by Stephanie Brail

One of the great things about the Internet is the availability of documentaries countering the status quo and mainstream propaganda that programs our lives. Alex Jones, for example, has done a tremendous amount of work exposing the Illuminati and their plans for a "New World Order" through his videos.

Zeitgeist is one such cult documentary that melds religious critique, 9/11 conspiracy, and an expose of the global banking cartel into a manifesto for consciousness raising and activism. Zeitgeist explains the problem; the follow-up Zeitgeist Revisited offers a solution. (I've seen Zeitgeist, which I have mixed feelings about, but I have not yet seen Zeitgeist Revisited.)

Yet another "down the rabbit hole" type video is The Pharmacratic Inquisition. The original was simply a lecture (lasting over three hours); the 2007 "DVD" version is a slicker video utilizing spooky music and a parade of graphics. You can view the video for free online here:

The Pharmacratic Inquisition shares some similarities with Zeitgeist in terms of the mood music and the association between Jesus and astrology. This part of the video is the most interesting. But The Pharmacratic Inquisition starts going way off the deep end when it suddenly shifts gears and tries to prove that all of Christianity is nothing more than a cover for an ancient drug cult obsessed with a red mushroom with white spots.

To this end, the narrators will compare every possible symbol with the shape of the mushroom - it's phallic, it's the Holy Grail, it's the reason why Christians use a cross as a symbol. (Never mind that crucifixion was a real method of torture and had nothing whatsoever to do with mushrooms!)

Santa Claus and bishops wear red because of the mushroom. But wait - there's more. If Krishna and Vishnu are blue, it's because they were copying the blue stalk of another mushroom! (As if there weren't a zillion other blue things in the world...the sky, the ocean, peacock feathers, etc.)

Towards the end the film talks about psychedelic drug studies and somehow relates these drugs to chakras and the kundalini energy going up the spine.

If this sounds disjointed - it is. The film skips around from section to section, laboriously going over certain things in great detail while not really coming to an overall point.

I find analysis of symbolism to be a fascinating subject, but unfortunately, the guys who did this film have mushrooms on the brain and can't possibly imagine that some symbols might have other meanings. E.g., they think the pharmaceutical symbol, the caduceus, represents a mushroom. I'm sorry, it doesn't look like a mushroom whatsoever. (Some in the yoga world do point out the similarities between the caduceus and the kundalini energy going up the spine - the snakes symbolizing the male and female energy channels known as the ida and pingala.)

Never mind the fact that the filmmakers clearly state that the mushroom in question, the Amanita Muscaria, grows under coniferous trees (pine trees). So how on earth could Christianity have developed based on a mushroom that quite obviously would not be growing in desert lands such as Israel? Hello!

This particular mushroom, by the way, is known as a fly agaric - the poison in the mushroom was commonly used to kill flies. (This is never mentioned in the video.) Thus, there's no good reason to believe that just because old Christmas and Easter cards had paintings with red mushrooms on them, that people were promoting the mushroom's use as a psychedelic drug. Maybe the mushroom was simply common and it happens to be kind of pretty looking!

My problem with a video like this is that it uses dubious reasoning and shoddy science to try to support the idea that psychedelic drugs are somehow ancient "spiritual" plants that have been suppressed for sinister reasons. No, the likely reason people aren't eating up Amanita Muscaria mushrooms today is that, actually, they are pretty poisonous!

This is not to say ancient shamans in certain areas did not use these mushrooms for drug use, but as a spiritual seeker who believes that psychotropic drugs are generally bad for the mind, body, and energetic system, I really don't think the use of shrooms is necessary to gain enlightenment.

The "Jesus was a drug pusher" type of mythology was not created by the makers of this film. Much of their ideas came from a now discredited book "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" by one of the scholars who studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, John Allegro. Some conspiracy theories like to think the book has been buried due to a paranoid church hierarchy; personally, I think that the mushroom thesis is extremely weak. (You can read the book online here.)

I do feel that there's a lot more to Christianity than the standard Bible tells us, and I do find the correlation between Jesus's birthday, astrology, and ancient pagan festivals to be quite fascinating. This, however, is not reason for me to dismiss all of Christianity as a useless religion, or keep myself from enjoying the magic of Christmas. Those pseudo-scholars out to "expose" the roots of Christianity might do well to remember that the underlying message of Jesus, whoever he was or was not, is still one that brings hope to a lot of people.