50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion (7 page)

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Authors: Daniele Bolelli

BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
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So what's the mystery that Wasson tried to solve? Over the centuries, the secret to Soma's preparation and botanic identity was lost. Part of the problem had to do with the fact that the Soma plant only grew at high altitudes. So, supplies were limited particularly as Hinduism expanded south into India. But some scholars suggest another reason for the disappearance of Soma. It seems that too many people were more interested in the “high” offered by the plant than in its sacred properties, so some priests decided
to let knowledge of the plant's preparation fade away and be forgotten rather than being misused.
 
Thousands of years later, believers and scholars alike could do little but make educated guesses about what this most important plant/drink/god was. And this is where Gordon Wasson enters the story. Pouring over all the references to Soma found in ancient Hindu texts, Wasson used his botanic expertise trying to gain clues to Soma's identity. In perfect detective fashion, he gathered up all the evidence to come up with a likely “suspect.” Piecing together the puzzle, Wasson began to think Soma might have been a hallucinogenic mushroom. Soma, after all, seemed to produce a psychedelic effect. Plus, its description included stems and caps, but no seeds, flowers, fruits, roots or any of the other features normally associated with plants. But the one piece of evidence that convinced Wasson was … well … just disgusting.
 
Apparently, Soma could produce some nasty side effects including heavy nausea. The only way to avoid this was to filter it three times—the last one of these filters being a “human filter.” Puzzled by what this could mean, Wasson remembered a story about Siberian shamans using the highly hallucinogenic mushroom
Amanita muscaria
. In order to avoid side effects, these guys apparently would drink the urine of someone who had eaten the mushrooms, since the urine was still hallucinogenic but didn't cause any of the side effects:
exactly the same as some Hindu priests apparently did with Soma. So, there you have it, piss-drinking, druggie priests shaped early Hinduism.
16 STEALING IN THE NAME OF GOD
 
Just about every religion teaches that it is universally wrong to steal from your neighbor … except if you do this in the name of God, in which case stealing on a massive scale is not a sin but a glorious feat of religious piety. Even though it is true that not all religions feel this way, this piece of kleptomaniac theology is particularly popular in Western faiths. All the passages in Jewish scriptures prohibiting theft, in fact, clash head on with the many, many references to God giving the thumb up to the taking of wealth and land from non-monotheistic peoples. We go from the tales of Exodus when Moses's boys fled Egypt, but not before stealing everything that wasn't nailed to a wall, to the wars of extermination against those who dared to live on what Jewish tribes believed should be their Promised Land. Truth be told, for most of the following 3,000 years Jews didn't have the power to act on this idea, but Christianity and Islam gladly borrowed this concept and ran with it.
 
In the 1400s, for example, the pope channeled Jesus's message to love your enemies by … granting Iberian monarchs full permission to “invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other
unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms … and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.” Stealing the pagans’ lands, wealth and their very freedom apparently was not considered a violation of “Thou Shall Not Steal.” God had obviously meant “Thou Shall Not Steal From Other Believers.” Unbelievers were fair game.
 
Inspired by this idea, Spanish conquistadors hacking and slashing their way through the Americas justified the slaughter of American Indians by arguing that they had brought it upon themselves. After all, the Jesus-loving Spaniards had read to them a proclamation—the
Requerimiento
—asking them to acknowledge the Catholic Church as ruler of the world, and accept Spanish rule and missionaries. If they stubbornly refused the Church to be their new boss, then they clearly deserved being killed, enslaved and dispossessed of their lands. To put it simply, the Spaniards established a principle that would later be enthusiastically picked up by waves of other European colonists: non-Christians had no title to the territories they lived on, since it was a right and a duty for Christians to constantly expand the kingdom of God all over the earth. Endorsed in the 1800s even by the American Supreme Court under the name of “doctrine of discovery,” this notion gave free license to the colonization of all lands inhabited by non-Christians.
 
It may appear odd that this brand of Christian morality held that stealing an apple from a store was a mortal sin, but stealing entire continents from their legitimate owners was a religious calling.
 
Never mind that this belief seems more fitting for the characters from
Grand Theft Auto
than for pious religious people. Once the debate was framed as a competition for real estate between God and the devil, then stealing was no longer stealing. It was an act of devotion to God. When told that any land that is not in the hands of God's people is in the hands of the devil, what's a good Christian to do? This same concept of Christian entitlement to take the lands of inferior people was still popular in the 1800s under the name of “Manifest Destiny.” By enlisting Jesus as an accomplice, Christian colonists could actually feel good about the takeover of other peoples’ land and property. This—in a nutshell—is how Christianity provided the theory for the stealing of the American continent.
 
So many Christian examples may have given the impression that Christians were unique in this effort, but this is far from true. Muslim states played the same game with equal skill. Muhammad regularly advocated the pillaging of the enemies of Islam. And violent conquest and forced conversions have been the main dishes served throughout history by Muslim armies wherever they have set foot. As it turns out, it is not a coincidence if Christianity and Islam are the most practiced religions in the world. Conquest (which is a fancy name for armed robbery on a large scale) is the most powerful tool for spreading one's religion. And no one has played this game as successfully as members of these faiths.
17 ORGIES FOR JESUS
 
What if Christian theology dismissed the virgin birth and other miracles as fairy tales? What if your pastor/priest told you to flush the Ten Commandments down the toilet and instead live life to the fullest? What if Sunday service at your local church consisted in a juicy orgy? All of this could have happened had Carpocrates had his way.
 
Carpo
…who? The lead character in our story was the leader of a second century Christian community based in the Greek islands. Back in those days, early Christians couldn't agree on just about anything. Official Christian doctrine
hadn't been fully established yet, so an extremely wide range of opinions and teachings fell under the label of “Christianity.” The only thing they had in common was that they all thought Jesus was a cool guy. Other than that, everything else was up for debate since they couldn't even agree on which books should become official scriptures. Some Christians believed their religion was to remain exclusively for Jewish people. Others wanted to open it to all ethnicities. Some believed Jesus and God were one. Others were far from sold about this. Some were strict ascetics. Others enjoyed a very sensual life. Some promoted women as leaders within their groups. Others felt women were good to cook dinner and make babies, but religious leaders? Ha!
 
In the midst of this very chaotic beginning, Carpocrates emerged as a particularly charismatic preacher, who soon attracted enough of a following as to give birth to his own branch of Christianity. His ideas were just a tad on the wild side. Jesus—Carpocrates argued—was as human as anyone else. He was a visionary whose brilliance and wisdom put him in touch with God, but was not God himself. This didn't diminish Jesus's status in Carpocrates's eyes, since it set him up as a model of behavior that regular human beings could hope to emulate. The whole story of the virgin birth made Carpocrates laugh. In his view, good old Jesus was conceived in the old fashioned way: through sweaty sex. The depth of Jesus's wisdom was enough for Carpocrates to admire and love him, so he felt no need for any supernatural special effects.
Since this beginning was apparently not controversial enough, Carpocrates promptly taught his followers to reject Mosaic Law as well as the prevailing morality of his times as mere human opinions, not divine commandments. A goodie-goodie morality was according to Carpocrates nothing but a cage built by those who were too scared by life's intensity. The soul could only achieve freedom and fulfillment by experiencing all of life, without discriminating too much. Only in this way, it would free itself from the cycle of reincarnation …
 
Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that? Carpocrates's followers—like the members of many other early Christian sects—fully believed in reincarnation. And just like several tantric schools found in the history of both Hinduism and Buddhism, they also believed that human beings should explore every emotion without holding back. Sensual pleasure in their eyes was not any less sacred than the most spiritual practices, so good food, sex and every other earthly joy was embraced as a stepping stone toward liberation.
 
This determination to live life to the fullest went hand in hand with another radical notion. Carp considered differences in wealth and social class as unnatural perversions. Since everyone is born naked and equal in front of God, human attempts to gain status at the expense of others were misguided and ultimately against God's plan. The cure for the very human tendency toward ego aggrandizing was to discourage the evil of private property. Instead,
everything—from material possessions to sexual partners—was to be held in common. Coupled with Carp's insistence on indulging in sensual pleasures, this idea led his followers to regularly stage sexual orgies as part of their spiritual practices … which makes you wonder: just how different would the world be had mainstream forms of Christianity decided to embrace Carpocrates rather than stern moralists like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine? I think it's a safe bet that church attendance would be much higher.
18 BEING A JEWISH MESSIAH IS NOT AS FUN AS ADVERTISED
 
Every so often throughout the history of Judaism somebody will steal the spotlight by claiming to be the redeemer that Jewish people have been waiting for. Typically, he gains scores of followers but before long he also meets an early, bloody death. In the course of many centuries, dozens of people have rushed with masochistic enthusiasm to fill the shoes of the expected Messiah. Maybe they really believed they were on a mission from God. Or maybe they just liked the attention. In either case, the point is that there has never been a shortage of volunteers for the job.
 
Despite dying in the usual gruesome fashion (for the joy of Mel Gibson and S & M fans everywhere), Jesus clearly won the contest for the most famous
among the contenders for the Messiah title. What few people know, however, is that Jesus had a serious challenge in the 1600s—a man who set Jewish messianic expectations on fire and looked like he had all the cards to start another new religion that could give Christianity a run for its money. The reason why he didn't is because … well, let's not rush to the end of our story yet.
 
The man was Sabbatai Zevi, a Kabbalah enthusiast who grew up in the area of modern day Turkey under the shadow of the Ottoman Empire. Among both Christians and Jews, many were those looking for signs of a coming Messiah ushering humanity into a new age and/or the end of the world. After battling for much of his early life some serious manic-depressive tendencies, Sabbatai promptly stepped up to the messianic plate ready to claim the title. In case his proclaiming he was the Messiah wasn't radical enough, Sabbatai also scandalized many fellow Jews by breaking traditional customs by eating nonkosher food and speaking the forbidden name of God. While he was at it, he also took as a wife a beautiful former hooker who in infancy had survived the massacre of Jews in Poland, and who believed she was destined to marry the Messiah. According to his followers (which at the beginning weren't that many), these violations were signs that the old laws no longer applied now that the Messiah had arrived. Many of the higher ups in the Jewish religious hierarchy didn't buy it and opposed him fiercely (which is exactly the same way in which the Jewish religious elite had reacted to Jesus).

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