There has even been a great deal made of its connections with Christmas, but probably too much has been made of this connection and different interpretations of this theory is available. Its image can be seen in Christmas and greeting cards, children's stories, science fiction and fantasy illustrations, and in mushroom models. In recent time, it is the mushroom that has been adopted as the "prototype" mushroom in western cultures. Yet, the picture on the left, of this mushroom, will probably be familiar to the reader. Muraresku's book features a brilliant Foreword by Graham Hancock, the New York Times bestselling author of America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization.Īmanita muscaria or the Fly Agaric is not a well-known mushroom based on its scientific name or common name. Muraresku in his best selling book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History Of The Religion With No Name, used Robert Gordon Wassons work: Soma The Divine Mushroom Of Immortality as one of his research tools.
A section on the post-Vedic history of Soma is contributed by the Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty.īrian C. In his presentation he throws fascinating light on the role of mushrooms in religious ritual. Wasson has aroused considerable attention in learned circles and beyond by advancing and documenting the thesis that Soma was a hallucinogenic mushroom - none other than the Amanita muscaria, the fly-agaric that until recent times was the centre of shamanic rites among the Siberian and Uralic tribesmen. While unlikely to end debate over the identity of Soma, this study's findings help to solidify the foundation of Wasson's theory, and also to demonstrate the importance of preparation in understanding and uncovering the true identity of Soma.One of the key enigmas of cultural history has been the identity of a sacred plant called Soma in the ancient Rig Veda of India.
The findings of this study demonstrated that the effects of Amanita muscaria were related to the type of preparation employed, and that its toxic effects were considerably reduced by preparations that paralleled those described for Soma in the Rig Veda. In order to address these specific criticisms over 600 anecdotal accounts of Amanita muscaria inebriation were collected and analyzed to determine the impact of preparation on Amanita muscaria's effects. Several critics have reasoned that such preparation should be unnecessary if equivalent results can be obtained by consuming the raw plant, as is done with other psychoactive mushrooms. One omission in Wasson's theory is his failure to explain how pressing and filtering Soma, as described in the Rig Veda, supports his theory of Soma's identity. While Wasson's theory has garnered acclaim, it is not without its faults. Gordon Wasson first proposed his groundbreaking theory identifying Soma, the hallucinogenic sacrament of the Vedas, as the Amanita muscaria mushroom.
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