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Old May 1st, 2011 #17
Karl Radl
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Default Is Jan Irvin on Mushrooms?

Is Jan Irvin on Mushrooms?


I have recently acquired the ‘book’; I somewhat object to calling it that as it contains lots of white space and almost 30 pages of pure pictures which seem to be there for no reason other than to be filler, by Jan Irvin called ‘The Holy Mushroom’. (1) It purports to be a ‘critical re-evaluation’ of the Wasson and Allegro controversy over the use and role of hallucinogenic mushrooms; particularly amanita muscaria (or fly-agaric), in ‘Judeo-Christianity’. In reality the book is a somewhat enlightening source reader; with not particularly stimulating or even critical commentary, (2) on that contentious and obviously deeply personal debate over the origins of Christianity. (3)

It unfortunately has little to do with Judaism other than a number of brief mentions of the theory that the (jewish) author of Genesis was out of his mind on; proverbial, magic mushrooms at the time that he dreamt up that weird book which; at the best of times, makes very little sense even in Christian theology which has tried; at least, to rationally explain it, while jews; particularly of a Kabbalistic persuasion, seek to mystify it yet further by punning and allusion, which is something Allegro himself mentions in his path-breaking ‘The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross’. (4)

The book itself is rather unfortunately put together with a rather difficult to read format, which relies heavily on quotation without enough detailed and on-point analysis. Rather Irvin has a nasty habit of not really explaining his points in detail as well as not referring to necessary sources when making counter-assertions.

For example: Irvin tells us that Allegro was of Anglo-French origin (5) and certainly not the Italian jew that Wasson alleges him to have been (one suspects his source is Judith Anne Brown’s brilliant biography of Allegro [she is Allegro’s much loved daughter]), but neglects to tell us on what basis he makes this counter-assertion which is about as useful as Wasson’s un-evidenced claim that Irvin reproduces twice in two different source documents. (6) What Irvin thinks he is proving wrong is beyond me, but it won’t convince anyone with an ounce of criticality that is for sure.

Interestingly Irvin doesn’t follow up on the point that Wasson; to my mind, makes in that Wasson alleges that Allegro was appointed to the Dead Scrolls team because he was a jew. He also claims that the ’£30,000’ that Wasson claimed Allegro was paid is beyond the boundaries of his research, with which claim I take the strongest possible objection as it is obviously of paramount importance to clear Allegro’s name of this apparent slander; which Irvin implies it to have been, but Irvin simply runs away from it for reasons that I find inexplicable and infuriating.

Another strange habit of Irvin’s is his referencing, which seems to suffer from a kind of inferiority complex in that he obsessively uses the ‘et al’ that scholars use to indicate more than two or three authors; preventing needless writing of long lists of names, of a piece of work for more than one author. I have no idea who taught Irvin to do this or whether he decided to do it himself, but it makes the reading experience even worse for it smacks of a dilettante trying to ape a scholar and is decidedly annoying. This proverbial egoistic blimp of unearned scholarly standing probably relates to the publication of Irvin and Hoffman’s article on the Wasson controversy in the Journal of Higher Criticism in 2006, but this is conjecture on my part given Irvin’s obsessive citation of this article in general without re-explaining the details. (7)

Somewhat stranger is the reference which reads ‘Shroom, 2007’ (8) and for which there is no corresponding author listed in the bibliography. Now ‘Shroom’; slang for mushroom, is a rather odd thing to put in as a ‘reference’ so we must presume it is a simple mistake on Irvin’s part, but one does get the picture of just how careless Irvin is if he leaves a reference reading ‘Shroom’ in a book then we can hardly take him particularly seriously.

I think you get the picture: Irvin promises much but his book is really a very damp squib and the only particularly useful part of it is the source documentation that has been reproduced from Wasson and Allegro; which at least shows that Irvin did some research, but I am forced to wonder how Professors Rush, Ruck and Whitehead could praise a book with so many painful issues that should have been ironed out in first draft but have apparently not even been noticed.

This could have been a brilliantly executed piece of work to re-open the debate, but it has turned out to be something that one scrapes off the intellectual boot rather than a deadly boomerang against scholarly convention in support of Allegro’s thesis (which has deep and I would say positive implications for anti-Semitism’s case against jewry).

In short: don’t purchase this book read the Journal of Higher Criticism article instead. It is far more illuminating. (9)


References


(1) Jan Irvin, 2008, ‘The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity’, 1st Edition, Gnostic Media: United States
(2) This is perhaps a slightly harsh criticism as I am a supporter of Allegro’s original interpretation, but I cannot help but find Irvin’s moribund commentary rather annoying at the best of times as it seeks to remove Allegro wholly from blame for the failure of this thesis to gain widespread acceptance, which may have been novel but had Allegro stood up more effectively for it then his opponents; Wasson included, would have not had the field day they did have misinterpreting his work.
(3) Even the idea that their religious belief is the result of drug-induced visions being written down is of course enough to send the overly-religious into proverbial spasms and lead; as it did with Allegro, to nonsensical abuse and invented arguments being thrown at you.
(4) John Allegro, 1970, ‘The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross’, 1st Edition, Hodder & Stoughton: London, pp. 19-28
(5) Irvin, p. 88
(6) Ibid, p. 83; 86
(7) I should add that the article is well-worth reading as it offers a powerful counter-argument to Wasson, which makes ‘The Holy Mushroom’ all the more of an oddity unless Hoffman was the real driver behind the research and writing of the 2006 article while Irvin was more along for the scholarly ride.
(8) Irvin, p. 93
(9) This is available at the following address: http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm [Last Accessed: 17/04/2011]

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...mushrooms.html
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Last edited by Karl Radl; May 1st, 2011 at 09:26 AM.