Gnostic Visions: Uncovering the Greatest Secret of the Ancient World

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Keys to the Spirit World and Classical Visions

Ch 1 Keys to the Spirit World and the Birth of Religion

The Symbolic Revolution

Prehistoric North Africa

Shamanism and Entheogens

Uncovering the Lost Secrets of the Ancient World

Ch 2 Visions and the Hellenistic Mysteries

The Delphic Mysteries

Delphic Priestess

Oracular Procedure

Secrets of the Delphic Oracle Revealed

The Greek Eleusian Mysteries

The Rites and Rituals

The Sacred Drinking Cup

Finding an Answer

Claviceps Paspali

Modern Visions

Ch 3 Mysteries of Pagan Philosophy

Mysteries of Platonic Thought

Philo of Alexandria

Neo Platonic Philosophy

Plotinus

Mind and Soul

Iamblichus

Iamblichus Magic, Nature, and the Keys to the Spirit World

Proclus

Ch 4 The Mysteries of Egypt

The Spirit World in Ancient Egypt

The Egyptian Hermetic Tradition

Hermetism & Gnosticism

Part II: Identifying Gnostic Visions

Ch 5 Gnostic Rituals

The Gnostics

Gnostic Texts

Gnostic Rituals

Sethian Baptism

Valentinian Rituals and the Sacred Marriage

Valentinian Ritual and Enlightenment

Identifying Gnostic Visions

Gnostic Cup of Visions

Ch 6 Biochemical Foundations

Biochemical Foundations

The Near Death Experience and DMT

DMT in Plants

Ayahuasca Vine of the Soul

Ayahuasca the Entheogen

Pharmacological Western Uncovering

Peganum Harmala, Keys to an Ancient Mystery

Ch 7 Zoroaster and Peganum Harmala

Peganum Harmala

Peganum Harmala in Modern Iran

Incense and Intoxicant

Medical Properties

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrian Sacrament

Identification of Zoroastrian Haoma

Zoroastrian Extraction of Peganum Harmala

Sacred Persistence of Peganum Harmala use today

Ch 8 Ayahuasca Analogs in Antiquity

Visionary and Narcotic Plants of Ancient Egypt

Peganum Harmala in Ancient Egypt

Comparative Analysis and Botanical Mixing

Egypt, Healing, Plants, and Magic

Gnosticism, Peganum Harmala and the Mandaeans

Ch 9 Identifying the Gnostic Sacrament

Dieting and Purification

Music

Inner sound

Light

Divine Light

Gnosis of Light

Transformations and Rebirth

Visionary Ascension

Visionary Progression

Gnostic Knowledge & the Experience of Gnosis

Beings of light & Gnostic Entities: Aeons, Archons, and Emanations

Dualism

Ch 10 Early Christian History & the fall of Gnosticism

Birth of Christianity

Diversity of Early Christianity

Early Christian Conflict

Christian Persecution

Two churches

Extraction of Gnostic Rituals

The Destruction of Gnosticism

Part III: Other Visions and a New World

Ch 11 Mysteries of Dark Age Magic

The Mandrake and Others

Mushrooms and the Faerie

European Age of Rebirth and Discovery

Ch 12 Shamanism and the New World

Celib Tree

San Pedro Cacti

The Morning Glory

Mushrooms

Salvia Divinorum

Datura and Brugmansia

Amanita Mascara or Fly Agaric Mushrooms

Mescal seeds

Peyote Cacti

The Hoichol Indians

Peyote in North America

Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca Churches

Ch 13 Modern Gnosis & The Greatest Secret of the Ancient world.

References

Introduction

This book is as much about plants as it is about identifying how Gnostic visions were originally created. We know more about our past and the world in which we live than at any other time in human history. But there is still much that remains lost and forgotten from human history, with some of this only waiting to be rediscovered. About twelve years ago, before the writing of this book, I had my first mystical experience. It took place on the top of a mountain in the middle of the Mojave Desert. From that time forward I began a search for greater insight and understanding into the world’s religions. Being raised Christian; I soon began to study Gnosticism. I was quickly intrigued by the many astounding experiences presented in Gnostic texts, experiences of travels to higher dimensional realms, contact with divine beings of light and even the experience and contact with the divine itself. Having collected a series of visionary and mystical experiences of my own by this time, I quickly began to realize that there was something truly great taking place in Gnostic texts that the modern world had not yet fully uncovered. This is when I realized that the modern world had no idea how Gnostic experiences were created. Because of the Gnostics close relationship to the genesis of early Christianity, the Gnostics are profoundly important in helping us to understand not only Christianity’s earliest beginnings but also the greatest secrets of the ancient world.

After reading Gnostic texts, one is immediately struck by experiences that are imbedded in visionary and esoteric lore. From studying the Gnostic’s visionary experiences we know that their visions take on a particular and defined character. Having spent the better part of a decade studying altered states of consciousness and enthogenic plant use around the world, I knew that the Gnostic’s visions were real and that there was only a limited number of ways that they could have been created. After exploring Gnostic scholarship on the topic of how Gnostic visions were created, I came up surprisingly empty handed. Only a handful of scholars ever attempted to explore and try to identify how Gnostic visions were created. None of the ideas presented by any of the big names in Gnostic scholarship at the time even once mentioned the possibility that the Gnostics were creating their visions through the use of naturally available visionary compounds. At the time I began to write this book, the general consensus among Gnostic scholars was that the method for how Gnostic visions were created was unknown, but the leading possible candidates were, meditation, ontological reflection of self, hypnotic trance, and guided group meditation. I quickly realized from these suggestions that these Gnostic scholars had no idea how Gnostic visions were being created. Because I had already gained extensive first hand experience with many psychedelic and entheogenic shamanic plants, I knew that there was a big piece of the picture that these scholars had missed.

In 1990, a doctor by the name of Rick Strassman began work on a little known neural transmitter which at the time had been found to have a direct connection to the experiences created by the brain in Near Death States. In that same year, Dr. Strassman gained approval by the American F.D.A to conduct research on this chemical compound and administer it to live human subjects. Over the course of his research, Strassman documented dozens of unusual reports of powerful visionary experiences that not only closely resembled Near Death Experiences but also the strange and unique experiences we find documented among the Gnostics.

Having already known about Dr. Strassman’s research into this chemical compound, known today as DMT, I began to conduct my own research on the substance and its potential connection to Gnostic visions. I quickly discovered that this powerful visionary neural transmitter was not a rare compound locked away in the brain, but that it existed with relative abundance throughout nature and the world of plants. I began to learn everything that I could about these DMT containing plants, their uses among humans, the history of their use, and the people that used them. Soon after doing this, I began experimenting with plants myself. While DMT is present naturally in many types of plants, the body has a natural enzyme called monoxides that are actually designed to break DMT down in the gut before it has time to pass into the body and pass the blood brain barrier. In certain parts of the world, particularly in the Amazon Rainforest, people have learned that these stomach enzymes can be denatured by other plants. When these two plants are mixed together and drank they produce a powerful visionary experience, with the DMT as the primary visionary catalyst. In the South American Amazon, this botanical mixture is known as ayahuasca.

Soon after experiencing ayahuasca myself and learning about how it is made and the cultures that use it, I discovered that it had recently been discovered by botanists that there were two plants in the Middle East that contained the same two chemical compounds found in the brew ayahausca. Because this news was not widely known at the time, very little research had been conducted on the possibility that the two plants could have ever been mixed or consumed for their visionary properties at any point in antiquity. So this is when I started to conduct my research. I started gathering evidence that the two plants that could have made up this visonary brew were known about and used in antiquity. What I found totally surprised me. Not only did I find evidence that the two plants that make up this visonary brew were known about and used in antiquity but there was direct evidence that these same two plants were also known about and used among the Gnostics. Studying the experiences of the Gnostics I soon came to discover that when the visonary experiences of the Gnostics are compared to the effects of Ayahuasca, a direct correlation can be seen between them. The following research of this book represents almost a decade of research into the identification of the lost Gnostic sacrament and the method of how Gnostic visions were created. Before I go on to explore Gnostic visions and present evidence for how their visonary experiences were created, I would first like you to gain a basic understanding of how the spiritual world is contacted and experienced by various peoples in the world today. I would also like you see the research that has been conducted on the identification of other ancient visonary religious experiences and understand the importance of visonary compounds in early human history and religion. So, to understand the Gnostics you must first understand the world that they came from and to do that you must first understand humanity’s earliest encounters with the divine.

Part I: Keys to the Spirit World and Classical Visions

Ch 1 Keys to the Spirit World and the Birth of Religion

And the Lord spoke to them, now listen to me! Even with the Prophets, I the Lord communicate by visions and dreams.

Numbers 12:6

In the very beginning of the Torah, as well as in the Bible, one of the very first stories you read after the creation of the world is the story about the transformation and subsequent exoduses of Adam and Eve from the Primordial Garden of Eden, the Garden of Paradise. Many people who have read this age old story never seem to see how it directly relates to what we know today as the history of early human evolution. Many Bible teachers today talk about this age-old legend only as literal evidence for their claim to the start of mankind’s original eternal sin and subsequent fall from primordial perfection and divine grace, as if God was still holding a grudge against mankind for eating this fruit, and still cursing mankind after all of these many years. If this is to be taken literally, in this way, then I would really not want to be any part of such a harsh and wrathful God. But if we look at the story as something else, maybe it may open up more possibilities. Maybe this age old legend really was passed down from generation to generation long ago and made its way into the history of the Jewish people, holding a glimpse of truth into one of the greatest mysteries of our own most ancient past:

But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not die, For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like god, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

Genesis, 3:3

Perhaps the story of Adam and Eve is not about a primordial never-ending curse on mankind for eating the mythical fruit of knowledge. Instead it may actually be about the transformation of primordial mankind from a primitive animal state into the first truly human humans. Perhaps this story of Adam and Eve is not about sin or an eternal curse on mankind as some have suggested, but is instead about the primordial transformation of human consciousness. The story of Adam and Eve shows how the human mind that we know today came about as a result of eating a mind-altering fruit or plant by the first two humans. It is also the first place in Western civilization that we find a prevalent and important theological and cultural legend that implies a clear and direct association between the acquisition of knowledge and the use of a mind-altering plant.

In the story of Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge was a plant that induced an experience that resulted in mankind’s primordial animal mind being forever changed and transformed into something much greater: something truly more human, a mind that can know right from wrong and for the first time, be fully self-aware, self-reflective, and free from the binds of pure animal instinct, a mind truly human.

One of the first people to propose the entheogenic theory of human evolution outside the biblical story of Adam and Eve was the late philosophical ethnobotanist Terence McKenna. McKenna proposed that some early hominids, being omnivorous, would have discovered and ate psychedelic plants and fungus in their daily foraging. In doing so, these plants would have made distinct temporary changes to their everyday consciousness. These plants would have sharpened or heightened the hominids perception, allowing them to better find and sense predators, even finding better food sources, as well as gain a distinct edge in competition for mates. This plant-based increase in awareness could have also added in the development of higher cognitive functions over time, much better than their other non-psychedelic plant-eating neighbors. This could have given certain groups or individuals a distinct advantage over other proto-humans, allowing for a superior but natural evolutionary edge on their competition, making them more mentally advanced and more suitable to survive.

In studying animal behavior, researchers have found that many animals demonstrate the clear desire to seek out intoxication. Some of these include cats to catnip, birds to intoxicating nectars, reindeer and caribou to Fly Agric mushrooms, elephants to fermented fruits, even cows to intoxicating grasses. There are also countless cases in which the psychoactive or narcotic properties of certain plants have been directly discovered by humans through the observation of animal behavior. But for a long time, there was no hard evidence indicating early primates ever utilized psychoactive plants for their effects or in any of their daily foragings. Because of this, there was very little evidence to support this particular theory of early human evolution at the time. Then a discovery was made while studying animal and primate behavior in a tropical forest of Africa that finally shed light on this ancient theory. ¹

In the forest of Gabon and the Congo in Africa, the Mitsogho shamans, or Nganga as they are called by the locals, reported to animal behavior researchers and various European ethnobotanists exploring the region that male Mandrills were known to use the psychoactive plant Iboga to become intoxicated. Mandrills are closely related to baboons and can be found in the tropical rainforests of West Africa, Southern Nigeria, South Cameroon, Gabon, and the Congo. Mandrills are known to live in wide-spread communities, adhering to a rigid hierarchical social structure. At the top of the social ladder are the Alpha males to whom other powerful males submit; these in turn dominate yet weaker males. When a male Mandrill must engage in combat with another, either to establish a claim to a female or to climb a rung of the hierarchical ladder, he does not begin to fight without forethought. It has been found that many Mandrills will first find and dig up an Iboga bush, eating its psychedelic root; next, they will wait for its effects to hit in full force (which may take from 1-2 hours) and only then does he approach and attack the other male he wants to engage in battle. This peculiar animal behavior is the first of its kind demonstrated among primates, something that clearly demonstrates a high level of premeditation and awareness in the mind of the animal. It also demonstrates some of the first documented reports of psychedelic plant use among certain primate groups, and the use of these substances by these animals for these unique and particular social purposes. These findings stand not only as supporting evidence for the entheogenic theory of human evolution, but also demonstrate the possibility that this age-old western legend of Adam and Eve could actually have had its place in fact, and could, in some fashion, have once really taken place. ²

If the change in consciousness from animal to modern human ever took place, as at one time it clearly must have done, what was the event that facilitated this change? What started this alteration in consciousness and heightened increased awareness of self that modern humans have over all the other animals on this planet? If the consumption of mind altering plants helped to contribute this change in human evolution and awareness, then the story of Adam and Eve would be a legend that is based on a real primordial event. If such an event ever took place, it seems clear that early humans would have had to deal with the deep-seated anxiety at their newly-perceived separation from their environment. Adam and Eve would have had a sudden sense of their own mortality, and clear awareness of their inevitable death. The down of human consciousness could have been interpreted as a fall from grace to early humans because animal consciousness is more instinctual and more imbedded in its own nature, not burdened by self awareness and the self-conscious weight of human morality.

After this change occurred, the first humans would have found themselves in a world without the innocent, no longer free of anxiety, guilt, and remorse. The first humans were the first to feel the heavy weight of morality. They were now responsible for their own actions. Maybe this is why the tree of knowledge became known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first humans saw this as a tree that gave knowledge, a never-ending knowledge and understanding between right and wrong, good and evil, a tree that in some way also separated them from their more primordial animal past and gave them their newfound awareness of their now naked animal bodies.

This newfound change in early humans could have been seen as a fall from grace because of the fall from the grace of their past instincts and ignorance and rise into what we know today as being truly human. So what may have once seemed like a fall from grace really opened their eyes and the doors of the great creative reasoning and insight that is so distinct to the human condition. ³

This early protohuman behavior could have even later developed into the vocation of the first shamans, healers, or priests; the very same individuals that modern anthropologists have identified with as being the earliest spiritual practitioners and healers on the planet. Remarkably, when we go on to study Shamanism, one of the most unique and central aspects known to unify the worldwide shamanic traditions is the fundamental belief that the alteration of consciousness is essential for accessing and contacting spiritual realities. The system of methodologies found in shamanism for contacting spiritual realities is also held to be the oldest of spiritual practices in the world. The belief in a spirit world or in the existence of a spiritual level of reality that is unseen by the normal human eye is held as the most fundamental component of all major world religions. But the ideas, myths, and symbols used to construct the idea of a spirit world as they are seen in any given major world religion, have their origins in these much older and much more ancient roots. As a matter of fact, the foundations for the belief in a spirit world or spiritual dimension of reality can all find their origins in these earlier and much more ancient shamanic roots and practices. ⁴

The Symbolic Revolution

The birth of human language, writing, and religion are known to have started with a prehistoric movement that is characterized today as the Symbolic Revolution. The Symbolic Revolution characterizes the first creation of human symbols and the attachment of purpose and meaning to these symbols, both visual and otherwise. The development of symbolism is known to have been one of the greatest advancements in early human development and evolution. In studying the first defining elements of human existence on this planet, we are led to examine the earliest depictions of mankind. In what are known as the first defining elements of human art, religion, and the belief in supernatural realms, (elements that are all found within the earliest cave paintings of humanity) is a unique phenomenon that mysteriously emerges some time around 40,000 years ago. Before about 40,000 years ago, other than a very few and widely scattered isolated examples, there is nothing in the archeological record left by our ancestors that we would instantly recognize as modern human behavior. After this period in time it is clear that creatures exactly like us had arrived and began to spread across the globe. The first and most noted universal phenomena associated with humanity and the early rise of modern human behavior is the notable and first defining evidence for the belief in supernatural realms, supernatural spirit beings, and the first direct evidence for the birth of religion. ⁵

The clearest possible illustration of this is found in cave paintings dating from the prehistoric periods found all around the world. In southwest Europe, some of the most ancient and sophisticated representations of prehistoric religious art can be found. The oldest cave art so far discovered in the world suddenly appears between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, where it then endures until approximately 12,000 years ago. This is the art of the great painted caves such as Chauvet, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira. The caves are rightly famous for their realistic images of Ice Age mammals. Much less known is the fact that numerous supernatural beings, often half human, half animal, are also depicted, very reminiscent of patterns found in shamanism, items or beings known as shape shifters a practice known to utilize altered states of consciousness in which the shaman enters a state of trance and experiences visions, supernatural beings, and temporary mental transformations. ⁶

For many years, these mysterious items were hotly debated within the academic community and the source of their meaning and inspiration were equally mysterious. Then in an ingenious explanation put forward by an international group of anthropologists and archeologists regarding the bizarre appearance of these cave paintings and the beings found within them, was put forward an idea that was finally able to explain their existence. The essence of their argument was that cave art expresses mankind’s first and oldest notions of death and other realms of existence, notions that are now largely believed to have taken shape in altered states of consciousness most likely brought on by the consumption of psychoactive plants. Although not to the liking of some scholars, this has been the most widely accepted theory of cave art since the mid-1990s. Because of this remarkable fact, it is almost an embarrassment that none of the experts currently advocating this theory have ever actually consumed any psychoactive plants themselves; nor do they have any first-hand idea of what an altered state of consciousness is like, or any desire to experience one. This in my view has limited the modern academic understanding of this phenomenon and its various manifestations around the world. While it is a great academic insight, I truly believe that to fully understand and comprehend the complexity of this phenomenon and its relationship and importance to early human history, one must extend this inquiry into the realms of direct first hand experience and knowledge.

Before modern human behavior, no one ancestor in human lineage had ever made use of any form of symbolism before and needless to say no other animal species had ever done so before either. The switching on of humanity’s symbol making capacity that took place sometime between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago was an event that not only changed everything in human history, but it was also closely intertwined with humanity’s first inquiries into spiritual and supernatural realms. So if altered states of consciousness did help facilitate the switching on of early humanity’s symbol-making capacity and our first inquiries into the supernatural as is supported by cave art research, then the relationship between early mankind’s evolution and the botanical world is much more closely connected then what has been previously thought.⁷

According to Professor David Lewis Williams, the first leading proponent of this theory of cave art, such ideas are not part of the normal, predictable current of everyday life but instead arise from the universal human neurological capacity to enter altered states of consciousness. ⁸ Many anthropologists are convinced that as far back as the Upper Paleolithic, our ancestors placed a high value on hallucinogenic and visionary experiences and made use of psychoactive plants to induce them. In addition, it is well known that rhythmic drumming, dancing, fasting, self mutilation, and sleep deprivation, are also known to induce visionary and hallucinatory experiences. ⁹

Supported by David Whitley, one of the leading North American rock-art specialists, Jean Clottes, the world renowned expert on the French prehistoric cave paintings, and Lewis Williams and a growing number of other scholars from many different countries around the world, are beginning to take the view that the first notions of the existence of supernatural realms, beings, and the first religious ideas about them, the first art representing them, and the first mythologies concerning them, were all derived from the visionary experiences of prehistoric shamans.¹⁰ One of the first academic investigators to propose this extraordinary theory of prehistoric cave art was David Lewis Williams. Williams first began to develop his neuropsychological model of cave art and the origins of religion in the early 1980s, and has been testing and defending it virtually non stop since 1988, when he and his co-researcher Thomas Downson officially put it before their peers in the scholarly journal Current Anthropology.¹¹

In examining Williams’ research on this topic, it has been pointed out by himself and other cave art researchers that much of the art depicted in the prehistoric caves of southwestern Europe date from around 40,000 to 30,000 years of age and are found to depict animals which would have been familiar to our prehistoric ancestors such as, bison, horses, and woolly mammoths. This originally gave rise to the idea that these prehistoric paintings were a form of magic designed to give humans power over the animals they hunted.¹²

This idea prevailed for much of the twentieth century, but it is hard to see why because it was so blatantly wrong. We can tell what our ancestors ate by the bones discovered in their caves, and these rarely match the creatures depicted on the walls. More importantly, many of the images feature fantastic monsters and supernatural beings that have never existed in everyday physical reality. Therianthropes (from the Greek therion = wild beast and anthropos = man are depictions of human animal hybrids. These images are inarguably one of the more enigmatic and mysterious features of these prehistoric depictions. ¹³ One such figure is known as the Sorcerer of Trois Freres cave in France, dating back approximately 17,000 years. Deeply engraved into the rock ceiling is an amazing figure with the ears of a wolf, the eyes of an owl, the antlers of a stag, the tail of a horse, the claws of a lion, and the feet and body of a human being. Other bizarre therianthropic images can be found in caves across Europe, and the similarities between them are not only remarkable, but quite often breathtaking.¹⁴

A horned bison with a man’s arms and torso, daubed in red ochre in Fumane cave in northern Italy, matches another bison-man etched in charcoal on a cave ceiling in Chauvet, France, which resembles yet another bison-man at El Castillo in northern Spain. One of the most remarkable features of these unusual cave depictions is the time spans separating their creation. The Fumane image is 35,000 years old, the Chauvet image was created some 3,000 years later in or around 32,000 years ago, and the El Castillo image was made some 17,000 years after that some time around 15,000 years ago. It is important to also point out that the 17,000 years spanning the creation of these prehistoric cave paintings is a period more than eight times longer than the whole history of the Christian religion. ¹⁵ An image must be very powerful to be maintained and repeated over such a great length of time, and just as significant is the fact that similar images can be found all over the world-notably in Africa. In South Africa, for instance, there are paintings of beings that are half man, half praying mantis. In Tanzania, there are strange other worldly images of human bodies with insect heads, including feelers and eyes on stalks. Clearly, such images are not depictions of a hunter’s prey. They are pictures of supernatural beings- i.e. beings that we do not see in everyday life, beings that are encountered in altered states of consciousness, being found in the visionary space. ¹⁶

But the questions remain: how, why, and because of what experiences did our ancestors begin to conceive of the existence of beings like these? In a search for answers, researchers have come to another mysterious set of universal recurring images found in cave and rock art all over the world: enigmatic geometric patterns such as grids, nets, ladders, spirals and zigzag lines. These patterns are central to the research work that was conducted by David Lewis Williams. Williams was intrigued by the results of various neuropsychological experiments in which volunteers under modern laboratory conditions were given psychoactive substances and asked to describe their effects. During these tests, the volunteers reported seeing various kinds of abstract geometric patterns known today as entopic phenomena. Since scientists believe that neither the average size of our brains nor the basic wiring had changed at all in the last 50,000 years, Williams realized that our prehistoric ancestors would have seen much the same geometric patterns had they entered altered visionary states. He began to speculate that the abstract patterns painted on the cave walls represented what our Paleolithic predecessors saw when they entered deep visionary trance. Williams also pointed out that in addition to the entopic patterns seen in prehistoric art, many modern lab volunteers pointing out identical geometric and spiral patterns. In fact, many volunteers in altered states of consciousness have routinely reported encounters with similar entopic patterns and therianthropic beings throughout the research that has been conducted in this field. This indicates that the modern lab volunteers who were experiencing these altered states of consciousness were reporting many of the same visual phenomena that were left on cave walls found from throughout the prehistoric period. ¹⁷

It was an extraordinary theory at the time, but soon enough Williams would find even more evidence to support it in the testimony of an extinct tribe of Southern African Bushmen known as the San. Until about 1927, it was perfectly legal for white South Africans to hunt and murder the San, whose body parts were kept and boastfully displayed by early white settlers as hunting trophies. So anticipating their annihilation as early as the 1870s, a German linguistic expert named Wilhelm Bleek conducted interviews with the few surviving San tribesmen to record their way of life before it disappeared. The notebooks contained his neatly written transcripts remained hidden in South African archives until David Lewis Williams re-discovered them nearly a century later. ¹⁸

The San were remarkably clear about the beautiful and mysterious rock paintings of their ancestors, which included the praying mantis images I just mentioned. They revealed that the paintings were the work of shamans, whose role it was to travel into the spirit world and negotiate with the inhabitants on behalf of their fellow Bushmen. On their psychic visionary voyages, these shamans were accompanied by spirit guides who appeared to them in animal form and taught them to heal the sick, influence the weather, control the movements of animals and so on. Intriguingly, the San described how the shamans entered the other world by means of an arduous and exhausting form of dance. Williams realized that this would have lead to extreme dehydration and hyperventilation, exactly the conditions that could propel them into visionary trance. When they returned from these visionary out of body journeys, the shamans informed the community about what they had learned and painted some of the strange beings and scenes they had encountered on the rocks and caves surrounding them. This was therefore what led to the existence of their rock art, further demonstrating the validity of Williams’ theory. ¹⁹

Williams also realized that the strange geometric patterns the ancient San painted were the same entoptic phenomena experienced by Western volunteers many millennia later, patterns that were also identical to patterns found painted on cave walls in Europe many millennia earlier. As for the half-man half-beast therianthropes, the ancient San people said that when their Shamans would enter the other world they would sometimes have to adopt various animal forms and the paintings depicted them at various stages of their shamanic transformations. The fact that similar images can be seen in cave systems across the world supports Lewis-Williams’ remarkable theory, that they were all the work of shamans who had entered altered states of consciousness and states of deep visionary trance. Besides ritual dancing, drumming, and eating or drinking psychoactive plants, these visionary states may also have been achieved through physical stress such as body piercing, starvation, or sensory deprivation, possibly even in the caves where the paintings were created. ²⁰

Prehistoric North Africa

As you have seen, the knowledge and use of visionary experiences goes far beyond recorded human history. Rock paintings and carvings from the prehistoric periods serve as a testimony to the preliterate history of human civilization. Rock art, was the first permanent form of visual communication known to man, and has been found all over the world. This same form of art and visual communication eventually led to the invention of writing and goes back almost to the origins of mankind. In the Tanzania region of Sahara North Africa there have been found rock paintings dating as far back as 40,000 years or more. Archeologists exploring various caves in these regions of the Sahara desert have found other numerous cave paintings dating from 7,000 to 9,000 years of age. Unlike many other cave paintings, these have clear representations of psychedelic plant use. These paintings represent what are now known to be the oldest depictions of shamanic psychedelic mushroom use in the world. These rock paintings depict pictures of people or spirit persons holding large bands of mushrooms in which the explicit use of these mushrooms seems to be taking place for the purpose of ritual or within a sacred setting. Many times these ancient mushroom cave paintings are accompanied by a painting of a large masked man or spirit person whose body is many times also depicted as being covered with these mushrooms. It has also been documented among Scholars that the masked dancers found in the caves of Inaouanrhat and Tassili from the Sahara have apparently influenced the early cultures of the Nile Valley and of West Africa, and one can suspect that the use of masks in both regions particularly in ancient Egypt is one such link. However, there is no stylistic similarity between the mask in Tassili art and those of West Africa or the Nile. But considering the time span that has elapsed between the two traditions it is largely accepted that some stylistic elements may have changed and evolved over time. ²¹

Rock art experts have already produced significant evidence supporting that the art of what is now known as the Round Head period from the many depictions of round headed mushroom figures found throughout the Sahara desert region are believed to have been influenced by ecstatic or visionary states induced by the consumption of the many psychoactive mushrooms growing throughout the region. At the time these cave paintings were created, the region was forested, covered with lush vegetation, rivers, and lakes. This time period is known as the Great Humid Holocemic Period and is characterized by the presence of enormous lakes all over the Saharan basin around (10,000 B.C. - 5,500 B.C.). ²² This is also the generally accepted period for the chronology of the Round Heads art. A pollen examination carried out at the Tossili site revealed that during the Round Heads period, this area was covered by vast vegetation and highland flora, as well as the presence of coniferous trees and oaks. It can be presumed that some of the mushrooms represented, specifically the large ones, were indigenous to this wooded area in that they are intimately associated with these species of trees. This vast region of trees, forest, and lush vegetation eventually died out due to the ever increasing drought and climate change that started to grip the region shortly after the end of the last great ice age. According to scholars and archeologists investigating the art in the region, the art was produced by the early hunter gatherers during the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holecene periods. ²³

Similar works dating back nearly to the same period in history can also be found in various other sites around the world,