It is a culture that has been misinterpreted. Not because it is 'evil' or wrong, but because it is generaly apolitical and amoral, unashamedly artistic, experimental, undogmatic, intellectual and oddly evolutionary. It is a sub-culture that is forming a question that 'reality' alone cannot answer."

Simon Dwyer Rapid Eye 1 Introduction

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For centuries, people believed the world was flat because society told them so. Then society changed its mind and told everyone that we actually lived on a giant football. Dribbling a fag off your lip was considered hip and healthy in the fifties, then it became a global killer. Robert Maxwell was branded a saint, a hero of our nation, before disappearing into the ocean with millions of pounds worth of other people's pensions. Paul Weller was once considered talented. Such half-truths were perpetuatued ad infinitum as there was never any wide-spread recourse to alternative points of view.

And so to the internet - now claimed to be the last true remaining sanctuary of absolute free speech. Unlike coventional media, you will rarely find only one side to any story. Such altruistic benevolence on the part of the web means that rather than having one opinion about something, we now have several. It does, however, mean that every warped and perverted fantasy that breeds in the murky canals of your brain can now corroborated by the power of the written word. The truth is out there? Well, that depends which truth we are looking for.

Take Diana for instance. It was only a matter of minutes before newsgroup threads and web sites were infected with meandering, alternative visions of that fateful night in Paris. One site seems to favour the premeditated murder option. It asks questions such as why the alleged "first persons on the scene" spoke in a different American accent depending on which TV station you were watching. Why was Di not taken to the nearby hospital and was instead driven halfway across town? They suggest that the driver, rather than being drunk, was actually drugged and that there was a decoy vehicle hiding in the tunnel that was deliberately rammed into the Fayed's precious Merc. Ridiculous perhaps, but given Mohammed's alleged connections with the global arms trade and the absurd, cartoon lifestyle of the Windsors, anything may well be possible. It was equally disorientating to see one contributor, Catherine, ask the question, "who are the editors of the site? why are you doing this? how do I know you're not the CIA?" Naturally, it's not the CIA editing the site, rather it's Chelsea Clinton's Global Underground Militia Movement. Of course.

I am fairly sure that it won't be long before Louise Woodward conspiracies abound on the web (like the suggestion that the family could only claim their 1.5 million dollar medical insurance if Woodward was found guilty...), but whilst our hacks are choked with toffee-apple outrage, the American press are - naturally - defending their own corner in a show of malevolence that would never find its way into our shop-soiled tabloids . One columnist from the Boston Globe's web site is in no doubt about the guilty parties and spits virtriol at the au-pair and her "million dollar defence team". "This is defense by distraction," Mrs McNamara hisses, "in truth, they made this trial about everyone but their dry-eyed, moon faced client." Notice her emphatic use of the word "truth" - her version is gospel, naturally.

Nannies , thrust so far into the US limelight, now seem to be the favoured choice of assailant for the latest Kurt Cobain murder theory. There was a time when the web was happy to perpetuate the notion that the FBI murdered Cobain in an effort to maintain the laid-back, non-revolutionary stance of Grunge (which they had obviously created) and its position as the white faced antithesis to hip-hop. However, time moves on and the latest "truth" would have us belive that Courtney Love actually plotted with live-in nanny Michael Dewitt to bump off the People's Poet, for reasons that seem to utterly disintegrate under close scrunity.

The same must be said for the "Project Dumbo" web site. Herein we find the allegation that in 1983 that Americans successfully combined the DNA of elephants with that of a bat and Skippy the Flying Elephant was born. Unfortunately, the project had to terminated when Skippy and his pals flew outside of the control area and had to be gunned down before Mr & Mrs America clapped their eyes on them. A tragic tale indeed. Seekers of more believable evidence should check out the Fake Moon Landing site - one theory that actually holds together well under achingly intense scientific study.

Illuminatus author and all-round genius, Robert Anton Wilson, has gathered together a fine collection of further alternative truths in his Black Ops site, and he attempts to aim at a few of the larger targets. The holocaust, AIDS, the War on Some Drugs, Vietnam - it's all there. Other sources of occutural disinformation that you should hurry your browser along to are SchNEWS, Urban75, Squall and the anti-drug hysteria oasis that is Hyperreal.

And just in case you fell for the world-wide conspiracy that Pop Tarts are made exclusively for ingestion, you should certainly consider the idea that underneath that suger-coated exterior beats the heart of a killing machine - for detailed construction plans, check out the Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow Torch site.

True or false? - you decide.

[sb.nov97]

| books |

The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross
by John Allegro (pub 1970)

In Data Base issue 2, we touched on Qabalistic magician Z'ev's identification of the Great Beast 666 (from the book of revelations) with Soma and the hallucinogenic mushroom . Deeper into the same theological territory is John Allegro's 1970 book " The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross".

Allegro proposes that not just certain sections but the whole of Christian doctrine is a coded guide to an ancient fertility cult and their mushroom rituals. The New Testament especially , as it was written at a time of occupation, contains the wisdom of the ancient pagan cult, disguised as a series of parables about the character of Christ.

Through investigation of the roots of the Semitic, Greek and Egyptian languages, in the Mother tongue of ancient Babalonian and Sumerian, Allegro traces the true meaning of the scriptures. Allegorical tales from Old and New Testaments are examined and reinterpreted in the light of this evidence. The roots of the 'shroom worship go back to the earliest religious ideas; the divine nature of fertility, the female principle of the "mother "earth and the male principle of the sky/rain god. The cycles of crops were important not just as food for survival but as a symbol for the human reproductive process. The continuation of the species was of prime importance, and linked with the "mystical" aspect of the sexual experience, the fertility of the planet and its inhabitants was the main religious focus. As far as the early Sumerian's were concerned the rain represented the sperm of the great masculine sky god, falling onto, and fertilising the womb of the mother earth goddess. Some essence of the godsperm was contained in all plants, but it was strongest in the Hallucinogenic plants.

The mushroom was a mystery to the Ancients as they did not understand the process of spores which allow fungal reproduction. The plant had no seed, so appeared to have some mystical place in the natural cycle. This explains the still popular concept of the Virgin Birth, i.e. the Son of God brought to earth without the seed. The hallucinogenic properties of the plant were said to be due to its concentration of the essence of godsperm. It also bore a physical resemblance through its life, first torn from the womb (the first stage of the plant enclosing and containing a minute version of the adult plant), and then the erect penis (I imagine the majority of you will see the connection). As R.G. Fraser points out in "The Golden Bough" there has always been an assumption of some magical sympathy between natural elements which have a physical similarity. Complex rituals surrounded the cultivation and harvest of the mushroom, the root of many Judeo/Christian ceremonies.

Allegro even proposes that the construction of churches is intended to represent the female principle. The entrance as the entrance to the vagina and the hymen, the hall as the vagina itself and the Inner Sanctum as the uterus, and the male priest as the symbol of godsperm ensuring the fertility of the holy place. On the subject of the Sumerian/Babalonian languages the book goes into detail, (you just have to trust that he's not having us all on).

Allegro was one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it is from these documents he prepared his theory. As an example: "Both the Semitic and Greek words for "christ" , the "anointed one", came from sumerian terms for semen or resinous sap ...Semitic furthermore combines both sumerian words into a new root sh-m-sh "serve" (tables, as a steward: the temple, as a priest: the heavenly throne, as an angel: the genitals ,as a penis or vulva. The noun means a steward, priest, angel or prostitute. An independently derived form very early on came to be used for the greatest 'copulator' of them all the Sun, Hebrew Shemesh, whose fiery glans was every evening plunged into the open vulva of the earth, and every morning, "came forth like a bridegroom from his marriage chamber" (Ps. 19:5).

Allegro's book was attacked by the Establishment but his scholastic expertise could not be doubted. While it may not be light reading, " The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" will be of great interest to anyone who wonders about the secrets behind Christianity.

[ab.autumn94]