioned in the texts regarding God on Sinai. The two names were quite interchangeable.

These were superstitious people who didn't need drugs to "see God" in natural phenomena that they couldn't explain.

Plus, we don't have much reason to believe that the exodus as such occurred, although the tale of the exodus probably relates to at least one or more trip of groups of people out of Egypt. If the stories about Sinai happened at all, is it any wonder that superstitious people not knowing where they were going "listened to God" as he stormed on Mount Sinai, in the hope of guidance?

Most of all, the whole thing was almost certainly written about so long after the fact that all of those accounts should be taken with a great deal of skepticism. Yes, I don't doubt that the plagues in Egypt were modeled on some experiences at some time, but we don't have to believe that they all occurred in any short period of time, or all in Egypt, or that they all occurred anywhere (especially the deaths of the first born). Even the Gospel accounts differ significantly from each other, and they date back to the time when memories of these events were supposed still to exist.

What is it about these "holy books," that people continue to try to explain how the things written in them "really happened"? The most important fact about the Exodus is that we don't know that any of it happened in the way written, and even if some quite different "exodus" or exoduses" occurred, we have no idea how.

We only know from the Bible how later Israelites understood how they got to be in Canaan. That is interesting in itself, but there is no evidence that their understanding correlates with any of the events mentioned in Exodus.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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21. Comment #138444 by PJG on March 4, 2008 at 10:32 am

Hmmmmm. I don't think this constitutes much of an argument. I am all for finding evidence that debunks the idea of God, "chosen people", miracles, resurrections and all that crap but if theists put forward this sort of thing in favour of any of their beliefs, we'd all laugh at them.

Of course, I think it is MORE likely that Moses was on drugs, suffering from a mental illness or lying (or for that matter, just about any other possible explanation) than that it was actually God talking to him. But that's just me! :o)

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22. Comment #138447 by Bruno on March 4, 2008 at 10:56 am

You know, there was a book that came out a few decades ago called "The Cross and the Mushroom" or possibly "The Mushroom and the Cross". It was written by a guy who was part of the team to first analyze and study the Dead Sea Scrolls. I can't remember his name now. His premise was that religion in general was the result of ancient man experimenting with with natural hallucinogens. The book was dismissed at the time as a total crock -- more of a product of its time (the late 60s) than a work of serious scholarship. Funny how some things have a way of coming back around again.

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23. Comment #138448 by hoops mccann on March 4, 2008 at 10:58 am

Rod-the farmer says:

"When one enters a jewish home, one is sometimes invited to "Have a nagela". This is the original name for a HHHHash brownie. Note the guttural HHHHH. "

I'd like to meet your friends!

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24. Comment #138466 by SilentMike on March 4, 2008 at 11:57 am

Probably not Moses since he didn't exist, but maybe other people in the region from whom these stories came.

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25. Comment #138473 by kintaro_crab on March 4, 2008 at 12:15 pm

This statement is false "The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says." Not all Acacia species have psychedelic properties, neither is there just one type of acacia tree.

I think it is much more highly likely that the Israelites never roamed the desert and Moses never existed, considering there are no records from Egypt of any type of mass Exodus.

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26. Comment #138489 by cyris8400 on March 4, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Bruno,

The guy's name was John Allegro. Although Shanon may be onto something, despite strong archaeological evidence that the Exodus never happened, and although Allegro was formerly a respected Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, Allegro's religious theories of hallucinogens are certifiably crackpot.

He concluded these theories in a manner not unlike how prophecy enthusiasts see predictions of Hitler, 9/11, and the supposed 2012 doomsday in the Bible, I Ching, the Popol Vuh, and the writings of Nostradamus. Allegro saw cryptic homages to phallic mushrooms and other hallucinogens in every religious text he examined.

His story is sort of tragic, because he gravitated toward quackery after a falling out with other biblical scholars, when we said in a radio interview that key events and figures of the New Testament may have been widespread motifs and character archetypes. Because this was shocking news to the average person at the time, and because most of his fellow Dead Sea Scroll scholars were believing Catholics, he was gradually estranged from them and from legitimate research. His daughter wrote a biography of him which you or anyone else can see for more detail.

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27. Comment #138495 by Gmork on March 4, 2008 at 12:44 pm

This reminds me of The Pharmacratic Inquisition, by Jan Irvin and Andrew Rutajit. They have a personal interest in drugs and society. They made an interesting compilation of theories on the origins of religion, stemming purely from astrotheology and shamanism. A lot of it goes into the symbolism.

They have a 2007 version of the DVD free online to watch, though I've only watched the 2004 version (rough with some smaller errors).

2007 version:
http://www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com/main/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=8

2004 version:
http://www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com/main/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=1

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28. Comment #138508 by robotaholic on March 4, 2008 at 1:06 pm

...the people who wrote the bible were on drugs, and the people who read the bible and believe it are on drugs- I could have told you that...

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29. Comment #138531 by Teratornis on March 4, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Who needs drugs from plants to invent a religion when our brains manufacture their own drugs which appear more than up to the job?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

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30. Comment #138571 by jimbob on March 4, 2008 at 2:36 pm

I must have been smoking the same stuff because I remember a vision in which Moses was alive and well, and appearing in ads for the NRA!

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31. Comment #138587 by aquilacane on March 4, 2008 at 3:05 pm

Trippin' on plant dope was a popular hypothesis in my house, even from a very early age. I remember my mother calling Jesus et al nothing more than a bunch of shroom heads trippin' around the dessert. This was over 30 years ago.

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32. Comment #138594 by Lucas on March 4, 2008 at 3:35 pm

Anybody ever heard of the Eleusinian Mysteries? Clearly, many of you have never ingested any serious hallucinogens. And I don't mean some ecstasy (which, by the way, doesn't even count) at a party, or a tab of acid at some Dead show twenty years ago. I mean the super heavy "the sky is made of liquid fire and I can see through time" kind of shit. Well, I have, many, many times, and while I was studying religion in college no less. Let me tell you, such an experience changes you. Unfortunately, most people react stupidly and take their experience to be some sort of evidence of some mystical reality (I'm talking to you, California hippy New Age Buddhists) instead of what it is: proof that your brain, given the right catalysts and conditions, can fabricate visions and sounds that are convincingly real, in fact, even more real than reality. Once you have a mystical vision brought on by our dear Dr. Hoffman, or any of the roots, fungi, etc that shamans have used for millenia, any rational person would be highly suspect of their own perceptions. And many of us then assume, safely I think, that a whole lot of, if not all, religious experiences are rooted in brain chemistry. And psychotropic plants are freaking everywhere, but this doesn't have to be the only explanation. Forty days in the desert will do it, too. Or meditating on a mountain in Tibet while fasting. Sam Harris has made this point, but not as strongly as I hope he will in the future. Neuroscience can help us understand how the brain creates illusions and how one little tweak of a protein can send you straight into crazy-land. Before denouncing this guy's theory, I'd suggest two things: read Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, an anthology, and eat about a quarter pound of psilocybin mushrooms while staring into the aurora and listening to Pink Floyd. If you come back from that without believing in space gods, or without thinking you ARE god, good work. You will have passed the test.

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33. Comment #138704 by notsobad on March 4, 2008 at 5:46 pm

If Moses existed...

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34. Comment #138709 by LorienRyan on March 4, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Funny, but I would probably go with the theory that Moses never existed.

Maybe the bloke who made up the story was trippin'?

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35. Comment #138729 by black wolf on March 4, 2008 at 6:28 pm

I think the most plausible way to explain the stories is that they convoluted different legends into a single epic one to make it more convincing, probrably not even deliberately. It's silly to pretend that any tall tale must be real when we know how even short term witness accounts get distorted in our memory. A charismatic slave here, a tribe leader there, rumours of a slave escape, and all that plus generations to retell the stories. This going on in a superstitious world where nomad tribes meet and exchange their myths.
Even more silly is the way of 'modern' theological thinking, knowing about cultural anthropology, psychology, neurology and then still claiming that all that exists but that your special myth is somehow different. As long as people can claim that there's a supernatural realm that somehow interacts with our minds, souls, spiritual knowledge, and these people don't get laughed out of the house right away but get respect instead, any uneducated irrational person can easily gain authority. We live in a world where religion and conspiracy theories run rampant; they're a political force unrivalled, repeatedly and relentlessly drawing humanity backwards over and over again. The deluded and insane people vote their politicians, and get their respect in return. That must end.

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36. Comment #138766 by Roland_F on March 4, 2008 at 7:09 pm

There were many trials to explain the biblical miracle stories by some natural phenomena.
Crossing their Red Sea at low tide (there is not too much tide difference) on a sand bench by foot, where the following Egypt army used later shortcut trough deeper water.

Then the burning bush as some gas eruption, so it's burning without being consumed.
Walking over water in Lake Galilee, as a flat area with some rocks thrown in the night before to appear like standing on the water.
Washing the dust encrusted eyes of people from the desert so that they can see again.
And so on, I think this entire attempt is in vain, e.g. barking up the wrong tree.

It is possible that also the prophets of Yahweh took drugs to get their revelations from God like so many shamans and other medicine mans and priests do. But this is of course no proving that the biblical fairy tales are true.

The global flood is a Babylonian myth merged into the Pentateuch (Torah) but haven't left any traces of evidence in sediments, ice shelf's, no traces in archeological records and even no disruption of history records in neighboring countries.

There are no records in Egypt about an exodus, about a drowning army, no archeological traces of an entire nation camping 40 years in the Sinai desert, no traces of the 3000 slaughtered followers after dancing around the golden calf.
Jericho had no walls to crumble down during they alleged siege 1200-1100 BC, the next destroyed city with the help of mighty Yahweh was not big like Babylon but just a small nomadic encampment with max. 5 families living there and even there no traces of ancient fight is found.
Kings with which Abraham allegedly fought wars never existed during this time, and so on and on.

The virgin birth of Jesus, all his miracles like walking on water, the resurrection after 3 days, including the attributes 'the light' 'the way' 'the truth' can be found in Egypt 2000 BC as Horus son of virgin Isis myth. So even this NT is mainly the invention from Saul/Paul.

In the end the Bible is more like the Hansel and Gretel, Frog King, Sleeping beauty, Snow-white and the 7 Dwarfs and all these nice stories.

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37. Comment #138851 by Big City on March 4, 2008 at 10:23 pm

Lucas said:

Let me tell you, such an experience changes you. Unfortunately, most people react stupidly and take their experience to be some sort of evidence of some mystical reality...

Fact. If you do salvia, you will immediately believe in some sort of transcendent Gaia bullshit. Our brains aren't meant to think like that.
Go to Youtube and search for 'salvia' to see what it does.
But don't do salvia. Seriously. Do mushrooms or acid or something.

This also reminds me of Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

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38. Comment #139019 by Wosret on March 5, 2008 at 3:14 am

Man, if I lived at a time without video games and the computer, I'd be stoned constantly on something. A field soon becomes alive with all sorts of crap.

If I was an ancient guy that didn't know that my senses don't always give me an accurate representation of reality, then I might also conclude they merely allow me to see things that are normally not visible to me.

Though Exodus never took place in any sense, there is absolutely no evidence that the jews ever spent any time in the desert, or were enslaved by the egyptians, while there is plenty that they weren't.

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39. Comment #139169 by Goodwithwood on March 5, 2008 at 8:50 am

Where can I get some of that shit?

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40. Comment #139180 by dj2baduk on March 5, 2008 at 9:00 am

This guy is called a researcher!? I may have missed something but the way I read it, the only 'research' he did was to personally use psychotropic plants.

Hell - I'm going to start calling myself an Atheist Researcher then because I've experimented with hallucinagens and other substances and I can tell you, I came up with some pretty fantastic ideas while I was at it. Can't remember much detail unfortunately but I can definitely see why someone would go through that and think up a religion!

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41. Comment #139266 by Colwyn Abernathy on March 5, 2008 at 12:32 pm

"I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," he says.

And I spoke with the goddess while tripping face on psilocybin. Cuz I was predisposed to such an experience, that's what I got. It wuz kewl... ;)

"Y'all get the impression the walls are breathin'?
I do, Mom."
-Bill Hicks

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42. Comment #139267 by Colwyn Abernathy on March 5, 2008 at 12:37 pm

So Moses was off his tits on hallucinogenics......always said religion was drug induced

Just picturing him now at a rave with his glowsticks in hand smashed on E's ha ha ha

You asked for it....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbPKhAwX004

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43. Comment #139306 by DamnDirtyApe on March 5, 2008 at 2:44 pm

I recommend the movie 'Human Traffic' folks... They reach a state of enlightenment by combining a vast quantity of drugs with a discussion of the Star Wars Trilogy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188674/

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44. Comment #139310 by perkyjay on March 5, 2008 at 2:53 pm

This is very amusing - since I embraced atheism 65 years ago, I've told everyone who would listen that I thought Moses forgot his manic-depressive medication on the day he went up Mt.Sinai. Guess I'll have to change my story, in the light of this new "revelation".

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45. Comment #139318 by Lucas on March 5, 2008 at 3:09 pm

Big City mentioned Julian Jaynes. Indeed, anybody who is confused about why people think they hear voices, read this book. I read it just in time to explain much of what I experienced while tripping. Basically, one part of your brain has an idea, and in the process of that information being transferred to the other part of your brain, the signal gets confused and the receiving end interprets the idea as having come from outside the self. You have a "revelation" and it sounds like a voice speaking inside your head. Jaynes thinks that primitive ape and human brains worked like this, and that we've slowly evolved to be unicameral. I've always wondered if this might not explain the difference between believers and non-believers - believers brains are less developed.

Colwyn mentioned Bill Hicks. He did an act where he explained human intelligence by imitating a monkey who finds some mushrooms on a cowpie, eats them, and learns to laugh. Hit the nail right on the head there, Bill. Also, the song Third Eye by Tool starts with a Bill Hicks quote and seems to be about a heavy trip. The song (and a space heater) calmed me down significantly the time I actually, as far as I could tell, jumped into another dimension that looked kind of like the dimensions Dr. Strange goes to as drawn by Steve Ditko. "And Dr. Strange is always changing size" - Pink Floyd, Cymbaline

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46. Comment #139478 by ericross on March 6, 2008 at 12:31 am

I think that most of the commentors on this article are being too nice. This is a good example of what I talked about in my most recent blog post -- the "unctuous and stupefying nonsense" (to quote Sam Harris) that moderates are apt to produce when attempting to harmonize science and religion.

I am dumber for having read this article.

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47. Comment #139663 by Wrought on March 6, 2008 at 11:27 am

I read in a book called "1000" that in the year of the title people in England ate hay until the food harvest came in, it had a mould (or somesuch, I ain't a biologist) on it and it had properties like LSD, so most of the population was on acid for a month or two. The result... witch-burnings? I dunno, drugs and religion go hand in hand. God knows what they put in those communion cups (not literally, of course).

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48. Comment #139904 by Goodwithwood on March 6, 2008 at 4:54 pm

Wrought

LSD occurs naturally in a mould that grows on RYE bread.

GWW

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49. Comment #139906 by black wolf on March 6, 2008 at 4:58 pm

There was a study a while ago about how addictive incense really is. The amounts they spread in churches during mass can cause a light addiction.

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50. Comment #139950 by Big City on March 6, 2008 at 7:36 pm

Wrought sez:

...so most of the population was on acid for a month or two.

I think I've heard about that. Ergot, wasn't it? I read that it was a common occurrence for people to go dancing and spinning in the street.

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