Moses: The original trippin' hippie

For those of you who thought that Moses was speaking to God on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments, Israeli researcher Benny Shanon has some news for you: Moses was trippin', dude.

That whole burning bush thing was really just one awesome psychedelic hallucination.

And y'all thought Moses just looked like the original hippie. Turns out he was the Real Deal.

This novel theory was crafted by Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at Hebrew University, who appears to be the Israel's Terence McKenna, the late ethno-botanist who took a lot of drugs and then came up with his unique "Stoned Ape" theory of evolution. (In short, McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory is that monkeys took psychedelic mushrooms that propelled evolution forward.)

McKenna never had any evidence to support his "Stoned Ape" theory. And Shanon admits that he has no evidence to support his novel "Stoned Moses" claim either.

"I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, Shanon told Haaretz. However, he said, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness."

Not surprisingly, like McKenna was, Shanon is a regular user of Ayahuasca, an hallucinogenic plant from South America used by shamans and various Truth-Seekers.

But where exactly did Moses get his drugs in the desolate Sinai? Were there nomadic drug dealers making their living off selling desert drug trips to wandering Jews?

Shanon suspects that Moses used either wild rue, an hallucinogenic plant used by the Bedouin in the Sinai, or acacia, the wood used to make the Arc of the Covenant.

Shanon's theory appears in "Time and Mind," a journal that McKenna also wrote for in his time.

In one classic description of a drug trip apparently carried by the journal, McKenna describes it as "a Bugs Bunny cartoon gone mad."

UPDATE: An observant reader notes that this "Time and Mind" journal is a new incarnation and not the one McKenna wrote for. You can find Shanon's whole "Stoned Moses" treatise (titled: "Biblical Entheogens: A Speculative Hypothesis") here.

UPDATE II: Scandal in the "Stoned Moses" world is brewing.

Did Shanon steal the "Stoned Moses" theory from the Orthodox Anarchist?

That's what the Orthodox Anarchist, AKA Daniel Sieradski says. The OA points to a post he wrote in 2005 in which he laid out the same theory.

"My general thesis," he wrote back then, "is that Shamanistic ritual used to be an integral part of the ancient Jewish tradition, as is consistent with most religious sects historically. It is my belief that the consumption of entheogens (”God awakening” plants and fungii) — which would have been an entirely natural occurrence for prehistoric man and his predecessors — is responsible for the evolution of human consciousness, as well as man’s religious impulse.'

Sieradski says that he introduced Shanon to the idea when he met him at an Ayuhasca ritual back in 2005. The OA says he wouldn't mind a few props, but says he's not so much mad as bitter...

Comments

[Deane]

Dion wrote:
Shanon's theory appears in "Time and Mind," a journal that McKenna also wrote for in his time

Deane
Actually, the March 2008 issue of "Time and Mind" is the first issue of this journal. The journal has a dubious pedigree, as I have explained here.

[Deane]

That is, here: http://merkavah-vision.blogspot.com/2008/03/moses-was-on-drugs-highly-probable.html

[TIM STONE, DALEVILLE, AL 36322]

Hey, and here I always thought that being in the desert for forty days Moses was just simply hallucinating, but illegal drugs?
And what is this big deal about the forty days? Fortydays in the desert? Forty days and nights for the great floods of Noah, and again forty days of meditation by Mohammed in the cave before his prophecy, when it took God only six days to create the heavens and the earth? DO I see a pattern here? And by the way, if it had been the Muslims or some other group of people at that time living in the desert and writing their own book,who else they would have called the God's chosen people but themselves, and to whom that God would have given the land of Israel? Why did he not send his people to just up the road and to a lot prettier place, Lebenon