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The Bible opens with Genesis, the story of human origins. Famously, the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil plays a central role in that story. Naturally occurring psychedelics, substances known to elicit intuitive religious knowledge, cannot help but come to mind upon reading this description. Entheogenic compounds that evoke the divine within and reveal death to be an illusion also fit neatly with the effects of the fruit as described by the snake that tempted Eve. “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods.” Aldous Huxley’s reference to the doors of perception being cleansed by psychedelics also fits nicely with the claim that “your eyes shall be opened” if these forbidden fruits are consumed. AMANITA MUSCARIA Like many churches, the Chapel of Plaincourault in France contains a fresco depicting the moment Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. However, what is special about this painting is the tree of knowledge from which the fruit came – it looks like a giant mushroom. Not just any mushroom, the psychoactive Amanita muscaria or “fly agaric” mushroom, complete with the red cap and white spots routinely depicted in fairytales. In the middle of the 20th century, this sparked a heated debate between two of the leading experts on the relationship between psychedelics and religion. On one side was R. Gordon Wasson, the ethnomycologist who had first brought psilocybin mushrooms to the West and argued that the sacrament of the ancient Hindus had been Amanita muscaria. Perhaps surprisingly, Wasson doubted that the tree represented a mushroom, and he leaned on the expertise of art historians to back him up. The matter was never solved and is still debated to this day. DID THE ISRAELITES CONSUME ERGOT WHILE WANDERING IN THE DESERT? In the book of Exodus, while wandering in the desert after fleeing slavery in Egypt, God sends the Israelites “manna from heaven”. Manna is described as an edible substance that appears on the ground overnight. It is described as looking like a white frost, each piece the size of coriander seed and tasting of wafers made of honey. It was boiled, ground, and baked before being eaten. What could this divine food have been? Mushrooms are known to emerge suddenly overnight following periods of rain, but no mushroom matches the description of manna found in Exodus. Some have argued it may have been ergot, the fungus from which LSD is derived. Ergot also contains LSA, the same psychedelic chemical found in morning glory seeds. However, while this food is clearly divine in origin, it is not reported to produce psychoactive effects. The true identity of manna remains a mystery. DID THE SMOKE FROM THE BURNING BUSH CONTAIN DMT? Is it possible that the visionary states in the Bible, like Moses’s vision of the burning bush, were produced by DMT? The acacia tree, which contains DMT, was an important plant to the ancient Israelites. The Hebrew Bible states that the vessel that contained the ten commandments was made of acacia. Details like this are not included by chance. The acacia tree very likely represented something important. Was its significance a result of the DMT it contained? Some suggest that the burning bush itself was an acacia tree and that Moses’ vision was produced by the psychoactive effects of the DMT. It seems unlikely that one would have a psychedelic vision when exposed to this kind of smoke; however, dying from smoke inhibition is more probable. DID MOSES DRINK A MIDDLE-EASTERN VERSION OF AYAHUASCA? The vision of the burning bush has a deeply psychedelic character. Could DMT have got into Moses’ system through its intentional consumption? The argument that the ancient Israelites knew the psychoactive effects of DMT found in the acacia originates with Professor Benny Shanon. Shanon is a cognitive psychologist, professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has extensive experience drinking ayahuasca. He produced a psychological map of the ayahuasca experience in his book The Antipodes of the Mind. Shanon also wrote an article for The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture called “Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis”. In this paper, he speculates that the ancient Israelites may have known how to brew a psychedelic concoction, much like ayahuasca. AYAHUASCA PHARMACOLOGY Ayahuasca, the drink, is brewed from the DMT-containing leaves of the chacruna shrub (Psychotria viridis) and the bark of the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi). The vine from which the drink gets its name does not actually contain DMT but contains alkaloids that inhibit digestive enzyme activity in our guts called monoamine oxidase (MAO). MAO usually breaks down the DMT before it passes into the bloodstream, but the alkaloids from the ayahuasca vine slow this process, allowing the DMT to reach the brain. AN ANCIENT AYAHUASCA ANALOGUE? The DMT in the acacia tree would not have been enough to get any psychoactive effect from consuming the plant orally. However, Syrian rue (Pergamum harmala) also grows in the Middle East and contains the alkaloids necessary to inhibit MAO and allow the DMT through the gut. Shanon suggests that the ancient Israelites may have brewed these two plants together, making an ayahuasca analog. However, actual evidence for this idea lacks any reference to Syrian rue in the Hebrew Bible. It’s interesting speculation but one for which we have no evidence to believe it actually happened. SYNERGISTIC POTIONS An ayahuasca analog would require the knowledge of the synergistic interactions of different plants. Danny Nemu, a reverend in the ayahuasca church of Santo Daime, has argued that the people of the Hebrew Bible had exactly this kind of knowledge. He suggests that several of the recipes described involve plants whose compounds may have had synergistic psychoactive effects. For example, the high priests would use an incense described in the Talmud of Judaism as containing saffron, spikenard, agarwood, cassia, mastic costus, and cinnamon. Nemu argues that the saffron, spikenard, and agarwood would have had synergistic effects on neurochemistry by activating opioid receptors and altering neuromodulators’ activity. In contrast to reductionist western medicine, traditional medicines around the world have widely used synergistic concoctions. Unfortunately for us, the wisdom of precisely making psychoactive mixtures in precisely the right way is often lost with the passing of time. WAS CANNABIS THE ORIGINAL INCENSE? In 2020, archeologists working on an eighth-century BC shrine at Tel Arad, 35 miles south of Jerusalem, made an incredible discovery. The shrine, which would have been part of the kingdom of Judah, contained two limestone altars in its inner sanctum. On these altars were black marks from where incense had been burnt. The marks on one altar contained traces of frankincense, a substance described as being used as incense in the Bible. The other contained traces of cannabis that had been burnt on top of dried animal dung. It’s one thing to wonder if the burning of cannabis had inspired the incense we’re familiar with today, but this archeo-chemical evidence moves this speculation into the realm of historical fact. DID MOSES MAKE CANNABIS-INFUSED ANOINTING OIL? In Exodus, God gives Moses the recipe for holy anointing oil. It is made with myrrh, cinnamon, and a plant called kaneh-bosm. “Kaneh” means “reed” or “hemp”, while “bosm” means “aromatic” or “fragrant”. Does a particularly famous kind of “fragrant hemp” come to mind? The name kaneh-bosm was sometimes fused in traditional Hebrew, into kannabos or kannabus. This is rather close to the “kannabis” or ancient Greek, from which we get “cannabis”. In “Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible”, author Chris Bennett makes the case for kaneh-bosm being cannabis. Many scholars, however, argue that kaneh-bosm is a plant called calamus. This recipe called for a large amount of kaneh-bosm which, if cannabis, would have been highly psychoactive when applied liberally on the skin. DID JESUS HEAL THE SICK WITH SUPER-CONCENTRATED CANNABIS OIL? “Christ” means the anointed one, and Jesus, along with his disciples, performed healing miracles using anointing oil. Mark 6:13 states that “They cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them”. If the holy anointing oil of the Hebrew Bible did indeed contain cannabis, perhaps Jesus’ healing miracles were performed with chemicals such as THC and CBD. In 2013, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta presented a documentary called “Weed” which included the story of a girl named Charlotte Figi. Charlotte suffered from hundreds of debilitating seizures a week as a result of a disease called Dravet syndrome. The seizures didn’t respond to medication, but she showed a dramatic improvement after taking CBD oil. Epilepsy has been attributed to possession by demons across cultures throughout time. Perhaps the casting out of devils described by Mark was the effect of CBD-infused holy oil helping people suffering from epilepsy. GNOSTIC GOSPELS If the anointing oil is so central to Christianity, why isn’t it widely discussed? In the first several centuries following the life of Jesus, many different Christian sects existed. In 367 AD Saint Athanasius, then the Bishop of Alexandria, decided which texts were to be considered canonical and which were to be excluded. The apocryphal texts, meaning that they belonged to esoteric cults that required initiations into their secret rites, were deemed heretical and were omitted. During the following period of persecution, the followers of these sects hid some of their texts, including those found in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt.