What you’ve posted is very interesting. I agree that this shows that Egyptian priests used drugs that altered their sense of reality. The issue is when they did that. I mean it is not clear if this was recreational for them, something they did in their free time, or if they did them in preparation for entering the temple shrine or naos. Lists I have read from Eaton (2013) describing preparation for the shrine do not include smoking joints or snorting cocaine (perhaps this wasn’t written down, but I’m going off what I have).
If I walk into the shrine high, and I think I see the statue-god moving, hear it speaking, etc. I may believe that sincerely. I concede that point. However, stories about statue-gods sometimes include statues performing actions that a hallucination could not accomplish. This includes not only eating and drinking, but also picking up tablets, lifting scepters, etc. This leads me to believe hallucinations are not being described.
Finally, I don’t want to be too adamant on this point but I’m skeptical about cannabis being described as a hallucinogens. I rarely hallucinate on pot, and the hallucinations are nothing like hallucinations I’ve had from LSD or mushrooms. I’ve never hallucinated on cocaine.
There is evidence that the beer given to the Egyptians in payment for their work was also hallucenogenic. A fungus of some sort. I read the article someplace and am looking for it now.
Nice Article…
I only know this stuff becaudse of my friend. He asserts that human consciousness, the ability to think and reason are a product of drug use. (That’s Archeology for you.) I also have a degree in Sociology and one in Psychology. I think the archeological stuff is fascinating but I don’t study it. I am waiting to hear from him. I believe he will have a lot to say on the matter.
@Cognostic I find that interesting, but I would only point out that Egyptian priests drank the statue’s beer and wine after the ceremonies, not during it. Warnings from the temple of Horus at Edfu survive to this effect (“Do not partake of the offerings until Horus is satisfied”).
As far as you know… The evidence I am aware of is that the religious rituals involved the consumption of hallucenogens and the burning of hallucenongenic substances. (Like the article asserts… difficult to demonstrate these things… debates are, in fact, raging. ) My assertion would be that “Making an assertion in either direction is an error.”
That is surely false. I really don’t think there is such a thing as an action that can’t be (seemingly) accomplished by hallucination. Over and over again you seem to appeal to this ludicrous notion.
@David_Killens Those are legitimate questions. Could theatrics have been involved? Perhaps, but I found no evidence of that. The text in question claims a statue of Amun-Ra walked across the room, saluted violently, and then picked up a tablet. I doubt this would have been possible to accomplish theatrically at the time.
My position is that hallucinations can trick you into believing these things happened. We’ve gone over this a few times now and I’m pretty sure you are aware of this. Yet you continue to fall back to this straw-man version. Why do you keep doing this to the other posters (I’m not the only user you’ve done this too)?
@Nyarlathotep t’s not a strawman. It’s a serious problem with your argument that hallucinations explain the texts in question. You keep reiterating it, so I continue to raise the objection. Your response to my position amounts to, “Well, they thought they saw the tablet being picked up…” I do not believe hallucinations are this catch all explanation like you do. What can hallucinations not do in your opinion?
We can move on to something else but we’ve been talking about hallucinations again today in this thread.
@Nyarlathotep The point stands that hallucinations have limits and the limits are they cannot meaningfully affect material reality, they only appear to. If the story about Amun-Ra lifting up a tablet is to be taken at face value, as I read it, a hallucination could not accomplish that. You’ll come back with, “Well, they were hallucinating so they thought they saw that…” and I’ll come back with, “The texts don’t appear to describe hallucinations because x y and z,” and we’ll go in circles from here.
You get very moralizing with me. I don’t appreciate that. “Disturbing,” “ludicrous,” yet I don’t use those words with you.
I don’t think Nyarl or anyone else is making the claim that hallucinations can have a physical effects that matches what the recipient is seeing.
Posters are pointing out that an hallucination can involve pretty much anything. Falsifying the claim it was real after the fact is pretty much impossible I’d have thought. Though I’d argue that Occam’s razor applies.
There is a text which hints at the use of theatrics in the Neo-Assyrian empire called “Initiation into the Secrets of Ishtar of Heaven.” A worshipper is allowed into a chapel-shrine and permitted to feed a statue, which then spoke to them for Ishtar. I think how priests pulled that off is they had a pipe built into the statue so the priest could put food and drink into its “mouth” and the food and drink would vanish. Someone would then use that same pipe to speak for the statue.
On your point of hiding the theatrics, the text does not actually say anything about the statue feeding or speaking, which is clever. it hints that this will happen but does not record it.
That is possible. The food appears to have been real, however, because other texts or wall inscriptions divide it among the priests. A few statues that were used in these rituals also survive (one is shown in Teeter (2007) I believe)
“or” alternatively you could come to the idea and the unproven opinion that what you read is a work of fiction and leave it at that.
What if there were no hallucinations?
What if some guy pulled it out of his ass and wrote it?
There’s always those thoughts to consider. We can’t prove any of it. But I’d rather just sit on the idea that all of religion and deities are just works of fiction until someone can prove that it exists with powerful evidence. That’s just me though.
